Old Beer from outside the state.

Two words. Columbia Distributing

 

I thought it was Ballast Point that did the Julian crap.

 

This very same thing has happened in Spokane, and will probably be a permanent benefit of all this craziness, which is fine with me.

 

Barley Brown's did a couple rounds of canning, but now they've returned to draft, attempting to fill that unslakable thirst for Pallet Jack and Occam's Hazer.

I have an empty Pallet Jack can on the bookshelf, to remind me that the dream was real.

 

I still haven't had Pallet Jack. And I both live at and frequent places closer to Baker City than you. I think that assigns some sort of status to me, just not sure what that is.

 

No more cans of Pallet Jack? Nooooooooooo

 

I sent a message to Barley Brown's page on Facebook back in mid-June, asking about new cans in Portland because I hadn't seen any in a while. This is the response I got:

Hi Eric, we don’t have any canning coming up anytime soon. Currently we’re trying to refill the pipeline with fresh kegs of beer - and we’re not able to fill all of our Oregon keg orders yet.
Once we’re caught up, perhaps we’ll fill more cans.
Keep an eye out for our canned collaboration with Breakside, it’s called WanderJack IPA and its hitting stores this week.
Thank you for the kind words !
Tyler Brown

I thanked him for the WanderJack tip and let him get back to his holy work of bringing Barley Brown's beer to thirsty people.

I think I heard him mention one time that they could devote their entire production capacity to Pallet Jack and still not produce enough beer to meet demand. (Pretty sure this was at the Belmont Station 20th anniversary party, but there were beers involved, and I was trying so hard not to be an annoying fanboy.)

 

and you would think it would show up in the TC. Minor detour on the way to Portland. Do they distribute in Washington?

 

Me too. Long ago, was a huge fan of Lagunitas, and drank their beer almost daily. So many threads on how great Lagunitas beer was, and bonus points added on for price point at the level of quality.

But even here in the Bay Area, it sits on the shelf for far too long and it is a chore to find it fresh, and they've just kinda got left behind the pack.

Then again, lets look at Pliny. Not long ago, it was a 1-2 bottle limit and all gone in less than 24 hours.

Now, no trouble whatsoever, and Russian River broke their own cardinal rule of not wanting Pliny sitting around in the refrigerated section. Same day turnaround.

 

I feel like we're getting a lot of old beer from inside the PNW.

 

100% agree with this. Everywhere has a ton of old beer sitting around and you have to be extra careful about checking those dates, even on beers you would presume would turn over quickly.

 

I think some of that is due to Covid. A lot of places were cranking out their excess beer into cans that they would normally be selling in their taprooms for on-premises consumption. That beer hasn't always sold as well as the breweries hoped, so now there's a lot of product sitting around in cans that are not so fresh anymore.
Still, an awful lot of places, at least where I tend to look for beer, have had things there that are clearly beyond their "best-by" date according to the dates on the cans, and many others have no dates, a situation that very much predates the pandemic.

 

I'm still finding some PNW Fresh Hops on shelves.

 

The Whole Foods near me threw some Field to Ferment sixpacks on the shelf a couple months ago, those cheeky monkeys.

I looked at them and laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh.