Random Beer Thoughts

[Snarf1]

Not sure I trust your palate right now.

He's in that post noob sophmoric stage.

 

[arren]

Been drinking for 12 hours now. At some ****** sports bar drinking bcbs and stand by my opinion that it's underwhelming this year.

It's honestly the best batch I've had in a few years - and it was still underwhelming.

 

[jwazzy]

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/chairgate.469990/

 

[JulianB1]

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/chairgate.469990/

"Funny thing is, this is the first thing from this site that I've liked. This blog gets mentioned in the NW forum sometimes, and I generally find the guy insufferable. This post though, was gold."

He sounds fun at parties...

 

[NAD1983]

"Funny thing is, this is the first thing from this site that I've liked. This blog gets mentioned in the NW forum sometimes, and I generally find the guy insufferable. This post though, was gold."

He sounds fun at parties...

That forum is the most insufferable bunch of twats on the Internet. That's including tosh BTW...

Everything is an argument and every god damn post is 800+ characters. The mod doesn't help one bit but I think it's generally the same 10 or so people arguing with each other.

Go back and read any of the HM or Fremont threads (especially Midnight Still), you will not be disappointed.

 

[FoudreGuy]

That forum is the most insufferable bunch of twats on the Internet. That's including tosh BTW...

Everything is an argument and every god damn post is 800+ characters. The mod doesn't help one bit but I think it's generally the same 10 or so people arguing with each other.

Go back and read any of the HM or Fremont threads (especially Midnight Still), you will not be disappointed.

Oh come on, they're not that bad. And beertunes is a real nice guy in person.

 

[NAD1983]

Oh come on, they're not that bad. And beertunes is a real nice guy in person.

The fact that beertunes waxes poetic about beer trading ethics is incredibly ironic, considering he has flaked on multiple boxes throughout his illustrious BA career. He may be nice in person but he is incredibly annoying online and that's the only way I will ever interact with him.

I'm sure some of them "aren't that bad" but unlike them, I am not practicing for the debate team. To be honest I'm not sure how any of the have the time or energy to write some of the responses they do. 15 seconds of searching brought me to this wonderful post...

Again, defining people that choose not to go or are unable to go as an "elite group" is weak sauce. By that logic virtually any group is elite. People that chose NOT to go are elite. People that choose to chew bubblegum are elite. Elite implies an inherent superiority in terms of ability or quality. This doesn't do that in any meaningful way. If you want to say your ability to wait in line on a Saturday is inherently inferior to theirs or the quality of your line waiting is worse ... well, ha ha.

"any other than the one chosen."

Let's run with that.

- A club which required a membership and a hefty up front fee would have been cooler. (But members of the club now DO have an inherent advantage ... and we've seen elsewhere how people hate speculative clubs ... i.e. Wolves & People)
- A 1 PP limit where they split the allocation over 2 or 3 days (selling 1/2 each day - and then if you were there when they ran out on day 1, come back tomorrow) would have been cooler? (But 1 PP is lame people will say - then I can't drink one and age one or give one to my aged grandfather that loves BA stouts? And what if I work both days of the weekend - I'm not part of the elite that has weekends off!)
- Pricing it at $35 a bottle so that it stuck around longer because of pricing to "supply / demand" would have been cooler. (Pricing so only the rich elite can afford this beverage that was once the tipple of the working man?!)
- A surprise release on a Wednesday would have been cooler. (Ugh, I work evenings ... and I wasn't elite enough to happen to be there on a Wednesday or to be able to find a baby sitter on short notice.)
- An online ticket sale that allows proxies would have been cooler. (But I work in a hospital and don't have access to computers during the allotted time and I don't follow facebook or instagram so I didn't know and the site crashe and, hell, look at all these mules from California?!?)

I'm not trying to be a jerk or single you out but "any other" seems a woefully inadequate answer. It's non-specific and puts the burden back on them. Next time if they do it differently and you're still displeased you can say "geez, there were literally an infinitude of other options and they still picked a bad one!" Pitfalls abound left and right. Your imaginary diligent and determined person had about a good a shot in this scenario as any and far better than in many.
Click to expand...
Sorry to take this thread back off track again, but I felt obliged to respond to Kurmaraja's points, and attempt to offer something constructive to the conversation. Anyway, here goes...

