On Saturday, January 21, we will offer an online, lottery-style opportunity to purchase a voucher with which the holder may purchase a bottle of Ann, our wine barrel-aged honey Farmstead® ale. Separate from our current two-week Toast-based sale, this will make use of our http://shop.hillfarmstead.com site and its randomized queue system, which we’ve used for our direct-to-consumer sales, and provides a flexible, weeks-long window within which successful buyers may visit us to complete the purchase.

We will sell each voucher for $5 with all proceeds shared between North Country Animal League’s Kingdom Animal Shelter and The Friends for Life Dog Rescue, a foster-based dog rescue serving the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Each voucher will allow the holder to purchase one (1) bottle of Ann at our brewery’s retail shop (we can not mail bottles; all purchases must be completed at the brewery). Each 750ml waxed bottle is $95 plus tax (does not include voucher cost). Pick-ups and voucher redemption may be made on any of our retail days between 25 January and 25 February.

Each voucher is linked to its order number, the email address of the purchaser, and the name of the purchaser, which must be provided at the time of purchase. Please note, we will not allow proxies for this sale.

On Saturday, 21 January, at 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, our webshop (shop.hillfarmstead.com) will open. We will utilize an electronic pre-queue and waiting room system, which opens at 1:45 p.m. EST (15 minutes prior to the sale going live). When you sign into the pre-queue, you’ll join everyone for the sale. The time that you sign into the pre-queue doesn’t impact your order in the sales queue.

As the sale officially opens, people will be randomly added to an order queue, moved to the waiting room, and brought into the shop to make their purchases. This helps maintain a steady and stable order process.

Glass pours of Ann will remain available in our taproom each retail day through 4 February. To learn more about this emergence of Ann, please visit our previous post: https://hillfarmstead.com/release/retail-update-for-11-january-2023/.

Editorial Note

Shortly after posting the initial announcement of the online sale of Ann vouchers, we decided to disallow proxy pick-ups for this release of Ann. In our effort to provide a timely update about the alternative purchase opportunity, we had not adequately accounted for potential unforeseen issues and complications that could occur with a new-to-us platform. We prefer to launch this new method without the added complexity of proxies, both within the online system and here for our team. We amended the original posts as quickly as possible to reflect that, and this serves as a more formal update and explanation.

The sale of the vouchers will make use of the same system we use for our direct-to-consumer sales. This is not a lottery, though, and we apologize for any confusion that stemmed from using that word. The pre-queue is a virtual waiting room that provides more time for people to “arrive,” randomizes the order (hence, a randomized “lottery” of sorts) in which prospective buyers enter the order queue, and offers a robust, smooth, flexible means with which to offer access to purchase Ann.

We continue to explore platforms better suited to release beers of this limited nature in the most equitable way possible, and this hybrid approach, while certainly not perfect, provides us with another way to share such limited releases.

Thank you for your patience and consideration.