Chocolate rain is coming back for sale!

Yes

 

I managed to get several, but expected to have none by the end. Got through checkout with a few minutes left on the countdown timer.

Give us Brown Paper Tickets please.

 

Dear Hoarder and Reserve Society Members,

Yesterday, we re-released 600 bottles of Chocolate Rain and the barrel variants of Bois. Many of you tried unsuccessfully to purchase bottles, and we know that the sale did not run smoothly. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience, or issue that you may have had with our eCommerce store or the release generally. We truly want to provide you with an incredible and valuable Bruery experience, and we are equally disappointed when our service does meet your (or our) expectations.

We received many complaints related to the sale, which we’d like to address.

“Society members already had a chance to purchase Chocolate Rain. Why did The Bruery decide to re-release this beer?”

Our goal in re-releasing this beer was to make sure that the beer was sold to Society members -- which includes both Hoarders and Reserve Society members. We do our best to anticipate sales of beers, production of which frequently begins more than 12 months prior to the sale. We set an initial allocation of the beers based on our estimates of the number of Society members that will purchase the release, and the number of each bottle that each Society member will buy. Unfortunately, we cannot carry and indefinitely store beer that is not purchased, and we determined that re-releasing this to the Society members would help ensure that this beer is a Society exclusive.

“Why didn’t The Bruery put limits on the number of bottles customers could purchase?”

We probably should have put limits on this beer, and we apologize for the lack of foresight in not doing so. The vast majority of Society members did not purchase their full allotment of Chocolate Rain, and we took that to mean that demand for the remaining bottles would be lower than it actually was. While we may have sales in the future without limits, we will certainly reconsider our approach to beers that we expect to have particularly high demand, such as Chocolate Rain.

“Why didn’t your eCommerce site work?”

We transitioned to a new eCommerce site in January. For the most part, this new site has allowed us to customize a number of tools to help us serve all of our Societies and other online customers. Unfortunately, the transition has not been trouble-free, as each new innovation and tool carries complexities and unintended consequences. As these bugs are ironed out, hopefully your experience has been generally better than what our old off-the-shelf system provided. The re-release of Chocolate Rain was the first time our site experienced the load that it did, and, to all of our disappointment, it failed. At this point, all we can say is that we are looking into it with our eCommerce developer. Chocolate Rain was a small release compared to upcoming releases like Black Tuesday and fixing the functionality of this site is priority number one. We can’t always guarantee that beers will be available, but we will do our best to constantly improve the site and make sure your future eCommerce experience runs smoothly.

“Why does the eCommerce site have the 15 minute timer?”

We added the timer to help control inventory. As a customer adds a product to their cart, it is removed from inventory. If the customer doesn’t complete the purchase within the 15 minute period, the product is added back to inventory so that it is available for another customer to purchase. At least that was the plan. Unfortunately, given the load on the website, the timer became a hindrance to completing orders rather than an assurance that inventory would be available for purchase. We will be working with our eCommerce developer to ensure that the site and timer work as designed.

“I wasn’t able to get any bottles, but I really wanted to buy some. Will you be releasing any more Chocolate Rain?”

Chocolate Rain is included with all Hoarders and Reserve Society memberships (2 bottles for Hoarders, 1 bottle for Reserve Society members). We also produced enough to guarantee each member the ability to purchase an allotment during the 25 day purchase period, which ended on April 26th. After yesterday’s sale, we have depleted the majority of our inventory, saving some for future events and special cellar releases. We’re planning on releasing a new batch of Chocolate Rain will be in 2014. Until then, we have a lot of great beers coming out that we hope you’ll enjoy.

Thank you for your patience and understanding, and your support most of all. It is our focus to continue improving in everything that we do, and your feedback is certainly helpful in achieving this.

Cheers,
Matt Olesh
Director of Retail Operations
The Bruery

 

Beta testing woes.

