Piss-Up In Brewery "Disorganised" - Official

Another week, and another seasonal beer release for those legendary respecters of beer, the spoogebeerians, to get into a frenzy over. This time it was the release of Batch 5 of Captain Lawrence's Cuvee de Castleton, along with very limited batches of their latest Barrel Select Series beers. Bottling runs of fewer than 250 for the Barrel Select stuff had the spoogerbeerians vibrating at higher than normal frequency.

Last time there was a release, a drunken punter managed to attract the attention of the local police, prompting brewery owner Scott Vaccaro to email this:

After the last release I was not sure if I would be able to do another at our current location due to a very unhappy land lord and local police. Without going into details as to what happened last time, I would just ask that you all enjoy the bounty of beers that are available for tasting prior to the release responsibly, and remember to keep in control of both your person and your bladder. We will not sell or serve beer at anyone that appears intoxicated

The brewery put a portaloo in their parking lot, and put out one of those numbered ticket dispensers so people could simply rock up, get their ticket for a place in the queue, and then go away. As usual though, the whole thing went wrong. Hoax reports on Beer Advocate about tickets, people turning up in the early hours to get their own tickets, and take handfuls more to trade to later arrivals. Queue-jumping - one notorious hoarder went in three times, buying over 20 bottles with, allegedly, a nod and a wink from Scott Vaccaro; people buying without tickets, other arrivals (one group, supposedly at 2.30am) left completely empty-handed. One guy seemingly had a box of beer stolen from the boot of his car, while another set fire to his trousers by standing too close to a space heater. All that was missing was the Keystone Cops, from the sound of it all.

And, predictably, the fallout on the ticker forums is full of recrimination and bile. Some people excused the queue-jumping and ticket trading because the beer would 'stay in the community', leading to incredulous enquiries about the writer's mental state. One Beer Advocate was moved to comment thus:

This culture of frenzied beer releases and fake advocacy is really wearing thin. "Respect Beer", how about respecting rules and honesty instead instead of cheating, cutting, making it this big insider thing. It's retarded and it's lame that you're bitching about people who point these things out.

So, why do the brewers do it, if they're risking problems from neighbours, landlords and police? Well, I hear that Captain Lawrence took $25,000 in CASH on the day. Very handy. And what about the beer? Well, eBay already has a couple of bottles up, being generously touted at a mere 300% mark-up. These tickers cut their own throats, don't they?

'Beer's Black Market'

The estimable Washington Post has shone its investigative light on the sordid secondary market for spooge beer. Read the whole thing here. Woodward and Bernstein would be proud.

Of course, readers of my own estimable (?) e-organ would have picked up on this dark and unseemly activity in posts past. The Post's article is interesting in including views from such tickerific brewers as Lost Abbey, The Bruery and Stone. Greg Koch offers an interesting view, which I tend to agree with, that it isn't necessarily drinkability that drives this market, it's rarity. Hence RRBC's Framboise For The Cure going at $400 a bottle, and not a penny of that profit finding its way to the charity intended to benefit from its sale. Yet, if RRBC had offered it at double its original $12 price, they'd have been slaughtered by the same tickers for hyping the price.

I've been monstered for criticising the beer fanboy websites which offer trading forums driving some of this secondary market. Many of their members believe that it would all stop if these brewers bucked their ideas up and geared up to meet all demand. It doesn't seem to occur to them that not all brewers are in it for reasons other than global market domination. They simply can't accept they might miss a beer, and move on. I've been there and, trust me, it's not a happy place.

It will be interesting to see how ebay responds to this. Will they stop sales of 'collectible containers' (wink wink)? Police the listings looking for newly-released beers? I imagine their present ambivalence is partly driven by the easy money they rake off from this spooge. I expect the traders will find other ways to knock their spooge out - I believe Craigslist is used for this market, including to recruit mules for people who can't get to launch events. I'll be watching the reaction to this with interest...

(By the way, anybody interested in a 2005 Dark Lord?)

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Then have a look here for the next few days. A Thousand Beer Vouchers American! For a bottle of beer!

Story from the shadowy Beer Underground is that this beer was very nice on release some five years or so back. Locals knowing it was a one-off anniversary brew (Sarah Palin?), bought up a few cases, and have been slowly dripping it into the spooge beer pool as tradebait. The seller in this case has been on HateBeer to explain his motives. Seems he wants to sell some spooge in order to buy his dad some Remy Martin Louis XIII brandy, which is supposed to sell at anything from $1,600 to $3,000 a bottle.

Another one of my Underground contacts says the buyer might have to prepare themselves for disappointment. He says he had information that a bottle opened recently had aged "into shit territory", so buyer beware. Of course, if a spoogebeerian is buying it, it won't be for drinking. Dear me no. It'll be straight into his Beer Mausoleum, probably in a little refrigerated display case with some tasteful display lighting.

I don't think I've ever tried any Midnight Sun beers, but some very good stuff occasionally emerges from Alaska. Safeway and Beers Of Europe used to sell Alaskan beers, giving rise to weirdness where I could buy a case of their 2004 Smoked Porter here, and had to take bottles back to New York, since the beer wasn't available there.