And yes, that's what happens when I leave my computer for a day to do some work out of town--the story breaks left and right.
Why all this conflicting information--including my managing to kill a report nearly two months ago by Jack Curtin for the most recent Mid-Atlantic Brewing News that Sly Fox was going to begin canning this popular elixir?
As the Facebook status option says, "It's complicated." Looking over a whole slew of back-channel communication on this, I now see just what happened, or at least I have a pretty good supposition based on the evidence.
The proposal to can Resurrection apparently began within Sly Fox Brewing, the Phoenixville, Pa. brewpub that expanded to a full production brewery in 2004 and became the contract brewer for Brewer's Art's bottled beers in October 2007. Sly Fox had added a canning line to their brewery, had had much success with their canned beers in the Pennsylvania market, and had been heavily promoting the idea of canning the overly-popular Resurrection to the Brewer's Art management and brewers. Some were apparently keen on the idea, while others were seemingly not as enthused. Curtin was apparently being told of the proposal by an enthusiastic Sly Fox crew, and thus reported on it as if it were a done deal, before the BA crew had made a final decision on the proposal.
Said Volker Stewart, BA manager, in an e-mail: "We didn't even tell our wholesaler about it until this week. We are quite reticent about sharing information unless we are sure something is going to happen." Furthermore, the denials I had heard earlier were given by one of the project's then-skeptics.
Volker is also reporting that a couple "issues" have arisen with the project, and that cans will not hit the local shelves until June at the earliest. So for the sake of the sanity of those at the Brewer's Art, don't badger them for information, samples, retail locations, etc. When it's out on the shelves, you'll see a report here.
The as-yet-unanswered questions: Will bars who can't get the draft version of Resurrection locally seize the opportunity to sell it in cans? Will people who can't necessarily get their hands on a draft version or despair at the thought of opening a 750-ml bottle eagerly regard the canned version as a viable option, or will snobbery prevail? Will this mean Resurrection at Camden Yards or M&T Stadium (at $10 a can, no doubt)?
(Brewer's Art-supplied prototype photo shamelessly swiped from the Midnight Sun blog at BaltimoreSun.com)
