(Placentia, CA) – Through no fault of their own, craft beer fans play the role of Steve Urkel once again.
[9/1 Update: Official Statement below.]
Official statement just received through email:
“The response was not unprecedented. In fact, the precedent was set last year when hundreds of our beloved fans stood anxiously around our building for hours on end, trying to get themselves a ticket into our Black Tuesday celebration. We hoped, and still believe, that online sales would be a far more convenient way for us to sell the tickets and for you to get them without having to waste an entire day in our parking lot without a promise of beer. Unfortunately, the company who runs our ecommerce server didn’t seem to think the response would be so great. We did all we could and warned them numerous times in the past two weeks, even reminding them yesterday that this morning was going to be crazy, but you know how that story ends.
Clearly, things didn’t end up going to plan. The server crashed before we could even update the page with the sales info due to constant refreshes in the minutes just before 9am. We’re sorry. If there was something we could have done immediately to remedy this we would have, but along with the server, our internet also kicked the bucket. We couldn’t even send an email to update everyone. In fact, this email isn’t even being written from The Bruery offices.
On that note, here is your update.
BLACK TUESDAY TICKETS WILL BE ONSALE TOMORROW AT 9AM. We are setting up a new, dedicated server and we are told that it will work. All of the below info still remains true. If for some reason this changes, we will email you tonight or prior to 9am tomorrow.
We are extremely sorry for this hiccup in our planning and we hope it didn’t ruin your mornings or your opinion of our beer.”
Original post:
This morning was the big ticket sale for The Bruery Black Tuesday, one of those “whales” in the world of beer trading and one of what I dubbed “The Big Six.” Instead of going off as planned, the sale, which was to begin at 9am PST, never took place. Living up to its name, the site imploded as fans of the beer named after the stock market crash, overloaded the server.
The Bruery has announced on Twitter that server issues will be fixed and that the sale will now be moved to Thursday at 9AM PST. Chatter has been rampant on the boards and social media sites today. Click here for the Beer Advocate thread, here for the RateBeer thread and here for the Twitter feed.
As part of a brief statement posted on The Full Pint, The Bruery said, “Our server, after being reassured several times by the server company, crashed. We are really sorry about this.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time that something like this has happened. Back in March, there was the St. Patrick’s Day massacre in which beer fans took down the Shopify website during the sale of Three Floyds Dark Lord tickets.