Spaten Production / Availability Problems?

As input to the OP; just found some Spaten Okto 12 packs bottled on July 30, 2014. Not many left of the few cases it looked like the retailer originally had. May have to stock up...

 

My b got it switched around

 

Wouldn't want you to put your faith in the wrong distro. Oh, wait...

 

We've had a ton of Spaten in our area (San Antonio) this year, but two years ago there wasn't a drop available. Must have to do with El Niño!

 

On a similar note - any of you Paulaner and/or Hacker Pschorr fans? How has distribution looked as of recent for these beers? I tried to do a bit of research about their importer (Paulaner USA) and the website paulanerhpusa.com is not functioning. Any insight?

 

There was a lot of both Amber Märzens from each brewery in northeast Illinois -- probably more so than the past few years.

On the other hand, I didn't see any Paulaner Wies'n or the new, limited edition H-P Festbier.

Sad thing is, outside of the Oktoberfest season I rarely see any beers from either brewery other than the ubiquitous H-P Weizen.

 

A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn't a square. I remember this from my 5th grade math class.

 

My perspective from the Twin Cities:

There's been no shortage of H-P's "Limited Edition" beers at many places I shop.

As for availability of the 'regular' H-P/Paulaner offerings: pretty much the same. They are available at a lot of places and on tap at many as well.

I go to Wisconsin quite a bit and the availability of both has been really good at the places I go (Madison/LaCrosse/Eau Claire) as well.

Edit: Regarding Spaten--At the few places I looked for it, it was available and fairly fresh all things considered.

 

It has to be the populace and what they purchase regularly. I'm sure the shelves around me are so overloaded with the latest trend beer that there's no room for decent, let alone great, imports.

This is the point where I would say I ought to move to the Twins... but as I check my calendar I see winter looming menacingly...

 

I'm a fan of some of their beers. They're not my faves, but they're solid and they're fresher than most. Paulaner/HP's US distributor is located in Littleton, which is just a few miles away from where I work. Not sure if I'm representative of the whole country, but I've seen roughly the same amount of Paulaner and slightly more H-P recently. After not seeing them for 4-5 years, we're now getting all of the the 1/2L swingtop singles from H-P. They aren't as fresh as I'd like them to be, but they're functional. 6-packs from both, especially the "Best of Munich" variety are available almost anywhere, although they're never fresher than 6-8 weeks old.

 

My local beer store in PA has a bunch of cases of both. I recently bought a case of Hacker Pschorr Oktoberfest. And they had a whole stack of Paulaner Salvator.

 

Year old beer ≠ good distribution.

 

plenty in Wi

 

Yeah his response was spot on. We were supposed to get another shipment mid October and kinda got left wondering where the damn boat was with ze spaten. I didn't know of the 12 packs being discontinued, bevmo in Costa Mesa use to always keep a good inventory of octoberfest year round when I oversaw that area

 

Are we still talking the Oktoberfest, or the Spaten Premium Helles?

Pretty late into the season for all that Okto to suddenly become available. "Hey, here's some leftovers -- we'll send it to those places where they like to keep it available year-round."

 

1997 Spaten brewery combined with Löwenbräu AG.

2003 Spaten-Löwenbräu-Gruppe sold to Interbrew.

2004 Interbrew and Brazilian AmBev united to form InBev.

2006 Spaten brewhouse Munich closed due to lack of workload, now the museum of the company.

2008 InBev bought AB to become ABInBev.

(Source Wikipedia.)

Unfortunate for those who like Spaten and Franziskaner, and dislike the beast. Eliminating jobs and competition, creating and misleadingly marketing faux products, funneling more wealth into fewer hands, and eventually sacrificing quality for profits, these are good reasons to dislike them.