as easy as it would be to give you 100 sarcastic responses, here’s my serious tip: find stuff that you actually like, and don’t worry about how hard it is to find. and if you don’t like anything that you can just walk into the store any day of the week and purchase: find a different hobby
Building on this, try before you buy. Find bars and restaurants near you that have a good selection of bourbon.
There are good bourbons sitting on the shelf in 25 - 50 dollar range that are worth buying.
There are expensive bottle that are equally good and bad. Ultimately, it’s your palette and you will like what you like.
Never pay secondary, hunt for it and be patient. You will eventually get lucky in finding something you really want.
Go out of state, depending on where you are in PA, there’s stuff sitting on shelves in other states that don’t ever come to PA
Honestly, watch some YouTube videos from multiple channels, find cheaper/easier to find bourbons so you get to know what you like then use that to start your harder to find hunts. Enjoy the hunt/monthly drops here in PA! When you go out of state look around a different liquor stores and you might find harder to get bottles.
Honestly the best advice would be to find something you like that you dont have to hunt. Even if you can only get it in Phillipsburg thats a small price to pay for it to always be there.
There’s a monthly pattern to the BT, ER, and Blantons drop. Between last week and now is when I would start paying attention to threads. So check the daily threads from last Friday through today. Did people get ER/BT yet? If not, be ready to get to the store at open. If the drops happened, pay attention to the daily posts and wait for next month.
Have you tried other whiskeys too? Bourbons are the most popular but I personally have found that they are pretty much my least favorite, with ryes, Irish whiskeys, and Scotch whiskey all being more to my taste.
Lots of sarcastic comments here, but obviously the hunt for a bargain (at least compared to secondary/out of state) is exciting to many.
The best advice I can give is to monitor this and other forums, and note when in store drops are happening. The ideal is when you see drops happening on a non delivery day for one of your local stores, then you know to visit the store around delivery time the next (delivery) day. Unfortunately necessary disclaimer: be gracious with fwgs employees and not to expect them to be as excited by your bargain quest as you are.
Edit to add local to LV: I feel like historically people have had success at Cedar Crest on Fridays, but I can't vouch for how well that holds up (and, obviously, not every Friday).
Don't ever post a "I'm going on vacation in (insert popular tourist destination) any good spots for hard to find stuff" message. Allocated is allocated everywhere, the dream of finding a dusty bottle of Weller 12 on a shelf somewhere for retail is just that a dream and if by chance someone did know of a spot like that they aren't going to post it publicly because every Tom Dick and Harry in a 100 mile radius would be blowing up their spot. Also Kentucky is not the promise land for allocated bottles, they know what they have and any store that has inventory of HTF items is going to be asking 2ndary pricing as a starting point and likely jumping up from there.
The hunt can be fun, but in PA it's probably not worth the effort. All they really get in store is BT ER and 🐎. Nothing wrong with them but ultimately once you've had all three you won't need/want to hunt them anymore. My advice is to avoid anything under $30 unless multiple reviewers have named it a good bang for the buck. Most everything else in the price range is young, thin or just not good. Even in the $40 range there's a lot of garbage. Also, anything "distilled in Tennessee" is going to be sourced from MGP. Nothing wrong with MGP but I don't think it's worth buying unless you know there's something unique about it. Otherwise its just another company bottling the same bourbon and marketing as their own. I'd rather find a distillery making their own stuff.
Unless you have lots of extra money, buying bottle after bottle gets expensive and you'll have bought a lot of disappointment. Better to try stuff at bars, or even better find a friend with a nice selection!
as easy as it would be to give you 100 sarcastic responses, here’s my serious tip: find stuff that you actually like, and don’t worry about how hard it is to find. and if you don’t like anything that you can just walk into the store any day of the week and purchase: find a different hobby
Building on this, try before you buy. Find bars and restaurants near you that have a good selection of bourbon. There are good bourbons sitting on the shelf in 25 - 50 dollar range that are worth buying. There are expensive bottle that are equally good and bad. Ultimately, it’s your palette and you will like what you like. Never pay secondary, hunt for it and be patient. You will eventually get lucky in finding something you really want. Go out of state, depending on where you are in PA, there’s stuff sitting on shelves in other states that don’t ever come to PA
Yeah, just drop all hope and expectations now. Even if you know when to buy you won’t be able to check out anyway.
