Abyss

Oh I agree with that 100%. Just never expected to find it in May still. @EdwardAbbey, it is the regular that I am seeing. I'm out in Eastern Wa and definitely never saw the variants.

 

Still sitting on the shelves all over CA, FYI. But I'm sure it will all eventually sell.

 

Yeah, my Haggen stores still has plenty. I wonder, with Haggen going bankrupt, and finally being sold to Albertson's, if that has anything to do with why they still have lots of it?

 

Regular all over e. WA and north ID. Mirror Mirror too.

 

FWIW, I've seen Abyss and the Black Butte anniversary beers at a nearby Albertsons, out in Hillsboro. Pretty sure I saw Mirror Mirror there too, last time it was available.

 

Emphasis on "area". There are plenty of Portland folks who think I live on the dark side of the moon.* But I see what you're getting at.

(* There is no dark side in the moon, really. Matter of fact it's all dark.)

 

I've been meaning to ask you, which beer is the "T" cap in your avatar from?

 

Tennent's Lager from Scotland.

Not a great beer or a great company of brands, but I needed a "T" and that's the only one I had.

 

My store sold both cases of the cognac and rye in roughly a week and we didn't really promote it. The abyss I got 2 cases and I want to say it took 2 weeks to sell it, again no promo. When I was in Las Vegas beginning of April the Total Wine there had over 9 full cases of it floor stacked, I think it was $15.99 too. Along with a bunch of Jubel 2015. I really think Abyss has turned into mainly a regional thing.

FYI in WA you can't really return beer to distributors. Once you buy you have 8 days to return and even with that its putting a spin on a grey area.

 

And I've been meaning to ask you: is this just your play on the notion of a "vertical" by way of bottle caps, or does this sobriquet have some personal significance?

 

Gas station here has been selling them at $11.99.

 

When I was setting up my first internet service account way back in the mid-90s, my first 3 or 4 choices for a username had already been taken. I started looking around my apartment for inspiration. In the bookshelf across the room, the day-glo colors of the dust jacket for the novel Vurt caught my eye. "Vurt" was available as a username, so I picked it, and have been using the name in a variety of online forums ever since.

Vurt, by the way, is a hallucinogenic science-fiction novel written by Jeff Noon in 1993. It used to be one of my favorites, though I haven't read it in many years, and I'm not sure it's aged that well. I ought to reread it, and probably will soon...

As for my avatar, it seemed like a good way to bring my love of typography and my love of beer together.

 

Lots of good points raised here, and I want to add a little bit. I don't think distributors held any back, at least form my communication with Deschutes and the local distributor. The initial allocation was quite thin, and the following allocation was quite large. It was a bit odd, and seems like they had more than enough beer to go around, at least in the NW. That said, there is still a ton of Abyss, and Rye Abyss available here locally. I have not seen a second shipment of Cognac and don't expect to. It would make some sense that Cognac would be more limited than Rye, but who knows at this point.

For as big as Deschutes is, they seem to be having some mild growing pains here. I remember regular Abyss being available well into July last year, and at this rate it may still be available when the next vintage is released this fall. Though is it really a bad thing for there to be Abyss on the shelf year round? Sure it may have lost some of its rarity, but to have that quality of beer made available without having to chase a release or a truck, is it a worthy trade off?

It is still priced at the mid - high end of the market, but Parabola, at the same cost, had no problem selling out instantaneously again this year. It would seem that Deschutes has overshot their sales forecast and over-saturated the market with Abyss, but that's not really a bad thing in my eyes. If FW had over-shot with Parabola would people really be that upset to see it on shelves after its release date?

Purely my opinion, and I do believe that Abyss has lost some of its luster over the past few years, but it is still a phenomenal beer and one of the best in its class. It will be interesting to see what Deschutes does when they open the Roanoke facility and aim for their 1M bbls a year goal.

 

Dunno where else to put this, but:

http://mybeerbuzz.blogspot.com/2016/09/deschutes-remarkable-limited-release.html

Looks like brandy and scotch are next for The Abyss variants.

 

Wow, can't wait for the Brandy varient!

Shouldn't be too hard locating some. I'm still seeing last years varients in stores as of September 2016.

Thanks for heads up.

 

Agreed. It's lost it's luster to me personally because I am a shitlord that falls hard for hype/scarcity marketing. I don't drink BA stouts very often, I have a hard time dropping $15-20 on a bottle of beer. On the rare occasions that I do, I want it to be something "rare" and cool (and hyped). I had Abyss with a friend a few months ago (he bought it for me, otherwise I would've probably still slept on it) and really enjoyed it. And then a couple days ago I shared a Rusty Nail with the same friend. Internet hype/the trade sections would have you believing Rusty was loads better than the Abyss, but as we were drinking Rusty we both agreed the Abyss from a couple months ago was much better. I'll definitely be grabbing a bottle or two of this years release.

 

Any Rye? That beer was great!