Hi, I thought I throw this out here since I am of two minds here. I read about quite a few places that more or less reserved some bricks for - I assume - regular customers ahead of time. I asked my beer guy to do the same, and he initially agreed, but then when a line was forming outside the store decided not too. Just to be clear, it was not that I was too good to stand in line, but rather I was out of town on business and hence could not attend. Initially, I was totally fine with it, I had Westy 12 on multiple occasions, so no big deal. However, now that I see them crop up on Craigslist for example for 500 bucks I almost think it may be better to set aside some of the rare releases for people that 1) one can be confident that they won't try to make a profit and b) already spent north of several thousand bucks at that outfit over the years. Would be interested to hear other peoples though on that. H
If someone's willing/stupid to pay that much for beer then so be it..let the seller make whatever amount. As far as the retail side of it, I would agree it's a give and take. You take care of the customers who have been loyal to you over the years.
I have been out of the loop for awhile. Did eBay finally drop the hammer(hey that is an auction joke)on all of the beer sales pretending to be for collectors? I noticed CL is cited as a sale site, but all you can find on eBay is empty boxes. Unless I am missing the super secret clue that the box will have bottles in it.
I just hope this Westy craze or this specific release is an one-time thing. I've witnessed alot of ebayers/hoarders who don't even drink craft beer, buying up westys just to make money. It would be so sad to see these guys thinking of exploiting ANY future rare beer releases just to rip-off the true craft beer drinkers who couldn't attend those releases. Imagine if the legal drinking(purchasing) age is 16. High school punks/skaters/swaggers would be skipping classes to hoard all these beer. Oh you can't attend the release because of your 9-5 job? well too bad....you will have to shell out $500 to get it from them high school punks.
Or how about this...teleportation is invented. But because a massive solar flare creates a shift in the Koch-Arthur radiation belt, you can only teleport during business hours between 9-5. Now, all them high school punks are 'porting directly to Belgium and picking up Westy bricks for 25 euros AND cornering the Framboos market. Result: those little teenage rat bastards reap even huger windfalls on the $500 bricks AND they control the market for Belgian rarities. It just doesn't seem fair for the honest, hard-working craft beer aficionado.
this was even posted on perez hilton so im not shocked people are just out there buying it to sell it.
I guess i can see your point, if you asked him to hold a brick and he knows/likes you well enough, i don't see why he couldn't hold it for you. Either way that brick gets sold. This is a hard one though because we don't know which person got "your" brick, the ebay douche or the guy that just wants to try it once. The world may never know...
I think the only sensible thing to do going forward is for all bottle shops to develop a ranking system for customers to make sure that these kinds of special releases don't fall into the wrong hands. Customers could be tested on things like their pronounciation of Westvleren, how often they use phrases like "distinct aroma of," and how many breweries' date coding systems they have memorized. And, of course, how much money they spend per year in a given establishment. Then again, that might be a lot of trouble to set up. Maybe we should just go on letting the stores sell to whoever the hell they want to.
