Atrial Rubicite Magnums

Phew! That was quite an experience.

This weekend was the first release of one of our barrel-aged, fruit refermented sour beers (Atrial Rubicite) in a large format bottles (1.5L magnums). As a collection of homebrewers turned pro, we’re very, very grateful for the interest, enthusiasm, and enjoyment of our beer. It really means a lot. Jester King was opened in 2010 with a fundamental sense of insecurity that practically no one would enjoy, or frankly purchase, our beer. The fact that the desire for our beer has translated into a viable business is something that’s far from lost on us. To that end, we really appreciate everyone who waited for long hours this weekend for Atrial Rubicite magnums. We understand the situation wasn’t perfect — far from it. We take full responsibility for that, and pledge a better, drama free setup going forward.

As a lot of our supporters will recall, we went through a learning curve on how to effectively manage the release of our 500ml barrel-aged, fruited sour beers. Who can forget the “Funk n’ Line Fest” of 2014? In our opinion, we’d say the release of these beers is now handled pretty well. We like mangum bottles, and we plan to continue to release them. However, managing the release is something we’ll improve upon.

We feel as though this release was a learning experience for us. In hindsight, we should have expected that only fifty bottles per day would create chaos and make emotions run high. Partially in our defense, we were lulled into a false sense of security by the (in our opinion) smoothness of the last several fruited sour releases. For those who feel they got a raw deal, please e-mail me directly (jstuffings@jesterkingbrewery.com), and we’ll try to make it right. We put out a request for people to please not show up before dawn, but we knew we had no way of actually enforcing that policy. So our apologies for the drama, confusion, and frustration/anger that ensued.

We’ll do better going forward. We’ll continue to be a drama free environment going forward (something we pride ourselves on). And we’ll continue to be eternally grateful for the interest in and support of our beer.

Cheers,

Jeff