Kane Brewing (December 2015)

^^^this is one of life's unfortunate truths. All any business owner can do is decide what type of organization they want to be, stick to those principles, and try to serve their customers as best as they can.

In this particular instance, I feel that Kane has bent over backwards to try to make this a smooth affair. I was impressed they went to tickets and even more impressed they went to a lottery for the leftovers. They deserve praise for listening to and trying to accommodate their fans, not derision.

 

This. By they way, what about thinking below the surface of "omg how could they do this wahh wahh wahh" and consider that maybe Kane knew demand and didn't want 5,000 at the doorstep of their brewery for a gamut of reasons...fire code, capacity, noise ordinances, parking issues, respect for surrounding businesses/residents, cleanliness, basic order, etc...

They're small, they have a limited amount of beer that people love and they did an AMAZING job accommodating AS MANY PEOPLE as they felt they could service at a high level and keep order.

It isn't always about YOU (talking to you 'NJ Locals' that are complaining about this and that). Get over it already. Continue to frequent Kane because they make great beer, have great people working there, and provide a cool environment for you to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Don't penalize them because you're disappointed you couldn't get a few beers.

Peace and love peace and love.

 

This last page of responses restores a lot of my faith in most of the beer community. Glad others share my love of Kane and PERSPECTIVE on the whole situation. I know my chances for winning a beer in the lottery is low. Is what it is. Yes I go up to Kane fairly frequently but it does not make me entitled to their special release. Maybe eventually they will have something similar to other breweries with a club and then the 'entitled' can have their day for a fee! Until then luck of the draw.. There are plenty of other good beers to enjoy out there! Still want to get over there and get a growler fill of that delicious sounding Triple IPA to make sure my new years eve goes to plaid.

 

Also am a NJ local that lives pretty close to the brewery (~15 minutes) so its not all of us

 

All I gathered from this is that you think New Jersey beer drinkers are assholes and you're a specialty beer release *****.

As for your final barb, it's certainly an entitled mindset believing that you New Englanders know how to show appreciation and us simple-minded folks don't.

 

The Jersey locals scene is not a mess. Just because a few bad apples lost their shit doesn't mean the whole scene is terrible. Anybody with half a brain knew that a beer like ANTEAD with a national following was going to be tough to get. What's even better for us privileged locals is that we'll likely see ANTEAD and some variants pouring on tap at select locations in our backyard

 

Port Omna Day + Uber = a very happy local

 

That is exactly what I was thinking when I made that post!

 

Anyone hear from Kane on the lottery results yet? Curious to see when those e-mails are going out.

 

I think you are the one showing their true colors here buddy. I too live close to Kane and have waited on line for every release for the last few years. I know about 20 buddies that tried the online release and did not get any. Are they upset, sure they lost out on a great beer from a place we give our money to almost every week (growlers at beer stores too). That being said, I don't think any one of them blames Kane. It's the beer community in general we have to blame. There are people all over the country thrading away ANTEAD. It's just a crappy situation but it's not Kane's fault. From what I've heard the release and sales went perfect Sunday so I don't even know what "mess" you're speaking of. With an attitude like yours, do us all a favor and stay out of Jersey, we're not all idiots but apparently you are.

 

It's not even the majority of NJ beer folk.

I've been going to beer events in this state and outside for well over a decade. Not only was that guy's post unwarranted, but it's also uninformed.

Complaining on the internet is not only not exclusive to NJ, but it's not exclusive to beer. Take a look at any hobbyist web site where there's limited product/releases, and you will find the same type of man baby behavior here and there.

I challenge @zaylon516 to show me even one single event in NJ that was ever a bonafide shit show.

Even last years ANTEAD release with thousands of people, long lines, sampling and full pours all day, was quite calm. Was there complaining after the fact? Of course, not every one got what they wanted. But the event itself, was well run, orderly, for the most part calm. Especially considering the amount of drinking going on.

 

It could never happen for a number of reasons, but I would have loved to see this as on site consumption only. Face facts, an ever increasing number of people acquire limited beers solely for trading or resale. Kudos to the countless others and the vast majority of people who do indeed consume and share with friends but people like myself who have been on here for nearly a decade and remember buying Rare 1 on line and Vanilla Bourbon and others on line have seen the shift to the have to have everything mentality that has consumed this "hobby".

Places like Al's release great sours for on site consumption and 99.99% of the people even within reasonable driving distance blow them off. Troegs did the same partly with Splinter Gold. Very little discussion or interest since you can't trade them.

The brewery gets a lot of buzz over these releases. They made a lot but I would love to see the reaction if they simply said screw it, keg it all or make bottles on site. Then you would simply get the backlash of " I want to drink it in my home" BS. Face facts, an increasing amount of interest is simply in the trade or resale game. Kane did the best they could and there are probably close to 1000 collective replies on Facebook drilling them for one reason or another.

Good luck to all today, hope it works out where more people than not are pleasantly surprised.

 

This would be nice, and I agree with you 100%. I'd also love it if they just had an ANTEAD party, much like the Anniversary (which is the best beer event around, period). But there is a significant limiting factor.

Kane isn't a bar. The facility that Troegs has, for example, is essentially a huge bar/restaurant attached to a brewery. My guess is that selling bottles for on-site consumption would run afoul of NJ alcohol laws, but I'm an economist... not a lawyer.

Agreed that it's nice to see some reasonable, understanding people in this thread.

 

My opinion really doesn't matter here...so why not give it?!?!?!

I really liked how Westbrook did their BA cake release this year. They did a ticketed release through BPT which was unannounced, then had kegs of all the variants on the day of the release. The big thing that I really liked was that they have put these BA cakes on tap randomly since the release and they tend to last a couple of days at least. This means that if you are a local that missed out on bottles, you get a good shot of at least having a few pours at the brewery. They also put these on tap in the weeks leading up to the release as well. I think this kept both locals and foreigners happy.

 

Sorry to take away from the complaining here, but did anyone actually receive an email yet?

 

Nothing here yet. Being hopeful in the assumption in the amount of time it will take to actually get all their emails in order from 9 am yesterday to now.

 

Haha yup

 

It has to be a shitload of work to run this lottery. They have to sort through all the emails (of which I'm sure they received over 1,000), delete duplicates and cross reference entries with people who got allotments from the BPT sale. Even then that only gets them to the point of determining how many valid entries they have. After that they still need to come up with a method of drawing winners (maybe assign each entry a number, then use a random number generator to select winners, which is also going to take time to set up) and repeat that process however many times. Then they have to go about calling/emailing everyone to let them know that they've won.

That's a considerable amount of time and effort, plus the money you're paying your employees to do it (not to mention whatever normal business activity isn't getting done because they're doing this). Also keep in mind that not a single one of these things contribute anything to Kane's bottom line. From a business perspective all of that is just pure waste. Yet they're still doing it because they want the release to be as easy and fair for their customers as possible. This is why I shake my head anytime I hear people say Kane doesn't care about their customers, or they're just trying to create hype, a cash grab,etc.

 

FIFY