BCBS Black Friday in Madison

1st come, 1st served, small bottle limits

 

Steve's McKee and Junction do raffles for the variants and the regular will be open season. Riley's and Trixie's have also done this in the past and I'd imagine that's the case this year as well.
Be prepared to get up at the crack of dawn and get in line anywhere where the variants are on a first come first serve basis.
My advice would be to get on the raffle list anywhere that goes that route and commit to ONE place to stand in line (you probably won't be able to swing multiple line-ups and get variants at both places, there's just too many crazy bastards out there and not enough beer).

 

Never hurts to stop in to a few places (talking larger groceries here) and try to speak with their liquor department manager. They should have a rough idea of what they are expecting for bottle counts.

 

There are definitely a few places which will only sell to regulars (i.e. Party Port where they need to recognize you). I'm only trying to get BCBS at places I'm actually a regular customer these days so it's not an issue for me anymore but one year I tried a few other places and it didn't go well. Additionally some lotteries may not actually be random and are really just ways to ensure regulars get some. So I guess my suggestion is to concentrate first on places where you're actually a regular. Plenty of places don't care but some do.

 

A cpl years ago I had good luck scoring regular at Bariques. Odd, but they had it

HyVee East may be a bit iffy - their liquor manager left for Festival and since then, it's been a bit chaotic. Seems like he's the only one who knew how to release anything with competence.

 

The last few times that I've tried HyVee on a special release to distro...their stuff is haphazardly piled up behind the counter, and often not priced if it's a new release. And if it's not in their system, they can't sell it!

 

I have to work Friday morning (and always have) so I get to sit this one out again! Yay!

 

I spoke with the liquor department manager at Woodman's tonight - he said that they are receiving a "good amount" of the "regular" BCBS, and one case each of the variants. He said bottle limits will be 2 each of the regular and 1 each of the variants. First come, first served.

If my hypothesis is correct, most of your larger stores around town are probably all going to fall within that bucket of 1 case of each variant and several/many cases of the regular BCBS.

 

I work in walworth county for a beer distributor and it sounds like if you do any GI volume, you get mostly regular and one case of each variant. Some will get multiples of barleywine. Heard of a few spots getting a case (12) bottles of rare too.

 

Which Woodman's did you talk to?

 

Woodman's East, his name is Bill.

 

Gotcha!

 

Wow, one case of variants is really weak.

The hunt is on, though I'm sorta tiring of hunting, but BCBS is the exception. Still, I know places got more than one case of the variants when they were in different formats. Now we get less with a worse format.

 

Yeah... He (Bill) seemed empathetic to the plight of beer enthusiasts that are already starting to chase BCBS...saying that because they changed the format of the bottles, they had to adjust their quantities accordingly.

 

It's a little frustrating; I've had it go both ways at HyVee East – the manager wasn't there to put it into the system so they couldn't sell it yet, or the manager wasn't there so the person working just looked it up and then sold me as much as I wanted. Hard to believe they wouldn't be more organized to at least get it into the system with Bourbon County, though – it's not exactly an obscure brewery releasing a beer no one's heard of.

 

Hah! Exactly my experience with the Dragon's Milk release (the Higher Math wasn't in their system at the time yet, so I had to stop off to Woodman's); there is a woman with darker hair that is super nice and accommodating that usually works when I stop in (although she knows little to nothing about craft beer, I had to step behind the counter to inspect the labels of the Dragon's Milk variants because she kept telling me they weren't a special release ). I could have bought the entire case of Coffe/Chocolate, had I wanted to spend that much.

Unless their liquor department manager is proactive and enters them in the system before Black Friday, I fear that trying to buy them at HyVee East on Black Friday will be a fruitless endeavor.

 

Some places (liquor stores, anyway) in WI are getting more than one case of the variants.

 

Cannery Wine and Spirits in Sun Prairie posted they are getting 12 each of Rare, Coffee, Rye and BW. Also 120 regular stouts.

I'd suspect this is similar to other area stores, less a Woodman's. Probably more BCS there.

 

I know the Janesville Woodman's last year did not have a limit on regular BCBS and didnt get variants but I know the Madison ones will be different