P2P in the PNW?

???? With your background Terry, I woud think you would have a better idea about this than most of us. When I lived on the East Coast, I heard stories about some sleazy, underhanded things AB reps would do to try to get as many tap handles as possible in certain bars, but I've never heard of anything similar out here.

How about when you worked at the Green Parrot? Did you see or hear anything when you were working there?

 

I think of that thread whenever I see GI Honkers ale, the IPA or some of the other low end crap made by GI around town. I never used to see GI stuff on tap down here in Eugene, but over the last 6 months or so, I've started seeing their stuff more and more around town. Still not much of a presence, and it doesn't seem to sell all that well (kegs tend to languish it seems), but you do see their stuff from time to time around town now.

 

I don't know.... it hasn't worked out that way down here in Eugene. We get a VERY limited amount of BCBS stuff, and I've only seen it at a couple of different stores in town. Those places do indeed carry a fair amount of GI stuff, but it's mostly the high end, barrel aged sours that I see on the shelves there.

Places that are carrying honkers ale, the IPA, 312, and stuff like that, are typically growler station places (you mostly see this stuff on tap down here), and you never see BCBS bottles there (I'm not sure we even get any kegs of BCBS variants down here... at least I've never seen any). Most of those places don't even sell bottles, or their bottle selection is pretty limited.

The impression I have, based on previous threads, is that the "reward" they're getting is simply a cheap, inexpensive GI keg. I'm not saying you're wrong The22Lou, as your observation makes sense (sell a lot of low end GI beer, and get rewarded with BCBS stuff), but at least so far, it doesn't seem to have worked out that way down here in Eugene.

 

This is my impresssion as well. The culture is very, very different on the East Coast, and when I lived back East, I recall hearing all kinds of stories about special deals and arrangements certain distributors had with certain beer bars. One well regarded beer bar in SEPA completely discontinued carrying anything distributed by the folks who carried founders, because the owner felt he'd been screwed by them just too many times (various founder's events where, at the last moment, some special keg promised to the beer bar, had "inadvertently" been sold to some other more "deserving" bar). Another bar up that way was renowned because, for whatever reason, they would only buy beer carried by one certain distributor. Then there was the time a certain beer bar that had just opened (less than a month in fact), had somehow managed to luck out and get a keg of PtY (in this part of the world, there is always a direct correlation between the amount of product you buy from the distributor, and the likelihood you'll get any younger).

As the bros indicated in their thread, pay to play is pretty much ingrained in the culture back East, and while a lot of the stuff you see and hear about is undoubtedly illegal, everyone seems to accept it as normal business operations back there (with a smirk and a chuckle). Maybe I'm just being naive, but I haven't seen or heard anything like that our here.

 

:-) You sound like you may have shopped for beer at Growler Nation. I think they had the GI IPA at a special discount price for a couple of weeks before the keg finally kicked. I was starting to think they couldn't give that stuff away.