BCBS 2016 Events in NYC

Drank mine before while bottling my latest batch of beer. So fucking good! Really glad I have one more can. I want to age it but I don't have much experience with aging canned stouts, so I'm on the fence on whether I should just drink it tomorrow.

Yep definitely plan on reposting this. Really pissed off about it.

 

For those thinking about lining up overnight for a bottle of Rare 15, don't.

My bottle from last year was infected (opened beginning of summer), upon reaching out to GI with photos and tasting notes I was sent a copy and paste email response that was a sad attempt at an apology. Followed up and received no response.

Buyer beware!

 

Dive Bar was very mellow last night. My type of event.

 

Rare and regal on the shelf at Westside market Chelsea ($75/$31). Couple feet from the bud light lol.

 

I swung by, the rare was gone but they're selling 2015 barleywine... not cool.

 

Is this true? Maybe not worth it. Can't believe they are charging $85 for rare...

 

Yeah that's pretty messed up. When your charging msrp for bcbs bottles it doesn't really make sense to gouge for rare.

 

8 people deep already at swiftway (3am)

 

Is GI/AB flooding the NYC market and other places with 2015 Rare and Regal rye to:

A. Make up for the lack of other variants?
B. Bring the people who were mad about 2015 infection "off-taste" issues back into the fold?
C. Recoup revenue lost from refunds in 2015?
D. Other
E. All of the above

I know that GI typically holds onto lots of product from each year for the purposes of Migration and other events over the course of years, but in my experience these bottles have never really been integrated into bottle shop/store releases for subsequent years - except of course at the Black Friday release at Binny's in Chicago where this is common.

 

It's crazy how much Rare is going around this year. Swiftway had almost three times the amount of Rare as they did coffee.

 

Just left Top Hops. Got the full set minus coffee, no wait at this point and they still had a couple dozen left. Way better than getting up at 4 for the same thing

 

Good to hear people are going easy this year, I feel like they (AB) need to see a measurable effect on sales. That said I hope everyone gets some Rare, since that seems like a kind of consolation prize.

 

Anyone checked at WF today? Three stores in my hood that had BCBS last year had nothing as of a few hours ago. A new store had some reg BCBS and that's it.

 

WF NYC tweeted they were releasing everything tomorrow.

 

Always release on Saturday. Don't know about variants though.

 

My guess is they're flooding the market with Regal/Rare to make up for the issues last year and minimal amount of coffee this year.

As per the GI rep: "only 30 cases made it into NYC this year, and 3-5 on long island"

 

Anybody check out Windy City Ale House in Bay Ridge? They usually get this on tap around now.

 

Love that I was able to just stroll into Top Hops at 5 o'clock with a ton of Bourbon County on tap and a wall of cases available.

 

Bcbs and Barleywine at WF Gowanus. 9.99 per, no limits.