Monkish Brewing (September 2016)

Are you jumping in line with friends or starting at the back?

 

When I show up at whatever the fuck time, I jump in to the back. Typically there's maybe a handful of people in front of me double dipping and then a couple more double dippers get behind me.

One time I saw the line and said fuck it and went inside for a pour. Drank it and then was told that they had enough and what not and then got to the back of the line.

I've just been fairly lucky/smart about how to approach it. But there's def. no reason why anyone should be waiting 12 hours for an IPA.

 

10:51am. No line for fills now.

 

Yes, that would be Henry and Adriana.

 

Thats great.
Now if Henry and Adriana would just hand these out the day before a release...

 

it would be nice to go friday grab a pour, growler and walk out with a wristband for saturday cans.

 

Decided to pull the trigger today and buy into the hype. Got there at 8:30am.
By 10am, 15-20 in front of me and sold out.

Never again, not worth it. Not mad or anything.

 

2 weeks ago...showed up at 10. Got in line. 15-20 minutes later got a 4 pack of Balloons. LAX ran out 4 peeps in front of me. Go figure. Still got me 3 cans of that Balloons.

 

That's impressive that you could show up at 10 and still get cans at Monks

 

Only reason is they got nuthin' better to do at midnight, 3am or what-ever-time it is they go git in line. Nuthin' else. Why wold you get out of a warm bed and go sit on an uncomfortable chair outside in the dark looking at a wall or other people. Drinking beers in the am. And then having to get up to take a piss somewhere where the cameras can see you. So what do you do when you have to take a sh!te at 2am? Fantastics is not open. I hope they bring toilet paper with them. Take a crap in the bushes next to the lot?

 

As stated earlier in this thread, I went there that Saturday to fill my growlers and hope to have a glass or 2 of the new IPA's. Saw the line and took a chance. Lucky.

 

This was bought up many times here in the past. Can release day the cans move in an hour+. Most of their bottles don't move like the cans. Maybe they had issues with some of their bottles sitting on shelves in the stores in the past. So they could not get their newer bottles out for distro/sales. So they may have had bottles sitting taking up space at the brewery? Can IPA's was a brilliant move for Henry. Maybe the once NO IPA's Monks new strategy is whats going to save them? Nobody else is really doing these IPA's here in SoCal. Maybe some of them should consider it?

 

Just heard today that it's the last Saturday can release/ lines starting at 2am. From now on there's going to be a different system. Maybe @Tgilly can confirm this? .

 

Pretty sure they're moving to the Tree House model, i.e. as soon as the cans are filled, they go on sale. No pre-announcement, no lines because nobody will know ahead of time. I mean I guess the lines will form as people make their way over but nothing like it is now.

 

hoping all the IPA pours will still be available by 6 ish?

 

It's possible, I heard it mentioned they were looking to take a break from saturday releases and just got a canning line set up. The problem is their brewery/tasting room is pretty ill set up for it..they have very little cold storage, and you'd have to have a dedicated runner going back and forth to pick up cans as they are ordered. With the saturday morning release they can just pull the 2 pallets out of the cold room and be done with them in less than an hour...

I also think Monkish does a pretty good job and managing the line and trying to get as much beer to as many people in the line as possible with rolling allocations, it's pretty admirable...the amount of double/triple dipping, trade-baiting, and possibly even reselling would go through the roof without and effective way of monitoring how much people are purchasing.

Last point in defense of the saturday morning release vs rolling weekday releases is that the brewery does have neighbors and if you do a random wednesday release, word of mouth will be such that they'll have a flood of business during normal weekday business hours which inconveniences their neighbors. at least with a saturday release most of the lines and cars are gone by 10:30-10:45 when businesses are just opening up nearby.

 

I'm just basing this off of conversations I've had with the employees. The fact is that there is no optimal way to do it that will please everybody. But I suspect that if they were to announce a can sale at 4:00 P.M. on a Tuesday (which is when they open), the rush would have much less impact on the surrounding area than the existing model does.

I agree 100% that they do the best they can with the Saturday releases, and maybe they'll go back to them if this new model doesn't work out, but unless something changes I'm pretty sure the next release will not be on a Saturday.

 

i'm fairly certain that the whole cold storage factor is a non issue as if they announce a 4pm can sale, the place would be sold out of them by 7pm latest.

 

What was the tech difficulties on Sunday? Last minute or planned outage?

 

i believe their cold storage went out completely. i know someone that was sitting there drinking IPA on draft and he said they got warmer and warmer as he ordered more pours, until they realized their cold box was not maintaining temp at all and had to stop serving.