Bruery RS/HS Allocations (2019)

Or that time they subbed sour in the rye with pineapple & coconut for kumquat version..

 

I'm planning my flight for the Anniversary party. Do they do SMM on Monday after the party? I'm sure the answer is yes, but when spending money on a flight I wanted to be certain.

 

I truly get all of the angst over the release of Spontanaheim, but griping about Hold the Spoon, c'mon. If you want Hold the Spoon, go buy the remaining Out of the Lunchbox, you'll get the jelly for free, wait you don't want that. As for Apflesap sh!t happens, it is a bummer for sure. It is not like The Bruery doesn't want to take our money.

What I don't like hearing is I pay $750 and deserve to get more than you, because you pay $300 nonsense. The Bruery only RS got screwed in that they were "promised" 2 bottles of Apfesap and could only purchase one. I'm sure HS was able to buy two to their one, so where is the injustice?

Could someone answer on what the avg. amount of exclusive beers RS gets in a year that don't trickle down to PS? I'm pretty sure with the HS boxes Hoarder's gets 24-30 exclusive beers now, so the RS should get at least 12-15 based on money paid (i'm sure it is nowhere near this), end of rant.

 

Tough crowd as usual. I'm guessing that The Bruery has to manage the needs of over 2,000 members when you include PS, RS, and HS. Many of those memberships are shared, so it could easily be closer to 3,000. We need to realize that the needs of so many is impossible to please all. Most of what I read above were complaints, but I did not see much in the way of suggestions. For example, losing Apfelsap stinks, but maybe instead of just complaining, we could suggest that instead of only giving us M&FT, they could offer 2-3 beers as an alternative or provide a credit minus society discount.

I agree that the society has struggled the past couple of years. There does need to be more leadership for the society and there does seem to be a lack of communication between the society, manufacturing ops, social media and tasting room. For a truly stellar experience, the society leader(s) need to advocate for the members in each of these departments for exclusive or special opportunities/beers.

- Crowler Fills: I for one would like to see a weekly crowler release for society fills like they did at one time. I still reminisce about the SHIT variants and when RS/HS could get fills and general public could consume in the tasting room.
- The Bruery Store Website: A big lift for me would be if they redo the user experience on the member log-in page. It's pretty much useless. Modern Times and several other breweries are able to provide an inventory of what you have outstanding and make it so easy and visually appealing. It also shows if your order was fulfilled or not. It's funny because the site USED to do this, but they took it away in the most recent "upgrade". Perhaps the upgrade helped improve their inventory tracking, but a major setback for members.

I could probably sit here all day and type little suggestions. However, my best suggestion would be if they created small member panels and discuss ways to improve the current situation as well as build for the future.

 

C'mon man! If we were talking burritos and you paid $7.50 and I paid $3 at the same taco shop, I'm sure you'd hope to get "more" burrito (in some form of marginal quality/quantity) than me

I can't speak for anyone else on Apfelsap's solution. For me, it all worked out ok because I knew what I had to do ahead of time and could make it happen. Others may not have been so fortunate. I really enjoyed M&FT from a couple years ago, so that being part of my "included allocations" is fine for me. Others may not value it as much in that they just want *the newness*, didn't enjoy M&FT, or something else.

Though I may have preferred this, I don't know their membership distribution numbers, so covering 1 bottle for all the HS members may not have been as viable. I get that covering the 1 bottle for HS members might then upset RS members, especially Bruery only ones who then miss out on not 1 but 2 bottles, who all have to fight over an even smaller supply on top of maybe feeling getting shafted on the swap out. So that may have played a part in the decision making. Hard to know from the outside.

If what you say about Hold the Spoon being similar to Out of the Lunchbox being true, then I guess I'm not missing much.

 

I know you're joking but others are not. At The Bruery taco shop you get twice the bottles for the $7.50 vs. the smaller $3 taco, as well as many more exclusive toppings. Now these exclusive toppings, do cost money, but you don't need to add the Guac if you don't want to.

 

Hey! Icky Thump’s release date is 3/18 for Societies. We're actually really excited for this beer! We do have a public released planned on the 20th... but based on all the Hold The Spoon feedback we'll hold back a good volume for members. Hope that helps!