Regarding the "elitism" of one-time-only event-style releases, like this one, if you have sufficient disposable time and income to wait 2-3+ hours in a line on a specific day and time, in order to just have a chance at spending $16+tax per bottle on 500 ml of beer, your life is probably pretty good. You might not own a solid gold hand truck, but, generally speaking, the odds are that you're doing okay. Perhaps "elite" is too strong a word, but something approaching a kind of "leisure class" certainly comes to mind (I include myself in it, BTW). It seems a fair observation to me, at any rate, that a non-trivial number of good honest folks are "priced out" in some meaningful sense--temporally, financially, by ethos, because they are infirm, etc...--by releases of this kind, which is what I was getting at. As long as they continue, those people who are able and choose to go will have to arrive ever-more early, stand in line even longer, feel more pressure to maximize their allotment by whatever means necessary; and more of them will go home unhappy because they invested all that time and energy and still got shut out. Over the short arc as well as the long, they bend towards exclusion and exclusivity. I shudder to think how many cookies poor Mama HM is going to have to bake the next time; but she better bake them, because they may be all that a lot of people end up going home with...

As for the myriad ways this release, and others like it (eg., Reuben's), could be better done in the future, why is every suggestion, including all of yours, fixated on a singular approach? Why not just make it a little more varied and hybrid? A softer, staggered, or rolling release would have given other people, unwilling or unable to go on Saturday, the chance to pick up a bottle of this beer. It would not have guaranteed anyone a bottle, let alone 2 to 4, but at least it would have given them another option than waiting in line for a few hours on a day when maybe they couldn't have, which was the necessary and all-too-predictable consequence of this style of release. Have a big event, if you wish, but hold some back, let people know you are doing so, and make a habit of it, so that rabid FOMO-ism on the main release day is curtailed (if only infinitesimally). Then announce, or don't announce, when you'll be releasing the rest (whether all at once, or, probably better, in smaller increments). Mix up the schedule, or don't. Whatever approach suits the brewery's fancy and seems fairest to them. Also, if possible, try and send out at least a tiny fraction for distribution to local retailers. Even if this can only amount to a handful of cases for a bottle count the size of Midnight Still, it rewards the other businesses (bottle shops, specialty markets, beer bars) which tend to be the brewery's symbiotic partners in the industry. It also rewards the loyal patrons of these businesses, and ultimately provides yet another way that a person can have a shot, however small, at getting a rare beer without absolutely having to wait in line for several hours on a particular day and time at a particular place. If you wish to mix it up even further, and maybe even do some social good along the way, have a main release but also make some available for purchase as part of a charity raffle (or at least a lottery of some kind). Chucks did this for BC Rare last year, and I thought that was pretty cool (it also made it possible to feel good about potentially buying an AB InBev product, and that's rare).

There are many other options, too, with their own pros and cons for both the brewery and the consumer, but maybe by now you're getting my point. Which is: no one approach (and least of all last Saturday's, to my mind) is ever going to be perfect and satisfy everybody. A more diverse approach, tailored to the brewery's capabilities and predilections, as well as the type of beer and the amount made, probably won't either, if I'm honest. People tend, after all, to be unsatisfied, and especially in situations where demand for something greatly exceeds supply. But a more diverse approach tries, at the very least, to throw everyone a bone, or throw more than just one bone, anyway. It lengthens the time period in which a product is available, and increases the number of opportunities for those interested to track it down or, if the fates are smiling upon them, stumble upon it. These are inarguable goods, don't you think? In the starkest possible contrast, a release like Saturday's did just the opposite. It hastened an already scarce product's inevitable journey towards total exhaustion.

In the end, people--sensible people, anyway--will at least respect the fact that some effort was made to give them more than one (highly undesirable) option of obtaining a product that was only ever going to be very hard to come by. If you cannot, or choose not, to make more of something people want, that's perfectly fine and understandable; but perhaps you can at least be called upon to give them a little more choice in how they can get it.

Okay, can I please go back to my beer now?

