Cigar City is no stranger to well-orchestrated releases. From their bold “trickle out” release of California Brandy Hunahpu which alienated a large segment of their fan base, to their teeth gnashing decision to release three barrel aged Hunahpu variants simultaneously, this Tampa-based purveyor of fine libations has become an expert in making sure that any potential customer will “absolutely fucking hate [them.]”
“If we pride ourselves on anything here at Cigar City, it is making things needlessly complicated, expensive, or just outright not delivering on what we promise to the customer,” noted CCB public relations officer, Daniel Jerkins, “we know people want our beers, and we will have failed as a brewery if we leave a patron ever wanting to deal with us again. It is a touchstone of the Cigar City philosophy.”
Most recently, Cigar City made the innovative decision to line up over four thousand people to distribute their prized Hunahpu Stout. “We know people in Florida don’t have much to look forward to beyond retirement communities or latent racism, so we wanted to give something back to the community,” Jerkins stated while scribbling on a chalk board, “it would have been simple enough to separate pickups, or to bifurcate the event from the actual bottle sales, but that simply is not the Cigar City way. We want the customer to know that we regard them with the utmost contempt.” To ensure this level of top-tier customer dissatisfaction, Cigar City decided to use an easily counterfeited ticketing system coupled with a paucity of bottles and a lack of space for attendees to attend their Hunahpu release event.
“We knew it would be a crowd of thousands, so we wanted to ensure that they moved through the line as slowly as possible. Not enough beer for patrons? On it. Not enough guaranteed bottles? Certainly. Having police oust people from the premises? If we did not ensure these standards were met, CCB would be doing a great disservice to its principles of making customers absolutely fucking hate us.” Jerkins proudly noted while he played the following video in gleaming pride, nodding in calm pride:
“You see, the way we closed the gate on the thronging, dissatisfied crowd, that was a touch we worked out early on in marketing discussions. Flawless execution on our part, if I may say so myself,” Jerkins succinctly stated while surveying the police cars outside his Tampa office. “It looks like people are still being dismissed, this really could not have gone any better.” The lamenting of Cigar City patrons had not resounded so loudly since CCB decided to sell Catador Club exclusive beers to the general public. “Well, I cannot take complete credit for angering Catador members nationwide, I will have to defer to Carl Wilkerson for that honor.”
Attendees lamented the lack of Untappd badges earned at the event, a true American tragedy.
At press time Carl Wilkerson was busy fielding angry emails from the contingency of their reserve society, each more disheartened than the last. “Yeah we really pissed em off good with this Catador thing. See, we made a $125.00 club, sold them a previously infected beer without enough units to fulfill even a third of the members, but today we really executed things in a magnificent way,” Wilkerson gleamed gushingly while poring over spreadsheets. “We decided it would be best to reward non-club members with exclusive beers for showing up early and standing in line, you know, contributing to more of the problems we were looking forward to. Some might say to me ‘Hey Carl, why not take those 72 cases of Double Barrel Huna and sell them to the biggest supporters who already paid $125 to be in your poorly organized club?’ to them I ask ‘Who will that piss off?’ There is your answer. We are trying to maximize people’s rage and doing things in an orderly, fair way just wont hit those benchmarks.” Wilkerson explained in great detail how Cigar City expected to maximize the beer nerd rage, “you see, just selling Double Barrel Huna to the peasant tier, non-Catador members would not be enough, we wanted to make a statement. To that end, we decided to set the limit at a case per person and then continue to sell other Catador beers to the mouthbreathing masses. Oh man, the results have been amazing.”
The local Tampa homebrew club showed up in full regalia for the highly anticipated release
Wilkerson strode through the Cigar City premises and looked on lovingly at the paper-thin Gildan Catador Club shirts. “See here, we could have used something above ‘undershirt quality’ for our merchandise, but again, who would that disappoint? Hell, I thought our customers would have seen this coming. We even made the affirmative decision to infect a dopplebock, pasteurize it, then sell it to reward our closest supporters. Make a domain for bottle sales? Not on my watch. We knew early on that bottle sales to Catador members needs to be at the pristine level of frustrating that Cigar City prides itself on,” Wilkerson declared as he blew his nose into one of the Catador Club shirts.
