Cycle/ccb bottle releases

Weren't Huna tickets available just up until a week or two before the fest last year as well?

 

Yes..never sold out last year

 

Yeah tickets were available right before. It's so big now that they aren't going to sell out tickets. There are only so many people that want to/can afford to pay a minimum of $200 for a Huna ticket.

My wife is going this year so we're dropping $400. It's not a problem financially for us but it's still a lot of money to spend. We're going to have 8 Hunas and I don't even want that many. If I could get 2-3 I would be fine with it but unfortunately not an option.

Also, I'll be interested to see how it works at Ray Jay. It's been hot in the past and I don't really love their lots. If there aren't a lot of tents and it kind of sucks I could see numbers dropping even further.

 

Actually I heard Ccb is brewing less due to the Down tick in overall demand. So I don’t know that there will be a large allotment of extra bottles.

Yes I believe it’s being brewed at the brewery now. I assume brewhub will eventually become a thing of the past for Ccb since they are brewing core beers in N.C. and eventually Texas at Oscar blues facilities. That said white oak is better than it was the past couple years but still not as good as it was. There have been so many changes to the ingredients of jai alai over the years it’s really not the original beer it was. Ccb continues to tinker with some of their core recipes, for example the recent draft versions of Cubano and Oatmeal raisin, were made with lactose in lieu of vanilla, trying to cut out the cost of vanilla. As a consumer you could tell the difference. I hope they don’t move forward with the recipe change into canning.

 

I'm a local, not going to Huna. I would go if I could buy a ticket without having to purchase bottles.

 

the profit of the fest is all in the bottles. and since CCB can't/won't think of a way to properly monetize the fest outside of that, they're not going to decrease the number of bottles required to purchase to entry or add a non-bottle ticket option, unless things get drastic and tickets don't sell at ALL

 

I was talking to a buddy this weekend and he said he saw a Cycle social media post about how they're not going to do bottles releases during Huna week due to how BA day tickets were handled this year. I was sort of taken a back by the statement because I hadn't seen any post like that, and figured if that was the case there'd be a lot of chatter about that here. It seemed a bit off to me, but figured I'd ask. anyone heard anything one way or the other on something like this??

 

The only thing close to that was a response to someone who complained about how they had low priority for the people who buy their beers and keep the doors open. It was during the BA Day line thread. And it had nothing to do with future releases.

The comment:

"Sorry you feel that way, truly, there are a lot of people who do that and not enough spots at this event for each one. The local crowd has the best shot, it’s the best we think we can do. With great beers like Brinner and &+ still for sale, we are satisfying a lot of demand but this event will either suck or people will get shutout. We like to do things well even if we can’t do them for everybody.
To be frank, this madness and turning off loyal customers is probably not worth doing, it is supposed to be a fun showcase of our Barrel Aged program not an event that costs us good customers, when the balance tips we will end it so as to satisfy more people."

That part at the end was specifically about the BA day. And they didn't say they weren't doing BA day in the future. But I can imagine how a game of telephone would lead from that to "They won't do bottle releases during TBBW."

It just doesn't make sense though. Think about how many bottles they'd produce for that week (30,000 total?) and they will sell them all, even at $30-35 each. I don't think any business is going to turn down that much revenue just because people were mad about the demand for their product on Facebook.

The funny thing is, I waited in line that morning for IGCCS at Angry Chair, then drove down to Cycle and got regular BA day tickets. So all of the people complaining beforehand were doing it for nothing, as they could have just walked up anytime before around 3 PM and they would have been able to purchase tickets.

 

See, that sounds about right. Why break with the current bottle model when it's a guaranteed cash cow and, for the most part, runs smoothy/efficiently??

 

Exactly. Even if they decided to stop BA day, it wouldn't make sense to stop the bottle releases, since there are no issues with that process. They sold out all of the Greatest Hits and most of them you could get days or weeks after the release.

I wasn't in town for the DBVDBR release and they still had plenty left when I got back the next evening. And that was more popular than any of the Greatest Hits releases.

The problems they experienced during the BA day release don't exist for the bottle releases.

 

They are definitely doing releases this year. Definitely 6 bottles including the festival bottle. Possibly 7 like last year, Sunday or chocolate stout, whatever you want to call it.

I heard of at least one dbr variant that sounds delicious!

 

All of the local breweries should stock their coolers and plan bottles releases that week. There are so many people in town that week for multiple events it’s an easy revenue stream.

 

TBBW going to be nuts this year between Cycle's normal Weekday Releases and AC is releasing a BA Bottle every day as well I have been told one of which is BAIGCCS

 

Source on a daily BA bottle at AC ?

 

First time in Tampa during this week. If I'm in Tampa on March 9th, where/who has releases that day?

 

I've heard the same thing about a daily bottle release, along with BAIGCCS being one of them. Also heard that Dave's Barleywine is returning as another one.

 

Cycle will have daily releases that week. I'm not sure how the demand will work during TBBW, but their past few releases have stuck around until Friday, so you should be able to get several bottles at the least that day.

Angry Chair will have daily releases, although they usually sell out in 30 minutes.

I've also heard 7venth Sun will have releases throughout the week. They're close to Angry Chair.

Green Bench has their festival that evening, and they sell their anniversary bottle separate from the festival.

Not a release, but Hawthorne Bottle Shop has a J. Wakefield event that morning, where you can buy pours of Wakefield beers.

That's all I've got for now. Plenty of stuff happening that day and throughout the week.

 

Awesome. Cycle is still open for purchases Friday even with BA day? I'll be there around 9amish, is that too late?

 

I'm not sure about that, TBBW bottle demand has historically been way bigger. I wouldn't expect to be able to get anything but Friday's bottle on Friday.

 

Is that for cycle or AC?