 

[JulianB1]

The fact that beertunes waxes poetic about beer trading ethics is incredibly ironic, considering he has flaked on multiple boxes throughout his illustrious BA career. He may be nice in person but he is incredibly annoying online and that's the only way I will ever interact with him.

I'm sure some of them "aren't that bad" but unlike them, I am not practicing for the debate team. To be honest I'm not sure how any of the have the time or energy to write some of the responses they do. 15 seconds of searching brought me to this wonderful post...

Do I even want to ask what he posted that in reference to?

 

[NAD1983]

Do I even want to ask what he posted that in reference to?

Not sure. I just opened up the Midnight Still thread and looked for a long post.

Some of the threads are only those types of posts, back and forth for multiple pages.

 

[liquiddegenerate]

 

[FoudreGuy]

Do I even want to ask what he posted that in reference to?

Ancient Ones or a Midnight Still release probably.

 

[JulianB1]

Not sure. I just opened up the Midnight Still thread and looked for a long post.

Some of the threads are only those types of posts, back and forth for multiple pages.

I got bored and started hate-reading some of those threads (Midnight Still and Fremont releases). To say they are torturous reads would be an understatement.

But holy **** who is that @stillill guy? He's either an amazing troll or one of the biggest *********s I've ever seen on a beer forum. Bragging in a beer release thread about his real estate holdings, hahahahaha. He makes Joel66 seem modest by comparison.

 

[NAD1983]

I got bored and started hate-reading some of those threads (Midnight Still and Fremont releases). To say they are torturous reads would be an understatement.

But holy **** who is that @stillill guy? He's either an amazing troll or one of the biggest *********s I've ever seen on a beer forum. Bragging in a beer release thread about his real estate holdings, hahahahaha. He makes Joel66 seem modest by comparison.

I commend you for trying. It's brutal but it's worth it to find the peaks (every release day or announcement or mention of AB Inbev).

Stillill is quite possibly the most clueless person on the planet or the biggest troll. Either way, I like that it throws a wrench into their "safe space."

 

[Sam Fu]

 

[drgarage1]

The hardest-to-shotgun beer can ever created.

 

[JulianB1]

I was wondering why you posted this, not seeing any terms indicating a special version or whatever.

Then I saw "AND CANNED" and "1 PINT" and got excited.

 

[JulianB1]

The hardest-to-shotgun beer can ever created.

Barrel-aged Ten Fidy stovepipes would like to have a word with you...

 

[FTowne1]

Is this going to be a regular item?

 

[lb304854]

Best ice fishing beer ever.

 

[capnmike]

Best ice fishing beer ever.

Will be great for Ravinia too - "just a few light sippers for the lawn, hon"

 

[lb304854]

Will be great for Ravinia too - "just a few light sippers for the lawn, hon"

"How did you get into a fight at a Jethro Tull concert?"

 

[Ziggy]

case of each. yolo indeed.

BUMP


Any word on this tomfoolery?

 

[mateoloco]

BUMP


Any word on this tomfoolery?

Not yet shipped. Still says the order has been placed (did so on November 21). I will receive a notification email when my order has been shipped. That $0.72 was burning a hole in my pocket.

I just contacted the seller (Jester King) to ask them what the status was, considering it was supposed to have been delivered by November 28.

 

[FTowne1]

Not yet shipped. Still says the order has been placed (did so on November 21). I will receive a notification email when my order has been shipped. That $0.72 was burning a hole in my pocket.

Same status for me.

 

[Ziggy]

Those 72 cents are definitely in some shitlord CEO's offshore bank account by now.

 

[FTowne1]

Those 72 cents are definitely in some shitlord CEO's offshore bank account by now.

Hasn't cleared from my account yet

 

[Ziggy]

Hasn't cleared from my account yet

 

[JulianB1]

From one of the big Facebook trade groups:

Bottles of 1986 (!!) Rodenbach Alexander. Didn't even know that existed, I'd never seen any predating the 1990s.

 

[Stubs]

Barrel-aged Ten Fidy stovepipes would like to have a word with you...

And a word with ilovestouts ...

 

[ilovestouts]

And a word with ilovestouts ...

My body is ready for Speedway cans.