Ballast Point coming to Georgia?

It's already here, but so far just the Big Eye IPA, pale ale, and wheat.

 

Sadly no Sculpin until '14.

 

5 Points in Athens has them, if you're anywhere close to that. But they don't have any Sculpin. Just the three mentioned above. Picked up a sixer of Big Eye for $9.99 and I'm pleased with it so far

 

Tower Buckhead, HopCity, Sprayberry Bottle, Ale Yeah all got shipments this week around Atlanta.

 

Ballast Point has hit Florida, but no Sculpin as of yet

 

As mentioned, Pale, IPA, and White all hit this past week. We got a case of each. Blew through them all pretty quick too.

 

We've had Ballast Point for some time now, including Sculpin.

 

Yeah, what? I've been buying VAS and sculpin for about a yr now.

 

Apoarently I'm an idiot. Never seen Sculpin down here. Will be looking harder for it!

 

Florida is a smaller market overall than Georgia for new breweries, so you guys have had plenty of stuff we can't get. Most the time there will be available beers in all outlying States before we ever see them.

 

Uhh, how is Florida a smaller market in any way? We have something like 19million+ people compared to GA having somewhere near 10million.

 

Not what I meant. As a whole, breweries come into the surrounding States way before they do GA, just based on demand and distribution. The Carolinas and Alabama have plenty of breweries available to them that we don't get, even though we're sharing borders. The Atlanta market alone demands more beer sales than most cities in Alabama, and it's an ever growing city.

 

And Georgia tends to get breweries before Florida (New Belgium, Founders, and several others). We're usually a market that craft brewers have to ramp up to enter, vs. the relatively population light rest of the southeast

 

I have heard, but I do not know where the data is coming from, that GA has higher volume sales of craft brands than Florida does even with its larger population. I can not find data to back that up though so it may just be a load of crap. Of course, overall beer volume sales are larger in Florida.

As far as breweries that we got before you, it is usually the large national brands that are doing an entire country roll out and they naturally get to us before they get to you. New Belgium and to a lesser extent Founders falls into those categories. However, there are a lot more instances like Ballast Point that have skipped over GA and the larger craft market was the reasoning I have always heard.

On the flip side, due to our craft market, we occasionally end up with some gems that hand pick states like Port/Lost Abbey.

My only guess on why we sell so much craft is because we have 2 world class beer bars along with a Taco Mac on seemingly every damn corner with 100 tap lines. Add in the proliferation of growler stores since that law changed to go along with having a large distributor that is almost entirely craft brand focused and there is a lot of good beer that is sold in this state. With that said, it is almost entirely in the metro Atlanta area with a couple of bright spots scattered around.

 

Sculpin is available in 6-packs in South Carolina (only about an hour outside of the Commerce, GA area). The issue is that a 6-pack of Sculpin runs 18.99 and I can think of about 30 different world class IPAs that can be had for half that.

 

I can't imagine anyone buying a $19 six-pack of Sculpin now that Jai Alai is making its way into GA.