How to be a better craft beer customer

Oh yeah I’m totally on board with that.

If the bar is busy I make sure I know exactly what I want on my flight and order it as fast as possible.

If you start asking questions, asking for samples, and hem and haw about your order with a line of 50 people behind you, you’re definitely being self-centered and rude in my opinion.

But at the same time I do see @Giantspace ’s point too. If a tap room is incredibly crowded I figure that kind of comes with the territory. I typically won’t stay at a place like that for more than a beer or two because it simply takes too long to get a beer and it’s not relaxing.

I should clarify that what I described (completely contactless ordering from a website on my phone) at a taproom/restaurant is something I’ve only experienced at one place so far. And I suspect this brewery will likely switch back to ordering from the bar once they reopen the tap room.

Coffee shops everywhere have this though, but that’s not really new. Starbucks has had it for years. It’s just that more local coffee shops do it now too, but again, this is likely due to Covid and might go back to normal once things go back to “normal”. Whatever that will be.

 

I buy flights if I am the designated driver or I am with my wife who does not want to sit there watching me drink 4 -6 pints.
I will always politely mention that I would prefer to pay cash. I will leave rather than having to use my phone for purchasing anything. I have nothing financial on my phone which can be easily lost or stolen.
I have purchased the dusty, last six pack of old beer at local stores just hoping that the store would then buy new stock.

 

That's putting in the work right there. I recently bought some year old pils from germany and it was surprisingly good. Thinking of going back to the store and seeing if they'd make me a deal on the last of their stock, hoping that it wouldn't be new year old stuff that came in to replace it

 

I'm not even from the Hudson Valley! I just drink there a lot.

Also, there are plenty of shit NY breweries, I just don't go to them or talk about them because it's neither interesting nor constructive for anyone. Focus on the bounty of good we have in NY.

Anywho, I'll concede that if you're looking at 'inaccessible' and 'rare' as pretty much synonyms than yes, Suarez would qualify as rare. Like I said to the other dude, I tend to think of 'rare' as a one-off, small-batch run of something (Anchorage's Deal With the Devil) or something that comes out once a year and is STILL very difficult to get (BCBS Prop, Pliny the Younger, etc) so that's why I was looking at Suarez in a very different light.

Not saying my way of looking at it was correct, but it's where I was coming from.

 

I think of it sort of like a Venn diagram with "Rare", "Inaccessible" and "Hyped*". Something like Yuengling (for people in a state like CA that they don't distro to) would be solely in Inaccessible. Something that's widely distributed but highly sought after (though I don't know if that even exists anymore, but think maybe like the BCBCS of yesteryear) would be in the overlap between Rare & Hyped. Hill Farmstead would be in the middle where all three circles overlap. Personally I would put Suarez in the Rare & Inaccessible overlap.

*Just to avoid any debate on the definition of Hyped - i mean in the borrowed BA sense of people lining up/going apeshit/trading away offspring sense vs the true meaning. Whether it's worth it is up for debate based on the specific beer/brewery/person

 

Several times at various places I have ordered a carefully selected beer and it is out, but once my first TWO choices were gone but they gave me my 3rd choice FREE! wheeeee!

 

Fair enough. My opinion has been altered to include these scenarios too. They had completely slipped my mind.

More this. Especially if the taplist hardly changes. Different story if, like above, the taplist is rotating a lot.

Figger it out.

 

Those are tragic ratings on world-class beers. This is why we can’t have nice things!

 

I know you know that there is a lot more to NYS than the Hudson valley & NYC.
Suarez is 'rare' (ie. not sold) anywhere west of, say, Newburgh and Albany.
Contacted the brewery last summer to ask if they distributed to the southern tier; they replied that Suarez wasn't distributed West of the Hudson.

 

I don't think you are going to reach that particular customer on BA.

 

Man how bad was that one customer?

 

Counterpoint: Breweries/bars should update their online menus/social media more frequently, particularly if they know a beer is very popular and in high demand. I remember going to a brewery once at opening on a Saturday to try a specific beer only to be told “oh yeah, that kicked early last night”. It was still listed everywhere.

But beyond a “crap, really?” comment from me, I had another beer and moved on.

 

I don't know if bars/restaurants/breweries truly understand how important it is to keep menus updated. I often will pick one place over another if I feel the list is more likely to reflect what's actually on tap. Obviously, you suck it up if you're already there.

 

Sometimes I would open for my friends growler store in Saturdays (before Covid, store is still open thankfully, but hours are going to the guys that actually work in the service industry now, as it was just a fun thing for me to do to get a few extra bucks on a Saturday afternoon, and I don't want to take work away from them).

The person closing has all kinds of responsibilities, one of them is to check which kegs need to be changed. Sometimes, they would just forget to change the menu. Its human nature as they have been working all night on the busiest night of the week. They also are cleaning up, securing everything, counting the money in the register, splitting the tips correctly, changing empty kegs at the end of the night, and cleaning lines, all have to be done (and are more important, IMO anyway). I would open, and for sure there would be a customer come in first thing to want that one thing that was changed but not updated on the menu. Because the store had only been open for 10 minutes I would not always catch that. More high volume places have it worse. Is it a mistake, and one the owner will remind people of (for both whoever is opening or closing)? Sure, but I swear, not changing the menu is not some lazy thing people at bars and everywhere else are doing just to be lazy. It can happen sometimes, and its not a malicious attempt at intentionally annoying customers.

 

Good point. I don’t expect an instantaneous update, but for breweries or bars that do update their list on their own site or a third party site like Beer Menus or Untapped, menus shouldn’t be weeks or months old. I’m looking at Goose Island Clybourn as one of the local offenders (its 9/10 menu is up now, about par for the course).

 

Wow, I have had customers complain I didn't update the menu quickly before...but that was like 30 minutes on a particularly busy and crazy afternoon. I would work alone until 3 pm and then get help, I can normally handle the early crowd by myself but every once in a while there would be that crazy unexpected rush, in the middle of me changing three kegs. I would get the lines cleaned and kegs changed while serving the customers. After the rush died down, I completely forgot I didn't change the menu ha.

 

Support your local breweries.

 

I worked in the business for years and only/ got mad at a small number of people. I must have been the Matt Dillon of Walker Avenue, but ours was and still is a peaceful place.

 

Executive summary: don’t be a rectum when ordering beer