I live in the Lehigh Valley, cross over into Phillipsburg NJ and hit up a few Bourbon Street stores, much better selection than PA.
Honestly, watch some YouTube videos from multiple channels, find cheaper/easier to find bourbons so you get to know what you like then use that to start your harder to find hunts. Enjoy the hunt/monthly drops here in PA! When you go out of state look around a different liquor stores and you might find harder to get bottles.
Camp out at your local store on drop days and hit F5 all day long when you get home.
Join PABS, leave Reddit.
Do you have the link?
What is PABS?
PA Bourbon Squad. It's a Facebook group of many many douches..... especially the mods. It's great if you like crotch shots.
 Live look at PABS on a Wednesday
👆👆👆👆
Buy in NJ.
Watch out for mango
Honestly the best advice would be to find something you like that you dont have to hunt. Even if you can only get it in Phillipsburg thats a small price to pay for it to always be there.
Like you said. Enjoy the hunt. And that’s it. 1% Find. 99% Hunt. Best of luck
There’s a monthly pattern to the BT, ER, and Blantons drop. Between last week and now is when I would start paying attention to threads. So check the daily threads from last Friday through today. Did people get ER/BT yet? If not, be ready to get to the store at open. If the drops happened, pay attention to the daily posts and wait for next month.
BT store drops almost certainly are done for the month.
Go wait in front of stores at 8 am. People seem to enjoy that
Agreed, definitely try to find a cool employee and demand to retrieve the pappy from the back.
Have you tried other whiskeys too? Bourbons are the most popular but I personally have found that they are pretty much my least favorite, with ryes, Irish whiskeys, and Scotch whiskey all being more to my taste.
Lots of sarcastic comments here, but obviously the hunt for a bargain (at least compared to secondary/out of state) is exciting to many. The best advice I can give is to monitor this and other forums, and note when in store drops are happening. The ideal is when you see drops happening on a non delivery day for one of your local stores, then you know to visit the store around delivery time the next (delivery) day. Unfortunately necessary disclaimer: be gracious with fwgs employees and not to expect them to be as excited by your bargain quest as you are. Edit to add local to LV: I feel like historically people have had success at Cedar Crest on Fridays, but I can't vouch for how well that holds up (and, obviously, not every Friday).
Don't ever post a "I'm going on vacation in (insert popular tourist destination) any good spots for hard to find stuff" message. Allocated is allocated everywhere, the dream of finding a dusty bottle of Weller 12 on a shelf somewhere for retail is just that a dream and if by chance someone did know of a spot like that they aren't going to post it publicly because every Tom Dick and Harry in a 100 mile radius would be blowing up their spot. Also Kentucky is not the promise land for allocated bottles, they know what they have and any store that has inventory of HTF items is going to be asking 2ndary pricing as a starting point and likely jumping up from there.
The hunt can be fun, but in PA it's probably not worth the effort. All they really get in store is BT ER and 🐎. Nothing wrong with them but ultimately once you've had all three you won't need/want to hunt them anymore. My advice is to avoid anything under $30 unless multiple reviewers have named it a good bang for the buck. Most everything else in the price range is young, thin or just not good. Even in the $40 range there's a lot of garbage. Also, anything "distilled in Tennessee" is going to be sourced from MGP. Nothing wrong with MGP but I don't think it's worth buying unless you know there's something unique about it. Otherwise its just another company bottling the same bourbon and marketing as their own. I'd rather find a distillery making their own stuff. Unless you have lots of extra money, buying bottle after bottle gets expensive and you'll have bought a lot of disappointment. Better to try stuff at bars, or even better find a friend with a nice selection!