Little Beeracles

[NathPowe]

Howdy,

I thought I’d share this little anecdote with the group. Not homebrew-related, but there’s definite beer-nerdery herein.

A while back I began having an issue finding freshies of one of my favorite beers (I’m not gonna name names - seems proper). When I say an issue finding freshies I mean that everything I could find was 6 months old. Now this beer is a really hoppy beer, and I’m less than excited about paying for 6 month-old really hoppy beers. And mind you, this isn’t happening at just one store, but at several different retailers. Naturally I mentioned it to the managers on duty at each location and got the expected ‘Yeah, we’ll check it out’. And yet, upon each return visit, the same old beer remained (same date stamp).

Finally I figured what the hell, I’ll email the brewery, and I did. The same day I received a response from a friendly sales rep saying he appreciated me letting him know about the situation and that he’d like to meet up and give me some freshies of the aforementioned really hoppy beer. So naturally I’m stoked and after an email we set up a meet at a bar promo he’s doing.

Fast-forward a couple weeks.

A few hours ago I met up with said sales dude. Cool guy. After introductions he goes on to tell me the story of how I uncovered a significant mix-up in their warehouse/shipping situation. Apparently it was kind of a big thing and very helpful. Basically, my understanding is that there were some fresh pallets of beer on top of a bunch of 6 month-old pallets and this resulted in a mix-up that had them thinking that all of the beer was fresh – and they were shipping it as such (something like that… there has been Stone Enjoy By involved). Thus all the 6 month-old beer I've been finding.

Anyway, sales dude then tells me that, as a result, he has no freshies for me (should be on the shelves in the next week or so) but that he assumed I was a beer nerd (valid) and had something special. He then busts out a cold can of Heady Topper. I live in NC and have never had it… so I was pretty stoked to say the least.

So as I sit here on my couch, listening to The Black Crowes (Before the Frost... awesome) and enjoying a can of Heady on this Wednesday evening, I just wanted to remind ya’ll that Little Beeracles do happen every once in a while.

This stuff really is mighty fine.

 

[coldcrash]

karma

 

[daksin]

Noice

 

[KurtB]

So if I have this straight, your email clears up a "significant mix-up" in the warehouse, and all you got was a can of Heady Topper? While that is great, and more than they had to do - especially considering Heady Topper is not available in your area, I would have figured that the sales rep would have hooked you up with some additional "give away" SWAG that I think all sales guys carry around (t-shirt, keychain, glassware, stuff like that). Regardless, the way they handled it was a lot better than what they could have done which was fixed the warehouse issue, and either ignored your email, or sent a reply telling you to check the shelves in another few weeks.

When Deschutes first was released here in Illinois, they had a bad problem with diacetyl in the early run of Red Chair NWPA that the sent to the Chicago area. One of the guys in our home brew club sent them an email about it (the beer was a real butter bomb), and in return they sent him a fresh 6 pack, a t-shirt, and some other SWAG, along with a very nice note apologizing for the quality issue and thanking him for bringing it to their attention. Because Deschutes knew he was a home brewer, they even went so far as to explain in quite a bit of detail how they felt the diacetyl problem came about as a byproduct of ramping up production too quickly on some new equipment and not being careful enough with the process changes that new equipment can bring about (much like in home brewing).

Heady Topper is a great thing, and with demand for it being high, "fresh" is not a problem.