Here is the question: What breweries are good at doing releases of multiple special release beers on a day or at a party and what was it do you think that made them successful? After a couple of releases I've seen with limits too high or too low, slow lines, ambiguous rules for ordering, slow checkout, incorrect orders.... I'm wondering if anyone has seen someone who seemed to have it together and how did they do it.
I went to my first release back in November at Hardywood for GBS. Although I have nothing to compare it to, I thought they did a great job. I went to both the pre-release and release. The pre-release is just a bottle sale where you buy and then leave the premises. I'd estimate there were at least 500 people in line ahead of me when I got there and I was able to get bottles within 45 mins. The release party itself I thought was slightly disorganized as there were multiple locations to get bottles from and wasn't quite as easy to know which line to get in. Other than that, it still seemed to be moving along pretty quickly. I'm not sure how long the main lines took since we found a "backdoor" by going to a shorter line for one of the tasting rooms, which also were selling bottles. Our line took about 15 mins before we were inside and able to get a pint and the bottles. I'd attribute a lot of the success to the checkout system they have. They use tablets (ipads I think) and they're some of the fastest swipe systems I've seen at any retail location. People were able to pick up their beer and pay within 30 seconds. They had 7 or 8 of these setup and had all of the bottles in close proximity prepackaged in 4 packs (which was the limit). I actually couldn't believe how fast it was once it was my turn.
So, multiple beer bottle releases. That excludes New Glarus' recent R&D VSB release which was excellent and well-done, but still a single beer release. The Good: Dark Horse 4elf: they did it right this year. You lined up to get numbered order sheets at 6am, turned them in at 7am and you could start picking up orders (in numerical order) at 11am. They already put together the orders so they would just have to bring it over to the register, you paid and they took it to your car. Aside from freezing my ass off overnight and seeing people fighting each other over cutting in line, it was actually a well-done bottle release. The Bad: Haven't really had any "bad" bottle release experiences and can't really contribute here with the exception of the next category. The Ugly: Kuhnhenn Winter Solstice: what a clusterfuck. I lined up at around 8AM, got #225. They started filling orders at 9am. I eventually got my order filled at 3:45PM. Basically they had no idea what they were doing and were filling orders at a rate of like 25 orders a hour. Fun party but a horrible bottle release and even though BB4D and BBBW are fantastic beers, I wouldn't do it again. What's more, they only made 100ish bottles of Rye French Toast and still had it as Limit 2 so it was all gone by the 60's. I wasn't going to get it either way, but what's up with that? I felt bad for the guys who showed up to the party the night before, went to the hotel to sleep and got numbers in the 300's. Especially the guys who are out-of-towners who wanted to leave before a snowstorm hit that evening. Kuhnhenn gonna Kuhnhenn...
I've never been to a special release with multiple bottles but in 2013 I did go to KBS, Dark Lord, Darkness, and 4 Elf. KBS and Dark Lord are ticketed but KBS allows you to acquire your beers over a 4 day period before the release party so that's the easiest way to get beers. I stood in line at least two hours to get my Dark Lord. Advantage Founders. Darkness and 4 Elf are first come first serve. I got to Darkness early with the intent to camp out. The bottle share the night before was awesome, I was in the first group to get wristbands, Omar brought out kegs of Cacao Bender at 7 AM. I bought a beer once I got in the gate and got my Darkness before I finished drinking the beer. Literally a less than 5 minute wait. There was never a line for beer for anyone with a wristband. 4 Elf was exactly like described above. I got there at 4 AM and was 303rd in line. Got everything I wanted and the tap list was pretty amazing. If I had to choose between Darkness and 4 Elf I would go with....Undecided. Surly wins on everything up until the party begins but Dark Horse has a better party. Better tap list and kangaroo burgers, reindeer, and camel kabobs beats the shit out of food trucks any day. Music at Darkness was the best of the year.
