AleSmith Brewing - Vietnamese Coffee

I agree with this. I think they underestimated the turnout though.

 

I was annoyed with the clear weather. If I'm going to wait in line for a few hours, it better be raining or else the trade value just isn't worth it. Honestly, if weather would cooperate more (Snow maybe? Come on San Diego...) then I'm all for waiting 5+ hours for a release. Overnight in a blizzard preferred to really capture that extra value.

 

I cannot begin to name how many times I've picked up BPT bottles at a place without ever buying a beer. I know plenty of out of towners who stack up BPT pickups for a single day trip who won't grab beers either. Money now is always better than money later. You worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. What you're worried about today is you had one hellova day on an otherwise lazy Thursday.

 

Exactly. There are some of us who own a business or work whatever hours we wish. It's not a bunch of degenerates in line who don't have jobs. Me personally I'm over the whole waiting in line thing for beer. Too much good beer in San Diego in my opinion. But I've got no problem with someone standing in line for beer. A wise man once said that it's not about the destination, it's about the journey.

 

What's convenient to you is not convenient to another. You seem to think your time is somehow more valuable than someone else who has the time to stand in line. That's elitist. There's been multiple comments in this thread alone, and you'll find them in every IP thread, where somehow people with time to stand in line are losers, trash, jobless, and overall lacking any value in their life where they can stand in a line for hours. Beer releases were never meant to be the fastest fingers on a computer.

 

The major problem with pray and wait is that there's always someone who wants it more. CFH is a perfect example of how shit gets out of control real fast and that 3 hour wait turns to folks willing to sit out for 12 hours.

Counter point is that there's also plenty who will dedicate those pick up days to making an event of it with friends and family that would normally wouldn't be able to go to a random weekday noon release. It really is a "people around you" type of thing. I wouldn't say neither happens. But I'm willing to bet that it balances each other out.

But even after the event died down, they still had no wait on Velvet and no one coming in for it. To the point that when folks came in for some VSS, they got pointed to the direction of the back for Velvet. So... it's not like this was just making it rain money on them day without any negative aspects to speak of.

 

Isn't saying I had the flexibility to wait in line and get a beer that you didn't have the flexibility to go get just as "elitist"? And were beer releases meant to be a war of attrition as to who can stand in line the longest? And if you have multiple hours available to stand in line for a beer aren't you just as likely to have a few minutes to sit in front of a computer and try and get the same beer?

 

A wha? People prioritize things differently. This AleSmith release was announced some time ago, so there was plenty of time for people to prioritize their life and be able to go to this release if they chose to do so. As I've already said many times, there's this underlying (and sometimes out in front) opinion that people who have time to wait in beer lines are some kind of gutter trash scum sucking on the tit of the government and buying beer with food stamps, or some crap like that. Just because someone decided that going to an in person beer release worked, and probably planned and prioritized for it, doesn't mean they're some low class citizen.

There's no problem with someone preferring to not stand in line, just like there's no problem with the guy who does prefer to stand in line. The issue is when you somehow think you're better, or more deserving, just because you feel, from some meaningless scale, that your time is too important to stand in a line. If you want something bad enough, you'll find the time. For some here, the beer wasn't worth the time needed to invest. Obviously, for many others, it was.

 

Wouldn't take it so seriously. People were saying the same things about dudes lining up days in advance for iPhones or shoes. It is what it is.

 

I don't care if its a month. If someone is willing to spend "x" amount of time then they deserve the beer over some guy who clicked refresh at the right moment.

I do value my time, which is why I wasn't at the release. Additionally, if there is going to be an in person sale they should let you know of an approximate cut off spot based on the bottle count. That way you don't waste extra time. There should also be someone from the brewery in charge of the line.

I am also for BPT if you can assure me that bottles will be available for more than a few seconds. But when something is in high demand or there are very few bottles available then I think an in person sale is needed.

 

There's no way that you can spin pressing some buttons on a computer for a few minutes as less convenient than spending hours through the elements. Come on now. That's just silly.

You do realize that more people are given the opportunity to acquire bottles through online releases, correct? You don't even need a PC--you can use a phone. If a greater number of people are given access, then how does that count as elitism? Look the word up in a dictionary because I don't think it means what you think it means.

