2019 Founders Releases

I had this same thought, but wasn't sure if I was wearing my tinfoil hat too much. In these days, it's tough for some of these more established breweries to do something that excites the masses. The Panther Cub and BA Imperial Stout taproom releases have certainly done that, and could lead to more widespread excitement if/when they send them out to distribution in the next year or two.

 

100's missed out regardless of the limits. . But dropping the limit to a case would not change that. There were not many that bought 5 cases.

I just said ~50 people were missing out with the 5 case limit compared to if it was 1 case limit. I think you are the one with logic and math issues.
Not many people bought 5 cases. Very few did
Sure 1 case limit would have been better. But only ~50 more people would have got beer compared to the 5 case limit. The issue was only 247 cases.

 

Exactly. I can see both of them being released next year in the BA series and generate BIG sales.

 

Maybe I misunderstood but wasn’t the mothership series supposed to be a draw to get people into the taprooms?

If they only produced 250 cases why would the limit be so high? At that amount, realistically it should have been 1-2 6 packs per person if their intention was to get it out to as many people as possible.

 

One case limit: 247 people get the beer.

Five case limit: Potential for only 50 people to get the beer, depending on how many people actually buy. How many people get shut out if the first 50 actually buy the 5 cases allowed?

My logic and math are just fine.

If you can't see the difference...

The point of people only buying 1-2 cases doesn't matter. The point is they're setting themselves up to piss off a lot of customers with the limits and minimal availability. Add to that how they changed the Willettized format this year... and they're not doing things right. Simple as that.

 

Yeah, it kinda seems like it is intentional. 99% of the buzz seems negative though but maybe that's good publicity anyways? IDK.

 

I was just thinking about this aspect as well...it seems like you would want to get more people into your taproom to possibly have food and beers on tap. Letting people buy multiple cases to share with friends means those friends don't come to your mothership. If it were 2-3 6 packs per person, there would be more people coming to your business.

Just to clarify in all this, in no way am I saying all this because I'm mad about how they did it, just more curious about the logic behind it and it's better thinking about this than the alternative (work).

 

Same here. I wasn't planning on going to get it. But I always liked Founders, and this kinda stuff has me souring on them as a brewery. And yeah... the logic behind it... doesn't exist.

 

I think it's just a marketing attempt to get the hype behind the base beer once into production next year.

 

You are dealing with what if's, I am talking about what actually happened.
Two totally different things.
It doesn't matter what the limit is with only 247 cases. People are gonna be pissed if the limit is too high and people are gonna be pissed if the limit is too low.
Whatever the limit was, you didn't try to get the beer, so you would have been shut out, yet still outraged.
What does the Willitized format have to do with Founders anyway?

 

Disregard the Willettized format thing. That's Lagunitas. Another brewery that is headed in the wrong direction lately. Got them mixed up. Not enough coffee this morning I guess.

I'm not outraged in the slightest, actually. I'm just discussing something that I think is dumb on their part, in the Founders thread, on a beer discussion forum... you know, the reason we're all here? It's possible for someone to disagree with something adamantly, yet not be outraged. I couldn't care less about it, as like I said, I wasn't trying to get the beer, and had no intentions of trying to get it.

My point is, they potentially limited the beer to 50 people, instead of 250, by offering up outrageous limits. You basically limited the beer to people who don't have jobs and/or were willing to take an entire day off work to stand in line, and even then, many didn't get it. Know how pissed I would be if I took the day off work, stood in line for 4 hours, and then gut shut out because they put a 5-10 case limit on something? I'm not sure how a single person can argue for these kinds of limits, unless they're buying the max and selling em for "max profitz bruh!" It's fucking stupid on the part of Founders. If the goal is exposure, and drawing more people into their taprooms, they're completely botching that. Because not only are they limiting the amount of people who actually get inside to get the beer, they're pissing off the people who stand in line and get shut out...

 

I think it's important to remember that we (the BA community, the 1%) are not the masses as far as Founders is concerned. The masses are the people buying All Day by the case load, not the fringe beer nerds like us. I always wonder how much they truly are concerned about excitement/buzz for limited releases. I don't have the answer... Just thinking out loud.

 

Good points all around. I do agree, the limits were silly considering the small amount of bottles. But in the end money is money, I doubt they care who it comes from. I noticed Founders did not reply to a post on their Twitter about the 5 case limit being questioned.

 

Founders is huge, they don’t need to generate excitement. Their tap room is always busy, they don’t need to hype something to get people there. IMO the Mothership series is something for their home town (also smaller allocation for Detroit). Is 5 cases too high, yeah. Do most of the people on here that are that concerned about it still get some, yeah. I’ve seen quite a few FB posts where people are helping each other out that missed out locally, plus they can get it on tap if you live relatively close.

 

I did see a reply from Founders on Facebook saying they "will consider" reducing the limit for future releases.

 

I think the fact that they posted pictures of the lines on social media shows they were trying to create hype.

 

KBS will definitely be turding up the shelves this year.

 

Completely agree with all these points. I'm not local and wasn't going to this release so I really don't have a vested interest one way or another. That said, there are a lot of people in GR (their home town as you point out the Mothership series is for--and I agree) that got shut out of this release. Additionally, mug club members who've tolerated a LOT of sub-par releases the last few years were not allowed the early access they usually have to arguably one of the most anticipated releases in quite some time. I would think these are two pretty important groups to Founders and it's very disappointing to see how this was ran. They should have learned their lesson after Panther Cub but knowingly elected not to.

 

How does BAIS compare to other Michigan BA stouts such as BAE, Black Note, BBPt5 and KBS?

 

My ranking
(My opinion/not others of course)

BA Expo
Black Note
BA RIS
BBPT5
KBS

I like the smooth creaminess of Black Note, thats why its above BA RIS in my book. As of lately