Prairie Christmas BOMB!

Yeah, I don't really understand their prices. Even great Belgian beers aren't that expensive. It's probably because Prairie beers are imported by Shelton Brothers, from a far away country Oklahoma.

 

Yup. I always see it and go, "oh yeah, I should grab a couple of bottles of that"...and have yet to actually walk out of the store with any. Drop a couple of dollars (I'd probably pay $6. $7 max), and I'll be more than happy to grab some.

 

lol

man... living in Montana if it wasn't for trading I'd be stuck with the same 5 stouts every year, grabbed a few Bombs in CO during GABF and wan't disappointed even at $8.99 each

 

Probably the difference right there; we've got *so* much to choose from. In your shoes, I'd probably do exactly the same thing.

 

I brought back three cases from CO, highly recommend Grapevine Wine & Liquors

 

Sounds way better than last year's Bomb Fruitcake. Although I had a Christmas Bomb last year with about 6-7 months on it and it was pretty good after the spices faded.

 

Drinking one now and it's amazing. Christmas in a bottle. I love it.

 

Enjoying a bottle now on business trip in Sioux Falls. The bottle in the bar cost $13, so I shared with others that didn't have their company paying for it. Concensus is that it is very good! A little heat at the end from the peppers to warm your insides, and the cinnamon makes it festive but is not overpowering. I really need to have my entire house smell like this for the holidays.

 

I banged around on their website and it seems the beers they had on tap were all 4.4 or below based on their rating here

 

Oh wow, a Prairie thread that devolved into a price discussion, imagine that.

This beer tastes like Bomb! aged on Gingerbread Cookies. It's fantastic.

 

Hey, I'm in Buffalo, and I'm lucky to get their beer. I'm not knocking Prairie, nor their distribution. I'm happy we get the beer, it just sucks the the price of distribution makes this 60% higher than local places.

Regardless, the beer is awesome, the distributors are awesome (I'm looking at you Shelton Familia), and I'll continue to buy it.

 

last years christmas bomb was a drain pour for me. freaking terrible. all the bottle shops still have it. makes me wonder if the bottle shops (in savannah) will even order it this year.

i would try one with just cinnamon added.

 

They are the "supplier" of a ton of cool brands like Cantillon, Prairie, De Struise, etc, so they are the ones charged with importing and consolidating the brews in America (Massachusetts I believe) and then getting them to the various wholesalers in each state. Essentially they have warehouses full of stuff people want, but leverage desirable brands by making wholesalers take tons of less known brands in return for getting "the good" stuff. It's like making a shop take a pallet of All Day to get a case of KBS, but to the Nth degree. So there's literally warehouses full of great beers (and shit no one has heard of) going downhill because wholesalers don't want to "play ball" and take tons of stuff none of their retailers want. Since the stuff in their warehouse has such a low velocity of getting product to the market, the dogs they have are even less desirable because they've been sitting at the Shelton warehouse for a long time. There's also been a devolution into also charging the wholesaler a huge markup for the desirable stuff, which is what this thread is saying about Prairie stuff being so expensive. In the Shelton model they take a cut, the wholesaler takes a cut, and then the retailer does. This is why the stuff they supply is $3 more than it would be if the brewery worked directly with their wholesalers.

I know in many states the people charged with wholesaling Shelton stuff are so fed up they have terminated business entirely, VA for one gets literally no Shelton stuff because Hop and Wine just doesn't want to load up their warehouse with out of date stuff no accounts will want to order. Last time I was in Phila Kraftwork had several of the Black Damnation series on draft, at $15 a 10/oz. All 30 of their tap lines were Shelton handles, and most of them were farmhouse beers from Belgium that I had never heard of (which is pretty cool to stump me, but they were not cheap and clearly not there on those beers merit alone).

Someone else can cut me down or add, but this is my interpretation of the Shelton model.

 

Saw it yesterday and could not resist. I am going to save it for the holidays.