Night Shift Brewing

I've seen mix One Hop This Time four packs at liquor stores the last few weeks already.

Good call on an older version being an anchor on the four pack, never thought of that.

I'm a hard sell though, I typically buy singles of beers at stores that I know allows me to break up 4/6 packs. I'll often supplement a mix-a-six with another six pack of an old stand by that is a lower ABV/sessionable.

I hardly ever purchase beer to-go at a brewery unless it's a place I typically don't visit, and would otherwise have a hard time getting that beer, or the beer REALLY knocks my socks off. And it's summer, so I'm exclusively wearing sandals...

 

Night shift tweeted:

"Two for Flinching is available at 11am! We were floored by your excitement - hence, going with a 1 case limit per person. On draft as well!"

They know exactly what they're doing by releasing a collab with all the buzzwords attached to a hyped out of state brewery.

Case limit is meant to sell out beer quickly and leave people shut out, what a joke

 

what buzzwords?

 

"for," "hence," "a," "on." Isn't it obvious?

 

I think he's referring to the tweet where posted that it was brewed with pineapple, mango and lupulin powder. Can't really blame them for making a beer they know will sell though.

 

Can't argue with that. Hopefully they learned a lesson from this release, though, and will set more conservative limits for the next one (although I feel like they've learned this lesson a couple times now...). Even if they limited to one 4-pack pp, it still probably would have sold out within a couple days. Just would have spread it around a bit more.

As far as aging Night Shift shelf stock goes, there's certainly a bunch at the Wegmans in Chestnut Hill where I do the bulk of my beer shopping. Lots of past Morphs and OHTTs sitting warm on the shelf. Not sure what they should do about that. Maybe smaller and more frequent batches? Beats me.

 

they wont set more conservative limits ever. They have given the same response every time something sells out same day (presidential IPAs, Fluffy, Phone Home, Two For Flinching).

 

It's not good for the brand in my opinion. You have highly sought after beers and you're intentionally limiting distribution to a few instead of many. You can only keep this up for so long. Fool me once...

 

It's not exclusive to Society members.

 

Not sure who is getting fooled when they announce the case count and limit ahead of time. And it certainly hasn't hurt them yet. Very hard to please everyone.

 

I don't care about limited releases in general, so this doesn't really bother me, but I'm curious why there's case limit on a limited release.

Personally, I don't understand how anyone buys an entire case of a single beer with so many options out there...especially an IPA. Many of the modern IPAs are preferred within a month or so...how much are you drinking that you can plow through an entire case of a double IPA that quickly, unless it's the only beer you're buying that month.

Trillium does case limits on their more standard stuff, and most of that I've noticed lately lasts a week or more. Treehouse limits their releases to what, a couple four packs or less? Again, this doesn't effect me, I'm just curious.

 

The mixed 4 packs of OHHT were a good idea in theory but has just seemed to be a chance to package older product with new. They are sitting at my local store already getting too old to buy. Right-sizing production to demand is what needs to happen, not new packaging gags.

Also LOL @ anyone showing up to a 1 case PP limit 100 case total release at all, let alone seriously expecting to get beer.

 

Damn. I really would have liked to see something like this takeoff since I like variety but don't like paying the upcharge for singles if I can avoid it.

 

Grabbed a glass of the Two for Flinching last night. Its OK. Not enough IPA character, more just fruit juice really. I like my Double IPAs to retain something hoppy in their presentation, but this just didn't have it.

Decided against a second glass and went for the Kolch instead. Really quite nice. I could drink a few of those.

 

That's two votes in this thread for the Kölsch. I might swing by on the fourth in the hopes that it will be quiet (went there on the 3rd last year and it was mostly empty...that was for that STELLAR 7/1 Morph).

I'm most likely staying the heck away from the beach party on Sunday...I imagine that won't be quiet at all.

 

I was there between 5.30 and 6.30 last night. Empty. Maybe 15-20 people in total. The beach party thing will be a shitshow. Much rather try to pub quiz on monday night.

 

Was looking through my cellar last night and wondering if anyone has opened any of these bottles recently and can comment on how they're doing: Funk'd Citra, Funk'd Porter, Sour Tea, Tripel Reserve, Farmer's Duel. Definitely want to open these soon since they're getting kinda old (3+ years on some), but want to know what to expect.

 

Hey all - We are constantly looking to improve our process and production volumes to better match demand. For one-off batches we typically brew only a 20 bbl batch (which is the size of our brewhouse) and can half and keg the other half. If the beer is successful and people like it - we make any tweaks that are needed and scale it up to a 40 or 60bbl batch size. We have done this with nearly all our beers. And now you see beers like Annie Oatly, Fluffy and soon to be Craigorator II: Pool Party return in larger volumes and get some distro action too. We need to crawl before we run with a new beer. There is almost always more coming.

We did over produce on Morph and One Hop and since have scaled back production in both volume and frequency to ensure we keep shelves stocked with fresh beer. That capacity that was used to make those beers is shifting to new beers that have proven successful.

We do buy back old beer from stores and try to keep our beer no older than 2 months on the shelves. This year alone we have destroyed close to $60,000 of beer that was past that date target. Not because the beer was bad but because it was "old". It is our commitment to having only fresh product in the marketplace. And we aim to brew to demand - not some number from a corporate overlord.

Keep in mind that nearly all our stores order inventory every week or every other. And that all our beer is kept cold and delivered cold to accounts. So while it might be a month old and sitting warm it likely has been cold for 3 weeks and less than 1 week on the shelf which helps ensure most of its original flavor profile is still there.

The craft beer scene has evolved into the mindset that if it's not canned today its crappy old beer. And at the same time people want easy availability of hoppy fresh beer. Trying to manage production to meet a constantly shifting wholesale market is a challenge. But I also think "old" beer is more subjective than ever before. Look at a scientific study on beer aging at various temperatures put out by the Brewers Association here. If its kept near freezing there is nearly a 2 year window before distinctive aged character sets in. I am not saying that NE IPA have that same shelf life but I am saying that there is real science to back up the importance of cold storage which we spend a fortune on in our distro warehouse and for our trucks. And not all beer can be judge fresh simply by the date code on the bottom. There are more factors involved that that simple date.

Regardless, the oldest hoppy beer we are shipping out to accounts this week is under 4 weeks old. Santilli is super fresh and was packaged on Monday and out for delivery Tuesday, Whirlpool is 2 weeks old and tasting delicious.

Enjoy the holiday weekend you all!

 

NightShift has a complex problem, I think they recognize that since they hired an experienced CFO and COO. In theory hiring experienced people is a good idea but the problems they face aren't "traditional" beer distribution problems so this might actually worsen the problem. They need to figure out how best to distribute their beer and how much of core beers vs limited releases they make. Optimal distribution to decrease shelf life would probably spread their stock out to more stores than they currently do. On the flip side its expensive to ship to more stores. This is more of an analytics problem, I wonder how much craft beer breweries are investing in big data and analytics.

 

Yes. YES.