How accessible is Bourbon County in your area?

I know I've posted this before but in my county it gets distributed by the Miller distributor instead of InBev dist, probably because of old contracts. From what I'm told, InBev will supply significantly less product if Goose Island is distro'd by Miller. This makes sense to me since my county has the second biggest city in Michigan (GR) but gets significantly less than neighboring counties where GI is distributed by InBev distributor. I understand this from a business perspective trying to keep your distributors happy and shaft the competition, but sucks from the consumer side.

 

Still on shelves here in N.Y. area..personally the BCBS & BCBBW are incredibly overrated..the BCBCS is really good..but there are so many other better BA stouts available at a lower price as well.

 

The incredibly high abv doesn't help it either, in my mind.

 

I like high ABV beers..but those 2 just didn't do it for me..this year or last year.

 

In my experience, its not. Maybe I'm not in the cool kids club but I've never seen any around.

 

First wave is only available if you line up on Black Friday, which is not too different from what people do at WalMart. Additional wave(s) trickled out a month or so after.

 

i don't feel like I'm missing out on a thing.

 

Nearly inaccessible...aside from some very specialty wine shops that will somehow get random and very select beer offerings...

 

It's kind of ironic actually, since the stores that get the greatest allotment of BCBS are less likely to have the demand for it. For instance, one of my local stores, which supposedly got the biggest shipment of BCBS in MD last year, sells a ton of pseudo-craft stuff (ahem, 312, Honkers, etc.) and is not exactly a hotspot for rarities. So whale hunters don't think to look there and the BCBS ends up sitting around for 1-2 weeks after delivery.

 

Was just thinking something similar. It is ironic that (generalizing, of course) most people who support the year round GI offerings are likely not high ABV barrel aged stout fans. So, they're driving the availability up for a beer that is quite possibly not in their wheelhouse. I fully support my neighborhood Honker Ale drinkers!

 

Only a handful of stores get any around here, and usually a one bottle limit so it pretty much adds up to a big tease. I'm grateful to get one bottle but it's a long year waiting for the next one...

 

I drove just over the border in NY and found a bottle shop with 10+ cases sitting on the floor about a month or so after i t was released.

 

Only one store gets it in my town. But their shipment lasts weeks and certainly no lines.

 

Being in the bar business and friends with our local bottle shop owners I would have to say it's based on your relationship (read sales volume) with your distributor. I could never get on allocation for bourbon county because I don't support other Goose Island products with the exception of Sofie. Our small town (about 40K) gets about 10 cases of BCBCS with about 8 going to our awesome bottle shop and 2 going to the liquor store across the street. Our bottle shop also got 3 cases of barley wine, 2 cases of coffee, and a case of vanilla rye. They do work hard getting this selection though because obviously there is only so much to go around. I'm talking boycotts, going up the chain of command, talking to the breweries themselves. If you are doing enough volume you can push your weight around a little, otherwise you get no respect. I've even tried bribing my reps, like "I'll give you $100 if you get me a case of KBS, or BCBS, put usually their hands are tied because everything is allocated in the computer. There was this funny mistake that happened in my area this year where some tiny gas station/beer store in Payson, AZ (pop. 15K) got two kegs of Vanilla Rye?? They were selling growlers of it and people from Prescott where I live were driving 2 hours go get growlers of it. We were paying one of our beer reps to stop by on his route and get us growlers. Took them like two weeks to sell out.

 

I had no trouble finding the barleywine and stout in RI this year. But RI didn't get coffee or vanilla rye. So boo to that.

 

Here in Dover BCBS was the only thing to show up this year. No variants. Most shops only got one case. They priced it at around $10 a bottle. I did get one 4pk at $29.99 as I frequent that shop a lot and the owner likes me. I still saw singles at one shop after the first of the year. At $15 a single it will sit awhile though. The best craft bar in town did have it on tap. That lasted a couple of hours.

 

My version of "fairly easy" was that I got one 4 pack at an out-of-the-way BevMo on Black Friday and never saw any ever again, despite calling and driving to every Total Wine and BevMo in the SFV and along the 405 corridor on the westside and checking with Whole Foods in Venice.

My version of "fairly easy" does not include camping out before a place opens.

 

????? What????? I visit nj way too much to go back and see family and I walked into a store and grabbed a 4pk then 2hrs later walked in whole foods and it was sitting right on the shelf...

 

I picked up two 4-packs during the last week of January this year. According to the store manager, they'd been sitting on the shelves since November.

This was two hours away from where I live, where everyone sold out in minutes, if not hours. No matter what part of the country you're in, it's all about where you look.

 

In my area, I could potentially buy cases of regular. I might be able to scrounge up a few 4 packs of barleywine as well as maybe 2-4 coffee. The 22 oz'ers are much harder to come by.