Daniel

 

Heyo! Bottle credits are definitely a solution we’re looking at for the future. Right now we just don’t have the back-end technology to issue credits for use on the site in that way. As far as M&FT, we decided to do a special re-brew of a beer that we heard great feedback on to make up for Apfelsap. To provide a bit of insight, we’re currently in the process of looking at new e-commerce technology to improve your online experience - but discussing how we can better approach the unfortunate event of low yield on an included beer in the future.

Daniel

 

I'm glad you took it that way as I'm not here to make enemies!

That's a fair assessment. HS does get more product to be somewhat equivalent to the higher price tag relative to RS (plus additional discounts and other perks). But we have to remember some of that--at least in past years--has been rice & beans (no relation to the beer name) filler product with retreads/re-releases that most HS members aren't all that excited about and have lesser value to those members. This year is different in that most of the products for HS are all new or at least new variants.

I look at HS as a higher commitment, which ought to come with a bit of preferential treatment. Obviously the whole HS being invite only makes the the situation more complicated where RS members may simply be locked out for "reasons." Add to that the likelihood there are RS members who spend more per year than some HS, makes the argument a bit weaker as well.

There's no one size fits all solution here and most of the best equitable or fair ones probably come with higher overhead complexity for The Bruery making them less ideal (from their perspective) to use.

 

Hi! Just to reiterate, we really are sorry that this beer sold out so quickly online. In complete transparency, we didn’t expect Hold The Spoon to garner that much interest with Society members. Our thinking was that unlike Bakery, this beer is a non barrel-aged imperial blonde. It was always planned as a public release and we planned for it to mainly be a distributed beer, but of course we wanted to give Societies first-access. We'll definitely take lessons from this release and apply them to the upcoming release of Icky Thump. Hope that answers any questions. Cheers!

Daniel

 

I know I addressed this in an earlier thread but honestly, we were completely caught off guard by the interest from Society members in Hold The Spoon. Unlike Bakery, this beer is a non barrel-aged imperial blonde. It was planned as a public release and planned to be mainly a distributed beer, but of course we wanted to give members first-access. We definitely will take lessons from this release and apply them to Icky Thump. Hope that answers any questions!

Daniel

 

As a team we do our best to stay shenanigan free! ..So we’re disappointed to hear that. We love our Society members and always want to make sure you're happy your membership. I'd love to get your feedback on the membership so far this year, shoot an email to [email protected] - ask them to forward you on to Daniel.

 

Hi there Mr. IKR. We actually do appreciate all the feedback and I want to assure you that Society members are always top of mind here. We’re totally open to dialogue and suggestions as well. I mentioned this earlier but one of the reasons we didn’t offer a credit on Apfelsap was simply a tech issue with our site: our e-comm platform doesn't give us that ability. This is definitely a solid idea and one we’ll take into account as we seek out a new e-comm platform.

When we realized yields were low on Apfelsap we decided to re-brew M&FT because we’d heard so much positive feedback around it in the past.

Access for all members is something we try really hard to provide. Unfortunately on something like Hold The Spoon, we underestimated interest. Unlike Bakery it’s a relatively low ABV imperial blonde, mainly brewed for distribution. Any other gripes/comments I’d love to hear about, if you email [email protected] and let them know to forward it on to Daniel I'd love to pick your brain. We’ll definitely take this all this feedback for our upcoming release of Icky Thump - we’re hoping Society members will really enjoy this coffee bomb we brewed with Mikerphone. - Cheers!

Daniel

 

This is a big one we’re working on. The answer in short is that we can’t offer free beers, as a reward for purchasing. That being said we absolutely want to take care of our Society members. This benefit was offered without diligence(our bad) and we in no way meant to offer something we could not fulfill.

I'd say by end of month, we’ll have a solution. The plan is to survey anyone who passed those "thresholds" and offer a few options for a benefit. Sit tight and make sure to check emails from The Bruery! Again I do apologize about that, but we’re doing our best to make it right. If you have any other questions please don’t hesitate to hit up [email protected] tell them you’d like to have your email forwarded to Daniel.

