Princeton's Liquors Blog

Here I blog again!!

Bill — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:05:09 +0000

So I finally learned how to blog on my own. No one holding my hand, no one reading over my shoulder and no one having to approve what I read. We will see how I do without approval.

Any who, with summer coming to an end I figured I should look back at what a great summer it was, beer wise. We added yet another stellar brewery to our arsenal. Tall Grass out of Kansas peeked in and we are thankful for it. You can never go wrong with craft beer in 16 ounce cans!!!!

Not only did we get new breweries but we started seeing line extensions from breweries we already had. Odell and Deschutes both started coming hard with little treats. Odell let us have the Woodcut series while Deschutes started coming in six packs. Which allowed us to enjoy their IPA and summer seasonal. More from each brewery still to come!!!!

Possibly the best part of the summer was once again the prospect of new breweries coming. I just had a visit with the people from Brooklyn Brewery 2 weeks ago. They were just doing a little recon, but all signs point to a possible Brooklyn drop in Spring of 2011. Another brewery that has been doing recon in MN is Alaskan. Those familiar with their Smoke Porter are most certainly excited to hear this. They seem to be a bit more elusive however, no time table has been set.

So with summer gone, it is easy to say we got a lot to look forward to. So keep an eye out and get ready for fall and winter.

Firkin Fest

Bill — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 14:01:02 +0000

One of the best things to start popping up in the last couple years is a beer event called Firkin Fest. On March 20th, the Happy Gnome in St. Paul put on this annual event. I was dumb enough not to buy tickets but lucky enough to have a friend named Jessie who works for Tyranena. She told me, my friend Travis and my brother-in-law Nick to meet her down there and she would get us in. We ended up working the event.

For someone like me, this was awesome. Free beer and talking to people? For the next 4+ hours I walked around drinking beer and talking to people in the industry and outside the industry. My brother-in-law and buddy will tell you I didn’t really work that much, which is true. But PR is PR, whether I was talking to Jon from Stub and Herbs or Mark (a customer at Princeton’s).

Firkin Friends

Dark Horse, Surly, Tyranena, Left Hand, Liftbridge…the list goes on of breweries represented there. The beers these breweries were putting forth were equally as amazing. This is such a great way to sample beers you have never had. Not to mention, enjoy the company around you. There was a lot of beer flowing, which translates into a lot of random conversations with people you have never met.

All-in-all, it was a good day, plus no hangover the next day. Weird.
~ Bill

The Craziness of Craft Beer

Bill — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:47:52 +0000

The craziness of craft beer and the awesome growth it has seen.

So, last week I got in 3 cases of a beer that retailed for $18 a four pack. Those 3 cases lasted all of 2 hours in the store. That got me thinking just how far craft beer has come since I started working for my dad 13 years ago. Heck even 3 years ago the thought of an $18 four pack of beer was mind blowing. One case would have taken months to sell, that is to say, if my dad even would have allowed me to order such a case. It has been fun to see the excitement in craft beer really continue to grow to amazing lengths. I am one of the crazies. The past 2 years I have slept in a camper outside the Surly Brewery just to be one of the first to buy 6 bottles of Darkness. I will continue to have my “little sleepovers” as my wife calls them, until the people at Surly stop letting us. It has been fun to see the store evolve and to meet more and more people in this industry. So buckle up and enjoy the ride, it has just begun.

~Bill