An Investigation into the Illbrewminati

Did it actually exist?

Did what exist?

What time did the link go live?

Admittedly, it’s becoming more and more difficult to rely on our sundial with all these buildings sprouting up in Minneapolis. Each one that pops up we’re like “damn, now we gotta move it again.” It’s been a real headache. 

For real though, the link was pushed live a minute before 9 am to account for how long our servers/internet gods usually take to make an item live on our site, but apparently the internet gods made it live within seconds and that was that. 9:01 would have been more fair than 8:59, and now we know for next time. 

What about the reports of bottles being sold even before that?

Unfortunately, a private pre-sale link was shared and circulated by a trusted member of our Modist Makers club, and 39 of the 300 bottles reserved for the public were purchased before they should have been. We’ve made sure this won’t ever happen again. 

How long before it was gone?

By our best guess, less than 30 seconds? Honestly, it was faster than the first time we refreshed on our end. So, wow. Congrats to the fastest of the button clickers. 

Why no cart protection?

This is simply something our POS/ecommerce company (Square) doesn’t offer, and was a surprise to us. While having a platform that protected your cart wouldn’t have changed how fast the bottles disappeared, it also wouldn’t have created the false sense of security that your items were safe. Anyone who stopped to add something else to their cart, or changed their tip to help support our staff, probably got hosed and that blows. We’ve checked with Square and there are currently no plans to add this feature, so we’ll be exploring other platforms/lottery options for releases like this. 

Why not limit the beer to 1 per person?

This one was tough. We understand the benefits of decreasing the limit and would love it if more people had a shot, but it also would have forced twice as many people to leave their homes AND forced our staff to be exposed to twice as many people. We sided with the option of less exposure and feel it was the responsible thing to do. 

PROXIES?!

Another tough one. While we tried to not blast the internet with the fact that we would bend on our no proxy rule, given the circumstances we did allow people to pick up for others. Some people are vulnerable and shouldn’t leave their houses, ya know? For the next one, we’ll go back to a no proxy rule and examine requests on a case by case basis if all this bullshit is still going on. 

Will this eventually be on tap?

Unfortunately not.

Will there be a Vol. 2?

Of what?