 

I see all these threads about the whole BPT vs in-person releases with everyone arguing about rewarding locals vs opening up a release to everyone. Seems to me that a happy medium would be to use BPT with no proxies, then just have a small pickup window (like 1 day/weekend). You could even make the pickup window on a weekday if you really want the locals to have an edge. That way you're giving the locals an advantage without making everyone wait in line, and you're also giving everyone else a shot at getting it if it means that much to them. Wanna drive more people to the brewery? Let them line up the following day for a shot at any forfeited bottles. Doing it this way could also mean that some of this stuff might last more than a few seconds too.

The craft beer world is only getting bigger and every long line we see now is only going to be longer the next time. This way saves everyone time, gives everyday customers a bit of an advantage, and drives extra sales at a specific time for the brewery to plan on. No method is going to be "fair" across the board but this seems to have a decent balance.

 

Yep. I'm fine with BPT with a super small window. If you can't make it in that window, don't go.

 

Could be wrong, but I think Iggy is arguing a different point. Re: opportunity/accessibility, BPT is clearly superior. You could argue, though, that BPT, because it's basically the great equalizer, eliminates the "desire" component of a release. With in-person, those who care most about the release have the opportunity to make decisions (i.e., waiting in line at the butt crack of dawn) to ensure they get it. With BPT, random Internet clicker and AleSmith fanboy have the exact same chances. It it more convenient? Hell yes. Is it more democratic? I think so, generally. But, does it allow those who want it most the best chance of getting it? No. Again, I prefer BPT, but I think Iggy is taking umbrage with the implication that those who can/choose to camp out in line are morons, while BPT'ers are enlightened.

A personal anecdote: I live in AZ these days. I happened to be headed to SD on the weekend of the Kiwi Herman release. I happened to be online the day the news of the BPT sale came out. I happened to jump over to the website and reserve a bottle (guilt-ridden guy that I am, I couldn't bring myself to buy more than 1). I'm sure as hell not a local. That probably pisses off the SD'ers who got shut out, and I'd understand why. Was BPT more inclusive and more democratic to the world at large, allowing a guy like me to score a bottle? Yup. But for the local guy that lives and bleeds Alpine and missed out, only to see some out-of-towner like me get a bottle, would he have preferred an in-person release? Maybe. That's all I think Iggy is getting at.

 

I heard that they did it this way to piss off all the people on the beer forums.

 

They wanted to collect tears for their next batch

 

I understand that there are labor costs involved, but I don't understand why when breweries do IP releases, they don't send a person or two out with tickets. Just hand out tickets in line an hour before you open since the staff is there anyway. At least it would ace out the line cutters that get there within an hour of opening and anybody after that 264th ticket gets handed out knows they won't get bottles and is essentially just there to enjoy draft pours now.

It doesn't seem that hard to then update social media saying the allotted bottles for sale that day are gone. Maybe you won't get as much traffic subsequently to posting that but at least you keep people from being all butthurt that they stood in line or made a trip to come away empty handed. That at least seems like a better plan from a goodwill standpoint.

 

From what I understood, they did pretty much let people in line know where the cutoff roughly was. Reaper?

 

I think a big problem with the IP versus BPT release argument is that there is no clear line in the sand that you can draw. Both have their own pros and cons and imo they are situational, at least for now. I was at Churchills this year and I can tell you in no unclear terms that I will never do that again. If every release ended up being like this then I would argue BPT all day and night.
But what about releases like Cuddlebug from Smog City? Or Mocha Machine from Beachwood? Those end up being fairly tame in person and the "reward the locals" aspect clearly pulls ahead. Will it last though?
Overall I think the biggest reason the beer world seems to need BPT is that people can't control themselves. I was one of those people and I'm definitely now realizing that when people start lining up 12+ hours early the event is made worse for all of us. Sure you could argue that the other 149 people and I wanted the beer more so we deserve it more but we also ended up making it worse for ourselves; it's self destructive and causes a lot of problems for adjacent businesses.
Unless breweries find a way to prevent people lining up so damn early I think we're just gonna have to accept BPT into our lives.

 

They started this way too late. I was around the cutoff area and heard no word on if they were getting close. They eventually started selling bottle tickets in line and there were about 10 tickets left when I got mine. They just started too late. By that time it was already noon and people were going in. I really think they just underestimated the turnout. I think they will start selling the tickets much earlier next week.