I had my first style of Goose Island’s iconic Bourbon County Stout greater than a decade in the past, earlier than I used to be of authorized ingesting age. It was an awesome expertise for an underdeveloped palate. The extreme cacao and coconut notes weren’t essentially misplaced on me, however fairly subsumed by a overseas gravity. My mates and I likened the viscosity of barrel-aged imperial stouts to moose blood.
Nonetheless, our first bottle of Bourbon County felt like a ceremony of passage. We had been younger and broke, but discovered entry to one thing coveted, beloved, culturally important—and, most significantly, uncommon. What we didn’t know was that Goose Island had lately been bought by AB InBev, which might improve its distribution nationally. Whereas we felt like we’d struck gold when the clerk emerged with the shop’s final bottle, veteran beermongers would have already seen it for what it was: a bona fide shelf turd.
“[‘Shelf turd’] was used to malign, like, Bourbon County. That was in all probability in, like, 2011 as a result of that may have been the Bourbon County releases that didn’t fly off the shelf anymore,” Alex Kidd, the cult-favorite beer blogger and host of the “Malt Couture” podcast, tells me. In different phrases, Goose Island’s mainstream second helped form the time period, one which each encapsulates and lampoons the collector mentality that has dominated the fashionable booze trade. “It’s this concept of one thing that’s accessible and has implicitly decrease worth,” says Kidd.
I’m typically seeking origin factors, of by strains in time that may assist weave a cultural etymology of phrases that outline the drinks trade. The ubiquity of “clean,” for example, is well traced again to American journal adverts of the Fifties, which had been obsessive about the all-encompassing time period. Within the case of “shelf turd,” you’d be forgiven for pondering that one of the crucial emblematic phrases in beer (and whiskey) over the previous decade was shit pulled out of skinny air.
The earliest cases that turned up by search inquiries—just a few weblog posts, a stray hashtag in an Untappd evaluation—date the time period to 2012. However in every of these circumstances, “shelf turd” was used self-evidently, as if it had already been in circulation. Kidd traces the time period again to the BeerAdvocate commerce boards round 2010 or 2011, the contents of which had been wiped from the web after the influential beer neighborhood migrated to a brand new platform in 2013. “BeerAdvocate’s evaluation database continues to be intact, however a whole lot of its discussion board info is type of misplaced to the sands of time,” he says. What we all know for certain is that “shelf turd,” which seemed to be a distinct segment, insider time period in 2012, grew exponentially alongside social media. By 2015, it was named one of many “most overused” phrases by beer nerds.
Maybe the precise genesis of the time period reveals lower than what it was born of. By 2012, craft beer had entered a growth state, and cult favorites—as soon as accessible solely to those that camped out at a brewery the evening earlier than launch—all of the sudden had the distribution channels to make it to retailer cabinets, diluting their worth within the commerce market. In all its hypelessness, “shelf turd” grew to become a vessel of ironic detachment to confer with any bottle that didn’t promote out in a flash. Whether or not it’s scrumptious or not is irrelevant to the dialog. Kidd factors to Elementary Commentary, a famend imperial stout from Southern California brewery Bottle Logic. “They make a lot of it now, so that may be in that pocket of one thing that’s desired, one thing that individuals would nonetheless be excited to drink, however so extensively accessible that it doesn’t have any commerce worth,” he says.
After all, the shelf turd wanted an antipode. The “whale” (or a “grail” in style), against this, is imbued with beliefs amplified by one’s anticipation and untarnished by actuality. A bottle of 23-year-old Pappy Van Winkle is, at this level in bourbon’s money-pit period, one thing that almost all drinkers right this moment won’t ever have of their possession, which concentrates the sweetness of longing.
Nevertheless, when one whale is captured, that sense of longing doesn’t simply disappear—that may be too handy. It’s, within the phrases of Canadian anthropologist Grant McCracken, “displaced,” and transferred to the subsequent whale. From whale to whale, beer fiends kind bridges to maintain an idealized avatar of want afloat. “These bridges function proof of the existence of this type of life and at the same time as proof of the person’s capability to put declare to it,” McCracken wrote in his assortment of educational essays, Tradition and Consumption. Our pursuits and passions assist us self-define; in that sense, self-actualization may simply be a whale away.
Shelf turds typically enter the market hoping to capitalize on such intense needs, hoping to be somebody’s whale. Some, like Bourbon County, as soon as had been. However sheer attainability can corrode hype straight away. It isn’t essentially concerning the soul of a beer or whiskey being misplaced, however the thrill (and hope) of the chase. “Collectibles, distinctive or very uncommon, have to be hunted down, introduced out of hiding, gained away from different collectors. When items have this particular elusiveness, they’ll as soon as once more turn out to be bridges … for his or her private beliefs,” wrote McCracken. “In brief, collectibles make it attainable as soon as once more to dream.”
And what’s a shelf turd, then, however the dying of a dream offered to you?
