Anyone else notice that Boulevard Beer's.....

That's interesting to see. I'll pass this along to our folks who manage sales in the PNW to see if they can offer any insight.

Regarding the best by date, we base those on real life results from our expert tasting panel composed of trained employees. We taste bottles of our beers as they age in controlled desirable and not so great conditions. Once we feel the beer has reach a point in its aging where we no longer feel it's an excellent example of our intentions, we apply a best by date.

Our approach to barrel aged beers is that we've already done the work of aging the beer for you and we want to release beer that we feel is ready to drink. Obviously, once you've purchased the bottle, it's yours to do whatever you'd like with, but we do print best by dates on every bottle we release.

 

I would assume a distributor forgot a stash of it somewhere. Hence the $8.99 price. Nice pickup though, as that stoof is tasty!

 

such an obnoxious way to title a thread. Do you write for thrillist or something?

 

I'm willing to bet that the distributor either lost it in inventory or intentionally held some back to release now. More or more (still very few) are doing something like this. I have seen it once with Bourbon County (releasing 2012 in late 2013/early 2014) and heard similar stories from friends in several areas of the country.

 

My message requesting more information to pass along to our local folks has gone unanswered as have responses to this post in a KC beer forum. Please let me know more specifically where this is happening and I may be able to provide an explanation.

 

Wow. All I mentioned was that my request for more info here/in a message and in a KC forum had gone unanswered. I simply wanted more information to provide to the local rep I'd alerted regarding this forum. He wanted to make contact with the specific distributor and retailer folks. That is all.

Given the nature of your lengthy response, I'll copy and paste and provide answers/responses in line.

"Second, I immediately had second thoughts after posting this on Beer Advocate, because I know you carouse these sites and had a feeling it would head down this path."

What path? I'm simply noting that you generated a discussion and failed to engage my request to provide more information.

"Maybe I mis-worded the Thread/Post, but really not looking for an explanation as to "where/why this is happening". There was NEVER any malice intended for the post!!!!"

I didn't think there was any intended malice. When I see posts like this, I pass them along to the appropriate folks within our organization, good or bad. I spend a lot of time reading much more pointed posts than your initial thoughts. It takes a lot to surprise/offend me. You haven't done that here.

"Let's be honest here, Boulevard (ie Jeremy) knows who the distributors are (for example: The Odom Corporation). What it sounds like the real intent is to find out "who" is selling the Boulevard Smokestack Series Imperial Stout 2014 at this particular price......"

I honestly do not know who all of our distributors are around the country as I am not in sales and often do not interact directly with distributor employees. I asked for more information because our local reps wanted the opportunity to follow up with folks who are directly involved. I'm not the beer police.

"Again, I was simply expounding on such a great find at the price paid. Nothing more, nothing less. Trust me, I've spent thousands of dollars over the years with Boulevard on merchandise and products considering I lived less than 5 miles from the brewery. So if this investigation is to pin-point what retailer might be underselling a Boulevard product, thus hurting Duvel Moorgat's bottom line......well, I say shame on you! On the other hand, if this is a distribution issue, then have at it. I don't think there is much love lost between the consumers and distributors."

I appreciate the fact that you purchase our beers. This is not "an investigation." This is simply me asking for specific information as requested by the rep who handles the PNW. It's not my job to determine if this is a distributor or retailer issue. I'm simply asking for more information.

"Maybe I'm uneducated on the rules/laws governing what a retailer can price a beer at. But does the retailer not have the discretion to discount a product to move it off the shelves or out of it's inventory? Again, I'm not keen upon the beer industry's buy-back policies on expired or dated beer."

By law, breweries have zero influence over pricing at the retail level. I can't comment to how our distributor in the PNW handles out of code beer as each distributor can have its own policies.

"I will say this, my knowledge comes from working in a similar environment within the specialty coffee and supply chain industry. Here, we often times allow the retailer full discretion at what to price the products. In similar fashion, the "best-buy" dates put on bags of roasted coffee beans is more of a marketing/inventory tactic to move products quicker. Thus, if you respond by saying you're concerned about retailers selling an 11% quasi (portion) barrel- aged Boulevard product out of date, I'm gonna respond by saying........."Come on Jeremy, please don't insult our intelligence" Ha ha "

As previously mentioned, we have zero influence over pricing at the retail level. Our best by dates are based on results from our tasting panel tasting library samples as our beers age under ideal conditions. When we feel a beer is no longer an excellent example of our intentions, we apply a best by date. These vary beer to beer. Again, I can't imagine how asking for more information has been pulled so far out of context that you would think I'm insulting anyone's intelligence.

"But for real Jeremy, I regret posting this because I thought you (maybe not you personally) might try to go after the small business owners for the pricing. Another thought which is more serious, are you concerned there might be a black market out there selling products outside the boundaries of the brewery's/distributors which undercuts everyone else? If so, i agree this should be a major concern similar to the counterfeiting market. But I'm really grasping for straws here and highly doubt this is occurring or what you're concerned with."

I'm not going after anyone. The nature of the thread title and the post concerned me so I passed it along to our local folks. They asked for more information. No, I don't think anyone is operating a secondary market that sells to retailers. The best way to understand my concerns is to ask for them versus all of this speculation.

"Let me finish up by saying that Jeremy will likely respond with subtle jabs or simply make me look like a fool. I have met and shared a few with Jeremy in the past. He's a good dude or what some might call the quintessential "company man". Ha, the twitter wars, forum post, podcasts, etc can probably quantify this title. Regardless, we all love you Mr. Jeremy Danner."

I believe you'll find no jabs in any of the above responses or in my closing sentences. I'll say it once more: My intent was simply to gain the information our local folks requested. That's it. I appreciate that you know how much I care about Boulevard and our beers and want you to know that my initial request for more information was motivated by that.

"See, you keep tugging and this is the response you get. Remember the famous Godfather quote by Michael Corleone: Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

I like movies too.

To summarize:

I took zero offense from your post. It did concern me so I passed it along to our local folks who asked for more information. I posted here asking for that info as well as sending you a private message. Neither received a response. I responded to your post in the local Kansas City forum asking for more information. That didn't receive a response. All I'm looking for is some specific information I can pass along to our folks so I can provide an explanation as well as answer the questions you asked in your initial post.

I'm open to continuing this discussion in this thread as I dig transparency or I'm happy to continue it via private message or email. I'm [email protected]. For anyone else reading this thread, feel free to contact me directly or tag me should you have any future comments/concerns/questions related to Boulevard Brewing Company or our beers.

 

• Wow. I think "you overreacted" is definitely the obvious answer.

 

Wow. Shaking my head. Overreacting might even be an understatement. Great composure, Jeremy!