 

Holy shit what a bunch of whiners. Haven't seen so much entitled whining since the citra release in kernville. It's only beer.

 

If I were you I would have said, "Dear Bruery Society member, It is not our fault you didn't buy all of your allocations. Nor is it our fault that you traded all of your allocations. Grow up and stop whining."

But cheers to you for being a better man. haha

 

Exactly! These were extras...in excess of your entitled allotments. Whether you scored anything or not, you should be thanking the bruery for tossing these out there and the chance to grab extra. Silliness. If you sent an email and complained to the bruery, you have issues.

 

Hopefully next year this will just mean a bigger allocation per Reserve Society member--perhaps with the caveat that only X bottles will be guaranteed, but those who act fast can get Y bottles (whatever the temporary max allocation is). That, or just add a bottle limit to the extras sale as they seem to imply in their response.

I'm bummed I didn't score any extras yesterday, but c'est la vie; I've still got my full allocation. (I did find it pretty funny that the checkout timer--which I've always felt is a bit too short--was timing out before people could even make it through the checkout process due to server load. Design decisions )

 

dear vast majority: you are doing RS/HS wrong.

 

The Bruery made in the neighborhood of $20,000 last night in the span of 15 minutes, and their eCommerce system is what allows them to effectively service RS and HS members, who also happen to be the groups of people that give them an influx of cash to the tune of $500,000 every fall.

You can call people whiners all you want, but The Bruery has made their eCommerce platform an integral part of their business - expecting it to work properly and providing feedback when it doesn't is hardly unreasonable. I'm sure some people are bitching beyond what is reasonable, and I'm not going to defend those people. However, providing feedback and asking why something isn't working isn't silliness, it's interacting with a business that you're a customer of.

It seems like so many people want to take a polar position with breweries - either they need to cater to your every whim and you'll boycott them if they don't, or they should get a pass on every failure they have, be it flat beer, infections, or technology issues. There's a nice big middle ground where you can be a fan of a brewery's beers, yet still provide criticism and feedback when they make mistakes.


Credit where credit is due to The Bruery - as usual, they're willing to discuss it in public and want to fix it. Hopefully they get it fixed before BT, otherwise, that will be an interesting release to watch.

 

I think that comparing the two releases are apples and oranges. I tried (and missed out) to get both CR and Citra. I was indifferent with one experience and pissed off with the other. For CR, I managed to get my five bottles already, so I would have to be a real entitled asshole to get pissed about a glitch where I couldn't greedily stockpile more. I also only waited 15 minutes before my attempted purchase crashed. Not a huge waste of time or effort at all. I understand the frustration though, simply because The Bruery should have anticipated the site issues.

For Citra on the other hand, you have to consider the long-ass drive, lack of sleep, gas money, the three-hour wait, the line-cutting, that they did not hand out tickets until an hour before they opened, and having employees laugh and snap photos at the "amazing" line when more than half were going to be shit out of luck. That experience made me swear off Kern's beers all together and I made a promise to myself that I'd never wait in a poorly run line like that again. In my world, the CR re-release may be a mild irritation that borders on whining, but the venom toward the Citra release was entirely justifiable.

 

I had similar experiences (yes, I was stupid enough to let it happen to me more than once) at Alesmith, won't be back there again for a special release.

 

Still complaining about Citra? Talk about butt hurt... Maybe you should think about gettting there earlier next year? Just my 2 cents.

 

Or wait in line for a better beer

 

The Hoarder's Society is not an ironic title, for future reference.

 

You do realize they stopped doing it that way, right?

 

If you don't max allocations, then how will you get to the next society level?

 

Exactly, genius. Because wasting 4-5 hours in line is much better than wasting 3.

 

I do appriceiate all that wais said, depsite how I quoted it. But seriously, kick your eCommerce people in the ass or come BT release time you will be fuct.

 

Still complaining about Citra? Ha! Drink a beer, you're probably sitting on a bundle of them, and just let it go, man.