Norfolk, VA

Just left, it's insane. There was 10 cases left and 200 people still in line with another 150 waiting to get into the brewery. Smart mouth handled this release like a rookie brewery and refused to warn people about there not being enough beer for the amount of people that showed up.

 

Coulda called that from a mile away.

Saw some dude posting that he'd pay $40 per 4 pack from people willing to sell. Absurd.

 

They are a rookie brewery in terms of lines/hype, they’ve never had a line of any kind before. Haha.
They did announce case counts/limits the day before though.

 

What do you mean by “refused”?

 

I drove there, thinking I could walk in and walk out like their typical release... said "F**k this", cursed the SOBs preventing me from getting out of Chelsea for a while, then went to BottleBox and TW to stock up on stuff I've missed for a week and a half.

For sh!ts sake, benchtop hasn't had a crapshow like that looked like.

 

Employees were literally counting how many people in line and didn't tell anyone that they weren't going to get any cans. 300 allotments with 600 people in line.

The way the line worked, you had to go through the building to where the cans were being sold, so you wouldn't know how many people had or hadn't had cans.

Employees went through and put on wristbands, would have taken 20 minutes to just write numbers and told people past 300 they likely wouldn't get any cans.

 

This hype was never about the beer. If it was people could just go to Benchtop, Commonwealth, etc. I stopped by bottleBox myself and looking forward to trying the new IPA & stout from Reaver

 

This... I got some Hiphoptopus, plan on getting Murder o Crows if it lasts (have had it on draft before, want more)

 

You’ve gotta give Smartmouth a little bit of a break if they didn’t run a expert/efficient release. They’ve never had so much as a 2 person line in their entire existence, they aren’t even the best brewery in their neighborhood.
Not hating on them at all, they are a just-fine-middle-of the-road-brewery, but they aren’t experienced in Veil esque lines.
This beer is a punchline on the local forums and only bought as trade bait.

 

So how is it then? Anybody tired it yet?

 

If this means anything, it’s a 3.7 on untappd and that’s with several truly comical 5’s thrown in, because they waited 3 hours.
Most I know said it was as expected -an avg ipa.

 

Curious if this'll be smartmouths breakthrough... A middling ipa. When that affordable CBS lite clone just went through a month ago... Which I walked in, grabbed, walked out

 

Finally opened a can, actually pretty good. More like a West Coast IPA with a ton of sweetness from the marshmallows, toasted marshmallow on the finish, along with slight pine bitterness. If I saw it in the store, I would def pick it up, but I mean not worth waiting in line 3+ hours for (but then again, not many beers are). Solid 4.0-4.25 beer though, and hope to see Smartmouth make more experimental brews like it.

 

Wow, I'm incredibly surprised that a brewery who paid for Facebook ads in an effort to drum up interest for their nostalgia-cereal-flavored beer and hasn't dealt with very high demand before was unprepared to handle consumers waiting in line efficiently and communicate effectively.

The best part about this is that Smartmouth confirmed that it's going to be distro'd as well lol.

 

Yeah, I can imagine all those folks that got shut out and see its going to make limited disto are going to be slightly upset.