Other Half Brewery Thread (November 2015)

As someone who waits in line and usually grabs a 4 pack of each, these types things perplex me. Rabbits? Mules? Also, who needs multiple cases of any one beer? I'm way too much of a beer ho to commit that much to a single beer.

That said, I usually have a great time at these releases and am sad to be missing this one.

 

notice I said "several days in advance". Why do you have to give a week's notice? Giving a heads up the night before will still get the word out to the people who pay attention, but have less people carpooling in from Connecticut or whereever and less of a chance for people to arrange these Taskrabbits.

 

I don’t know if there is any good way of doing it.

It would be nice to have some sort of loyalty program. Kind of like how Hill Farmstead tracks people and what they buy. Maybe if a person has been to the brewery 10+ times in a year they are added to an email distribution where they get advanced notice of beer releases and get first dibs before it goes on sale to the general public. Lets say they can come in on Saturday morning to buy it everyone else on Sunday. No gouging of loyal customers just preferred treatment. But then you get the cries of people saying that they still support the brewery by buying beer on draft at bars and can’t get the brewery. And also the people that cant make it on certain days.

Or what Tired Hands does, you pay upfront for membership but then you get a gift card for that amount. So effectively you are paying nothing for the membership. And if you really do visit the brewery as often as you say, you will easily spend that money.

There is just no way of pleasing everyone.

 

how about, if you trade in a bottle of Red Wine Barrel Aged Stout then you get to skip the line?

 

i still have mine! ill wear it around my neck if i have to.

 

The problem is logistics given OH's brewery space. The brewery side which encompasses the coldroom, grain room, tanks, barrel aging, and other equipment is maxed out. When you buy cans on release day, have you noticed how they have to pull empty kegs and equipment on to the sidewalk via forklift to facilitate the flow of human traffic? This is necessary to allow access to the cold room and process orders without doing a sidewalk sale. You want your beer cold don't you? There is no room left in there.

They also do not have the space for a canning machine, so they have a standing canning run on every other Friday with IH to can ~500 cases in one day. Even the logistics of canning 2 batches in one day means everything has to go right on both sides in order to get this done. Asking for a Thursday release isn't going to happen as IH has clients scheduled on other days. As Kanger knows, on canning days you have to clear even more space so IH can setup and move the blanks as cans get filled. Also, stickering/labelling the blank cans is done manually (5000 cans) which takes up even more space, time, and staff. You see a trend yet?

The only option given their setup would be to can on a Friday and then release some other day than Sat mornings. The problem is where do you put 500 cases (5 pallets of 10x10) in the cold room as they have pallets of kegs that have been filled and waiting to go out to customers? Maybe in a perfect scenario you have a football field hangar like Tree House does, own a canning line and have a canning operator overseeing fills on various weekdays and then have a staff to just sell cases starting on Wednesday. Oh, and have a huge parking lot helps too. Maybe you expand production to a remote location and keep the Centre St facility for tap room and barrel aging. Maybe another option would be to operate on a Trillium model and bottle rather than can, but space and equipment is still an issue. You know what you can't get at Trillium and Tree House? Beers to drink on premise.

As other people mentioned you will never satisfy everyone. They got a ton of backlash a few months ago when they held back some cases and rereleased later in the week. I would love to see a membership type program, especially as I think some of the barrel aged beers will be coming on over the winter and that will be mayhem.

All you can do is let the beer speak for itself. I am fine with that.

 

Amen brother. Oh, and eff those taskrabiteers.

 

So what time is everyone getting there Saturday?

 

Im aiming for 10. I assume I will be inline for a while but don't think I will miss out.

 

I'm gonna have my rabbits out there at 6:00.

 

I was originally planning on 9 but might get there closer to 10. Depends on what I end up doing Friday night. Or maybe I'll just taskrabbit it...

 

My taskrabbit is there already.

 

I am my own taskrabbit

 

I have shown up around 9 am each of the last times I've gone and am usually between 25-35th in line, can't imagine it won't last for at a while with the lower limits.

 

Someone needs to get this on a shirt and wear it to the release.

 

I think I showed up around 9:20 last weekend and my best guess is that I was 50th-60th in line. The line was around the corner by around 9:45-9:50.

 

Looks like Pizza Moto just opened around the corner from OH

 

I saw that as well. Weren't they supposed to open this about a 2 or 3 years ago? Or am I just making that up?

 

Wonder what the rabbits cost? At some point a person is paying more for the rabbits then for the beer.

I personally think Other Half's next beer should be called Taskrabbit.

 

I looked at the website and it seems like $20-25 an hour. Must be nice to have that much extra disposable income to pay someone to wait in line for beer.

"Taskrabbit" That's an awesome idea. Someone will use that name for a beer. Maybe should be a brown ale?