Black Friday stories

Had some BCBS vanilla rye and coffee on tap. No bottles, or endless searching and that's OK.

 

Oh, poor you and your town getting "stiffed" when you only managed to get all of that beer. Get out of here with your "complaining." You just wanted to brag.


I got two bottles of BCBS, and I had BCBS and Barleywine on tap. I only had to wait 30 mins, so I can't complain. BCBS was great, but the Barleywine was a bit underwhelming in comparison.

 

Went shopping with my family. Stopped by the local brewery and filled up a growler. Perfect black friday.

 

Just nabbed a 4 pk of BW and another Vanilla from a local liquor store, had them in the back. Pays to befriend your local liquor store owner

 

I met up with the family to get Mom (and our own) Christmas trees. Great haul after-
Endless (everything following) fried walleye and shrimp, mashed potatoes and white gravy, green beans simmered with pork steak, beets, coleslaw, applesauce, and biscuits with apple butter. I had a Michelob Amberbock, the only beer on tap besides Mich Ultra.

Cheers!

 

I was in line for 2-hours at a place here in Dallas, and I met quite a few other Dallas area BAs. We had some great conversation for 2 hours, and then we all got our 1-4pk of each regular, coffee, barleywine, and 1 bottle of vanilla. It was actually quite cordial when the store opened, no one was pushing each other in line, everyone knew they would get his/her allotment and it was fun to see the huge crowd and beer community get together and celebrate a great release here.

 

That's worth a phone call to so called jerk owner

 

I went to Joe Canal's to get Carton Epitome in cans (terrific!), Stone's new Enjoy By and a few other goodies. While I was there I asked if they had any BCBS. The guy said, "not yet." Story over. Guess I won't be having any this year. Oh well.

 

Stores in my area were selling it at 24.99 per four pack. I left it on the shelf and instead bought some founders RIS What did this enormous haul bleed you?

 

NJ seems to be having a staggered release. My local place told me to check back next week, and Total Wine has it 'unavailable' on their website, though there is a feature that will send you an email when they get it in. If you have a TW near you, maybe you could sign up for the notification that way.

 

Thanks for the info. I asked my wife, who is up in NY for the day, to try to get some. Otherwise I'll ask my local place if I'm there. I'm not going crazy to get some. I do still have one left from last year. Good luck!

 

I got the shaft! Anyone willing to part with a Vanilla??

 

You too. Hopefully your wife won't have much trouble, if things are going along the lines of the past two years.

 

And those 120 12oz. bottles were gone in one hour. A big FU to GI.

 

Went to that release at Listermann as well. The DIPA they had on was incredible.

Not sure if you checked them out, but Party Town in Florence has BCBS in stock for the release. They get most stuff and are great dudes. Buy from them!

 

Once place near me got one case, I got a tip Monday night that it was already out, decided to test my luck Tuesday after I was out of town all day and surprisingly got the last 4 pack

Went out yesterday to a very soft release at a place that got, IIRC, 7 cases regular, 2 barleywine, 1 coffee, expected the limits to be 4 regular, 1 of each of the other, and it ended up being 2 4-pack limit. We got there 15 minutes before open and were the first 3 in line (though they ended up not bringing out the BC until 30 minutes after they opened). By the time they started selling it the line was deep enough that some people were getting shut out of the variants but there was still regular on the shelf once the line was done (the three of us each got coffee and BW as our packs). While waiting we got a tip that a place ~30 minutes from that location got vanilla (something we didn't think we'd see around here, and the 2 places we knew of before this that got it were kinda far from us and we figured had lines). We decided to check it out, got there ~90 minutes before they opened, nobody in line. An employee that was opening the store let us wait inside, and eventually rang us up an hour before open anyway. A bit pricey (37.50 for vanilla, 11 each for the other three, one bottle of each limit per person -- I only got a vanilla and another coffee there), but the price qualified us for the 15% mixed sixer discount (even though we only got 2 bottles? I'm not complaining though). Finally we went to one last place to grab lunch, they still had bottles of regular available so I picked up 2 more singles.

When we got home to crack one of each of them (aside from vanilla), we realized the barleywine we got at the store somehow was 2013, and not 2014. We were unsure how to feel about that (especially the one guy who still has 2013 and didn't particularly care for it). I'll probably try to track down an IP trade at a share or something and see if I can offload 2 of them 1 for 1 so I can have 2 of each.

tl;dr -- 6 regular, 5 coffee, 4 (2013) barleywine, 1 vanilla, all without having to wait in hours long lines and fight crowds.

 

I watched grown men and women all lathered and blithering first thing Friday. It's truly comical to watch this charade and realize that it's just a set of beers? I think the beers are good, but the price (and increase) make it all even more stupid. This type of passion and fervor could be much more useful if intelligently applied. It's funny and kinda sad, really.

 

Weird distributor issues in the northwest suburbs of Chicago - seems like everybody up here was releasing today (Saturday) because of it. Wife suggested I drop by a Whole Foods in Hinsdale (western suburb) on Friday, walked in, saw the big BCBS box behind the cheese counter and the woman on the phone (calling somebody on a list) smiled, eventually got off the phone, said one 4 pk BCBS, or 2 packs and I had to buy 12 of other GI beers because they got stuck buying a ton of GI to get their allocation... and even with that extortion from their distributor, no variants. Happily walked out with my two packs (plus IPA & Xmas 6'rs), no line, no hassle around 10 A.

Went to my local Whole Foods this AM, showed up 10 minutes before open, line outside, went in, was told there were already people they had let into the store (!!!???) and we had no hope of getting any Proprietor's or vanilla. Still, picked up another 4 pk and one bottle of coffee (it was a single pack limit on BCBS, and either a bottle of coffee or BW by the time I got to the front of the line).

The whole thing kind of pisses me off - I was less happy this year than with the single random 4 pk of BCBS I managed to get while out of town this year. I'm probably going to gift 4-5 bottles to friends who either had no luck or decided the time was better spent with their family. My goal is to get to a point where I can do 5 year verticals once a year every year with friends, but if the crazy doesn't top out that may be a pipe dream.

 

As for cost: at $25/4 pack of BCBS (Chicagoland), that's basically the equivalent of a bit over 2 $12.50 bombers (since bombers are 22 oz.). I've bought a lot of worse bombers for that much or more... and for one of the better beers available, in crazy high demand, and in a serving size that is rational I think folks should quite complaining. They would sell every bottle they made if they went exclusively to $30 bombers - and it wouldn't sit on the shelf like Eclipse.

 

Got an e-mail from my favorite package store, they were pretty clear, honest and apologetic about it- 1-case of regular, may get more. No chance of any vanilla or coffee. Connecticut gets stiffed on a lot of stuff.