In All Its Hypelessness, the “Shelf Turd” Abides

I guess in this context you could consider beer to be like any other collectible. Baseball cards have a similar culture around them.

The difference is that I personally have not seen the interest in any other span of collectibles of people trying to “protect” a brand. People on Facebook hate to see a high value bottle go for less than the perceived secondary value because they’re so worried it will drop the value of the beer and the brewery. Likewise for whiskey.

Not only that but when you consider baseball cards, gold coins, etc.; these products are limited. Like, really limited. The opportunity to purchase KBBS is an every year event. Over and over again. People win the lottery and immediately post their bottles for 5x cost on websites like MBC.

Overall, as a relatively new consumer watching these worlds collide, you could say simply; I’m not interested. Yes of course I would love to try PVW, BBT, and Double Barrel Assassin. But I absolutely refuse to pay the exorbitant costs that these folks are reselling for, in the name of protecting a brand and protecting a “trade value”. I can’t bring myself to do it with a consumable product.

Here’s hoping everyone gets to try their personal “whales” in the future. If you have disposable income, most of them are a click away.

Cheers.

 

Same author's Vocabulary of Beer from last month:

Am I missing something - or is it just too obvious to mention? - but does the writer not realize that "Whale" aka "White Whale" is a reference from Melville's Moby Dick or, The Whale? At least, that's how I remember it being used here and on Rate Beer. Never got into trading so didn't follow the jargon all that close.

Also, isn't "Shelf Turd" a reference to beers, usually ones that were once difficult to acquire, that now are both easy to find and even linger on the shelf, often beyond the geekery's desired freshness point or brewery's own "Best by" date?

This sentence suggests the author thinks otherwise, that they are just failed "limited" releases:

I guess they could be either?

I suppose, like the dreaded A_____t word, the definition of word in the world of influencers is not what it once meant but how it has commonly come to be incorrectly used. Still, I gotta note that this, from the linked Vocabulary page, is (well, "was") not the case:

 

Is the definition of shelf turd any beer that sits a long time in a retail store or specific to a previously hyped beer that would disappear quickly that now doesn’t move out of the store quickly? I always assume it could be any beer that wasn’t selling quickly with the true marker being it has that has dust on the bottle.

 

I too have always assumed that "shelf turd" refers simply to unsold/unsellable beers on the shelves of whatever type. I've never understood why retailers allow beers to just sit; after all, shelf space is money, and unsold beer is taking up valuable real estate. I suppose the solution lately has just been to replace the shelf turd with hard seltzer, etc, which has been selling faster.

 

FWIW, I've heard it used for both; however, it probably makes more sense when referring to a hype beer that experienced a drop in sales / interest. This phenomena is easy to witness a casual who doesn't own a beer store and can actually review the sales numbers of each product. Compare that to more typical brands that sit on shelves year round - without some insider information, it's not reasonably possible to say whether or not a SN Pale Ale 12pck is a shelf turd and taking up space for extended periods of time or not. Are they selling and replacing them, or are they just sitting?

A local example would be Perennial's Abraxas. Five years ago (maybe more now) people would chase trucks to pick these up. Stores would limit sales to one bottle per customer. This beer now sits on shelves for months to years now after its annual release.

Granted, some casual could be tracking the 'brewed on' dates of SN Pale Ale in that example and have some idea whether or not the product is moving or being a shelf turd, but I'll say that doesn't happen in any meaningful numbers until someone shares their own spreadsheet of product dates at a local beer store

 

I think this is the more meaningful representation of the term. CBS would be another good example of a beer that was once sought out and became a “shelf turd”.

 

I think there is some level of context to the term. Around here, 90% of beers sit on shelves and gather dust. That's what happens when there 200 IPA's to choose from and people are only buying a dozen of them. Yet nobody really cares or even knows most of those beers. They might as well not even exist.

I think the term refers to beers people DO know. The ones that make you do a double take even years after a beer has become relatively available. "Huh...look at those 6 cans of BA Ten Fidy that haven't sold out in over a month. I remember driving across town on my lunch break just to buy one of those."

