18th St Barrel Massacre

Those breweries are all much larger than 18th street, btw. If you haven't visited, you still should. Though I complain about value it's pretty clear it's bootstrapped. I don't want to imply that good customer service is a luxury that only bigger business can affort but ... they're pretty tight. And I'm not really sure many hour waits for Pliny the Younger really qualifies as great customer service either. ;-)

 

I mentioned the ticket purchasing process, not the value of the event for a ticket purchased. Two completely separate things.

 

They struggle to meet local demand. Yet you think they should really be concerned with marketing to people from California and Ohio? Your idea of simple business practices and mine diverge.

 

Not really. People make decisions about what to purchase based on price and value. Not knowing what you're buying ahead of time feeds in to process. So they converge there. I bet a lot of people bought without knowing what they were buying, knowing it would sell out immediately. That's a process issue.

I also had to drive down day of and would have prefered some advance notice, so I could have as easily chimed in on the advance notice part of the process. I sympathize with the folks that don't have as flexible a schedule as I do automatically being locked out even if they are local.

That said, I also sympathize with the business. As small as they are, no process they came up with would avoid pissing off many. Fact. I get that.

 

They are completely separate. How once acquires a ticket is completely independent from the price/value ratio. Whether someone perceives the price/value ratio is not worth driving to the brewery to purchase a ticket, that has no bearing on them being able to drive to the brewery to purchase a ticket in the first place. Similarly, if someone perceives the price/value ratio is not worth purchasing a ticket online early in the morning on Friday, that has no bearing on them being able to purchase a ticket on the website.

A lot of people buying without knowing what they were buying? Not sure what this means because the details were posted on FB.

 

I agree with the fact that not everyone will be happy, but I have talked with quite a few other locals here in NW Indiana, and while I knew it would be ticketed, many did not. So even with advance notice of the fact that it would be ticketed, I still missed out. A random 7 am release on a Friday is not exactly ideal... Unfortunately I am one of those people who wasn't paying close enough attention to grab a ticket. While I am disappointed, No harm, no foul.

I do completely agree with you on the fact that the brewery should be judged on the second release, and not the first. Learning from past mistakes is a good thing.

If they wanted to ride on the coattails of DLD, then great for them, their beers are good and I will gladly support them. I love the hunter series and plan on being there when it opens to the public at 7. Hopefully they will have something available on draft and have leftover bottles. If not, oh well, I've already started to look into trading for them.

 

FT: 12 oz BA hunter
ISO: 2015 phantom

 

Whoever says that 18th St is riding the coat tails of DLD needs to shut the fuck up. 18th St could've had this event at noon on a Wednesday in the middle of winter and it would've sold out just as fast. The fact that 18th St sold tickets online and IP shows that EVERYONE (yes, even you butthurt out of town jag offs) had an equal opportunity to get tickets. If they would've given everyone a day or 2 notice on when online tickets went on sale there would've been thousands of people trying to get tix all at once (ala DLD) and the server most likely would have crashed. You would all be bitching about how you got shut out because their server couldn't handle the volume of people. Just stop fucking whining about "business practices" like you all fucking know something, and go to your boner fest bottle shares instead.

 

I can summarize for everyone. "I didn't get tickets and because of that 18th Street didn't do it right and fuck them."

Maybe step your game up next time you really want to attend an event. This was a pretty straight forward ticketing process.

 

Well stated. End whining session/

 

If you REALLY wanted to go. Paid attention to BA and FB, and saw that @awdturboiv referenced that it would be ticketed with a wink face (more than a few times), then you would have been fully prepared to get tickets. His location says "NW Indiana"...so that increases his credibility a couple of notches (I assume he works there - or goes there a lot) You might have saw the Barrel Massacre FB page when Drew said there would be an update soon, and set an alert to get notified on your page when they posted. Sounds like you just wanted it handed to you.