 

We’ve had a few too many Loakal Reds…. kidding. I know I’ve responded to the Hold The Spoon debacle quite a bit here but just to reiterate. We goofed. We didn’t realize there would be such a high demand for this style of beer. We are definitely taking learnings from all of this. We can’t guarantee that everyone will get access to everything, but we’ll make sure to give Societies as much love as we can with the release of Icky Thump in a few weeks. Feel free to shoot us an email if you have any other questions!

 

Sorta pasting what I said before but... This is a big one we’re working on. The answer in short is that we can’t offer free beers legally, as a reward for purchasing. That being said we absolutely want to take care of our Society members. This benefit was offered somewhat carelessly and we in no way meant to offer something we can’t fulfill. By end of month, we’ll have a solution. We’ll survey anyone who passed those "thresholds" and have a few options for a benefit. Sit tight and make sure to check emails from The Bruery! Again I do apologize about that, but we’re doing our best to make it right. If you have any other questions please don’t hesitate to hit up [email protected] tell them you’d like to have your email forwarded my way.

As far as Spontanaheim, yes, let’s chalk that one up to poor communication - apologies if anything was miscommunicated. As far as the spontaneous fermentation...I’ll defer to Jeremy and our production team there


Daniel

 

Agree - we totally underestimated how much support we’d get behind this beer. We’ll definitely take these learnings and apply toward our Icky Thump release in a few weeks.

 

Ouch...I can assure you we care deeply about Society members, we lose sleep thinking about all of you!

If Hold The Spoon is the only beer we botch on access to this year...I think that’s pretty damn good. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

Daniel

 

Hey there! Hold the Spoon is a bit of a different beast from these other two. It’s an 8% blonde ale that we didn’t think our members would show much interest in (oops) . Unlike Bakery, cans were well on their way to distro so we couldn’t pull any back - which we gladly would have for members! We're definitely taking this lessons in and making improvements to apply these to our future releases! Feel free to reach out with any questions.

Daniel

 

It is really nice to know someone from The Bruery are reading these concerns and giving responses. I'm still up in the air right now on whether upgrading to Hoarders is something for me or not. Some of that is something I knew going into it (Bruery vs Terreux and not being able to select a specific one) but there is still a lot of year left! I know for sure the Anniversary party will be a big boost for me as getting extra tickets was actually a big perk for me (along with early entry). A couple of thoughts on the recent situations:

*Bruery only Hoarders boxes (Bruery only membership also) would be amazing. Even if they're say monthly (not sure how often they come out), swapping Bruery/Terreux each month.

*Apfelsap - Crap happens. The warning was great (see next issue), and if it ends up being a beer I really like it'll be more of a "Well, damn that's disappointing" instead of a "The Bruery is horrible, etc etc."

*Hearing about beers that were promised as a membership inclusion (as well as the bonus archived bottles for going above tiers thing) and then changed without a heads up or option to alternative. I saw people post e-mails to the society with basically denials of those beers, as well as a kind of "well technically this is still an xyz beer" I appreciate the posts today but these are from last year and we are into March 2019 already. Staying proactive rather than reactive with e-mails will be a huge thing along with hopefully someday providing options of replacements/credits

*Kind of piggybacking off of this one would be an example of for Hoarders it was advertised I'd get double the allocation of tickets for events. I wasn't and via e-mail I was told it was because of the tour through the brewery or what have you. Ok chalk that one up, thats cool. Then I go and I am on the 2nd to last session and there's already no more Wee Heavy with Coconuts (which I since have tried from the can and it is awesome). Then running out of 3-4 more of the last beers as the last session is finishing their tour. The actual tour itself was awesome though. I just think when advertising things it would be better to plan a little extra rather than come up short on things.

*Hold the Spoon - If anyone is really mad about this one I think it's funny. I haven't tried it yet and don't even know if I'll like it but I maxed out because what the hell it's $6 a can. Public sale which they announced, and society members got a first grab at it. Not every single beer release needs to be society only (although appreciated). If people are really that desperate for it they can always head over to either taproom and get a $12 crowler.


Just some thoughts and examples on these topics. Not sure if anyone has had similar experiences. Like I said, awesome to see someone from The Bruery reading and responding to these things and passing them along.