AleSmith Brewing - Vietnamese Coffee

That's no longer a valid excuse for any brewery that has been open more than a year, especially Alesmith.

 

Nick was present at the 2009 BASS debacle; he should know better.

 

I've been in this game for a little bit now, and what I can tell you is,.............. sometimes you just gotta let that beer go. The BS is not worth it 90%+ of the time. But, that's a lesson that comes from time.

I'm guessing some folks spent more time on this thread complaining then they did in line getting shut out. Doubling down on that loss of time, ehh fellas?

 

Wasn't excusing anything... Just relaying what happened...

 

For the record, the 2009 BASS was still drinking mighty fine about a year ago.

 

Exactly my thoughts. As soon as I saw the Alesmith e-mail that it'd be an IP release I laughed because a. I knew I wasn't going to even try and b. I knew there'd be a huge line and a ton of butthurt people. Like many people have said it's been on tap at the new location for weeks and even available to fill in their mini-growlers.

 

I spent many a wed afternoon getting a few pours and then many a wed evenings catching up on @Midnight episodes, with some hot wings, and my grumbler of vss. #toughlife

But no Heavy, unfortunately it was patrons that came down the line with the information so it was a 50/50 gamble if you believed it or not. The alesmith employees were pretty much all working hard. When Vicky is the one handing out the bottles, you know they needed an additional employee or two. Or else she just wanted to. Either way, there was no lack of running around and work for them yesterday.

I think I heard Brian try to project to the crowd as he was running out, but I mean...he is no Shannon in projecting his voice.

 

I'm guessing a lot of people complaining in this thread weren't within 100 miles of Alesmith yesterday.

 

I got there at 1115 and got bottles. My coworker got there at 1130 and got bottles. Other friends got there at about 1140 and barely got shut out. When we got in, I gave my tickets to a friend to grab my bottles and I went and got us beers. By 1210, he had come back with my bottles.

All in total, you could have spent maybe 45 minutes from arrival to departure and walked away with bottles. That's a lunch break for most people, and probably less time spent than people who get bottles by refreshing on BPT. I fail to see how spending an hour to get a beer that you want is a waste of anyone's time.

 

Mrs AleSmith came through and was telling people that the bathrooms were open and we could go in for water. I asked her if we'd still get bottles, and while I didn't get an official answer from her, she said her rough estimate is yes. They were then coming through the line and selling the bottles beforehand. I don't know what time they started, and maybe they should have started earlier, but I think it was pretty clear to see if you rolled up at 1155, you could tell you weren't getting any bottles. Reaper rolled up at like 1140 and missed out by a handful of people. If you were behind Reaper, I think it would have been pretty obvious you weren't going to get bottles if you opened your eyes, and at that point, at 1140, it's not like you wasted your whole day finding out. You wasted 20 minutes max if you weren't paying attention.

 

pressing f5 for 1-5 minutes is still less than waiting in line for 30 minutes. Especially when you don't know if you have to wait for 30 minutes. The issue is the guessing game of how long you have to wait.

 

A typical BPT release takes less than 5 minutes to complete including refresh time before the sale starts. Let's say it takes 10 minutes to complete your transaction, that's still 35-50 minutes less than the time you claim it takes to complete your in-person transaction, and we know that your estimate is only under the most ideal circumstances. Furthermore, we live in Southern California, where most people need to drive considerable distances to reach their destinations. What it comes down to is you don't make any sense.

 

If you simply give up if you don't get through when BPT goes live, well then there's really no reason for us to continue to have any kind of conversation. It's not abnormal for people to refresh and get bottles of "sold out" stuff on BPT hours after something went live and sold out. I know I've spent an hour from start to finish on BPT before, and when you're refreshing, you're not doing anything else. That is, unless you're scripting, which I'd venture to guess is a big basis as to why you love BPT so damn much.

 

As I said, the only real issue I see from yesterday is AleSmith should have started selling bottles earlier, so people arriving at 1145 knew instantly that bottles were sold out. However, I don't think it's any stretch to say 150+ people got bottles (three people in the ten or so in front of me that I watched only bought one bottle). If they started at 11AM, that's 2.5 transactions per minute to get through 150 people, which is really unrealistic. They had to start before 11AM, which to me, is acceptable. It's not like people waited from 6AM to Noon just to find out they were shut out.

I'll say it again, people found out they were shut out a lot quicker than many of us spend on BPT releases when we miss the initial sale window and refresh for cart drops.

 

Are you counting driving time in your 45 minutes?

 

Most BPT bottle sales run smoothly and the small number that don't, well, I just leave it to chance to get bottles. If I miss a bottle when it first goes live, then I may check 15 minutes later to see if anything becomes available when carts expire. If it doesn't happen, then c'est la vie. There's new beer being released so often that missing out on one bottle release is of no consequence. It's simply absurd to put in so much effort.

 

I prefer BPT for many reasons, and one of them is it's better for the environment because you don't have people driving miles and miles for nothing.

 

You know, when I was at beachwood for Mocha Machine, I got there around 11:35 or so. Bottle sales were already going and while I didn't get snubbed, just the sell through alone to get to the front took a solid 45 minutes. Let alone them questioning my hundred dollar bill's "green shiny part" took another 10-15 minutes to walk to an establishment that had a black marker to make change for it.

If BPT would have been employed there, you wouldn't even need someone jockeying the register. What I'm saying is that even in the ideal in person sales, it's going to take you time to get the bottle transactions done in itself.

The fact that you don't have to pray the whole way to the destination that you've made the cut off of bottle sales is a winning factor alone.

 

I can understand why people prefer IP releases, I don't think I've ever actually missed out on an IP release... unless it was during the work week. That's my main beef, and why stuff like Hangar 24, Smog City, etc. don't bother me much.

That said, I understand not everyone works M-F and those folks are getting screwed out of 95% of the releases so I guess they deserve the occasional love.

 

Exactly. I can go to my local 7/11 and get speedway stout. Is it better than Vietnamese speedway stout? In my opinion no but it is super close. A lot of times when people want beer bad enough to wait in a line I think it's more about the enjoyment of the experience than anything else. Even though I like BPT it does seem more like a lottery for some beers at this point. If C4speedomachine and 96williamforfergiedope want to stand in line for 19 hours to get a beer, than who am I to say they made a bad decision. In reality if you look at life it is often just a series of nonsensical events. People learn from experiences and so do businesses. If I had a dollar.............