BO & Luke 2015 variants?

Not supposed to be announced until day of from what I've heard.

Speculating is fun as hell, though.

 

Is it worth the trip from Nashville if I can get the presale? About 2 hours or so...

 

For trade value if nothing else.

Last year was bad if you were early in line, the first three variants on tap blew before anyone in line had a chance to get any. The line wasn't bad, though.

There were also a lot of IP trades going on.

Last year was also when London Balling debuted in bottles, maybe this year it will be 70K. (fingers crossed)

 

As a Louisville resident who will be trying to get the variants, I'd say nah, don't bother.

 

I bet it's Erogenous Rhone instead of 70K. They were originally going to bottle 70K this year, but moved it to next year. They could have done a one-off bottling, but I'm sticking to my Erogenous Rhone guess.

 

Dang, I hadn't heard about the 70K delay.

 

Erogenous Rhone is awful. I hope you're wrong, but you're probably correct.

 

Was there a reason for pushing the 70k back a year? Since moving away, 70k is really the only beer that I miss from Against the Grain and the Louisville scene in general. I check in from time to time and am always disappointed at the lack of overall growth and quality from the breweries in the Ville, as I feel it's still an untapped market that is waiting to blow up. Holy Grale can't always be the saving grace in that city.

 

Louisville's beer bars are the saving grace. Our breweries are mediocre at best. Also, FYI, sadly the recent batches of 70k have been nowhere close to the quality of the original winter 2014 batch. Its still a good beer, but nowhere close to what it was. Akasha brewing just had their soft opening last weekend, and all of the beers were pretty weak. I know we have a few more soon to open breweries, but i don't have high hopes for anyone of them.

I think one of the issues is probably that since we don't have a single great brewery, everyone's at about the same quality level.

 

That's a shame, as I felt 70k was always was one of the few beers AtG made that could compete with some of the top breweries out there. Not sure what happened to them, as I thought they had huge potential, but instead of perfecting a few styles, they continue to experiment too much and end up with a lot of mediocrity. I wonder if the lack of competition in the area has made a difference in terms of their drop in quality.

 

probably. I recently drank the batch 1 bo and luke at Zwanze which was excellent. Just as good as batch 1 70k. I think ATG has an inflated opinion of itself, probably because of the lack of competition.

 

If you look through some posts on their Facebook page, they respond to a 70K question. They confirm they plan on bottling it, but not until next year. I'm pretty sure I saw them say somewhere it's because they are just too busy this year.

I think 70K is still killer and look forward to it being bottled.

The fact that they rotate their taps so frequently does make it feel like a gamble when making a trip there. It's good beer, but having consistently available flagships to make it a persistent destination would probably be good.

 

Well, count me as a fan of current and former 70K. It does seem like ATG constantly has new beers coming out instead of working on perfecting the old ones, but they've had some good new ones like Everlasting Gobhopper come out of that experimentation. I think you guys might be setting the bar a little high, and from the sounds of things, they're not going to change any time soon.

 

The number of breweries in Kentucky in the last three years has tripled. Just like thereare standouts in VT, there are also your local brewpubs or breweries who have "mediocre" beers. Not that they are BAD beers, but they just may not rank in the top 100 on rate beer.comadvocate#backslashUntapped. The key thing is, it takes time to perfect your beers...if we constantly knock what we have going on locally (an amazing growth) than we are all a little bit spoiled when it comes to beer. Not every taco I eat is A+, but I will steal eat a MFing taco!

 

I think Country Boy has done several great beers, and consistently puts out a lot of quality things. West 6th is decent in Lexington too. Kentucky is alright at their best for how long breweries have been open, but Louisville just needs to step up.

 

I don't disagree with anything you wrote there. IMHO, Country Boy and W6 are too very consistent breweries when it comes to the beers they are producing. One thing to note is that with the large increase in breweries = harder to find hops, grains, etc. So brewers are starting to either going to be inventive and try new things (which can be problematic) or stick with what they are already doing because of the relationship they have with their grain and hop distributors.

 

How'd everybody do? Those went way quicker than I thought.

 

Both of us that tried ended up with a ticket. You are right though, I was checking back and they were gone within 2-3 minutes.

I just wish they would have released the variants prior to the sale.

 

Yeah, I was glad to get one, seems like they might have opened it a little early. Lots of pissed off folks out there.