 

I do not agree with the idea that a shelf turd is a beer that was once hard to acquire and is now easily accessible. If a beer was once a "whale", and therefore likely to be of considerable quality, I cannot see how it should be compared to a turd now that it is seen frequently.

To me a shelf turd is usually past its BB date.
lightly dusty or with thin bonded dust.
Dents in cans and damaged labels.
"Hey, look, there's only one left". "Must have been a sale!".
Room temperature for the entire summer.

It's cool to see BA getting some historical credit. Cheers.

 

... of the worst kind.

 

This is all relative.... several of the beers mentioned in the article would not sit on shelves here..... they probably do in bigger markets but not here.. the beers that sit here are Two Hearted and SN Pale Ale....simply due to the fact that by the time they reach beer shelves here they already have several months on them

 

"Shelf turd" has definitely been used around here to refer to a beer that was once unobtainable and can now be picked up off a shelf for weeks or even months after release.

I honestly don't hear or read the term much anymore. Maybe that's an indication that we've passed through a certain level of market maturity and there's less frenzied hunting for rare and obscure beers? Maybe it's just that we went through a flood of once rare brands ramping up production and becoming widely available that burned people out on the use of that phrase.

 

Or those rare brews are straight to the costumers from the source.

KBBS can never be a shelf turd so long as it's only available via raffle.

 

Amen, and I found it (and a 2019 KBS bomber) out in the wild just last week.

 

Right. It would take the brewery being bought up by (Insert brewing Goliath here) and greatly ramping up production of a beer that people will pay $100 a bottle for at the brewery.
National distribution later, people bemoaning it's not what it used to be, and it too could be on the "no longer greatly desired" pile of ex-whales.

 

That would get my 'vote'.

Maybe some BA will start a thread with a poll?

Cheers!

 

While I don't like the term in general, I think the context matters quite a bit here. It also pints out the problems with colloquialisms, casual terms, and the "need" to categorize things.

I remember the annual frenzy around Bourbon County which pretty much moved to a Black Friday event. Trucks being chased, hoarding, whining and complaining about bottle limits and favors being done for favored customers. We're into the new year and I still see plenty of Bourbon County and some variants available in almost all of my frequent haunts. More is produced and it moves slower - some people were pissed about the AB purchase and don't buy it anymore, etc. But is a beer like Bourbon County on the store shelf that a lot of people buy to age intentionally a "shelf turd" just because most folks don't (or don't "have" to) take part in the release day frenzy, chase trucks, trade their grandmothers for a variant, and hoarde it anymore? If the term "whale" implies hard to get or rare, then that term certainly no longer applies by my observation but to call it a "shelf turd"???

Allagash Odyssey - hasn't been brewed in a few years. Bottles pop up every so often in a couple of the better shops we visit and we buy every damned one of them. I've had four year (maybe longer) old bottles that were awesome beers. Shelf turd? Past any expected Best By date - no doubt. No longer a delicious beer - absolutely false. This, while not an anticipated beer like so many, to me is now a whale. It most likely is not a whale to the vast majority. It still exists and it's hard to find, eventually it will be gone. (well, until Allagash decides to brew it again then I can join the "it isn't the same" crowd )

There's certainly a negative connotation to the term and it just doesn't apply universally in my opinion. Seems to me a whale is a whale regardless. The distinction might be in the age of the whale and the speed it swims in some cases, but I wouldn't conclude that whales evolve into shelf turds or that it's done by any intent or that one exists because of the other. Craft drinkers - you can't get much more ephemeral - many move on to the new shiny all the time regardless of the particular beer. It seems to me it's the basic argument of fresh beer versus old beer (or sells versus sits), and in some cases it actually doesn't matter.

 

Man, I’m sitting here reading people talking about chasing trucks and stuff and I guess I’m just not as hardcore as some others It just seems like at that point it’s not fun any more.

But to each his own. I have fun getting the crap beaten out of me at jiu jitsu and Muay Thai and I’m sure that doesn’t seem like a good time to a lot of people either

 

I guess I mean that even in the case of direct to consumer situations where the beers are no longer gone in a matter of hours people haven't been throwing the term around. Although I suppose it's possible that the shelf being turded has to be a nonbrewer retailer?