Many years ago when I was first starting my beer journey I fell in love with a Dubbel called St Sebastiaan Dark ( https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/183/713/ ). Every year I would buy a case of it for myself drink it slowly to make it last until the next birthday. 2-3 years ago that stopped, no beer store in my state (Indiana) carried it, nor could I find it in the surrounding states (Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky). The only place I could find it was online at a significantly higher price. My question: Does anyone know what happened to the US distribution of this beer? Or something else that could've affected their distribution everywhere? Any information is appreciated. Thanks.
The website is in English, so that's a good sign. http://brouwerijsterkens.be Have you tried reaching out to their info. email? [email protected] I can't recollect seeing these in the Northeast at all (the bottle is pretty distinctive). Good luck!
The saga continues. The brewery responded to me, pointing me to their main US distributor, great, good start. That distributor says they only handle distributing that beer to the western states and they use another distributor for the rest of the states, cool. The second distributor lets me know they just got bought by another distributor. I recognize the third distributor, Cavalier. They're the big dog here in Indiana. Check out Cavalier's page ( https://cavbeer.com/our-brands/ ) they carry Brewery Sterkens...but only in Florida. Cavalier's territory is Indiana, Ohio and Florida but they only carry this beer in Florida. So close yet so far. I contact Cavalier thinking there may be a happy ending to this beer hunt after all only to get this in response: "Unfortunately, no hard facts for you. However, the possibilities are endless." I'm not sure how I'm supposed to respond to that, does that mean A) You have rights to distribute the beer in Indiana as well but you choose not to for some reason? or B) You have the rights to distribute the beer in Florida, but not in Indiana. Which brings up the question, if you don't, who does? I emailed them back with a more polite version of those questions, we'll what we come back with.