Pictured above, three dissatisfied attendees who found out about stouts nearly three months prior
“This is just the beginning though,” Jerkins announced over the boos from attendees outside his office, “we recently made a press announcement that we would be making this right. To double down on the anger, we asked people to present the item they were most likely to discard, their wristband, you know, really piss them off.” At press time, the complex and highly questionable CCB plan was netting intended results across Facebook:
“My particular favorite aspect of this outreach are the demands from these peasant-tier beer drinkers, as though we really give a shit if they buy White Oak Jai Alai,” Jerkins laughed scrolling through the comments from hundreds of dissatisfied customers. “This year was a huge success, and we are already in talks with the organizers of Dark Lord Day to brainstorm items that we may have missed to really piss people off. It’s like they don’t even realize that Prairie still brews Bomb on a regular basis. Hell, it is a work in progress, but I look forward to kicking our customers in the nutsack on a daily basis: the Cigar City way.”
More details will be made available as they develop.
dontdrinkbeer 
Bro u just mad. My 5 bums I hired as mules for a liter of Night Train got in with forged tickets, and got a case of Huna each! Now Im contacting Catador members to see if they want to buy any at an inflated price.
What are the odds that we used the exact same strategy. I better get my MBC listing up fast then to offload these
Good lord, that read just like an Onion article. Bravo! I chuckled heartily while reading this post
Pffft. Three Floyds has cornered the market on sucking at beer releases. Cigar City, you’re tardy to this party.
Funny write up, I will share my experience:
It was my first year there (I drove down from Atlanta), I booked at the Howard Johnson hotel nearby, I got in line early (waited in line at 10:30 AM, got in the gate at 11 AM). I noticed their ticket scanning system wasn’t working well, but they ‘pretended’ to scan it (I think, I couldn’t really tell). They told me my 3 bottles were guaranteed until 4 PM and after 4 PM, you could buy additional bottles if any extras were left.
Once in the gate at 11 AM, there were some long lines (Toppling Goliath and a couple others) but not many, most lines were immediate. I was able to have between 30 – 40 sample beers between 11 AM and 4 PM (plenty for me), and many nice random strangers were sharing bottle pours with me all morning. I was having a fun time!
I got in line to get my 3 Hunahpu bottles at 12 PM, strategizing to go in line while some people were at lunch. The line was only 5 minutes long and I got my 3 bottles easily for $60 cash. I went in line again at 4 PM and got 1 more bottle, the line was 40 minutes long at that time.
The only DISAPPOINTMENTS for me were MINOR, and were as follows:
1) In the afternoon, people were getting a little rowdy due to the sun and the increased crowd size (and the alcohol, of course).
2) Many special releases I was looking forward to were held until 1 PM
3) Of the 40+ cigar city beers on the list, I only had about 5 of them. I couldn’t find the other 35, and Cigar City was the main reason I went to the festival. Perhaps a cigar city (ONLY) fest in the future would be worth going to, and it would be nice if they published how many bbls / kegs of each beer is present, so guests can strategically choose what they want to wait in line for and what they want to give up.
4) The crowd seemed larger than 3,500, which means someone probably made beaucoup $$$ reselling tickets.
5) I wish I had known the tasting room was open and free on Sunday, but this is not something I can ‘expect’ – and even though I missed this I think it was very generous of them.
Normally I’d be more upset about #3 above, but I had so many other amazing beers that I couldn’t have possibly had any more.
I would go back. Perhaps those who are bitter should consider that someone is refunding 3,500 tickets * $50 ($175,000). Any brewery who hosts thousands of people for free beer and ends up choosing to leave $175,000 on the table is humble and is good in my book. In fact, getting $50 back that I didn’t expect to get back is icing on the cake for me.
