Le Bleu release date announced.

Kate the Great, buy a bunch of lottery tickets, if you get seven of them maybe you will get a chance to travel to NH and buy a beer, Dark Lord Day, try to be one of the lucky ones to get onto their site in the first 15 nanoseconds before they sell out of tix nec. to be privileged to get their solidly above average stout. Capt. Lawrence- throw out a roll of carnival number tickets, in the dark, in the freezing cold, with no supervision, so that when I got there at 4:00 AM the 150 people waiting had already taken over 400 tickets, Pelican, put MOAS for sale on line Thanksgiving in the middle of the night/next morning with a website whose server is a Commodore 64, and people stay up for hours refreshing site, and looking for answers without knowing if coming back on line. These are problem releases. Ithaca, none of this, pardon the French, fucking bullshit that other breweries routinely do. I love these guys, always have, and I don't live close enough to be a homer

I was at LeBleu. I knew the exact moment when the last folks who would get bottles got in line. I used a rare skill that finally has come in handy, counting. If I'd been twenty people after them, I would have gotten off of the line and moved to asking those in front if getting full allotment? No? Well, then I leave. The staff at the brewery did a fantastic job, with what they had to work with. Oh well, they should have told people what was obvious to myself and many others in line without being told, I'll fault them very slightly here. But, I will take this style of release over all the others.

Re: Finger Lakes : great store, nice selection, there were a couple of things I don't get, Saranac bombers, Horseheads IPA (we get every other one of their regs). Overpriced on everything, crowded with people, and not enough space for their style of display.

There now my turn to get bashed

 

Dave did you guys open a bottle yesterday? It's drinking amazing right out of the gate. Can't wait to see how this slowly evolves with time.

 

I drank one last night. It was delicious. It was also a very unique color that I found pretty cool.

 

What is this "promise" you speak of?

 

The promise I speak of is the full case of Le Bleu. I feel like this is being perpetually regurgitated in this thread: Ithaca released a newsletter, which stated in plain english that you can buy one full case based on a 'first come, first serve' basis. Therefore, if you were one of the first people on line, you were promised a full case of Le Bleu. They did not say that they would be gauging the bottle allotment based on the volume of people.

 

IMO, 4 people wanting to put 4 cases on 1 card SCREAMS mules all over the place. I have some great friends but I would not be willing to put $400 of beer on my card for them. I would say this was Ithaca's way of trying to keep mules to a minimum in the only way they could.

 

It's so refreshing to see that some people can still function, logically.

 

I dragged my wife who hates beer along with me. She just bought a 4 pack of soda though (and they let me ring it up with my 10 bottles of LeBleu - yeap I left 2 bottles behind). Sorry to those who didn't get any, definitely a crap situation. I got there at 10 and based on the amount of chatter on this site and the fact that I knew from BA that there were only 100 cases, I assumed I had a 50/50 shot of getting some. I ended up being roughly 75 people back in line and had no trouble though. I was out the door by about 12:20. Other than the single register I didn't think it was that poorly run. There were definitely mules there, but what can Ithaca do about it? I watched a group load 7 cases into one car.

The line wasn't bad thanks to the really nice people around us. Thank you to any of you that were BA's.

 

Were you the kind gentlemen who shared the 2010 Dark Lord with us?

 

I guess we differ on whether a newsletter constitutes an irrevocable promise upon which you are actually entitled to a case of beer, much less whether it prevents Ithaca from reserving the right to modify their business practices after releasing a newsletter.

 

Because that prevents mules from just ringing it up all the same multiple times? Stupid logic. I wanted to pay for me and my girlfriend, and I was with a couple and a friend that wanted to pay together to keep things simple. How does this keep mules at a minimum exactly?

Edit: I wasn't clear with my last post. You could use the same card over and over, they insisted on separate transactions, not cards. So there was no mule prevention.

 

This is not a personal shot at you or anyone, but is it really that hard for people to bring cash??? If I wanted to pay for everyone in my groups beer, I would have gone to the bank and withdrawn the cash to do so...

 

My question is this, we all hear the "the american's aren't ready for sours" yet every sour release has way too many people and not enough beer to go around. So, why not make some breweries just do brettanomycyes and Lactobacillus and they can even charge upwards of $15-$20 a bottle to just sit on it for maybe 6 months to sell a boat load of it. I found I use dregs from Cantillon and make my own. Making a Fou Foune now and it is awesome, cost me $20 too.

 

that's for 5 gallons!!!!

 

I am pretty sure that is what crooked stave in colorado does. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I am almost sure they are only brewing sours at this time.

 

And... http://therarebarrel.com/

 

There's enough of a niche market to support sours, but when people use "Americans" its prolly in the aggregate sense and they're most likey talking about sours beyond that niche market of beer geeks.

Bud Light isn't about to be bumped off the grocery/gas station shelf for a sour beer. When sours can make it to just 1% of the overall barrel production in the United States, they probably have become 10 times more popular than they are now.

 

Exactly. Even if they'd cut it to 6 bottles/person they'd have been able to serve most of the people in line (and certainly everyone who got there before 11).

I've been to a couple releases at Hill Farmstead just in the last few months in which the bottle limits have fluctuated on the day of sale based on attendance/demand. If there was a serious outcry about this on the part of people who got to HF earlier than I did, it was news to me; I really hate to think the people who showed up early in Ithaca would have acted any more entitled.

So the way they handled this bums me out. CNY isn't exactly a craft beer mecca, and Ithaca isn't exactly convenient to get to - I imagine the majority of people who showed up Saturday went (potentially very far) out of their way to get there. There's ultimately a responsibility on the brewery's part to gauge a situation like this and make a judgment call. Sending two-thirds of the crowd away empty-handed is seriously bad PR.

 

Where is this magical 100 case announcement coming from? There is no information on their Facebook page, nothing on their Twitter Feed, and nothing on their website. Can someone reproduce the actual source of this information, that apparently went out to the masses?

 

I know I had read somewhere that there was less than previous releases but I was under the assumption that the amount was closer to 150 cases. I was as surprised as everyone when the girl came out and announced the 100 cases. It def had us nervous about getting any.