2021 Beer Memberships: Adding, Keeping or Dropping?

adding: none
I'll need to get drunk and then renew: Solemn Oath.

 

I was mooching off my friend's Old Order membership. And now he's moved away so maybe this is the year I join?

 

Yeah that’s the brewery I’ve really fallen out of love with the last couple years. Old Order was a blast those first two years, maybe a few too many wine barrels, but still the party’s were intimate and awesome. 2018 and 2019 they grew the membership too much, so the events became too crowded, and then most of the bottles made it to the pubic. They also then sat for months at a time it seemed.

I was going to drop last year, but then they changed to cans, told you exactly what you were getting, and made the beers exclusive to the membership. Unfortunately Erin, who was the heart and soul of the old order, left and now it just seems John and Eric are going through the motions with it. Add to the fact covid killed the events, and I don’t really have a reason to continue doing it.

 

Can someone breakdown the deal with Barclay for me? Is it Chicago based and contract brewed in MI like I initial thought? What’s the connection to Connecticut?

 

Used to be but now he is moving out east and brewing at Twelve Percent in CT. The next batch of Barclay stuff will all be brewed there.

 

Brian Barclay used to live in Chicago, and was homebrewing here and occasionally he held events where you could try his beers at Pizano's in the Loop. There was a lot of buzz around his homebrews and he created a membership program for commercially brewed beers which sold out quickly. The first year of memberships he brewed the beer at Ellison in Lansing MI. The release was at Ellison and you had to pick up there or use a proxy (Brian himself proxied a lot of beer back to his place in Chicago). I think he wanted to contract with a Chicago brewery originally but wasn't able to find a good fit and he ended up going with Ellison.

Now for the second year he is brewing at Twelve Percent in CT, they have existing distribution relationships to many states which means they are able to distro the member beers to a number of places around the country including Chicago (Warehouse & Crafted IIRC). Brian recently moved to CT as well, hence the decision to brew there.

 

I totally agree. Without dumping too much on Solemn Oath, after the first year there was little value to the program other than the actual releases (the bottles would sit in the cooler for literally months, you're only saving like $0.30 per bomber by paying up front). I was excited when they made the move to cans, but the events seemed to have dropped off. They used to have 2-3 different version of the beer being released. I realized COVID pretty much ruined the year after the first couple releases, but yes, it does seem like they're just mailing it in for the most part.

 

Adding : Perennial

Keeping : Floodland

Dropping: Funk factory and afterthought

I love afterthought , and still buy their beer regularly, but there is too much other stuff in the saison / wild ale space for me to justify a membership.

 

Keeping: Homes

 

Adding : None

Keeping : None

Dropping: None

You all are animals, I have enough beer without these 'ships! (I did used to belong to Une Annee).

 

hopefully him being closer to the CT facility will help bring back this beer to his home brew status. But man, DoT was a major let down.

 

If it was up to me I’d be adding a Phase 3. But we all know how that’s going to go

 

Adding: P3, Funk Factory

Keeping: Afterthought

Dropping: None

 

I found the base, the vanilla, and maple vanilla all to be quite good. The maple I was not a fan of (but I am picky about maple), and the 5th one was not great IMO.

They were certainly a bit overhyped though.

 

Fuck...18 beers for $150 including the return of beverage of champions. Damn you solemn oath!

 

For fuck's sake. Haha. A friend just texted me a half hour ago. Our response.."fuck it". Hopefully by release 5 and 6 they'll be able to do some sort of release.

 

Keeping: American Solera (year 5)

Adding: Modern Times, Whiskey Hill, Barclay

Dropping none

 

Keeping: Transient, Homes, Drafting Table, Ellison

Adding: none, unless convinced otherwise!

Dropping: None

 

Keeping: Solemn Oath

Going into my...fourth year, I think? Only missed the first year, if my count is correct. I liked the switch to cans this past year, but my favorite part are the events, and COVID pretty much killed the events as has been mentioned. That said, the one event since March I've made it to had $10 wristbands for unlimited barrel-aged pours, which was phenomenal. I'm in again, hopefully we'll have some indoor events later in the year, I hope. (Screw you, COVID!)

 

This thread certainly makes me feel better about my beer buying habits. Thanks guys.

I went in on a Perennial membership with a few friends this year. Memberships I tried for and got nothing:
P3
Pips

Trying to decide about attempting More. Once life goes back to normalcy, I'm pretty close to VP regularly...