Overall, the experience was great – it was the best beer festival I’ve ever been to. I especially liked that I got to try many sours I never would have been able to try otherwise.
It sounds as though you had a nice time. There are several others who would respectfully demur and note that their experience was not congruent with yours.
Read the first few paragraphs. This was way too serious a response.
Also, tl;dr
You’re a moron. Short enough for you to read?
Not really like an onion article, IMO. The Onion has insightful sarcasm. This strikes me more as anonymous bashing of Cigar City with reckless abandon.
A++ commentary, it’s like Mimesis reborn reading your insightful words.
Here’s some insight: Judging by your capitalization, it appears you believe mimesis to be the name of a person. A++ nescient comeback, bro.
Saw the Abraxas 180º. You plan on doing more of that once brewers start responding to your tweets?
Mimesis is a proper noun, that’s why I capitalized it. Here let me put you up on game since you are a grand dragon of literary criticism http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimesis:_The_Representation_of_Reality_in_Western_Literature
I could give a fuck less if Cory responds to my tweets, the fact that you even noticed some minutiae like that demonstrates how you ride my dick like a sybian. Keep grinding.
Mimesis is only a proper noun if you are referring to the book by that name, which I guess was obvious to everyone but me.
More importantly, I DO think you videos can be funny, and at times offer some good commentary about the hard-core craft beer geek scene. But I personally don’t find it interesting or admirable when you anonymously trash breweries and people who are new to beer. At first, you seemed to be doing reviews “in character”. And while I still think you take on certain affectations in your posts, they seem to have morphed from you doing videos as a beer-clown of sorts to you looking down on others through the guise of pseudo hip-hop comedic writing. You really tear into beers, are worse, other people pretty hard. This is easy to do anonymously. Would you say the same things if your identity was public?
So there’s my criticism. I think you’re good at writing humorous stuff, and you obviously are a serious craft beer hobbyist. But I think you could do the same exact thing while not using the crutch of tearing others down. It’s easy to mock Cigar City by tearing them down and ridiculing everything they do. I think it would be much more impressive to be just as funny, but also offer some perspective that your followers could learn from. Or at the very least, if you’re gonna trash people that hard, at least have the balls enough to not hide your identity. Love or hate, people would have to respect the fact that you were at as open about yourself as you are about your dislike for certain beers/people.
Make fun of me all you want, I really don’t care. I’ll still read your stuff from time to time as it is. But I’d much rather have you truly become The Onion for beer geeks.
I referenced Mimesis within the framework of your criticism of my writing. The capital “M” should have been indicative that I was referring to arguably one of the most famous works of literary criticism ever written. Again, it’s that community college level writing level that is likely muddying the waters.
Clearly the majority of the narrative offered within the reviews is either hyperbole or understatement for comedic effect and should be treated as such. If it fails to be funny and you find it offensive, that seems like an aesthetic valuation which will be pervasive on every subjective appraisal. There are others who find the material very entertaining and I will not denature the site to attract a wider, casual audience.
I tear into beers with flaws because no one else does so. Most beer blogs are a fountain of gladhanding secretly wishing for kickbacks or accolades from brewers. I could give a fuck less and have the liberty to comment upon things that most tickers won’t address, therein lies a latent merit, albeit caustic in execution. I recognize that you appreciate the more palpable Don Quixote/misinformed DDB vedeo revue character, notwithstanding, the written reviews have remained consistent in constructive criticism and imagery. Please give me some examples where I personally attacked someone on a completely unwarranted basis. Did Catador Club not use Gildan shirts? Did they not sell 72 cases of Double Barrel Huna at a case a piece when they sold 2 bottles to club members? There are salient points worthy of comment and ridicule. Your bruised cervix or not knowing more about my personal life fails to change this facts.
