Bourbon County 2018

Even more reason to avoid it imo. Have some orange chocolate sticks in my cabinet. Not my cup of tea

 

Then you should totally try Coffee VaMidProp WheatRye ... best $100 beer ever

 

Meh. I'm on my 3rd Coffee VaMidProp BrambleWheat RESERVE and it's just barely okay. Quaffable and a nice warm-bellied drunkenness but that's it.

 

Decided against line waiting this year but, while out and about, stopped in the liquor store at my local WI grocery store 45 min after the doors opened. I was able to grab a regular, wheatwine, and vanilla, and passed on orange. While checking out, I was talking to the manager. He mentioned there was only one person waiting outside for the doors to open at 8am, but as it turns out, he was only waiting to get a case of bud light. Apparently just another day in WI

 

You mean bramble on.

Okay, okay, fine too easy. Let’s turn on the radio then. I wanna hear that song that goes “Lord I was born a bramblin’ man...”

 

I haven’t read back far enough to see if someone posted this, but for latecomers like me, jewel Southport has cases of barleywine, coffee barleywine and orange on the floor. A few bottles of bramble. Rayan discount liquors has all variants but the markup is heavy (I think they were 32).

 

The true hero of this day.

 

Still tons of wheat wine, a few cases orange & BwC left at Jewel on Kinzie/DesPlaines. Shout out to @jokemon and others for posting!

 

Wanted to take a minute to acknowledge the HUGE improvement over the way Binny's LP handled the event this year vs. last year (or any year).

This was the 6th year my wife and I have done the LP line and I'm very glad to see the staff is working to improve the event, and listening to feedback, especially if they're going to insist on driving traffic to a single store.

I'm often one of the loudest critics when there are problems so it's worth noting a few things that they did right this year:
- Bundling the allotment with a single SKU for fast, easy checkout
- Snaking the line through the parking lot to keep people on their property and within their control.
- Handing out wristbands, so it was clear where you where in the line, EXACTLY. And matching tickets to your wristband.
- Free pancakes with barrel aged maple syrup, berry compote and Intelligentsia coffee.

All of that said, this is the biggest retail beer release in the world (Seriously, they did $2.5million in a few hours.), so I think they can still improve a few things:
- Trash cans. I mean, I know they said no "camping" but that many people generate a lot of trash. Even if you don't count the bottles from the true assholes that were out their drinking all night. This is will also make their cleanup a lot easier.
- More people in the parking lot. The line exited the parking lot somewhere in the early 600s. The line being off-property is one of the biggest causes of problems. There were still way too many cars in the lot.
- Incentives for people arriving first. I think it would be MUCH better to do randomize the vintages and the posters/books, etc. We had 40+ people in line before noon on Thanksgiving. Is this really what we want?
- Wristbands need to be handed out AS you arrive. We waited more than an hour, I know some people waited three.
- The gap between when you get your wristband and when you get a ticket. There's literally no reason to wait in line (other than the fear of missing a ticket) once you have a wristband. In the future, people are going to game this system. Go there as soon as wristbands are being handed out, then go home or sit in their car. If you want your place in line, you have to sit outside. That's the deal.
- The best scenario is a totally fenced in parking lot, where people can only enter/exit in one area. Get a wristband as you enter and you can't leave without forfeiting your wristband.
- Tents. It turns out eliminating tents doesn't stop the line crunch issue in the morning as people put their stuff back in their cars. We still had the same issue, but with wristbands/tickets, people kept their place in line much easier. I'm pissed that I can't bring my ice shanty that I literally bought for this event specifically, but as long as we're all playing by the same rules, that's fine. While I didn't see any tents, plenty of people were hunkered down in sleeping bags, under tarps and I saw at least one cot. So where we draw the line is going to be tough. And if it rains, we'll really see who wants their beer.
- Loopers. Once the first person goes through the line, allotments should be cut off or they need an airtight way to stop people from coming through the line again. I talked to too many people in the line who were getting their second allotment. Getting in line 24 hours early, sounds better knowing I could get a shot at TWO full allotments. That shouldn't be a thing.

 

That sounds zero % appealing.

 

at almost $300/allotment, no way i can go thru twice

 

but weren't these cars of employees?

 

Regarding Loopers, I suppose they could just get a marker and put an X on the hand of people as they check out? Seems to be an easy fix for More when they do a Henna release so people won't get more than 1 pour.

 

If you're in Wisconsin and you buy bud light over pbr or a Miller product you should be hung. Just saying

 

Regulating the loopers is too small of a population to worry about. Nobody should be going to Binnys LP after open and expecting a full allotment.

 

They had coffee barleywine and regular barleywine? Might explain how when I asked for the coffee variant and barleywine variant separately I ended up with just the coffee barleywine. Was there a coffee stout as well? That's what I wanted. Don't know how I ended up with the rye other than the confusion that happened when they dropped a bottle while I was checking out

 

Yes, I saw them occasionally letting them in throughout the night.

 

Goose island did not release a "bcbcs" varient this year. They did release a coffee barleywine. If they got any BCBCS this year, it was most likely a '17 BCBCS.

 

I’m assuming the previous poster meant coffee barleywine and wheatwine respectively.