Tired Hands (November 2016)

+1 for this comment. Hidden River is not even in the same ballpark as TH, not even close.

 

I ended up making a trip out to Forest & Main for a few Thanksgiving saisons and IIPA crowlers instead of the TH madness. First time there. Pretty happy with my decision.

 

Gotta say, three super solid releases. The big surprises were actually the Trendler Alt and the current Hop Hands batch. TA is nice and malty, light and refreshing. The HH batch is really spot on. At this point I can't remember if it's like the first HH I ever had, but it's really good, the fruit is there, tastes clean, full of flavor but so light.

Punge is just nuts. One sip will blow your palate and the above two beers will taste like water.

 

Drinking a glass of Punge in the Fermenteria after freezing in line for 2 hours was one of the most satisfying beers of my life.

Glad I stocked up on Hop Hands and Trendler--I think i'm done waiting in can lines until the spring.

 

Tired Hand's Beer Avg is 4.07/5. Hidden River's Beer Avg is 4.01/5. That's pretty close.

 

Don't hold onto those Hop Hands too long, they don't like age. I just drank my last one from the Watermelon Milkshake release and it was not the same beer it was 2 months ago.

Maybe, but a lot of the Hidden River beer is just.........odd. When I was there a few days ago, they had maybe 15 beers on tap of which I was only interested in 3. I go to Tired Hands and I want to start at the beginning of their tap list and work my way through the entire list. Granted, I'm an IPA guy and TH always has a bunch of great IPAs on. HR only had one IPA and although it was solid, it was no TH IPA.

Anyway, I'm not giving up on HR, I'll keep stopping by and giving them a chance, they are local to me so that's a positive.

 

Both breweries use unusual ingredients, but you can sometimes make the counter-argument about variety and Tired Hands. A month or two ago I was going to a show at the Ardmore Music Hall with some friends and we considered hitting up Tired Hands for food and beers beforehand. It was a Tuesday night so only the Brew Cafe was open. So I checked out the taplist and every beer they had except for HopHands was some form of Saison. I don't like Saisons, so we went to Iron Hill instead.

I think variety in a taplist is a good thing. Especially if you have a group of friends with diverse beer preferences.

I am in the minority in that of the beers I've tried from Tired Hands, I've enjoyed the porters / stouts more than their hoppy beers.

 

Came back to Philly and opened a High Road last night upon arrival. Poured it very vigorously into a glass, after storing upside down, and it's basically completely flat. No carb. Cans are also as squishy as I've seen. Is this a problem they've had before? Not sure what I'm going to do with these last six high roads...

 

Yes, I've had that exact same experience with High Road before. The most recent time I got a 4-pack of it it was very good though. It seems to be their least consistent beer. Sometimes it is clear, sometimes it is turbid, sometimes flat.

 

I just noticed this on Tired Hands' Instagram

"Limit 3 four-packs/person as per our great state of Pennsylvania"

Did they get in trouble for selling more than 192oz of beer to individuals? All their other releases, and even this one, have listed things like "1 case/person" or 3 4-packs of each beer per person.

 

I don't know how/why you guys put up with these guys as much as you do. As their popularity grows they seem to keep pushing the envelope of how much BS their customers will put up with. I can not think of once recent instance of them 'giving the people what they want' short of issuing magotago refunds (yet still not apologizing or taking blame, just telling people it might be too bitter for your taste and that it will be better in a week. it still stinks and not another word about it) $40 grand they took in on those cans before offering refunds. I really thought the 5pm release would mean more beer to go around but less than 300 people were able to get Punge? The 75 or so people behind me who got there after me didn't get any, most not finding out until they got to the table. Once it sells out why not post this information so locals can get out of the cold and come back tomorrow for HH & Trendler Alt.

How can Treehouse keep an active dialogue going with customers over twitter but Tired Hands can barley post information in a regular time frame while there are 6 guys standing around bumping stoner-metal and sipping mago tago to make a statement.

Bottle that red wine crap void and sell overpriced exploding growlers of the BBAged void for 2 weeks! why not reverse that and give your loyal customers what they want.

Ever since jene stopped brewing I've found their quality to go down. Aside from space needle there hasn't been any one-off's that I was wild about. but hey thats just my opinion. Church is still great, why not take a day out've the week to brew that regularly? Hell why not take an extra day to brew anything, the ferm is a ghost town most of the week until after work. I love Tired Hands and have been a loyal supporter since they opened the cafe but I'm just so turned off on what seems to be every decision they make.

Veil, Treehouse, Monkish, Bissell, all the other greats, treat their customers so much better than THands does yet their popularity keeps growing. Cant wait for some other local brewery to start giving them some competition

:end rant:

 

When they sell out of the side door, they can sell in any quantity they wish to sell. When they move sales behind the bar, they are limited by law to 192oz per transaction for carry-out beer. All you have to do is carry the 3 4pks to your car and then get back in line if you want/need more.

 

To follow up with a possibility of why people put up with their "crap"...

Someone told me on Saturday that they went to the can release this past Wednesday "just to get beers to trade" and that "you can get anything in return for Tired Hands."

 

ah, I overlooked that part about them being sold behind the bar. Cheers!

 

How much beer a retailer can sell is dependent on the type of alcohol license they obtained from the PLCB.

The restriction of 192 ounces is part of having an Eating Place (E) Liquor License.

I have no idea what type of license(s) Tired Hands owns but they have indeed sold beer in case allotments in past can releases.

You can read more about the E-License (and other types of licenses) here: http://pennsylvanialiquorlicense.com/typesoflicenses.asp#3

Cheers!

 

Do you happen to know whether Tired Hands had to purchase a Distributor (D) Liquor License in order to sell those cases?

Cheers!

 

According to PLCB site, they have 2 licenses for each location (4 total): Brewery and Brewery Pub.

 

Does the license that permits Tired Hands to operate as a brewery also permit them to operate as a retailer (i.e., to sell cases of beer)?

Cheers!

 

Complaining about allotment size is getting rediculous. They always keep it to 3 or so 4packs for the more popular beers. If you can't get there early enough that's too bad. They only make so much beer at thisnpoint. Nobody is going to wait in line for a single pack of each beer.

 

Yeah they will. Only Void was recently 1-pack-per-person and people lined up.

I saw the allotments for Punge and decided it wasn't worth standing in line for hours for that beer. If the allotment was 1 4-pack I'd probably have gone because it would have been easier to get some.