Anonymity has nothing do with the opinions posited because it fails to invalidate the points that I have presented. One may argue that it makes them less credible because overstatement is more possible because I somehow wish to protect my “public beer image” but again, zero fucks given. I don’t have a reputation in the beer world worthy of protecting. I am capable of being completely dismissed and Fat Tire drinkers can feel free to do so. I am not in the industry, that stance makes me capable of saying what so many brewers and bottle shop owners wish they could say and I have been told same repeatedly. I provide a different value outside the constructs of what you feel is valuable in the beer world. I am fine with that.
Perhaps this site just isn’t for you. There is still BeerAdvocate and plenty of other innocuous sites for you to enjoy where no one actively presents topics worthy of discussion with any tinge of acerbity.
For your final point, you are essentially presenting the timeless “Bill Cosby Paradigm” of comedy. “You should still be hilarious but not at the expense of anyone, despite how deserving they are.” Again, you can go watch Jeff Dunham or Larry the Cable Guy if you want paper thin narratives on low hanging fruit. I shouldn’t have to strip down my content for your pussyhurt feelings, or deconstruct the underlying message and coat it with a sugar glaze for the suppository to be easier for you to swallow. Again, my hidden identity fails to invalidate my points about Catador Club, the event itself, or the flaws in execution on the part of Cigar City. It would just give someone a mouthpiece to undercut with tu quoque or irrelevant objections.
I hope you keep reading, you make some valid points but I won’t ratchet back the quality of my content or undermine the narrative and spirit of this site to make it easier for the uninitiated to digest. I refuse to water-down the content to attract more readers and I think tickers respect DDB more for it. This site is for a select penumbra in the beer community and your objections demonstrate that perhaps DDB is not a compatible outlet for levity.
Some people beat off to Maxim, others like Motherless.
I appreciate the that you are going after a subsection of craft beer drinkers, and that people like the site. I like the site – at times.
But lording over other people who are just trying to enjoy good beer (“I just found out what a stout is”) isn’t noble or warranted in my opinion. Likewise, trashing a brewery with a completely one-sided approach isn’t constructive criticism. By leaving out significant info about counterfeit tickets, etc., it becomes an invalid critique. Perhaps this is what you mean by the “Bill Cosby Paradigm”. This also isn’t fair. I’m not saying you shouldn’t write negative reviews. Cigar CIty fucked up. Everyone realizes that. THEY realize that. But there’s more to what happened than that, which I’m also sure you realize. It’s not that your anonymity invalidated the points. It was the lack of context that invalidated your points. Your entire narrative revolved around the fact that Cigar City didn’t care about it’s customers, and in fact foresaw the issues but decided to not put any procedures in place that could help prevent them. That’s bogus. What I’d like to see if you actually tackle the issue of beer releases – something very very much of interest to the tickers who read this site and whom you write for. THAT’S what I mean by I’d like to see more. It’s easy to be anonymously elitist.
Also, the most offensive thing written yet is equating Bill Cosby to Larry The Cable Guy! That’s messed up. I think you’re narratives can be paper thin. Too much Dice Man, not enough Richard Pryor.
Furthermore, yeah CC uses Gilden shirts. So what? What does that say about them> Does it say the same thing about Prairie or Tired Hands, who have also used Gilden shirts? Christ, we have to be elitist about the shirts too? If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.
I don’t think I’ve asked you to decrease the quality of your content. I’ve asked that you improve it. You can do this while keeping or changing your narrative. But I think you’ve gotten into a place where being elitist IS the narrative. And while that used to seem tongue in cheek, now it seems all too real. And I would argue that having actual constructive critiques would attract a more casual audience, but rather a more educated reader.
As to saying your anonymity. You’ve invalidated the reasons I gave, so I’ll leave it to you. Why do you post anonymous?
While I’m asking questions:
What causes the animosity towards other beer drinkers? You say your criticisms are warranted, so what has anyone done to you or your ilk to deserve that?
Is every beer you trash technically flawed, or rather not to your preference? If it’s not to your preference, then what makes the criticism warranted?
