Toppling Goliath Brewery appreciation thread...

Yeah I don't think the issue here is "fairness" but what a waste of time it was for so many people. Would have even been better if they had just started the sale at 1pm when the original tweet went out about it.

 

I didn't even use the F5 button. I actually hit the refresh button on the browser. Man, did I work harder than I needed.
I also got a ticket, so it was worth it.

 

I saw on Twitter yesterday, that at peak, they were seeing 80,000+ people clicking at the same time. If that is in fact unique people, that is a lot! It is too bad they can't use that hype for a great cause. Just thinking if they did a lotto and those 80,000+ people had to essentially donate $5 for a chance to win one of the 500 MD tickets. That could translate into $400,000+ that they could have donated to charities. Hell, even $1 would still have been $80,000+. It would also be interesting to see what they could get if they auctioned off a few tickets to the highest bidder with all proceeds of the auction going to charities.

Of course, assuming this is all legal and not a logistic nightmare. It just seems like an untapped resource for raising money for charities.

 

Pretty sure that was 80,000+ total; I had several devices. Either way, I bet there was 15k trying for the 500 spots.
I like where you are going with it. CW could do that for their release. Charge all a few $ to even sign up; donate that money. Gets a few $ to a good cause. Then auction off or sell raffle tickets for the bottles that were not claimed.
Either way, it would be nice to see a charitable portion of these crazy beer releases. I know BPT does donate a certain portion of their piece to charity.

 

Casey's Brewing and Blending in CO does something like this. Tickets for events are $5 or so and all that goes to local charities.

 

from at IT perspective I doubt it was 80,000 people. I'm guessing 80,000 incoming HTTP requests, which could easily be inflated by each person using multiple devices and also refreshing [F5] before a timeout is reached. one person could easily contribute to 10-20 of those at a time.

 

Yeah, I work in IT too and wasn't sure if it really was unique people or just connections. But with it being MD, people knowing it was coming and the current craft beer culture. I would not be surprised if it was in fact 80,000 unique people.

Either way, it had to be more than enough people to raise a pretty penny for charities.

 

80,000 sounds like someone switched their bitcoin mining operation over to a Morning Delight mining operation.

 

Mug Club will be getting an email for Assassin release. TBD on if Mug Club will get MD email - per TG Facebook

 

It seems like active sessions would be a fairly accurate measure of the number of unique people. There would be duplicates for people that were using multiple devices, and not all of the sessions would be for people trying to get MD tickets, but those on the site for some other reason would be a pretty slim minority.

 

Sure, the BG release via lottery is easy for us, but it may present other challenges for the business that TG prefers to avoid. I don't know why the breweries choose different methods. An hour of my time wasn't that big of a deal to try and get a ticket to this. I didn't feel like I was refreshing over and over, though - maybe that's why I didn't get a ticket, even though I did get through a handful of times and tried to add to cart, but it didn't go through. Maybe other people just got too stressed out during the process.

 

I have a good friend who does web development with database backends. A Web page with a lottery signup complete with back end database and software to generate the 500 pseudo randomly picked winners is very cheap and is a one-time cost.

The brewery would literally end up with a list of the winners. This still leads to some additional effort to generate tickets, but it's really a question of how interested the brewery is in providing a positive experience for the customer.

I've heard that some of the online ticket sellers will run a lottery for you, where you specify how many may attend, then they provide the sales (sign up), selection and ticketing.

The bottom line is this: If the brewery's message is that they know the system they're using sucks for the customer, but they're doing it that way because otherwise it sucks for them, then the message is pretty clear. They don't feel the need to provide a positive experience for the customer. Whether that comes from laziness, arrogance, or something else is obviously up for debate, but the fact is they don't care enough about the customer to make is pleasant for them.

 

80,000 people+ for 500 tickets? It's just laughable. You've got a 1% chance of scoring a ticket. If there is that little of MD available, why not allow a one bottle limit, and at least 500 more people walk away with a bottle. I can't believe people are getting so pissed over this. It's a great beer, but when you really put into perspective the demand and the actual supply, it doesn't matter how they do the ticket release you probably weren't getting a ticket anyway, so just move on. In a couple years when the new brewery is in full swing MD production will quadruple and many more people will get the opportunity to buy this beer.

 

People...even the biggest beer groups out there have less than 10,000 members. There are not 80,000 beer people going after MD. Please just stop that nonsense.

 

What don't you believe about this? You had people from nearly every state and internationally all trying at the exact same time. The hype for TG stouts is outrageous. You've got people from California, NY, etc. who got tickets that are flying in for the release. 80,000 doesn't surprise me in the least.

 

Nice to see Mug Club get some love with Assassin at least since it was crickets on MD....

 

Attempt at redirecting. I like TG Beer.

 

It probably would've helped if they just sold the tickets at 1pm at their announcement. Giving people ~3 hours to prep probably didn't help.

 

Glad they finally responded to one of my messages on Facebook. A friend had also emailed Jess there and she had said that no determinations were made on Mug Club yet for MD. There's still a little hope, but I'm not holding my breath. I'll still be coming for the day since a couple friends did get picked and I'm still looking forward to a draft pour (if I can get it into my cart and check out before it times out).

 

I think it was arrogant that one of Clark's first tweets included #nocomplainers