I was just wondering what they have bottled so far. I know of: BA Bunker-C, a 6.8% BA American porter (1st Anniversary and 1st bottle release with 420 bottles) Lower Class Barleywine, a 11% English barleywine (2 releases?, 2nd release with 777 bottles) Rude Boy, a 8.1% sessionable barleywine (1st release?, ~800 bottles on the current release) SummaRye, a 8.5% saison with rye & rice (2nd Anniversary saison , ??? bottles). Also, they have brewed a special beer for Max's Belgian Fest, which they also intend to bottle and the tentative name for it is Ten. These are the only ones I have heard of but this line really throws me off: "According to Brushmiller, the next bottle run should be ready by late-November and he hopes to produce one every other month." (source) I am just going to assume that this didn't really pan out to have monthly releases. I wouldn't expect it either, due to size constraints.
I was wondering if anyone knows what the Militia Membership is. Does Burley Oak have like some kind of small membership thing going (like The Bruery's Preservation/Reserve/Hoarders Society, albeit not on the same scale)?
The SummaRye hasn't been distributed yet, but should make it out to the places that carry Lower Class and Rude Boy. The Militia Membership is apparently an awards program for local patrons. I didn't ask for details.
Militia is a rewards program based on how much you spend/purchase at their brewery. You get points for each purchase which can be redeemed for stuff like free pints, growlers, merch, carve your name in the bar, etc.
My 2 cents? Make the trip to the brewery for any bottles if you can. The retail prices I have seen are simply obscene. Your list is correct as far as I know there have been 4 bottle releases.
Are they much cheaper at Burley Oak? I have passed on every retail bottle I have seen because of the prices. I thought it was pretty ballsy for a relatively young, unproven brewery to be pumping out $15 bottles (with the barrel-aged one being close to $30).
Paid $15 at the brewery for the Lower Class barleywine and that was dropped to 12 later. Everything else was 12 that I have bought. Have seen the bottles in store for no less then 19 and as high as 32!!!
Yeah, these are ridiculous. Even the "cheap" $12 bottles. I tried a Saison of theirs on tap, and it was decent. Looks like the only Burley Oak I will be trying is on tap.
12 bucks for the barleywine was not bad. In these days of more and more 10 and 11 dollar six packs well.......Got me a growler of Old Rasputin for 10 bucks the other day. Lets hope the recent allowing of growler sales doesnt drive that thru the roof as well.
12 bucks for the barleywine is not terrible, but let's not forget that it debuted at the brewery for $17, and remained that way for several weeks. I guess they only lowered it when it wasn't moving. they make some good beer, and some not so good beer. but for bottlings they either need to get a real bottling line and embrace a smaller format (ala evolution), or make sure that what they are bottling are very good one offs, and not year round offerings that get marked up to even more obscene prices.
