No Mikkeller beer in MN?

http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/no-more-shelton-brothers-in-mn.60264/

 

I really enjoy their stouts. I better stock up.

 

Anything shelton bros

 

Who's really disappointed by this? Not saying I don't enjoy the stouts, but at the price point, there's plenty of other options to us lucky Minnesotans...

 

I see Mikkeller all the time. I'm sure it's old stock. Some shops also bought quite a bit while they could. Ironically I spoke to a guy at a store today about them stocking up. I think they still distribute to WI. Pretty close to STP/MPLS but I really have only had one by them that I thought was incredible -- Beer Geek Breakfast Weasel. Ironically I got it as an extra in my first trade (in person in MPLS).

 

Looks like I know what to bring to Darkness Day next year.

 

I don't necessarily enjoy doling out the big bucks for Mikkeller and won't miss them too much (at their price point, they'll be sitting on the shelves quite a while) but Shelton Brothers distributes a lot of other stuff that I do enjoy that will be unavailable to us: Anchorage Brewing, Prairie Artisan Ales, Jolly Pumpkin, Les Trois Mousquetaires, Fantome, Cantillon, and on and on.

 

Yup, and those beers have pretty much been gone all year. I'm surprised people are now just catching on...

 

You can still find plenty on the shelves, and whether or not Shelton returns to the market, I'm sure you will be able to for years.

 

http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/no-more-shelton-brothers-in-mn.60264/#post-1081694

 

I get the feeling that most of the Shelton Bros portfolio was greatly ignored by consumers here. I moved to MN shortly after this happened and saw the threads and nobody seemed to care much or it may have just been one or two brands that anybody would even mention, like Jolly Pumpkin. Even now, people are only just catching on that some of these major breweries haven't been here for 10 months, which leads me to believe that they never had that large of a presence here. Coming from CA, it has been tough going cold turkey without any of the Shelton Bros catalog of breweries. Even with the amazing West Coast breweries that could easily fill any beer bars taps, the best places were always the bars that were able to really mix it up with a strong representation of the evolving beer scene around the world (along with obvious breweries that have been around for hundreds of years). Don't get me wrong, I have found some great beer bars here, but I do miss the diversity that having the Shelton Bros beers rotating through, gives to a tap list.

 

You have that backwards. Minnesota was greatly ignored by Shelton Bros. I know many buyers who would put in the same requests month after month for various Shelton offerings and received nothing. And when they would receive things it would be in drastically reduced quantities. We've learned to live without Shelton offerings long before they officially moved out, hence the somewhat apathy towards their departure.
It's hard to miss something you never really had.

 

I was going to say Shelton didn't really send anything worthwhile here for years, so fuck 'em. But Dan made the point much more eloquently.

 

Well, that is just how catalog like that goes (same with B. United). Kind of like the argument that breweries have against bars that only want the highly sought after rare beers without pouring the yearlongs; if buyers don't want to (or do not have a consumer base interested in) supporting the girth of the catalog, of course those accounts are going to be last in line for all those Cantillon requests (or whatever wasn't getting filled). Trust me, nobody there was saying "we hate Minnesotans, so screw them." If there was real business to be had in this state, politics and everything else aside, that business would have been done. I have had a business in a different industry that has some parallels to what B. United and Shelton do, only on a direct to consumer level. I have heard what you just said, a thousand times at least, over the past 15 years in doing this. No company makes money by not filling an order. You want to offer as much as possible and some of the rarest can have demand that exceeds supply or you may be dealing with suppliers that are homegrown businesses where even they do not have the capital to keep up with production. If orders here went unfilled, don't think that made anybody at Shelton any money. Businesses only make money on completed transactions, not for putting the resources into maintaining backorders for some stores wish list of Cantillon.

Sorry, this Shelton Bros thing really kills me, as you probably noticed in that older thread about them leaving. There is a huge catalog of beers there that have no supply problems, that really round out a full beer scene. And another reason that I have some serious doubts about how much this state supported those brands, is because a similarly deep catalog of imports at B. United are seemingly completely absent from any beer bars that I have found. OK, maybe not completely, because I just had my mind blown by seeing a Thornbridge cask of Black Raven, but that was the first B. United beer that I have seen on tap anywhere in MN in 9 months. There just doesn't seem to be a strong demand for these imports in MN. Just look at what happened down at Blue Max; where they had a massive clearance of mainly imports, because they were restructuring the allocation of space given to imports.

 

While this all sounds good, Shelton did not support this market. There are plenty of other states that have had the same issues with them. Washington state went years with out Shelton due to their distributor dropping them for not supporting the market. Minnesota may have been hurt by geography, Shelton has no trouble unloading the most of their catalog with out shipping things across the country. Why ship things when you don't have to. There was never any consistent availability for any of their products, not even the stuff that no one else wanted. We would still get the sixty Mikkeller single hop beers, but it wouldn't be until they were already long in the tooth.
The deep offerings in both B. United and Shelton Bros don't sell in this market, but they also don't sell in most markets. These are the quintessential Dusties. They lay waiting on the shelves across the county. Minnesota is not unique in this respect. Distributors in larger markets may buy more of their catalogs, but this is only because they have more places/stores to hide/pawn off these beers where they will be left to bask in UV light for eternity.

 

Sorry the above was typed between calls and emails over the course of the past half hour. My train of thought was routinely interrupted, making for a less than cohesive ramble.

 

Lol, Shelton will short you on EVERYTHING (And only give you 25% of the beers you ordered). It has nothing to do with complaining about never getting sent Cantillon. :-)

They left Nebraska a couple years ago after several years of mediocre support. I do miss quite a few beers from their portfolio, but thankfully they recently came back to Iowa (and at least for now are supporting them pretty well) so I can just cross the river to Council Bluffs.