The Bruery's 2014 RS/HS Allocation Thread

You're giving up a month in because they're releasing beers they said they would?

 

Label indicates that the blend went back in a barrel. Maybe that's it?

 

i am a hoarder but for whatever reason i do not see melange 9 on the site. anyone else in that same boat?

 

Same here

 

It's a combination of being disappointed with the quality issues last year (despite the very prompt handling of it) and now the feeling of being used as a channel to offload over produced barrels. Maybe I missed the memo, but I don't remember seeing a list of the beers with descriptions of the blend before I re-upped this year. Not to say it wasn't made available, but if it was, I didn't see it.

 

Gone for me now, it was there yesterday. Seems kind of odd that they went live with the allocations without sending an email. I thought the last round they sent an email a day before it went live in the store.

 

Haha, that made me laugh too. I would say Mocha Wed was so good I would probably have joined HS just for that. I will admit I am not overly excited about Feb offerings but my budget is thankful after the savage beating it took with the opening sale, CR and MW all hitting day one.

#"What have you done for me lately?"

 

Hi All--

Melange #9 is back online at $25 rather than $30. There was a pricing error, so I took it offline until it could be fixed. Why is more expensive than most of our other sour beers? The price of the coconut, plus it absorbing 30% of the beer, is the major factor. We're loving this beer around here, hope you all enjoy! I'd recommend trying it fresh while the coconut is at its highest intensity.

Cheers,
Patrick
The Bruery

P.S.-- Those who already purchased will be refunded the difference between the old price and the new price on their credit cards. Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

Re: whacky ABV:

I talked to the Society clerk about BBA 5GR and the massive 5% ABV bump. The batches of beer that made up the original 5GR were brewed and bottled, but the barrel variants are tweaks on the original recipe. So you get a bump there. Also, the barrel is a guaranteed 1 or 2% depending on barrel wetness.

In general, any barrel program is going to have a range of ABVs depending on the recipe that went into the barrel, the barrel state, and the amount of evaporation in the barrel due to age. If they ferment out Black Tuesday and only get it to 12% ABV, I don't think they would just flush that down the drain; they would barrel it and see where it goes, and if the flavors match up to spec, it is in the blend.

 

All that Smoking Wood that nobody wants...

 

I can sort of understand the disappointment, but it's not like it's really a new thing, nor would I necessarily characterize it as overproduction. The Bruery gets a lot of mileage out of certain base beers and has developed a brewing/barreling strategy around keeping them on-hand for use throughout the year:
1) Black Tuesday - BT, Chocolate Rain, Grey Monday, Mocha Wednesday, Melange #1, Melange #3, Wineification, Mardi Rouge
2) White Oak Sap - Melange #3, Melange #8, White Chocolate, White Oak, Cacaonut
3) Anniversary - Melange #3, Melange #8, Bois Fume, Smooth Criminal, plus the various barrel treatments
4) Sour blonde base - Melange #9, Sans Pagaie, Beauregarde, Filmishmish, Rueuze (I don't think they've explicitly said these are all the same base beer, but it's a fairly safe bet)

And that's hardly an exhaustive list. Just looking at the list of 2014 beers without a description, it was clear that they were doing a lot with adjuncts and blending to create new beers. This month happens to be really heavy on blends, and clearly not exceedingly attractive ones based on a lot of people's reactions, but I think it's a bit early in the year to be judging the quality of the program as a whole.

 

And there will be 10 RS members waiting to grab your spot ASAP

 

I believe it. No hate for the bruery here, I started the reasons for my thinking. We all have our preferences.

 

The Bruery has been selling mainly blends of the base beers for a few years now. How did you get to hoarders level without realizing this?

I dont find it unsurprising to see a bunch of anniversary ale based blends since they must produce a metric butt load for the BBA to see nation wide distribution.

 

Am I wrong in thinking that the Hoarders membership fee included one bottle each of the two "Hoarders Pilot" beers?

 

This is demonstrably incorrect.

 

They have been selling a lot of variations, not so many blends.

 

The variations, particularly the fruited sours, are much less of a concern to me. They're more drinkable than, say, blends involving the anniversary and BT base. So I wouldn't (personally) include those on the revisions you made to my list. So again, after excluding those, it becomes far below "mainly" blends. But I'll happily concede that there are a lot of blends/variations on that list - but far fewer with a heavy base than we're seeing this year. Again, as I noted before, if there was a list describing the upcoming year's blends pre-deadline, I didn't see it (not to say it didn't exist, I may have just missed it).

To sum - looks like way more heavy blends this year, which is different from the recent past. To my view, it's one thing when this is done with sour beers which are cheaper and easier to consume, vs when it's done with an expensive anniversary beer or stout base. That leads to heavy, expensive beers that are not easily consumed. The higher price and higher volume of these beers is what's leaving me slightly miffed. Obviously, you disagree with this view. That seems like an ok state of affairs.

 

Any word when these will be put on tap to try?

 

Saw a post on Facebook that they should be in the Tasting Room on Thursday.