Arriving at work on March 10, 2012, communications manager Sarah Aldrich realized her company had a major problem looming. Founders Brewing Co. was set for their annual one-day release of their most coveted beer Kentucky Breakfast Stout (KBS), and there were already more than 1000 people waiting for the doors to open. With only 315 total cases of beer available...a lot of customers were about to go home empty-handed.

As craft beer has boomed, sometimes it seems there's not much difference between a limited beer release and a former Soviet Union bread line. A lot of standing, a lot of tireless waiting, a lot of men with thick beards, and a lot of impending anger. I should know, I've attended plenty of these things. I've stood in the snow to score Goose Island's Bourbon County Stout and road tripped to Indiana for bottles of Three Floyds' Dark Lord. Recently, I even lined up to buy cans of Green Diamonds Double IPA from Other Half, Brooklyn's hottest brewery of the moment.

Freezing my ass off on that -10 degree wind chill day, I thought to myself, "Dammit, aren't I finally above all this? I'm not like these other schmoes—I actually write about beer for a living!" It was then I decided I had to see how these limited beer releases looked from the other, warmer side of things, from the brewery's point of view. Founders Brewing in Grand Rapids, Michigan was the perfect candidate, so I embedded myself with them for a few days in mid-March during what is known as KBS Week.

Being a beer geek often brings you to cities most people probably never expect to visit. Tillamook, Oregon. Greensboro, Vermont. Grand Rapids, Michigan. Many of these smaller burgs call themselves "Beer City USA," and I'm always skeptical. How could Grand Rapids, a city of just 190,000 make such a claim when places like San Diego and Portland exist? But upon arriving I quickly realized they might actually deserve the lofty title, finding my Holiday Inn's unassuming lobby bar stocked with better craft beer taps than some so-called "good" beer bars in my brew-crazy Brooklyn neighborhood.

Grand Rapids is a remarkable beer-drinking city—I'm not sure I saw a single person tippling wine or spirits my entire time there—and perhaps the only place in the world with enough interest in beer to devote an entire week to just a single offering. Of course, it's not just any offering. KBS is an 11.2% monster of an imperial stout, packed with real chocolate and coffee, then aged for a year in bourbon barrels—one of the first beers to be so treated when it was unveiled in 2003.

After the debacle of 2012, Sarah Aldrich and the team at Founders realized there had to be a better way to get KBS to their fervent fans and so KBS week was created. Monday through Friday, three different bars a night (15 bars total through the week) serve 15 different tappings around the Grand Rapids metro area. On Saturday, it ends with an event at the brewery. The bars selected are of all types and clientele, not just beer geek hot spots. For 2015, there was a hip brewpub, the famed HopCat on the list, but also a pizza joint, Irish pub, and even an Italian-ish sports bar in the 'burbs, Uccello's Ristorante.

This year, as I traveled with the Founders team as they popped from place to place, I couldn't help but notice that they were welcomed like a famous rock band. Their front men were the brewery's affable co-founders, Mike Stevens and Dave Engbers, as well as their head cellarman, Jason Heystek (whose official job title at Founders is, I shit you not, "Lead Guitar"). When we arrived at a spot, we'd all get the Goodfellas treatment, getting whisked through the crowd to a corner table where we'd set up shop and begin schmoozing with beer fans eager in anticipation of the night's tapping.

Even with Founders spreading the wealth to so many bars, there was still minor concern some fans would be shut out. Just last year, a downtown "sports lounge" Peppino's had blown through an entire keg in seven minutes, the tap opened and then split three ways, then never shut off until the last drop was drained. But I noticed no issues this year at any events and it seemed like anyone who wanted a glass got one.

At Uccello's Ristorante's Tuesday tapping, I spoke to Corey Mason. He'd made the five hour drive from Champaign-Urbana and was amazingly headed to Tampa the following weekend for yet another rare beer release event, Cigar City's Hunahpu's Day. "Will travel for beer," he matter-of-factly told me, sounding more like a Deadhead following a band, rather than a guy who travels the country chasing major beer releases. (Surprisingly, he had a wife and a good job back home in Illinois.)

