Off the shelf is easily available?

There's the old use of "off-the-shelf" that means readily available locals
and
there's a newer use of "off-the-shelf" that means "Your King Henry is not a whale."

I think both uses have value in certain cases.

 

I pretty much take off the shelf to mean just that; its literally anything where I can walk into a store, pick it up off the shelf and purchase. That said, some beers are obviously harder to find than others. Which is where limited and rare beers such as KH and BCBS come into play, but they are still OTS.

 

don't think of it as "what the word means," think of it as "how the term is used."

(some people would argue that the two phrases are equivalent, but we're a small philosophical minority)

of course, king henry was bought off the shelf. it's perfectly true to say, thinking of it that way, "king henry is a shelf beer," or "king henry is off the shelf."

but look at from the perspective of someone saying,

"i'll make up $4$ with off the shelf locals,"

or

"i wouldn't trade growlers for off the shelf beers,"

etc.

maybe the 2 hypothetical speakers there would include rare, king henry, the majority of cantillon releases, etc, in the definition of "off the shelf," but probably not. if you were to say, "no, they HAVE TO mean king henry too, because that's what WORDS mean!" you would be keeping yourself from understanding the world around you due to stubbornness.

 

True. How the term is used and what is actually means are pretty different in the trading world. Thus where rarity comes into play. Usually OTS refers to common locals, but that doesn't change the fact that people didn't have to stand outside the gates of the brewery to score KH.

 

i don't think how you get KH is relevant to very much beyond "fun with words; does this label properly apply to this beer!?" if you don't like offers of KH for rarer, brewery-only beers, you shouldn't take them. if a lot of other people do take them, obviously they think the arrangement is fine.

to put all this another way and sort of from another angle, in the giant majority of cases, language is not controlled by humans. if people started using "off the shelf" to mean some strange nuanced thing, everyone meant something different, and communication started breaking down, all that would happen is that people would just stop saying "off the shelf." it would become forgotten trivia for "old traders". no arguments or opinions on language or that term in particular would outweigh that utility drives human behavior, and language is a human ability (like walking) not a decision you make or a poem you write.

if you repeatedly made "FT: OTS chicago locals, ISO: cali locals," every day and got inbox flooded exclusively with requests for king henry, you'd probably just stop saying "OTS". maybe a few "trading: general" complaints would occur, but eventually you'd stop wasting your time. this is just how this stuff works.

 

Uhhh... yeah, I was agreeing with you. Obviously beers like Cantillion, KH, etc are going to require equally rare and specific beers to land them, but the ones who were lucky enough to purchase them did buy them from a store, not the brewery. Thus they are OTS, making them fall into the realm of beer that isn't a brewery only release or reserve society, etc. They just happen to be rarer and more delicious, thus the large demand and short supply.

 

i know you agree, i'm just reiterating it doesn't matter if they're "strictly speaking" off the shelf--though it really can matter to you or anyone else, if that's how you or anyone else feels. it's silly to argue that one way or the other in my opinion.

anyway, no more longwinded ranting from me. if it seemed like i was trying to start an argument with you, i wasn't.