On a trip to San Diego, I was at Alesmith talking to the bartender about beer. I mentioned I had several bourbon county bottles at home. He said I should have brought them to the brewery and he would open something to share. I was assuming it would be something special from the cellar. Anyone had any luck bringing rare bottles to a brewery?
I use to share bottles, growlers with the people (brewmaster, workers) at Zion Canyon Brewery when they first opened up. Cheers!
I think it's more common than people realize and is just one of those things that's generally not spoken about (questionable [not really] legality).
I agree with @1beerbaron Please keep it unmentionable. Many breweries (and it varies wildly by state and region) only have a tap room license. Like in NM, a tap room cannot sell beer from outside of the state (would likely require your full scale distributors license at that point, which is beyond the scoop of a small or medium sz brewers license). With that in mind, bringing in any sort of alcohol that isn't local may be beyond the scoop of the law. Now some states have had the bring your own wine (with corkage fees etc) setup for years. Others are just getting the ball rolling, and I want to say some regions allow beer. Gifting beer for them to drink in the back brew room, or office, is one thing. Being invited back there, I can see random beer shares. But on the front bar top, whoever you ask be sure they have some know in the laws and such. It seems really innocent but you could get a whole brewery in a lot of trouble
Bottle sharing at my current brewery is much more common than at my last. I enjoy it a lot when customers are excited enough about a beer to come share it with us and I normally like to try to spend time with the guys that do share. Sometimes I show up at the brewery to find bottles of stuff that I have no clue where they came from and that's always pretty cool too. That said, on brew days, I normally decline. I don't start drinking on brew days until after I've already started all the cleaning cycles and I've got down time, which is normally 10:30-11:00 p.m. if I started at 6:00 a.m. At my last brewery, I was working 70-80 hour work weeks and even though I appreciated the gesture of someone trying to share beers with us, normally I just wanted to get everything done around the brewery, get home and get to sleep. My advice is if you do go to a brewery hoping to share a beer, be understanding that for brewers, even though it is work we love, it is still work and some times it just might be inconvenient for us to sit down and give the full attention that you and the beer deserve.
Freetail brewery in San Antonio does a bottle share 2-3 times a year and invites you to bring a rare bottle to share with them and other patrons.
