Back in the Winter of 2011, the Lagunitas Brewing Company had some technical issues that made it impossible to brew their Holiday Ale.  Instead, they created a substitute recipe with a label that read "Lagunitas Sucks".  Here's the explanation that ran on the original boxes:

This sad holiday season we didn’t have the brewing capacity to make our favorite seasonal brew, the widely feared BrownShugga’ Ale. You see, we had a couple of really good years and so heading into this season while we are awaiting the January delivery of a new brewhouse we are jammin’ along brewing 80 barrels of IPA and PILS and such every 3 hours. A couple of months back we realized that since we can only brew a mere 60 barrels of Shugga’ every 5 hours, that we were seriously screwed. For every case of Shugga’ brewed, we’d short 3 cases of our favorite daily beers. It’s a drag. This year, we brewed something that we think is also cool and brews more like our daily brews. The new brewhouse will help insure that this kind of failure never occurs again. It’s a mess that we cannot brew our BrownShugga’ this year and we suck for not doing it. There is nothing cool about screwing up this badly and we know it. Maybe we can sue our own sorry selves. There is no joy in our hearts this holiday and the best we can hope for is a quick, merciful end. F*@& us. This totally blows. Whatever. We freaking munch moldy donkey butt and we just want it all to be over..”

The thing is... the beer didn't actually suck.  It was delicious.  So every holiday season since, Lagunitas has been brewing BrownShugga AND the replacement recipe called Lagunitas Sucks.  This year, however, Sucks has become so popular that it's been upgraded to a year-round offering.  So be sure to pick up a half-price growler this week from Half Time on Route 9 in Poughkeepsie and check it out... because missing out on this beer will surely suck!

 

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