"Chairgate"

This talk of freshness is silly because it's just a MacGuffin. I guess this is a driving factor for @FatBoyGotSwagger and a tiny percentage of others, but beyond that it's like saying that people line up (or place a chair) because of the cool art on the can. Let's not confuse an event with beer shopping despite the similarities.

Jack, nobody wants to line up for bottled local beer anymore because when the beer sucks the consumer can't blame the mobile canning company for the problem.

 

If that brewery was a 15-20 minutes drive away but to purchase the beer you would have to wait a few hours in line would you buy that beer?

Cheers!

 

I should also add that the only reason that people line up (or chair up) for canned Tired Hands beer is because they are sick of having their growlers explode.

 

And I do think that makes a HUGE difference in "the way things work". Proximity is a big deal (at least for me) - it means stopping in rather than planning a trek. I love my beer, but there is no way I can justify taking the time to drive to JA, Allagash, Treehouse, etc. on a routine basis. And if I did, it would probably get to the point of aggravation where I don't enjoy the "special" feeling of visiting once in a while.

But case (or example) in point - I don't have much use for growlers. It's not the drinking of them, but where the heck do I put them when I might not be on premise again for six months? If I could fill any growler anywhere, maybe that imparts some change to my thinking. But since they are brewery specific here in MA it's a moot point. If I do get one, I'll drink it or it just defeats the purpose. If I could go ten or fifteen minutes, even slightly out of my way, o have it refilled than I'd definitely think differently about the entire concept.

 

Nope.

Caveat - if my intent was visiting the brewery in the first place, rather than just a "beer me", I might be more tolerant. But I have walked away even when visiting a favorite because the lines have been too long.

 

Chris, you are on a roll today!!

Cheers!

 

That's a good case for Crowlers, then. Some places don't even charge extra. I find the whole growler station concept is an exceptional way to get fresh IPAs in particular, and you're not stuck with just one breweries offerings.

 

The wine filling stations or whatever you call them have just started catching on around in package stores around here. I'd be OK at a brewery where presumably they would know how to take care of their tap lines. Some (most) of the stores in my immediate area can't manage their inventory, never mind a tap line for a growler station. I don't think they allow bars and restaurants here to fill growlers or crowlers, but I could be incorrect. And if I understand the crowler correctly, it's basically a 32 ounce growler in can format. I'm committed to consuming a quart until somebody invents the crowler sealer as seen on TV Yeah - I will drink a 32 or 64 ounce growler, but it still takes me more than a sitting.

Wow...admitted I don't like Celebration, won't stand in line, won't "man up" and drink a 64 ounce growler all at once...doing a pretty good job of self-revoking my BA card in this thread )

 

I think your avatar pretty well sums up how I feel about things. An affliction I suffered from for a very short time when this was all new to me.

 

People are funny. If I ever go crazy and decide to wait in line for beer, and there is a bunch of empty chairs in the line, I'm just gonna sit in the first chair in line and think, "man, it was really nice of the brewery to put these chairs out here"

 

Larry, FWIW I am pretty consistent with you here with the exception of Celebration. Last month I purchased a 12-pack of Celebration that was bottled on 10/13/16. With a purchase date of 11/21/16 that beer was just a bit over 1 month old which is a "lucky find" for me. I have three bottles of that 12-pack left.

Cheers!

 

Would you sit in this chair?

 

64 oz can be a bit much, but ever since I got some 32 oz growlers I find I'm using them so much more often and have access to an even greater variety. Some places even fill 16 oz. for high gravity beers or whatever...

 

I'm ALL about the 32oz growlers. Psychologically it seems like you're drinking a lot, but it's the same as two of these new-fangled shiny "cans" which I can easily drink two of without thinking about it

 

How do your local beer places fill their crowlers? There is only one brewpub near me that does crowler fills and their method is to fill the can from the tap just like they do their glasses and then take the can other to a thing-a-ma-jig to seal the top on the can. There is a boatload of air (oxygen) exposure during this particular filling process. If I were to order a crowler there I would feel compelled to drink that crowler in less than 48 hours. Properly canned beers I feel comfortable waiting a few weeks before I am compelled to drink them. For the case of canned Tired Hands beers I actually wait at least two weeks before drinking them; they benefit from a bit of 'can conditioning'.

Cheers!

