I have to tell you, this has been a really challenging month as the shutdown of the federal TTB office which approves new beer recipes and labels has impacted a number of beers we had slotted for Q4. The nature of the products featured in The Rare Beer Club™, which are often exclusive products brewed just for our members and new products to the US market, has made us much more susceptible to being affected by the government shutdown.
The fact that I just happened to be wearing my Jolly Pumpkin t-shirt on the day that we rated a potential replacement beer for their Los Vivos y Los Muertos, a pumpkin lime saison brewed exclusively for The Rare Beer Club™, was bittersweet to say the least. We’re all pretty bummed that we had to delay bringing this special beer to our members, but after we tasted Malheur’s Zestig, labeled a Belgian strong golden ale (we all felt was more of a strong Belgian IPA), we began to feel a bit like there was in fact a silver lining to the predicament we were facing.
Man, did we ever get lucky finding a solid replacement for JP. We called dozens of importers, distributors and breweries before stumbling across Zestig. The fact that Malheur translates to “misfortune” seems a bit ironic as this is a brand new product from the brewery and only a little over a 100 cases have been sold in the US in very limited distribution. It was indeed our good fortune that we were able to secure all but about 60 cases of what the importer has left on the floor for our members. So you could say it’s got a good “rareness” story…but how’s the beer? One word: Outstanding. You’re gonna love it. What an impressive beer. We were all blown away and felt that in some strange way this was all meant to be as we now can bring our members both outstanding beers, both of which are virtually RBC exclusives. We’ll have the full tasting notes for Zestig up on our site early next week if you’re interested.
One last parting thought. I want to reassure our members that we will in fact get Los Vivos y Los Muertos to you one way or another, either as a special offer or in a future month. Thank you for your patience.
Prost!
Kris
