The Bar Towel

How bad (or good) were the lines?

sprague11 wrote:How bad (or good) were the lines?

I was at the Leaside location. Exactly the same set up and lines as last year, except they were giving out Double Tempest samples this time. No events at this location but the people in line were friendly and you can wait inside.

If you arrived any later than 10 mins before it went on sale, it looked like a 30 min line or so. Not sure when/if it will sell out. Most people were buying maximum 6 bottles.

Lots of bottles and no lines at the waterfront. The event is fairly crowded and the band is deafening. I'm happier on the patio in the cold, but I'm not one for crowds.

That said, the beer list is terrific. The El Jaguar in particular is outstanding. I also thoroughly enjoyed the Gose, which I think is too tart to be to style.

When I left around 4ish, they had about 20 cases left at the QQ location. They're expecting to run out tomorrow.

According to one of the guys in the retail store, the reason why there are literally triple the amount of bottles this year was that they felt bad that they were forced to drop the ABV from 14% to 11.9% due to LCBO retail regulations. Apparently the last two releases were higher than they legally should've been. Anyone know more details?

Napalm Frog wrote:When I left around 4ish, they had about 20 cases left at the QQ location. They're expecting to run out tomorrow.

According to one of the guys in the retail store, the reason why there are literally triple the amount of bottles this year was that they felt bad that they were forced to drop the ABV from 14% to 11.9% due to LCBO retail regulations. Apparently the last two releases were higher than they legally should've been. Anyone know more details?

I believe that the LCBO (and breweries I think) can only sell beer up to 12%. Above that, you have to have a distillers licence. Pretty sure that Flying Monkeys got one a few years ago so they could brew whatever they wanted.

(I might be wrong, so someone correct me if I am!)

MattS wrote:

Napalm Frog wrote:When I left around 4ish, they had about 20 cases left at the QQ location. They're expecting to run out tomorrow.

According to one of the guys in the retail store, the reason why there are literally triple the amount of bottles this year was that they felt bad that they were forced to drop the ABV from 14% to 11.9% due to LCBO retail regulations. Apparently the last two releases were higher than they legally should've been. Anyone know more details?

I believe that the LCBO (and breweries I think) can only sell beer up to 12%. Above that, you have to have a distillers licence. Pretty sure that Flying Monkeys got one a few years ago so they could brew whatever they wanted.

(I might be wrong, so someone correct me if I am!)

I was curious about the abv drop, how was it achieved? Also, Skeleton key was well north of 12%. LCBO sold Utopias numerous times. What up?

And the LCBO was selling Bush Pilot Norsemen, an Ontario contract brewery, at 14.5% just a year ago.

Might well have got my numbers wrong, but definitely remember talk of distillers licences a few years ago.

I ran in and out in 2 minutes at esander around 2:30pm. No line, nobody in the retail shop.

GLB just released two 11.9% abv imp stouts this past week. Perhaps this is a recent thing?

Bellwoods BYOD will be released at the end of this month. Last year it was 12.2%, so we'll see if they are limited by this 11.9% thing too.

I'm very curious if this is true about the ABV cap. Given the LCBO's arbitrary rules it wouldn't surprise me.

The fact that the previous 2 years were 14% and clearly labeled as such mean either someone got incorrect information or the LCBO is incompetent. I'm pretty sure we're all leaning the same way between those two haha...

Just picked up from the brewery (Esandar Dr.) and I'd say there's about 150 bottles of Double Tempest remaining on display.

Does anyone know what the deal with the regular version of Tempest is this year? I've heard numerous rumours that there won't be a regular version this year, but I haven't heard any reason why. Amsterdam dodged my question about it on Twitter.

Just stopped in at the Esandar location at opening and there were exactly 6 bottles left. I bought four, so two remain. I figured that it was fitting that as the second person in line last year I should leave a couple bottles to be the second to last person this year.