Production losses during bottling?

Does what the staff drink count as losses?

 

Not to mention, I'm guessing they will keep many cases from hitting distribution. I know I've read they did this with Rare. Some will make it to festivals, tastings and the brewers cellar.

 

You also have to take into account that they are blending the barrels so not all of the beer may be used. If barrel 1 is a little better than barrel 2 maybe they use more of 1 and less of 2.

 

To the OP. You have two distinctly different discussions happening in one paragraph.
As for the differences for barrels between the two. That is up to one thing. How rare the initial barrels are, and also, how old they are. Each of those factors ramps up to how expensive the initial investment on those "spent" barrels will be.
The amount of loss in barrels will probably be minimal compared to production floor waste.

 

Read somewhere on here its about 8% first year lost to the "angels share"? Don't quote me. But pretty sure thats what I read.

 

Depending on the types of spirit, we usually lose 8%-10% of the barrels due to off flavors and general weirdness. There is also quite a bit lost to evaporation about 6%-8% per year.

Some barrels are a little better, some are a little worse. Brandy barrels can be as high as 25% lost due to weirdness or infection. Wine barrels can be brutal too

-B

 

Awesome, appreciate the inside info. All interesting to know.

 

If you're talking about accidental spillage then I have a feeling that the more valuable that the beer is that is being bottled, then the bottling process become all that more careful to lessen the loss.

 

Bourbon County Rare had about 12,000 bottles from what I can remember as the number that was tossed around.

 

Also, keep in mind that America's really big. 1000 cases sounds like a lot, but if you divide that up equally, that's only 20 cases per state (or 320 bombers). 320 bottles of beer wouldn't service the Boston area, let alone the rest of the state. Obviously distribution gets skewed based on market size (are there even 320 people in South Dakota?), but that's the kind of thing that shakes out because very large markets (San Francisco, Austin) balance much smaller ones (Pierre, Anchorage).

So even if 1000 cases isn't M levels of rare, it's not going to be the easiest thing to get your hands on.

 

Without barrels, I have read that 8% loss in the brewery is not uncommon.

 

Nope I mean 12,000 as in twelve thousand bottles of bourbon county rare

 

I would love to find some parabola sitting on the shelf