Thanks
First and foremost, this is not a beer journalism outlet. There are plenty of content aggregators who will repost release info and press releases to churn up hits. I don’t need to re-spam beer news to pander to people who don’t give a shit about the ongoings of items they have already seen. Furthermore, I can safely say next to no one took this Huna piece literally as some hard hitting beer news. It was a comedy piece and should be viewed in that light. You stated that you want to see DDB become the Onion of the beer world but then demand a fair and balance narrative with accurate facts…just like the Onion? The Onion has never needed to post a retraction for their works of fiction which are based on reality simply because their readers know exactly what is being presented. It would be absurd to hold DDB to the some Pulitzer standard of excellence when the readers understand that CCB likely cares about their customers and don’t actually go around blowing their noses in Catador Club shirts. I don’t need to clarify this for 99.9% of my readers because they have the wherewithal to know “this is a work of satire, not some exposee piece about fictional CCB workers that I should view with the utmost gravitas.”
What you are essentially positing is that I present a joke and then immediately thereafter deconstruct any humor in the joke by presenting a factual counterpoint to my work of fiction. That is absurd and not demanded of any fiction writer. You are correct, it sacrifices the journalistic integrity of DDB. This is what logicians identify as a “vacuous statement” because DDB has no journalistic integrity.
If my narratives are paper thin, then positing disclaimers and counterpoints to what are clearly absurd positions are not warranted. If I posted “I AM GOING TO MASTURBATE IN YOUR BEER CELLAR” I hardly need to attach a PDF addenda letting my reader base that it is not my intention to break into their basements and engage in some autoeroticism, everyone already got that, well, almost everyone it seems.
I think the most salient point is that the highbrow condescending jokes are well tread territory, and I can respect that and I completely agree. Much of what I present is tired schtick, and somehow people keep coming back for more, with more viewers every day. I will attempt to diversify the commentary with different devices but that seems more like a QC issue rather than a fundamental problem with the site.
With regards to why I remain anonymous, the answer is simple: I don’t owe my identity to my readers. In fact, I don’t owe my readers shit. They come here for free yucks and read 900 word pieces that I have wasted hours of my life writing. That is the extent of my duty to everyone who, until your post, seemed to understand that this is not my job and none of them felt entitled to know my name and a bevy of personal details about myself that would add little to nothing to the DDB experience of reading tired ass jokes.
With regards to animosity towards beer drinkers, I think your irony compass is demagnetized, razzing the neophytes is done in good humor and furthermore, they aren’t going to make it to DDB anyway. The average Beeradvocate user is going to content himself to debate pumpkin ales or the pressing issue as to whether Hopslam IS that good. They will not penetrate this deep into the butthole of the beer world. Making light of those who know little is a form of catharsis to people who have made beer a significant part of their life over and beyond stopping at a Binny’s after work. I am here for those people, if someone who is excited about Narwhal stumbles upon this page, good for them. They will not appreciate the jokes or references, and they will go post on the reddit beer group about how unfunny DDB is. I call that mission accomplished.
No one has done anything to me and I don’t have an axe to grind, satirizing hypothetical beer newbz hardly creates a victim caste. The day I get a serious heartfelt email from someone new to beer who is genuinely upset because I made fun of “him” in the abstract as someone new to craft beer for not knowing production numbers on the late 90’s Santes, I will issue a legitimate apology and include a referral to a list of competent psychiatrists to treat this person.
You final point about subjective experiences in general addresses as to whether beer can ever be truly “reviewed” since everything is reductible to preference. Clearly I am reviewing to my “preference” since I do not have an objective apprehension of beer in the abstract. I shouldn’t have to qualify every beer review and note that it is predicated on opinion, that should be understood implicitly. I am not tasting beers outside the scope of myself as a single perceiving thing, so arguing whether criticism if warranted makes no sense. When would criticism NOT be based upon preference? I cannot fathom instances where something contrary to one’s tastes would somehow garner immunity from any form of criticism. The question is the implicit VALUE of the person perceiving and their subsequent input.
