breakside reserve club

I was just thinking about this reserve club and wondered what the experience was like.

Were the beers great at least?

Edit: I went to their block party last summer and got a few pours of some good stuff. Were these the beers that were part of the club? i.e. Apollo & Dionysus & Aquavit Barrel-Aged Saison

 

I didn't renew for 2015. I did get free pours of the members beer each release. Maybe it helps knowing some of the staff there. But then they dropped that as a perk for 2015. So you end up paying a premium for bottles of beer that were served at various events around town. Get to go to two parties, which are ticketed and you got about the equivalent of three glasses for free. Monies just don't add up. I would be surprised if they had a lot of repeat members. Unlike De Garde.

 

Hey folks- Sorry that some of you had a disappointing experience with our Cellar Reserve (CR) Club. There's no doubt that $200 for a membership is a big "ask," and we want everyone to feel like they get their money's worth out of it. We appreciate your feedback and definitely want to improve how we run the club each year.

I'd like to clarify a couple of things: the bottles of CR beers were exclusive to members and were never released outside of the brewery. There were a handful of kegs of Apollo & Dionysus, the gin barrel-aged saison, that went to events throughout the summer, but the bottles were only ever available to members. The other four bottles (Ansatz, Bricolage, Jouissance, and Habitus) have also never been released to the general public, only to CR members. As far as I recall, there was a pony keg of Ansatz that went to an event at Imperial Bottle Shop and a keg of Bricolage that went to a wild/sour event at Bazi, but that was it for outside draft on those beers as well. Habitus and Jouissance have never been released on draft outside outside of our Milwaukie Taproom. Some of the other beers mentioned in the thread-- Aquavit BA Saison, for example--was not a CR beer, so it did see a wider release.

@crusian, I'm sorry that you didn't get the free pour and early access to bottles of our other (non-CR) barrel aged releases; I know that many members did. Did this happen multiple times? We offered that option to CR members 3 or 4 times throughout the year, just before the barrel-aged beers went to market. Did you follow up and ask one of the staff members about it? All of our staff/bartenders should have known about the discounts and courtesies for CR members, but it's entirely possible that someone got confused or forgot.

@oregonskibum, the courtesy pours are still part of the 2015 package. We're actually starting to release Bellwether (our Gin Barrel Aged Sour Double Wit with Kaffir Lime) tomorrow to CR members at their discount. Much like BB Aztec last year, it's not a CR exclusive beer, but CR members do get first dibs to buy and get a free pour.

If you were unable to make one or both of the Members Only parties and/or missed the Anniversary Party (free admission for CR members), then you lost out on some of the added value of membership beyond the beers themselves. All three were very well attended by CR members; though, with a group of over 75 people, there are inevitably going to be individual scheduling conflicts that prevent some folks from attending.

I don't expect to change anyone's feeling about their personal experience, but I do hope that the information here helps clear up some misunderstandings. If anyone has feedback or questions they want to share directly, email me at [email protected]. The staff and I are more than happy to talk with folks about their experiences in more detail.

Cheers,
Ben

 

Shooting from the hip, this sounds like a case of A) being spread too thin and B) not really having a focus / meaning / mission (whatever word you want to use) for the reserve society.

I contemplated joining this club - I love the experimentation and a lot of the culinary threads that Breakside follows - but when it came right down to it I realized Breakside ALREADY does so many unique, one off beers that are available to me pretty easily that there's no real incentive to join the club. Even in Seattle I got Apollo & Dionysius and Trans Pacific Sour (could fill growlers of both), The Man Who Made Dessert, 3 different fresh hop beers, bottles of BA Aztec, Elder Statesman, New World Bruin ... in addition to bottles of all the other stuff - Wanderlust, Toro Red, Amuse, Tropicalia, Passion Fruit Sour, Lunch Break ISA, Salted Caramel Stout, Easy Day Kolsch, La Tormenta, Alan From the Wood, etc. Unless I'm going to exclusively drink Breakside there's no perceived value in "trading up" to the club member only bottles instead of just drinking the publicly released stuff. This is more marketing / branding feedback for Breakside, but there's no real clear line between many of these beers that anyone can get and the club beers. Not saying this is the case, but it "feels" a bit like an afterthought ... "hey, we make 100 different crazy beers each year, some in really small quantities ... let's sell those to a club."

Take the De Garde club as a counterpoint: I know I'm going to get an exclusive berliner and wild / non-berliner bottle every quarter. I know that, in general, these will be more time consuming / expensive beers to make.

TL; DR I think part of the issue is the clarity of the story behind what members get and why Breakside is doing this.

 

Sorry to hear that, @crusian. If you had let me or Amy know, we could have taken care of that at the time and made sure it didn't happen repeatedly. Again, this is good feedback to hear, and we will make sure that there's no gap between what we're telling our members in emails and what is available at the bar/what our bartenders know.

We do release lots of beers, but I can personally guarantee that the CR bottles were never sold to anyone other than CR members.

 

That's a great point: we do release a lot of beers already, which I could see being a disincentive to joining the Club. You're only going to drink so much beer, and only so much of that will be from one brewery, so why join a brewery's cellar club when you already can get so many unique/different beers from them? It's strong logic.

From our point of view, I'd say the biggest benefits to the Club are that it gives us (the brewery) a guaranteed avenue for moving bottles of some small batch beers that would otherwise only be on draft. It gives some of our most dedicated customers one more avenue to get involved with Breakside. Most of our CR members are folks who are already spending a lot of time and money at our brewery and pub.

I'd actually argue that the marketing/branding value of Cellar Reserve is pretty limited. If anything, I'd like to hope that it raises a small level of awareness that we are making a lot of wood-aged beers that are not getting distribution beyond our own two retail locations.

 

Over the past few months, I've seen Apollo & Dionysus on draft at 3 different locations (including Saraveza yesterday) without making ANY effort whatsoever to track it down. This leads me to believe, perhaps incorrectly, that I could have several chances to try any or all of these Reserve beers around Portland over the next year if I'm patient, or if I keep better track of the tap lists at various locations, or if I attend more festivals. Or hell, if I visit the Breakside taprooms more often. (A good idea, btw.)

Yes, I do understand that it is the bottles which are exclusive. But if the beers themselves aren't, then I end up having a difficult time talking myself into spending that $200.