Black Friday stories

Last Monday I saw on Facebook that my local shop got in BCBS with a two bottle limit. I picked up one bottle for 7 bucks plus tax. I then picked up a Kiwi Rising, a 4-pack of Mastermind and a 4-pack of Heady. Who drinks stouts in the winter?

My black Friday story involves supporting my two local independent record stores with special black friday releases.

 

I could be wrong, but I believe the issue is that bourbon barrels are in high demand these days.

 

Thank you for hoarding. I spent all day searching for the variants and was completely shut out. People like you ruin it for everyone

 

My local got only 2 cases, delivered on Tuesday. Owner's day off, and staff mistakenly put them all out on the floor that day. Gone when I inquired on Weds. - much to owner's dismay. No variants came to VT - again. Went downstate to visit family and was advised to call the beer guy Friday at the local bevvy there - he was raging on the phone because the distributor had "accidentally" left his 6 case allotment off the truck that morning. Said rep promised to drive the 50 mile RT himself to get them to him. Beer guy took my name & number, and said he'd call when they came in later that day...and he did. I bought two $6 bottles and was perfectly satisfied, because I prefer to give A-B as little of my money as possible, since they clearly don't give a shit about VT, so I absolutely don't give a shit about them.

 

Your state may hurt for BCBS and other whales but your state gets the lion's share of the limited release bourbons. I'll shed no tears for you. You need to trade bourbon for beers. Better yet, you should home brew your own imperial stouts and barrel age them yourself seeing how you have close proximity to all those barrels after they have been emptied.

 

Honestly I don't know why people get so upset if there state did not get any, enough, variety, etc. I don't get mad when Lost Abbey doesn't ship cable car or DDG here or when The Alchemist doesn't ship here, etc. It is what it is. Frankly if u think about it, most of the people who get multiples don't actually hoard, they use them as trade bait for things they can't get or are not distributed in their area. So you could look at it as them actually assisting with the lack of distro and in essence being BA's. Just my opinion.

 

I was #6 in line arriving at 6am for an 8am opening. While it was totally worth the wait for BCBS, I found out this evening that I somehow purchased the 2013 Barleywine instead of this year's batch. It's pretty strange, we only got BCBS and the Barleywine, no variants but last year we only got the Barleywine, so I'm wondering if it sat around in the warehouse for the past 12 months. Especially frustrating because it was well known ahead of time that the Barleywine would be the more thinly spread beer between the two allocated to the state, so I arrived especially early to get what turned out to be a fairly old beer. Is this a distributor issue or did Goose Island not brew Barleywine this year?

 

I can't answer of sure but what I can tell u is that Barleywine came out again a few months ago again from the original batch. Ur store may have received those from their distributor, I suppose.

 

"Hey I got more than I needed and gave away plenty to all those bros who got the short end of the stick in trading all year" Bro love.

 

Doesn't this story then make you a **** blocking, truck chasing hoarder?

 

It is hard to read the sarcasm over the net

 

Not going to lie while certainly not easy to get ANYWHERE, I've had better luck getting Pappy in Chicago than in Lexington a short drive from the darn distillery. That was a few years ago so things may have changed a bit since then. I've much like Bourbon county just given up on Pappy.

 

A lot of liquor stores have not even received bourbon county yet. The places that did get it in got limited quantities so there were limits. Stopped by one store when they opened and there was a one 4 pack limit. So I got a 4 pack and the gf got a 4 pack.
The store had 3 cases total...so while we are checking out there is this lady ripping open one of the other cases as the cashier is yelling at her "ma'am, I can't sell you anymore! It wouldn't be fair to everyone else" the crazy lady is ignoring the cashier who continues to rip open the last case. The cashier continues "ma'am, please stop, I WILL NOT sell you anymore. Finally the lady yells back at the cashier " I'M NOT BUYING ANYMORE! " then counts how many 4 packs are left. She then leaves the store.....I check out and head to the car and see the lady talking to some random people at her car she is pulling out a 4 pack of bourbon county saying "it looks like this, right as you walk in you will see it, if you could please buy me another 4 pack each" then sets the one she had in her hand back into the tink next to 2 full cases and several other 4 packs..... Needless to say I was kind of pissed. With such limited quantities why would you pull something like this.....there ate some liquor stores with no quantity limit as well but this lady is just working the system and trying to buy it all up. I've heard of a few liquor stores trying to buy up all of the bcbs at the chain stores at $6.99 a bottle then turn around and sell them at their store for $10 - $13 a bottle. I can only assume she was affiliated with one of those liquor stores. It just kind of sickens me to screw everyone over when there are such limited quantities being released in the area.

 

This might be the case and I wouldn't be surprised that the distributor held onto them for this long, there were quite a few stores who had the Barleywine for at least a couple of months past its release last year. Possibly price deterrent on a new beer, most customers who haven't heard of Bourbon County Brand weren't likely to drop $15 on a 4 pack here. I'm pretty miffed though that my efforts to obtain 2014's batch were fruitless.

 

This might be true for other beers, but I call bs on the bourbon county. People age those and do verticals. Hopefully they share! But now beer becomes a "who do you know" game.

 

Hah! Yeah, I hope that was sarcasm, lol. Sad thing is that is probably an accurate account of several people's day.

 

Yeah that was mentioned. I had bo and luke a few times at beer trappe. Never had coffee, sounds good!

Sadly 5:30 is the middle of my rather long work days Rare I can get out of the office before 7 or 8 and then they are a pretty decent drive from work.

 

Trading isn't an option with Kentucky's archaic laws involving the shipment of alcohol across state lines. Not really worth risking my law license by breaking the law just to get some beers shipped here that I can't otherwise get.

 

Sounds like you need a mule instead of a hug! /sarcasm. Yet I totally agree with you. In the end, though, AB-InBev are the ones laughing at the beer community.

 

Some of us poor sods had to work on Friday.

I got out at 5pm, drove to my favorite spot and put a 4pk of regular in my basket. They still had cases left, but my buddy there told me the flavors were gone within the first 30 minutes of business. Hit my next two weekly stops (same three stores every Friday evening, BCBS or not), and the story was the same.

There are cases of it sitting around my area, another buddy of mine is actually considering a small floor-display of it if it's still sitting around in a few days.