By Tim Kowols
Thanks to craft breweries, grocery stores like Egg Harbor’s Main Street Market and Sturgeon Bay’s Econo Foods get a taste of the Black Friday shopping frenzy. The Black Friday tradition of breweries across the country selling specially aged beers dates back to Goose Island Brewing Company releasing their first iteration of its popular Bourbon County Stout in 1995. While thousands line up for hundreds of bottles in Chicago, distributors like Sturgeon Bay’s Flanigan Distributing only get a few cases a year for its region. Owner Brian Flanigan says he has never seen anything like it and it is only growing.
Flanigan says many of the places he distributed the popular Black Friday offerings at were already close to being sold out. Sipping through his own vault, Flanigan added he enjoys the complexity and smoothness of the beer varieties as they move through the aging process.
