Some questions about The Lost Abbey VIP Ultimate Box set

1) it got you into a couple parties that were announced after the fact. I'm not sure if they're going to have anymore, but I kind of doubt it
2) not sure, but apparently too many. If I remember correctly, it went from "lottery to get a shot at buying the boxset" to "anyone who comes in can buy the boxset" to "let's just send these boxsets to some friends in the beer community"

 

I think there were around 600 total? And they were wildly expensive.

 

Well, yeah, the badge is useless now. The original idea was to release 3 different "sets" for a total of 12 beers. They were all brewery-only AND had to be consumed on premises. They released 450 bottles to the public for each of the monthly releases. At some point towards the end of the set (October maybe?) they decided to offer the Ultimate Box Set as a complete unit. They limited the numbers to 500 (so effectively they brewed at least 950 bottles of each Track). The set included that VIP badge so you could get the last few bottles as they were released and also attend some sort of party. They had a few more parties offering up left over bottles to VIP's first. This was at the end of 2012/beginning of 2013. Needless to say, the whole thing was damn confusing, expensive, and never really took off. From what I hear the beers were good, but none of them gained classic status.

 

Possibly. Most reviews were mixed with a lot of "this is pretty good, but it took a lot of effort to get it". There were some consistency issues throughout the series (kind of like Stone's vertical epic). A few were really great, most were merely good, and a few were not good. So it became more of a novelty than a once-in-a-lifetime beer experience.

 

Yeah. A few friends split up an entire set one night and had a lot of fun.

 

oooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, so that's what this thread is about. Here I thought you had a serious question.

Nice score!!

 

How much $ was the set?

 

A complete set is probably getting pretty hard to come by. They did a few re-release days in 2013 where badge holders could pick up 1-4 bottles to "replace" the ones they'd already drank. They didn't offer all 13 beers, though. Who knows, they might have a few more in the cellar that they could put out there for badge holders in the future.

 

Did some of the tracks go out for general distribution? I saw Track #8 pop up at a store a few days ago.

 

I'm assuming you are referring to the track beers? They just released track 8 into distribution in the sd area. In addition for their anniversary ~1 month ago you could buy all of the track beers for onsite consumption. They are either continuing to brew them or have a bunch in storage.

 

#8 was one of the better releases, so I could see them ponying up a few more barrels of it.