Hop Delusion

Yah, Endeavor is bottle dated. Had a 4-pack fresh in April. I believe it was bottled 4/24 and I went into an HEB and picked it up on 4/29. Freakin delish when fresh.

 

I remember trying to find Endeavor dates, and couldn't. So maybe the ones I saw were faded or something. I will search it out again...great beer. And I still haven't run in to six packs.

 

I don't think you'll ever run into 6 packs, the 12oz bottles come in 4's

 

Fucking 4 packs...whatever.

 

yellow print on the shoudler of the bottle shows the bottled on date. sometimes it can smudge.

(or has been smudged off by some less reputible sources)

 

Anyone seeing a more recent canning date than 4/29?

 

I got some recent ones at the specs downtown It was late May I think for the date

 

I'm in Austin. If any one see's late May canning date please let me know. Would really like to try this fresh as possible.

 

someone tweeted out that there was a new batch canned on 5/21 popping up around Houston yesterday or the day before....

I'm curious why there appears to be a 7-14 day lag between canning and shelf on this beer? I've picked up weekend warrior a day or two after canning at the heights kroger... what gives?

 

Yeah d&q in Houston posted 5-21 cans yesterday I believe

 

Aren't Karbach and SA using different distributors? I thought SA used Silver Eagle. If so I guess Silver Eagle is just shitty

 

FIFO. These batches of HD seem to be much larger than previous ones, so it's possible that the distributor still had some batch 1 to get rid of before they could send out batch 2. The same is true for retailers.

 

Karbach and SA both use Silver Eagle.

 

Ok, then what I said makes no sense.

 

weekend warrior is a karbach beer also... so it confuses me how some karbach gets to the shelf in a day or two, but other product takes 1-2 weeks... but who knows...

 

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Aren't Karbach and SA using different distributors? I thought SA used Silver Eagle. If so I guess Silver Eagle is just shitty
weekend warrior is a karbach beer also... so it confuses me how some karbach gets to the shelf in a day or two, but other product takes 1-2 weeks... but who knows...


Probably also the reason it took Freetail's Hophothesis 4 weeks to make in on the shelf here in San Antonio.

 

They both use Silver Eagle. Are you consistently finding super-fresh Weekend Warrior on the shelf, or is it an occasional thing? Sometimes retailers just get lucky and happen to place an order when there's very fresh stuff to be had. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. And it's more likely to happen with Weekend Warrior because retailers aren't buying big stacks of it like many did with HD.

I'm not saying that Silver Eagle is the model of efficiency, but there are a lot of factors to take into consideration, not the least of which is product rotation. Your local store isn't going to order a fresh batch of Hop Delusion if they still have 3 cases of the original batch on the shelf. And in the case of Freetail, I believe TABC has slowed things down on more than one occasion.

 

Maybe so. But the May TABC approvals thread shows Hopothesis was approved by May 12th. The bottles I bought on May 29th(1st day I saw them on the shelves) were bottled on May 1st. It was still delicious, but it made me wonder why a beer brewed 5 miles from the store I was at, took 4 weeks to get there.

 

Hey Seco, first off: glad you enjoyed the Hopothesis. We used a new hop variety, Equinox, and we're really pleased with the results. Hopothesis will be a once-a-year thing and we will try and use a new hop every year (hopefully an experimental/new one too).

On the logistics end of things: we actually got label approval on May 4 (which is why bottles and draft were available at our locations and Jester King the weekend of May 9). However, we were unable to get the bottles to our distributor until May 14 (kegs went out a week earlier on May 6, which is why some of them started appearing in the market sooner) because we had a flub in getting the item set up between us and the distributor that was our fault. We usually send product to the distributor every Wednesday, but we held off until the Thursday the 14th because we were packaging up a fresh batch of Soul Doubt that morning that our distributor desperately needed. Because of the bottles not showing up until Thursday, this meant that there wasn't much time to sell them in that week (Since most of the deliveries happy Tuesday-Friday).

My records show that the distributor sold basically their entire allotment of bottles the week of May 18-26. So, we take the blame on this one. We hadn't gotten our distribution all the info they needed to set the bottles up in their system which caused that week delay in the beginning, and then pushing the delivery to Thursday the follow week caused another week delay.

We're getting better at this wholesale business... but we're still learning. I think all those years as a brewpubber has clouded my brain with pizza dust.