I have had quite a few beers, I attempt to provide context based upon my experiences, since intersubjective descriptions are the only thing that one can provide. Whether my impressions are somehow more worthwhile is a matter of taste predicated upon my reader’s approximation of my palate, bias, etc. The concepts of the mind (capital B- Beer Understanding) and the perceptions or intuitions that garner information from phenomena (capital S- Beer Sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension.
So because I have an opinion based upon my personal preference, my criticism is warranted. It is warranted with the respect that it is as equally worthless as everyone else’s opinions, the only difference being that several thousand people read my impressions on a daily basis.
Beyond the dick jokes, DDB serves a legitimate function and I am confident that hundreds of readers understand this. I will not tailor Dontdrinkbeer to your conception of what it should be, but you are welcome to garner a following with your own website. God knows there aren’t enough beer blogs out there just yet.
The arguments you are assigning to me are silly, and seem to be more for the sake of a retort than to further a discussion. Nobody is saying your posts are taken literally or should be taken as balanced news reporting, that you should have disclaimers about what is or isn’t a joke, or that beer criticism isn’t inherently subjective. You say your criticisms are warranted, then call your writing fiction. You seem to want it both ways. You don’t want to dilute any content for the sake of your readers, or even stop with the played-out rhetoric, but then say you don’t owe them anything. Then why use them as a reason for remaining anonymous? Whatever.
I don’t understand the all-encompassing elitism in everything you do, including your replies. You seem to have a need to put others down in relation to you. Your need to chase the rarest beers in the world – which you insinuate to also be the best. Cork and Cage New Belgium is great. The same beer in a bomber, a shelf turd. And a six pack beer from that brewery, such as Fat Tire, is utterly beneath you. You use language in these replies that are florid to the point of being farcical. You making fun of someone for not picking up on a reference to a literally critique by saying they went to community college speaks more about you than anyone else. I suspect you may be trying to make use of that private university English degree daddy paid for?
Whatever, you don’t care anyway, right? Even though you defend tooth-and-nail everything you do. You don’t care about your readers, or the brewers of the beers you spend time and resources seeking out, or much of anything. If you say so. You have no interest in a discussion, which is why you distort things. No you aren’t the Onion. Again, you want it both ways. You want to have warranted criticisms, yet remain behind a wall of complete fiction when convenient. You don’t want make your claims publicly, but refuse to say why. We all know why. Because you are afraid of the blow back. Or at least you would be if you cared about anything. Which you don’t.
You feel you can say inflammatory things, but be completely self-righteous about them. Anyone who doesn’t agree is a pussy and needs to get off your dick. Noted. You can be funny. You are a good writer. If you need to constantly, CONSTANTLY put yourself above others, then have at it. It’s weird, and doesn’t put you in the best light. But fuck light, you don’t care about it anyway.
I’ll leave it at that. We’ve spent too much time on this already. This is the last time I’ll look at this post, so reply so you can get the last word in, and move on. If you want to actually further the discussion I’d be happy to do so. Why not do it in public, as ourselves? Maybe record it so everyone can see! If you truly don’t care, then I don’t see why you’d have a problem with that either. Probably can’t be bothered, huh? That’s fine. It’s cowardly, but it’s fine. I DON’T CARE.
Keep up the good work. I don’t mean that ironically either. You can be funny, and you know a lot about hard to find beer. I look forward to seeing how the blog grows in the future.
All good man. Not trolling, you make some legitimate points. Thanks for the thoughtful responses, seriously.
After reading DDB for the past few months, I took this article for what it was when I read the title – a comedy piece. After reading & hearing about what went down at Huna Day, just the title of the article alone was enough for me to know that anything that came after only had the intent to entertain.
Just read the comment section. Jesus…I work In the beer biz my friends are all brewers or work in the beer biz. We all read DDB because it’s funny and we can all relate to the humor! Please don’t change! I had the pleasure of a pedio bear shit was great! Send some more to Libby so I can drink it.