Selling out NE breweries.

This just in: there are some shitty people out there, try not to be one of them.

Also, anecdotal experience =/= widespread problem

 

you know how you like good beer? without the hype, there's less of it.

 

I got anxiety just looking at pictures of the lines outside of TH and Tributary this week. In all honesty, it makes me not want to go do something I really like doing, which is drive out to Monson with my wife, my daughter, and dog, get some beer, then some ice cream.

For me, one of the stranger ideas is buying a "full allotment" of beers. It's even crazier that breweries had to put limits on the amount of beer customers can buy in the first place. I get that going to TH/VT/HF/Alchemist is a trek and a treat, but do people really need -- odd word choice -- a case of 8% IPA's?

One story I read here was about a guy who wrote, essentially, "I was lucky. I got the last 20 HT's the store had. I'm lucky, too. The guy behind was looking for them too." Yup, this person needed 20 Heady Toppers while the guy behind him -- in the same store at the same time -- gets shut out. It's turning crappy.

 

It can get annoying, but whatever. You gotta just come to terms with it because it's how it is, and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.

 

Here is my advice. Find a beer that you love that is readily available. Boom. No need to wait in ridiculous lines.

 

Rock concerts & sporting events with thousands of tickets sell out in minutes, why is that any different.

I am glad to see the limits, if not, there would be people that would show up with a buttload of cash and really control the secondary market.

 

I've come to terms with not being able to spend 4-5 hours waiting for a beer a want (even though I'd like to). With a job that keeps me at work until 5-6 and a 2 year old at home I usually miss the big ones. Beer hunting is a young mans/no kids type sport. Gonna check out Stead Habbit tomorrow. Hoping that one day TH cans last until a Saturday or they stagger their releases.

 

I blame Tickle Me Elmo and Furbys. Those damn kids who waited in lines for hours for those back in the day are all grown up now and drink beer.

 

I'm a young man with no kids and I have zero interest in waiting hours for beer, unless I make it, in which case, I sink hours of active time into a batch. I truly don't understand this phenomena. Is Green better tasting than Larry? Sure, depending on my mood. In the amount of time it takes me to get two growlers of Green, I can go for a 25 mile bike ride, pick up a 6 pack of Larry, and probably bottle a batch of beer (and I actually made a Double IPA that accidentally tasted very similar to Green once).

Some people might actually enjoy some of the wait times for the social aspect. I don't. Crowds make me uncomfortable and I value my time more than what I get out of waiting. Same holds true for special releases. I've come into a few by being on a mailing list for a liquor store that's down the street from my office. But I've only stopped in on my way home from work and asked if there was any left - not a special trip out.

On the other hand, I'm sure more people can't understand why I'd spend an hour at a time grinding my teeth as I ride uphill. I know I can't.

 

ISO:Your homebrew

 

Green is better than Larry though

 

I feel like people are going to get burnt out on doing the "hey, look at me, I waited in line for xxxx beer for 4 hours and spent my entire paycheck to grab as many as I could" eventually. Great beer is all around us and we should only be lucky which leads to this question:

If there wasn't anything new/unique/different coming out- would people get bored and bitch/complain that we don't have such a great variety of beers to try in the North East?

 

I conceded that point. To me, not better enough to warrant 40 minutes driving each way, plus 90+ minutes in line.

In other words, if I could go to the store and pick up Green or Larry for roughly the same price, it would probably be Green the majority of the time (but I really love Larry, so I'd still buy it too). I've never made any claims that I'm 'in touch', and I like Treehouse and the folks that operate it a great deal, but like I said, I don't understand how people feel like a beer run that takes half a day to complete. I'm not passing judgement or 'throwing shade' (which is apparently a phrase that means something now?), but if you can drink really good beer and get other stuff done, that's a better scenario for me.

For the record, I'm almost 29, which I think still classifies me as 'young', but maybe just barely...

 

This is me, my latest purchase was a 12 pack of Ipswich 101 for under $15. I work walking distance to Trillium and still I don't wait in the growler line, bottle line and out in under 5 minutes.

 

But it only takes me ten minutes to get Larry. And I get more Larry. And I can enjoy Larry 6 times, whenever I want, without worrying about the rest of it going flat.

Commiting half a day to procure 64 oz of time sensitive beer just doesn't make sense to me. Never mind the cost of travel (gas, tolls, wear & tear). Maybe it's because I have kids? Maybe it's because I think spending 3 hours in the car with little to show for it isn't up my alley?

 

someone get this man a tissue!

 

It sucks, especially for people who were there in the beginning before these great breweries had followings and hype. You could stroll right in and drink all you wanted, now you have to fight the masses, it sucks. But the good news is for these breweries to be so desirable they need to make great beer which is why we go there in the first place. No new brewery that is destined for greatness is going to stay a secret for long.

 

Nope , it just sucks for everyone. Nobody should ever have to wait hours to grab a 12 pack of beer.

 

Seemed appropriate to this topic, which ultimately devolves into similar things. From Shaun Hill in Boston Mag:

“Imagine we have a 300 bottle release and 25 percent of the people, those standing somewhere in the middle of the line, are just buying that beer to sell it and never even consume it. And the people in the back of the line get to the front and the beer’s gone and those people were actually going to drink it and made the effort to drive all the way out here. There’s this whole argument amidst capitalist America, which is ‘Hey man, I’ve given you my money I can do whatever I want. I can sell it out and never drink it. I can destroy it. I can do whatever I want.’ Everyone in America is like ‘Capitalism! Hail capitalism!’ Nothing gets in the way of the dollar in capitalism. Whatever happened to idealist principles like integrity and respect, thoughtfulness, and maybe not trying to destroy ourselves as a civilization? Where did those ideals go?”