Another group of fans I met at Wednesday's tapping at SpeakEZ Lounge had traveled to Grand Rapids all the way from Korea. I have no clue how they'd even heard of Founders, even if it's currently ranked as one of the world's 100 best breweries by RateBeer. Thomas Friedman said the world is flat, but I think it's just very drunk.

That might also explain the nearly 100,000 people who visited Founders' Eventbrite page on Valentine's Day this year, attempting to pay $5 to RSVP for the chance to eventually purchase three KBS four-packs in-person from the brewery during KBS Week. Reservations went on sale at 11 AM and were gone within the hour. I haven't even mentioned the folks in the other 31 states Founders distributes to that will also attempt to get their paws on a bottle or two when it arrives in their market's stores this month.

With such a desire for people to try this one beer, the layman asks, "Why not just make more?" If only it was so easy. Making barrel-aged beer ain't like cranking out Kraft Singles on a mechanized, processing line. As Engbers explains, "Most limited beers are limited for a reason, whether it's the brewing process or availability of ingredients."

Another change Founders made after 2012 was upping their production by three times the amount. They are currently the largest strictly bourbon barrel-aging brewery in the world—Goose Island is largest for all barrel-aging—with some 5,000 bourbon barrels currently storing beer in caves, yes caves, underneath the city. But that amount can't account for the number of people who want to try this beer, now ranked the #12 beer in the entire world. There aren't just plenty of prideful locals (the brewery counts some 700 members in its select "mug club"), but countless fans across the world.

Aldrich told me KBS amazingly only accounts for about 1% of Founders' annual beer production but she sometimes feels like the marketing team has to put 75% of their total effort behind promoting it. If that sounds like a bad ROI, it's a necessary evil. It's these coveted beers like KBS (or Goose Island's Bourbon County Stout or Three Floyds' Dark Lord) that put breweries on the map. That allow beer fans in, say, Korea, to discover their flagship beers that pay the bills, like All Day IPA in Founders' case, easily their best-selling offering.

Still, I've found when it comes to rare beer releases, someone is always going to get angry. It's just human nature. Fans that were shut out in 2012 immediately flooded Founders' website and social media accounts, angrily lashing out at the brewery (A sampling: "Thanks for making a five hour drive feel like a swift kick in the sack!"). And, again, in 2013 when Brown Paper Tickets's website, then used to RSVP for the bottle release, crashed and deprived certain fans of guaranteed bottles ("This is absolute horseshit!!!!!").

As Aldrich told me, "We're actually lucky and it's a good problem to have. It just means they really care about our brewery a lot—and that's why they get so angry at us when they miss out on something."

It's a similar sentiment my beer geek friends and I have long felt about rare beer releases. Yes, they're tiring, expensive, overly crowded shit shows full of the worst of geeky humanity...but, fuck it, we're still going because it's often the only way to get a taste of these sweet, sweet nectars.

Still, I wanted to know if Engbers thought all this effort was ultimately worth it.

Of course he did.

"We brew the beer, we don't brew the hype. People schedule their vacations around KBS Week and come from all over. That level of engagement with our core customer, the beer enthusiasts who are willing to travel, allows the community that supports the brewery to flourish!"

How Other Breweries Conduct Their Limited Beer Releases

Standing in a long line is the most common way to score rare beers, but some breweries try other methods.

Unannounced

Portland, Maine's Allagash doesn't make much hoopla about their coveted sour ales. When limited beers like Coolship Resurgam are bottled and ready, they're immediately made available in the brewery store, easy as that.

Online Lotteries

A few breweries like St. Louis's Perennial Artisan Ales offer online lotteries. In Perennial's case, you simply enter to try and win the chance to buy a bottle of their acclaimed Barrel-Aged Abraxas should your email address be selected.

All-day Parties

Other breweries figure, if you're already traveling a long distance to score their most desired release of the year, they might as well turn the whole day into a bacchanalian beer party. Such is the case for Three Floyd's Dark Lord Day, Cigar City's Hunahpu's Day, and Surly's Darkness Day.

Members-only Clubs

Of course with certain breweries like The Bruery, de Garde, and Rare Barrel, membership has its privileges. Pony up a few hundred bucks at the start of the year, and you're assured allotments of their limited releases throughout the entire year.



Aaron Goldfarb Aaron Goldfarb lives in Brooklyn and is a novelist and the author of 'Hacking Whiskey.'

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io