Sorry, we don’t have that beer anymore.

I am the butt of jokes for the same reason. It happens all the time. I'd like to think that it's because I pick the best beer which tends to kick fast, especially because I go to places where other beer geeks tend to frequent.

 

The places I frequent keep their beer menus up to date on Untappd. I always check ahead of time and plan accordingly. If it's an unfamiliar place, I'll check their listing on Google Maps to see if they have a menu / tap list posted. Of course, that's not a guarantee they'll have what you're looking for when you get there.

 

Relate to your post almost entirely as this happens to me on a frequent basis… except for the last part - I’ll never surrender to water!

 

I default to Diet Mountain Dew

 

Reminds me of going to the Falling Rock Taphouse pretty much any time ever.

 

I do most of my drinking at breweries and it can happen there too. Usually they're already in the process of changing the keg if I don't mind waiting a few minutes for the beer I ordered, or I can choose something else. If the keg kicked when drawing my beer the server sometimes brings me the partial glass to drink while waiting. No charge for it.

But the kicked keg has happened to me too at a bar or restaurant. Usually I'm at a place with a number of great choices, so plan B is always something good too.

 

Depending on the appellation of the Bordeaux, I’d have probably gone with that either way

 

A random kicked keg every now and then is just part of doing business. A slight bummer but no problem, onto the next one.

An outdated beer list in which the best 3-4 beers on the list are all long gone and the waiter and bartender have little clue what I'm talking about when I order said good beers is never a fun experience.

 

In the words of Mick Jagger: "You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you need."
At one point in my life I decided I needed to gain appreciation for AALs...or at least a few. And @bubseymour your plight is one of the reasons why. I can have Miller Lite no prob if a bar/restaurant is out of crafty brews. But the craft scene here in town is so robust that the beers find their ways into small places. If all taps aren't happening for me I'll settle for a bottle or can of something. It's all good.

 

What year was that? I went on a couple of those. I think the first one I can recall was GABF week of maybe 2007 or 2008?
Either way, I never ordered anything at the FRTH without at least 2 backup beers in mind. The paper menus were typically a week old, but even the chalkboards were off 1/2 the time. They tried to make that their schtick when they were THE beer place, but I dunno if that worked so well when other places popped up. At a certain point they knew me and dropped the act (and even hooked me up on many occasions), but they never did modernize or represent what they really had in a timely manner.

 

Sure does. It only really bothers me when the server unilaterally attempts to replace with a subpar option.
Recently -
me
"I'll have a Fiddlehead please"
them (5 min later)
"We're fresh out. I'll get you a GoodWater instead. You'll love it".
me
"I will not. Please don't. Evan Williams and Coke..."

 

Same here. Either that or diet Pepsi. I get all the calories I need from beer.

 

What bothers me much more are places that keep a taplist on their website (as opposed to Untappd, Beermenus, etc.) but don't include the date the page/list was updated. I'm not talking about places where beer is an afterthought... I assume their web list is out-of-date. I'm talking about places with a reputation for caring about beer. Monk's Cafe is a good example of a place that has the date clearly displayed. NYC's Spuyten Duyvil is a good example of a place that doesn't include a date. A place with that reputation should just remove the list from their site rather than display wrong info to the world. And yeah - The last time I went to Spuyten Duyvil, I wanted a beer that I saw on the list on their site... but was told that they didn't have it. That beer is still on their site to this day.

 

It has happened to me countless times and the server will ask want a bud or coors. No, god damn it, I want the beer you offered

 

This is my superpower. That, and having the keg blow in the middle of my pour.

 

About 15 or so years ago I went to Ebenezer's in Maine. Many publications listed it as "one of the best beer bars in the US". I'm not even sure they still exist. Well anyways I went through 4 rounds of "we're out that also" before I said "this is cheese shop, right?". It got a pretty good laugh from the people at the table but I think it went over the waiters head.