Is the Barrel-Aged Stout Craze Over?

IDK how typical it is in Minnesota, but Abyss in Chicago is extremely underrated and can always be found. Now BA Darkness and KBS have never sat longer than a week. Maybe you have found yourself a nice little gem spot.

 

"Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"

My guess is it's not over as such but been overtaken by interest in NE IPA, Sour, and tweaked traditional styles (Gose, Saison.) Also likely that a boozier take on a heavy style might build up a stock pile over the warmer summer months. So enjoy that honey hole while it lasts.

 

Yes, these yearly releases are sitting longer and longer. The one off and pastry stouts are garnering the hype currently.

 

BA Stout craze not over or even close to, you found a honey hole. Agree with @Chaz it is competing with the NE ipa/pa/2ipa, at this time

 

I'd say the market is just saturated with BA stouts because everyone seems to be pumping out more SKUs in higher volume.

 

I think the major thing right now is everyone is spending all their money on brewery release only stuff.

 

Now that more smaller breweries in the area are selling crowlers or 750ml botttles of their beer out of their taprooms I think this is probably most accurate.

 

I love it too, because sometimes those are awesome, or sometimes I find a crap-ton of FW vintages at a beatdown liquor store and I load up.

 

Sick brag.

 

$30 for BA Darkness was on the high end (i.e. MGM) prices when it was released. Looks like you are benefiting from price 'gouging' if you are happy paying that (not blaming you, if I was still looking I'd be happy to pay $30). Never cared too much for Abyss.

I'll call the death of BA Stouts when I can walk into a liquor store in December (in MN) and buy a case of BCBS.

 

I believe there are some mitigating factors. For KBS, Founders substantially increased production, and it was plentiful all over, but still sold out within hours in many markets, within a day or two in most, and longer in others. Founders' goal certainly is to sell them all, and they've pretty much done that. Next year they'll probably be reducing allocations to areas where it lingered, and increasing allocations to areas that sold out too quickly.

For BA Darkness, I have to suspect that Surly holds quite a lot back for Minnesotans, possibly to make up for having to tolerate the Vikings.

As far as Abyss - not sure there, but perhaps folks are starting to take it for granted. Still great, but there are so many other great BA stouts that are cheaper. BTW - the standard Abyss is BA also, not just the variants.

 

I was visiting my parents in an undisclosed location about two months ago, and a nearby liquor store had several 4-packs of the 2016 release of KBS still sitting on their shelves ($25 each). They also had a half dozen different varieties of past Schells Noble Star releases, with at least four bottles of each, just sitting there....nobody taking them. This is my new gem spot whenever I'm back for a visit.

 

I've seen several folks refer to KBS 2017 as a "shelf turd" and this was only a couple of months after release. Ridiculous. In this case, priced at $25, I can see why it is taking longer to sell because that's on the high side. It is kind of nice to run across a favorite and/or difficult to find seasonal/cult beer out of season.

 

I've always thought the psychotic fervor for BA stouts was highly correlated to their lack of availability. So, I guess I've never even thought of them as liquor store beers. They're beers people stand in line and pay insane amounts of money for at tap rooms.

 

I've heard Darkness Day is going to be a bust this year. So no one needs to show up till 9-10am the day of. No need to camp out early...

 

The $25 was for the entire 4-pack. I seen the 2017 KBS for about $6 a bottle, so the $25 seems about right.

 

Here they were $21 to $22 a 4-pack, and from forum postings that was pretty typical this year in the US. Some places in the US were under $20, and some were near $30. I guess retailers will charge as much as they think they'll get without alienating their customers or being left with stock for months on end.