Any signs of 2011 Gratitude around here? (2-8-2012)

4/10/12 Update: Still no progress, or guess on when it will hapen. Thanks for asking though.

I've been getting a lot of emails on this subject lately, so an update on this year's Gratitude Barleywine is probably overdue. So, let's start off with the timeline...

We brewed what we refer to as "this year's" Gratitude back on November 22nd, 2011 right before Thanksgiving.
After a little over a month of primary and secondary fermentation, we bottled it the first week of the year on January 5th. It worked out to be just slightly over 1,500 bottles, and it's been bottle-conditioning at the brewery ever since.
Between the holidays, all the new bottle releases we've been doing, waiting on Gratitude artwork, and all our attention on our new brewery down the street, things haven't progressed much more beyond that. But we're ready to move it ahead now.
Still ahead: finalizing this year's the label design, Federal TTB label approval of that label, label printing x 1500, bottle waxing x 1500, and signing/numbering x 1500. So as you can see, it will be a while before 2011 Gratitude is ready for release. I'm guessing maybe 2 months or more. Luckily, this beer keeps well - or so I am told.

RELEASE DAY: What I don't know, What I think we'll do, and What I know we'll do...

No, I don't have a date for this yet. I'd rather not announce one until we know we can meet it, but this page is where it will appear first, so check back in anytime.
Right now, I'm thinking we'll do the release at our NEW BREWERY BUILDING. Although the building is mostly just an empty shell, it's got one thing in abundance that we lack in our current space... SPACE. In fact, we might even get all of our regular Brewery Growler Hours operations moved over to the new building by then too. But all of this depends on knocking out a whole bunch of licensing work, building and occupancy permits, followed by the actual work to finishing out the new and improved East End Brewing Growler Room enough to get it functional. And that's a lot to do, so we'll see.
Yes, we have some older vintages of Gratitude that we will be releasing this year, but nothing any sooner. There's not enough of many of years to do our usual "Stacked Verticals", but we've got a little from every year, every color, all the way back to 2005. I haven't taken complete stock of what's here just yet though.
We will definitely move through 100% this vintage Gratitude stock that we've been holding all these years for this very day. (Okay, maybe I'll keep one or two of everything for personal sentimental reasons.) The timing could not be better, since we really need all the cash we can raise to fund the rest of this expansion.
To sweeten the mix, I'm also going to bust out a small stock of oddball bottles from older beers we've released through the years that are still holding up well. Namely, I've got a box or two of Toaster in my personal cellar that I think people might enjoy having. And like I say, we can use the dough.

* 5 out of 7 years of Gratitude: Photo courtesy of Jason Harris. No bowling please.

HOW WILL THE SALES OF VINTAGE BEERS BE HANDLED?

Short answer: I don't know yet.
My current thinking is that maybe we'll do a mixture of sales by Auction, by Wristband (first come, first served), and by Random Chance (either lottery or raffle).
There's one thing I do know though: No matter what we do, some people won't get what they want, and some of those people will be upset about it. But that's just the nature of a limited release, and I don't see a way around it. But I can say that we will do our absolute best to balance all concerns to make this as fair as possible, and we hope that you can understand this too.
Oh, and here's a tip: If you really want a 7 year old bottle of Gratitude for a nice price, buy a bottle of the new stuff and wait 7 years to open it. That's what I do.

DOES THE END OF THE "ROY G. BIV" REALLY MEAN THE END FOR GRATITUDE?

Yes. And No.
Yes: It's the last year for this PACKAGE of Gratitude, and probably the last year we will have to limit production of Gratitude to just 1,500 bottles + a little bit of draft. Next year, it will be brewed on the new Brewhouse and we'll have lots more capacity.
No: We'll still brew this beer once a year, but it will move to a form that we can do more than 1,500 times over without driving ourselves a little bit nuts. Because we really need a significantly less ridiculous package for this beer.
It is without a doubt my personal favorite of any packaging we've ever done here, and among my top 10 of any I've seen in the industry. But as the weight of the work that goes into these bottles looms heavily over us, I've also come to hate this package a bit too. And even when it's done, it's a fragile format, highly succeptible to moisture-releated problems, as some of you have seen with our "Ugly Label" releases of years past... And by then, it's almost time to start thinking about the next year.
I'm not sure what the new form will be like. Maybe just a simple swingtop, maybe a 750ml as we use it today but without the overwrap, wax, signing, numbering. Or maybe something completely new and different to us. I'll add that to my list of things to figure out before next year. Or by this Thanksgiving, as the case may be.

Okay, so that's what I know for now. I'll update this when I know more.

...and here's that further update now. Actually, it's an email reply I just sent to someone (2-21-12):

Last year, over the course of the 5 hours we were open that day, we sold through roughly 2/3 of the 1500 bottles of "current year" Gratitude that we released. The previous year, we sold through about 1/3 of the 1500 bottles. I can't predict what will happen this year, but if we extrapolate these two data points into some sort of guess, we will have exactly enough beer for everyone who comes out that day. Who knows?

We let people in at about 12 noon last year, but by 9am, there was already a line forming at the door. Mostly, this was for the older year "vertical packs" that we don't have stock to do this year. For this year's "vintage stock" of Gratitude and "other previous releases", quantities that we have on hand are all comparatively VERY LOW, so realistically, don't count on landing some.

We may find a creative way to auction, raffle, or random draw for some of this stuff, so that everyone who wants some will get some sort of chance at it, but we haven't had much time to think that through just yet.

Cheers - Scott