Modem Times

If anyone can snag an extra glass Sunday I'd be happy to trade something worth your while for it!

 

Are you going to the sour event? I will be looking to trade mine for that one.

 

Working on it - trying to figure out driving situation and babysitter

 

Not trying to make much ado about nothing, but in L.A., I'm noticing lots of "old" MT cans sitting around--lots of Feb/Mar. Blazing World, even some four-packs with the old can holders. Was in SD yesterday and this wasn't the case (although the Booming Rollers I found at Baron's didn't have a date stamp at all). Any thoughts on this, @ModernTimesJacob?

 

I notice that MT tends to sit longer at LA area BevMo locations. It doesn't help that they're not refrigerated.

 

Obviously I'd prefer that all of our beer be refrigerator end-to-end and consumed as quickly as possible after packaging. But in reality, beer packaged in Feb/Mar (i.e. 2-3 months old) is still within date code for all 4 of our year round beers (4-6 months depending on the beer).

For what it's worth, we sell nearly as much beer in L.A. as we do in San Diego, so I doubt there's much difference in the pull through rate: at this point we're not selling into many (or any) previously untouched liquor stores (bars & restaurants are a different story). I'm sure if you went hunting around some less highly trafficked stores in San Diego, you'd find the same thing. And relative to a lot of what else is on the shelf, 2-3 months old is still quite fresh.

As for the Booming without a date code: sometimes the date coder fouls up during a canning run and during the few minutes it takes to repair, some cans have already gone through.

Cheers & thanks,
Jacob McKean
Modern Times Beer

 

Thanks, Jacob, wasn't trying to stir up shit, just wondering. I don't want to become one of those freshness ****s who won't touch a can after two weeks, but there's definitely a drop off after the first month or so. Glad to see you showing up at my local Gelson's, too . . . any chance they'll be getting the seasonals? Should I make a request to the beer buyer?

 

I agree our beer is always better fresh, but this is one of the compromises inherent in distributing packaged beer.

I'm not sure if Gelson's will be getting the seasonals, but it would definitely help either way to request it from the beer buyer. Customer requests make a HUGE difference in what beers get stocked.

Cheers & thanks,
Jacob McKean
Modern Times Beer

 

I have actually seen improvement on the dates for MT cans recently in LA. I was noticing that a lot of the cans I was seeing were 3+ months old, and more recently I have started to seem them slowly creep towards the fresher, and most places I frequent have maybe month old cans now instead of the older cans.

 

Event yesterday afternoon was wonderful. Never packed, all beers for everyone that showed up (i.e. ticket labeled 1 got you beer tagged as #1 on the sheet).

My only slight complaint is that all 10 offerings should have been Monsters Park variants...hehe...but MP batch 1 was still drinking fantastic and that was nice to see on the list. Poured so black...tasted so damn good.

Well done MT.

 

Yup. It was so smooth, I was done with all my tasters around 1pm Sorry David, I missed you, decided to check out Toolbox on my way home.
As far as the beer offerings, yeah, I have to say that those NorCal people still have some stuff to work on in terms of their IPAs The Farmhouse Noir was much better from the bottle imho, maybe because it was served really cold and I didn't have the patience to wait to long. #1 of the show was definitely coffee BA MP...and yeah, awesome event, well worth the ~1.5h drive for me especially because it was so relaxed and smooth.

 

Does anybody know when Oneida is being released in cans?

 

From their Twitter today:

4-packs of Oneida will be available at both tasting rooms tomorrow & around SoCal & SF next week. We'll keep brewing it through August

 

Friendly reminder to those who have yet to pick up their online BBA Monster Parks from the March event (*cough* me *cough*), you have one week to do so. Tuesday, May 26, is the last day.

(Sorry to those hoping people forget so they can swoop on leftover stock.)

 

Picked my Monsters Park variants up on Saturday, drank the coffee that night, and it is drinking great. Definitely wouldn't let the coffee sit too long if you have it.

 

Yes, but there are some people here that think it has a fecal quality. I thought it was the best of the lot on release day, but whatever.

 

good fecal or bad fecal?

 

Bad fecal. Could've been the taster, could've been my palate, could've been any number of things, but I thought the coffee character was very unpleasant, and I'm generally a huge fan of coffee stouts. Your mileage may vary.

 

yea i thought the draft and bottle tasted horribly fecal. I ended up drain pouring most of my bottle when i brought it to a bottle share

 

Maybe they used Kopi Luwak beans??