The Bruery's 2014 RS/HS Allocation Thread

My thoughts:
very coconut forward. Like drinking a Pina Colada. But more sour then sweet.

 

I'm hoping it has more coconut than Cocoanut.

 

It is drier and not a cloying as Cocoanut.

 

Just saw a store on Instagram selling Melange 9, Chocolate Rain, Smooth Criminal, Bois Fume, and Tumescense....Are there stores out there that get Society beers?

 

No. Tell us where.

 

Santa Clara Liquors http://instagram.com/santaclaraliquors
http://instagram.com/p/kaPjBPRjZT/

 

I like how the pictures are of the bottles in the shipper from Bruery.

 

@PMR Looks like Hoarder's Society will have an opening next year.

 

Thankfully I received an invite to the HS this year but had I missed the cut i would have been firing up the pitchforks and mob. Even if it is a guy who is a member drinking some for himself he is selling the extras likely at a major profit. Not cool

Hopefully there aren't many HS members in the Santa Clara area and this guy is figured out by address and given the boot.

 

Bottle shop near me sells Reserve stuff. I've e-mailed the Bruery about it and here's their response;

"Yes, we know, as well as few other liquor stores are doing this. They have RS memberships and sell our beer at an inflated price. We really don’t like it, but there isn’t much that we can do. We actually hope it will encourage people to join our membership so they don’t have to pay an inflated price at a liquor store for our bottles.

Technically it is illegal, but it is really hard to get the ABC to do anything about it."

 

Texas Wine & Spirits in Carlsbad sells some too. But at truly frightening prices. Much cheaper to join RS if you plan on buying even a few bottles.

 

That's the particular bottle shop I e-mailed about.

$60 for Chocolate Rain and Black Tuesday. $30+ for most of the others

They also still have bottles of Praecocia, BA Autumn Maple, and Cacaonut on the shelf.

 

Too bad they wont take the Russian river approach and cut off the offending shops supply of regular bottles...

 

It seems like it would be straightforward to just cancel the membership associated with the store.

 

Chances are the membership is under the name and address that is not linked to the store. That is, the closest it probably would be is the owners home address for example, or the owner probably has a trustee himeself in CA in which case then it could be anyone...

 

I concur.

I really don't think Bruery cares. As a Trustee, I ship a lot of stuff back East to a liquor store. They even have a license to ship booze with FedEx. I joke about it with staff every time I pick up the boxes in Placentia and they don't appear to care.

 

I have no way to assess that. I think that they could do something if they really wanted to, but I doubt they care much.

 

We do care-- it's our intent for these beers to be for our members and their friends, and by having the beer resold at very high prices is harmful to our reputation. However, there's a limit to what we can currently do. We don't have any language in our Terms and Conditions giving us the ability to cancel memberships when beer is bought through our memberships and resold, but this is something that will be changing starting with 2015 memberships. Once we have this in place, we'll have the ability to remove Members who re-sell our beer purchased through our Societies.

We don't want to eliminate liquor stores / beer shops / restaurant owners entirely as members, as there's a lot of great RS / HS members who own great beer spots, and are consuming the beer themselves and sharing with friends, not putting the beer for resale. Some others are putting the beers on the shelves or on beer menus. We'll have to deal with everyone on a case by case basis.

One thing that has changed from last year is setting caps on purchases for the 2nd round. By reducing limits on 2nd round allocations, we're able to reduce some of the re-selling from some customers that were presumably buying multiple cases to resell.

Hope this helps clarify.

Cheers,
Patrick
The Bruery

 

Hopefully if SitR w/ Kumquat comes back there is no cap, I'm almost out.

 

Can't wait to see a bunch of RS/HS memberships cancelled in 2015 because they're reselling the beers at high prices. Great news!