 

It took 39 posts of ripping on and griping about the consumers to finally get here.

If breweries weren't looking to stoke that hype machine and get free distro* then this wouldn't be a thing. (*We all know damn near 100% of the people in these lines are trading a good chunk of their bounty).

Ultimately, the people whose chairs are there are people that got there earliest of all, and are partly concerned about line cutters, but mostly concerned about getting screwed out of getting beer they unfortunately are not guaranteed. Breweries could easily rectify this by any number of means, tickets being an obvious one--a practice that some slightly more conscious breweries already employ (I can't believe I'm saying that about Hoof Hearted, of all places).

For those of us that have had a good variety of offerings from these hyped breweries, we all can probably (mostly) agree that there is simply nothing on shelves in accessible quantity that is quite like these beers that are being waited in line for--whether it's Tired Hands, Tree House, Trillium, Bissell, Monkish, Other Half, Veil, Hoof Hearted, Hill Farmstead, etc. There may be some very limited distro for a few of these, but that's only in rare cases where they don't sell out, which brings us to the reason they aren't on sent to stores in the first place--they don't want stores to be part of their sales model, and it's a conscious choice, as has been pointed out with the pricing comparisons. If these breweries really wanted to "thank" their "loyal" consumers, they would find a better way to sell to them.

On the other hand, I have to believe though that Trillium's production is so large at this point they will start having to send some of their stuff out farther. It always amazes me that the brewery that makes the best of them all IMO is the "easiest" to get out of the bunch. Not only that, the "limits" are practically non-existent, aside from what your wallet and trunk can handle, outside of a few very rare releases that frankly aren't as well known as their most flagship and vaunted brews.

There is a brewery out there that tends to get overlooked in these discussions for a variety of reasons [Lord Hobo]. They have even made it a stated goal of theirs to end this nonsense, which, oddly enough, doesn't seem to score them any more fans. I was able to find them all the way up the coast on my trip to New England, and their beers are pretty close, if not identical, to some of the more hyped brewery-only releases we've been discussing.

 

I for one welcome my line waiting, chair bringing, beer hoarding overlords! I live in an area where canned, NE style beer is still looked down on and direct can distribution from a brewery is a super rarity (northern california/Bay area). On top of that, breweries here aren't really selling anything good enough to line up for on a regular basis.

If I have to trade gift boxes with a friend for the newest Other Half beer then so be it. I'm glad he's willing to wait in line on those cold Brooklyn mornings because I fuckin' love their beer and they will never, ever distribute. Probably not even to stores in NY unless some kind of expansion happens.

Putting out empty chairs to save your spot is completely douchey and should not be allowed, but if you go out there yourself, wait a few hours, and find a way to enjoy your time with fellow beer drinkers while waiting, then it's not so bad every once in awhile.

 

I just had one last week of Kane Head High, filled on Sunday and consumed on Friday. It was surprisingly fresh as a daisy when I had it, but it was kept in continual cold the whole time. I couldn't say what the limit is, but these do seem to last past a few days.

 

@JackHorzempa @beertunes @SammyJaxxxx

Case in point - five hours ago, Trillium tweeted about Permutation No. 4, available at the Boston and Canton locations, two bottle limit, bombers. Two hours ago, there were 15 cases left in Canton, 10 in Boston. The latest Tweet says "approximately" five cases left in Boston an hour ago, nothing about Canton. So what - in the course of five hours however much they decided to release is gone?

For one thing, it's a work day for me so if I were all wound up to try this fabulous new brew, it'd be the dreaded FOMO - well, it would actually just be "MO" since I am sitting here at my desk "talking" at all y'all, freezing my nuts off because the heat is f'd again (which assuages my guilt at least a little bit). I don't see where it says how much was actually released (not a Twitter person), so think about that - even on a work day for most of us, it's pretty much all gone. Then what - there's 12 bombers in a case times let's say $15 a bottle and that is probably low side?

I think this is a perfect example of some of the points brought up in this thread - leveraging social media, being a "hot" brewery, creating the "limited" scenario, and using hype.

I wonder how many phenoms showed up?

 

Nowhere near me does crowlers. They're all growlers. Either the standard hose / cap on foam approach. Or some places (including Other Half) do counter pressure fills which supposedly last longer.

For me though it's all fairly moot. Either I drink the growler immediately, or I "age" it for a couple of hours and then drink it