Best/Worst Trade Extras

I'm sure he did Nick. @Texasfan549 taught me the ropes on trading/extras. Great guy!

 

I like how this thread is focused more on the best, and not the worst. Surprising someone with amazing extras is the best part of trading

 

I hope you told your bro in law to not just drink things and assume its cool

 

Got sent a pumpkinator in a box that I had sent 4 months earlier to him. He forgot that I was the one who sent him it.... I laughed since pumpkinator with some age on it is so much better

 

I didnt have to, my wife - who loves bcbs, was really pissed.
Thats the other part of this story thats "funny" - he doesnt know anything about craft beer but decided he wanted to try something while house sitting. He said he knew not to drink something special/rare but saw 9 bcbs (we had two 4packs of '14s) so he assumed we wouldnt mind him having one since we had so many, so he incredibly managed to grab/drink the one '13 out of the group.

 

recieved as extras
gose gone wild multiples
huna
cantillon bio gueze
florence
saison du fermier
pulling nails b2
prop & vanilla
just to name a few

sent as extras
a deal with the devil
life is like
vanilla rye
mocha wednesday
mexican cake
westbrook 4th
bier du pays
just to name a few

having regular trading friends is what makes this fun

 

When I send extras I always check the wants to see if I can hit something and if nothing else I check their distro to try to get them something they can't get. I got this wild package one time from a new but great trader and it had quite a few extras that were main stream and you could get on a shelf pretty much anywhere in the U.S. I appreciated the fact he was sharing some beers he enjoyed but when I send since I'm spending time packaging and money to ship I want to give someone something they just can't get where they are at. Extras are part of the fun of trading, not to be expected, but you just never know what you might get.

 

Best: good gourd almighty, BCBCS, hop drop, raspberry tart, Fred's blend all come to mind

Can't complain about free extras but I've been unimpressed with Lakewood beers I've had other than temptress.

 

Distro is so good anymore that unless it strictly local sometimes it's tough to send something they can't get. Ny nj Distro is amazing, and it's tough to send IPAs into certain places in NE where they already get some of the best IPAs in the world.

 

Conversely, Maryland distribution is wildly inconsistent. Unless you live right next to State Line, it frankly blows. Ergo, it's very hard for me to do much trading - just finding fresh SN/Lagunitas/whatever on our shelves is a miracle. We do have our fresh locals, though...shame not one of them (except MAYBE Double Duckpin) have any real trade value.

But no matter what, I always make a habit to send good extras. Those aforementioned locals? They make great extras.

 

Recently completed my first trade, and while I haven't finished everything yet, one of the extras was FFF Gorch Fock Helles. I drank that bad boy like there would never be another made, I loved it! Big props to @BigRedDog for including this awesome extra in my first trade, hope he enjoys what I sent and we get to do it again one day!

 

I traded for 2 Parabola's earlier this year and received as extras: Pugachev's Cobra, Velvet Merkin, Consecration, BA Old Rasputin and Lost Abbey Track #10. Best. Box. Ever. I had to send more just to make up for it.

 

My first trade ever was a locals for locals. My trade partner sent me a Deschutes Abyss as an extra. I know the beer is somewhat easy to acquire in some places but as a noob, the generosity really stuck with me.

 

Hard to say which extra I received was "best", but a few that have stood out: JK Atrial Rubicite (batch 2), Backyard Rye, Hottenroth with Peaches and I recently got a Bourbon Barrel Hellfighter With Vanilla Bean that I have yet to open, but am extremely excited to try.

In terms of giving, I've given out KBS, Backwoods Bastard, BCBS, and Apple Brandy Noir, as well as Abyss and Bomb! before they had become much easier to get. But I still think I've received better than I've given, which is something I want to get better at.

 

Best received: 12x week old Zombie Dust (in a mule no less), Heady, Blind Pig, Atrial, Chocolate Rain.

Best given: Heady, BCBCS, Santa Fe Kriek, Parabola, Abyss, Peche n Brett (went to the guy who sent me the zombie roughly 6 months later). I'm sure I've given other stuff too. Always like the surprises of extras, fun stuff and never expect anything aside from shelfies outside of distro.

 

Best Extras: Consecration, Potlatch, Legend of the Liquid Brain and a growler of Comrade Brewing courtesy of @gklover1

 

My best extras to date have to be my first ever Hill Farmstead - Arthur and Firestone Walker's Feral One II. Good people out there!

 

just received a CW Black Gold as an extra for a trade outside BA

 

Best extra was on my second or third trade. I was super excited to finally be able to trade for a Chocolate Rain and it was with a veteran trader. This was early 2013. I was sending a bunch of pretty good beers for the CR and threw in several local extras. I was bummed when the box came and it was only a 2 bottle shipper. My initial reaction was I probably sent 4-5 pretty nice locals as extras and all I was getting was one extra. So I opened the box and the first bottle was the CR. I grab the second bottle and it was another CR!! The dude extra'd me a CR!! Couldn't believe it. So about a week later I brought one of the bottles to a share and shared it with 10-12 folks that night that had never tried it before and told the story to everyone. I've since sent out 2-3 bottles of CR to new traders who greatly underestimated what it takes to land a CR and were getting lambasted in the forums (when comments were allowed in FT:ISO). I sent them out asking for nothing in return except to pay it forward to other new traders when they have the opportunity. One of those traders has since become a great trading partner of mine and we were able to share some beers when he was in town for business. My history with CR has been pretty cool.

 

Best: Melange No. 3

Worst: Head Hunter (10 months old)

The date looked like it was smudged on purpose, but I could still make it out.
It was as if the trader said, "I don't feel like throwing this away... here, why don't you go ahead and do it for me."
The extra actually turned into a chore.

Not a big deal, just thought I would make light of the bad extra.
I actually got a good laugh out of it, which elevates it to a decent extra.