No Rules will not be distributed this year

Next year, I'm videotaping the guy, calling in the tip to the appropriate city police that will give me a share of the loot for the tipoff, and laughing my ass of as the guy gets a hit on him from one of the angry pre-payers...

 

What makes this even more hilarious (and sad at the same time) is that the beer itself simply isn't worthy of this level of hype.

 

Aren’t you the guy that hates all the Michigan breweries and boycotts them all tho?

 

Yes....it’s so “sad” that No Rules has developed a yearly following and fan base.

God forbid some people like something you don’t care for! Jeeze man, what are these people thinking? Getting all excited for an annual BA stout release, what a bunch of losers.

 

Muley McMuleface.

 

I know that we have all been poking fun of this, but I think the general sentiment is that most of us are generally surprised that it is worth the effort for 100-200 people to try to coordinate something like this, instead of just trading for a couple or a few bottles. Seems like the cost (in $ cost) is at least as high doing this, and probably more so in time.

It's not that people don't like this, or can't believe other's can't, it's just that it seems like a lot of effort/work for a beer that is "good" or "great" but not "getting in line overnight" great.

 

Well said. The extremes that people have gone through don’t seem to justify the means. This was a beer that sat on the shelves last year for a cheaper price than the brewery was charging. I’m truly at a loss as to why the extreme efforts were taken in the first place. Congratulations, Perrin. Your brewery only released worked. I didn’t think it would. However, it never occurred to me that someone would want to mule $26,000 worth of beer for a Facebook group either.

 

Everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that this guy that is muling No Rules has likely had a TON of beers muled for him by people in the group. This is something that group does a lot, obviously this is on a whole other level than what they normally do but he's been on the receiving end many times I'm sure. Add in the facts that he was planning on being there anyways, the money is fronted & he'll get thank you beers & i can understand someone being willing to do it. I would NOT be that guy but I can understand why someone would step up to do it for many people that you've shared beers with & that have helped you out.

 

Hyperbole much? I was critical of one brewery that knowingly refused to publicly acknowledge the presence of wild yeast and several batches of BBA stouts released on Black Friday in 2015. I didn't realize this is now a thing of legend?

You said it, I didn't.

 

Is it really all that surprising, though?

100-200 people didn’t coordinate the $25,000 haul.

One person coordinated it with the help of a few of his friends. For the people that wanted bottles from that mule train, they didn’t coordinate anything outside of an electronic transfer of money. Not a lot of effort involved with that. And just to put a different perspective on it, it was more than 100-200 people wanting those bottles. I’m not going to sit around and tally up a total but from what I saw, it looked like significantly more than what you’re guessing as participants.

So, if someone is offering to mule back a yearly favorite brew (at cost)....which by the way, is/was brewery-only this season.....why is it so surprising that so many people on the east side took advantage of the offer? The trade market can be a total pain in the ass these days, of course people 2.5 hours away from Perrin are going to jump at that offer.

I think if Perrin identified this as being distributed this year (in addition to the brewery release), then yes....we would have a whole new level of craziness with that haul. That’s not the case here, though. The brewery-only deal shut out a lot of Michiganders who didn’t/couldn’t make the 160ish mile trek.

 

I haven’t been on here much lately but good to see you’re still excelling at the grumpy/sarcastic asshole act

 

GREAT points. There is a lot of helping each other out in that group. This is the same craft beer enthusiast group that raised over $16,000 for Toys for Tots this past Christmas.

I guess from an outsiders point of view, this type of help-your-neighbor-out behavior can be considered “extreme” these days.

 

I am a fan of this beer ... but I will not miss it dearly if I don't come across it this year. This is how I feel about many many very good beers, so the fact that there's even an inkling of a possibility that this beer could command a strong secondary / trading market ... especially one that could drive someone to spend $25,000 upfront ... is mind boggling.

And i would feel this same way if you replaced "No Rules" with dozens of other beers of very good quality.

 

I've got a handful of beer friends that I will help out and share beers with when others miss out. That's a far cry from coordinating and distributing 200+ orders while then renting a U-Haul to drive 2+ hours (and I'm assuming lining up much earlier than he would have if he was just getting bottles for himself). Plenty of us help each other out, but if you don't see this as being extreme, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. In the end, it's great they all got the beer they wanted, I suppose?

 

Your reputation precedes you.

 

Ferris Muler’s Night & Day Off

 

How funny would it have been if they looked at the line and then changed the limits?

 

My credit limits aren't that big...

 

@red94tt Essentially what @croush said. The fact that this guy might have to distribute more than 200 (300? 400?) orders is crazy to me. There have been very few beers that I would go through this effort for. Given everything we know about the beer, it's hard for me to imagine it being 'worth it' for someone to go through this is what I believe we are all continuing to echo. On that note - it's not just a money transfer. The cost (in terms of time) is the money transfer, the back and forth about when to meet up, when to drop off, etc. And that's just for those that receive the bottles, not for the person dropping it off.

Muling like this is cool. I'm glad to see so many people share such camaraderie and be willing to do this when people take trips, etc. That said, it's a lot of effort. It's a lot more than I think I would ever be willing to go through, especially if I'm not dying to have a particular brew. I understand that if I do this for the group, and then everyone takes their turn, everyone is 'equal' in that sense. But it's too much work for me, and as a result, I would not want someone else to go through that.

So, add to all of this the fact that it is for a beer that isn't earth shattering (I find it hard to believe everyone in this group thinks it is), and it's not a limited brew, it's hard I think for most of us to accept that the amount of aggregate effort that went into a stunt like this could ever be worth it given the beer, past availability, etc.

No one meant any disrespect. (Cue the guy that says 'I did.')

 

I knew I should have come back to this thread sooner!

Full disclosure: I ordered a single bottle from the Supermule. No idea what other peoples' orders were like, but I'm pretty sure there were a fair number of small orders like mine, so I'd hazard a guess that the number of people is way more than 200. It was worth it to me because--taking Perrin at their word*--it wasn't going to be distributed at all and I like the beer well enough to have a bottle, and with this guy taking orders, it was really a minimal level of effort on my part. Place order, send compensation, go grab bottle. At least as easy as hunting around town for a bottle of something.

As far as whether it was "worth it" to the guy in question? Honestly, since he had already been muling orders back over to the East side for a couple years prior, I suspect that he viewed the change in logistics as kind of a challenge: like how ridiculous can we get this thing? And is the lengths he went to really that much more ridiculous than the lengths people go to for rare bottles? We all read the Binny's Black Friday 2017 thread, right? Is it just a matter of that being "worth it" because of the bottles at stake, while it's not "worth it" for No Rules because it's not as good or as highly sought?

*also, if Supermule's haul was really 22% of total production, then I'm calling bullshit on some part of Perrin's story. Because that equates to ~7,000 bottles total. And it doesn't seem possible that Perrin could have made more than last year and only produced 7,000 bottles worth. I suspect out-of-state accounts will be getting No Rules again and of course we'll probably see the holiday packs as well. And boy, if Perrin thought people were mad last year after waiting in line at the brewery and seeing it on store shelves, just wait until the people who were supposedly told that No Rules was sold out start seeing evidence of the bottles in distribution.