 

Totally agree with JakeT469. I don't think 18th Street did anything wrong, more the opposite. I wasn't able to get tickets because I couldn't get my group of people together in time to purchase tickets, I'm dissapointed sure but it's not 18th Street's fault. Obviously they have a small venue with only room for a certain amount of people and therefore only had a limited number of tickets for a limited number of people for a limited amount of beer. They did great job of spelling out the details ahead of time (unlike some other events). Maybe they didn't annouce the time of ticket sales because they didn't want their site to crash and the tix to sell out in 5 secs because then people would complain about that? (They did however announce the IP sales to take care of the locals which is always great). Maybe they didn't want people to buy more than one ticket because they only had a limited number and that's really probably the only way to completely prevent reselling? They have even opened the event to the public after the ticketed seasions so if you were not able to score tickets or thought they were too expensive then you can still go and potentially try some of these beers, so in a way everyone wins. Obviously the price is not too high because the tickets sold out quickly. If you think the price is too high then that's your problem, not 18th Street's. As previously stated, this event had huge shit show potential and it sounds like 18th Street has done just about everything thry can think of to prevent that and still allow as many as possible locals and non-locals an opportunity to be a part of it. For their first event like this, it sounds like they've done a great job so far and I say kudos to you 18th Street. I guess we will see for sure as the event unfolds. No matter what you do, the complainers still gonna complain.

 

Have they posted pics of snifters and is there any truth to a scratch off portion on the tickets?

 

Well put. How can people say that their beers are overpriced? They're mostly sold out within a week of 18th Street releasing them. The tickets to the event are overpriced? They sold out in less than 24 hours. You could make a better argument that the tickets were under-priced, based on how quickly they sold. If their beers are too expensive for you, that's your problem, not 18th Street's. Are they supposed to mark down the prices of their products even though they have no problem selling them for the prices they currently are? That doesn't make any sense.

 

It has nothing to do with price, just a lot of butt hurt people without tickets throwing fits like my 3 year old.

 

"You know what, guys? I've got debt, employees to pay, equipment to maintain, property taxes, utilities, insurance and materials to purchase, but I'm gonna go ahead a drop the prices of my beer even though I can't keep them on my shelves for more than a week at a time." This is basically what you people want Drew to say, as if he owes you this because you can't/don't want to purchase his products at those price points.

 

I couldn't care less about whatever this event is about. Never heard of this brewery. Can I complain too?

 

Maybe my thinking was unlear. 1. How much advance notice & disclusre you give about what you're selling is part of the process. 2. Very little advance notice was given; information posted on facebook the night before is not a lot of time for most people to come across it and absorb it. I'm online a lot and didn't see info until online tickets were sold out. Very few people are on Facebook 24 hours a day. 3. People had to rush to buy online, particularly those outside driving distance, or they would be shut out. Therefore people were put in a position where they were buying as poorly informed consmers. This is the correlation between value / process; when a product is scarce and you're pressured to buy quickly due to the process, your ability to consider value is compromised.

Maybe you call that "entirely separate" even though they impact one another. I'm sure people reading this are thinking "what a whiner" or that "this is semantics" or "who cares." But I think it's important - if you rush people to decide you can, intentionally or not, "pull a fast one" on them, adding a lot of caveats and disclaimers that aren't customer friendly. I'm complaining about both process and value so your claim that no one that got a ticket complained about process is untrue. ;-)

Still looking forward to the event. Maybe you thought the proces & value were perfect ... but I hope / assume they'll fine tune next year. Cheers!

 

Let's take a step back here, was the process by which they sold the tickets perfect? No, but seldom do any of these limited beer release events ever totally nail it. We are all big boys and girls here who are in charge of our personal finances. I knew that by purchasing the ticket I would get a tasting glass, 2 12oz BA beers and access to all their beers on tap over a 2 hr window. At no time did I feel rushed or obligated to buy a ticket, in the end it's just $25, that's a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of this whole weekend. If you didn't get in here there are others great beer events and bottle shares all over. This weekend is totally what you make of it and not getting certain beers is all the nature of the game. Cheers everyone, here's to a great craft beer weekend! If you think about it NW Indiana is the center of the craft beer culture for 2-3 days. Pretty cool if you ask me.

 

I'm still quite amazed how Drew and co are able to pull all of what they are doing off in that tiny space. Tetris Mastery on high.
If a lot of entitled butthurt and people who cannot even read the rules of the road for it is the biggest issue they face. The future is indeed bright.
Good on them for inducing a scramble cos it is a containable issue. The other side of it with an extended window and time to respond, react. And to hustle and scheme would be a nightmare.