Richmond, Virginia was recently the scene of yet another fiendish feeding frenzy over an extremely limited, highly thought of beer. Founders "Kentucky Breakfast Stout". KBS is also a beer that allocated which means a store gets what it gets typically based on an establishments sales on a given brewery's core brands. Such is the way of wholesalers to try to be fair. Some may not like this model but I find it to be reasonable. But this entry is not necessarily about allocations, at least not in reference to wholesalers.
Richmond is the home of a handful of independently owned bottle shops and grocers/markets that carry great selections of craft beer. Richmond is also home to a few national chains that focus on craft beer as well. Lastly Richmond has a great selection of craft friendly restaurants as well. So lets say (and I'm being generous) that the greater Richmond area received 50 cases of KBS....that's roughly 1200 bottles.... And there's likely less than 5 sixtels of draft floating around.... That seems like plenty but not when you consider the following....
There's a local beer group (forum) on Facebook in Richmond which has approximately 1450 members.... Take out those folks who don't actually live in Richmond, then add in the folks who live in Richmond but aren't members of that Facebook group....I'm keeping the number at 1450. If everyone of those 1450 beer lovers wanted some KBS then that would be about 0.86 bottles per person. That's if all establishments selling it were selling partial bottles.
In Richmond we had everything from tickets being handed out to be able to purchase 2 bottles, shops selling singles only as well as shops selling the entire 4 pack. Some restaurants were also selling bottles to go. There is no right way to go about the sale of a beer like this so every retailer does what he or she feels the most comfortable with and what works for their individual practice. There's never enough to go around and people inevitably get frustrated and even mad, throwing about bad statements about stores and distributors....it's a nightmare. But is it worth it? The beer is phenomenal and I am personally happy to deal with the few hours of headache to hopefully get a bottle...
There is also this to consider. The craft beer community grows exponentially every single day! Countless numbers leaving Bud and Miller et al for better quality and flavor. I'm all for it! The craft consumer grows much faster than the craft brewer so there is inevitably less of each beer every year. Sure Founders has increased production, but they've also expanded to 3 new huge territories this year as well as added countless fans and followers. And let's face it, that cave can only be so big!
There are always going to be folks new to craft who have the capacity to get to the bottle before some who have been following for years. Fine by me! The 20 something college kid who just had his first 60 minute IPA last night may very well be the future brewmaster of my favorite brewery some day!! Patrick Rue and the Floyd's, Greg Koch and Sam Calagione, Firestone and Walker and countless others all had their first craft beer at some point.
This is just my observation and opinion. I'm not right. I'm not wrong. I'm just a lover of great beer with a slightly higher tolerance to deal with releases like this.
Cheers!
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