There seems to be so much that even Drills can't keep it under control, so I'm wondering...

During the Councilor Cruise event in 2012, when the ship docked in Veta they opened the brewery to give out free beer. There wasn't really a limit to how much you could get, so until it closed down people ended up with absurd amounts.

- that's interesting. So I guess Drills is being a...beersink? That makes sense, but sounds weird. Eh. Anyway, thanks~

Yes, I think a year or two ago they also had an event during Alegarten to get Gunter drunk by giving him a ton of beers, I think part of that was to try and get rid of some of them as well.

- that sounds suspiciously similar to this Alegarten. I remember buying a load of free beer to give to him then, anyway... or was it more advertised then?

I got mixed up a bit, the getting Gunter drunk thing is yearly it seems. But there was a one year only thing where they had a Beer Throwdown between Gunter and Angrybeard where you could only donate free beers to whichever side you wanted. Like a restock war, but to try and cut down on some of the numbers. I don't know how effective it really was though seeing as how many there still are.

- ah, I see. Interesting...perhaps Carl should ask for them too, that might cut them down a little more...

To add to this, the Recycle Beast did ask for Free Beer as an item on 6/13/2013. So much free beer was turned in that we actually lagged the site. I have no doubt that got rid of quite a bit of the hoards; it would be cool if RB asked for it again. That would make a big dent in the current supply.

- and with the site being made less laggy recently, it shouldn't have so much of a performance impact...that makes sense. I didn't know about that, though honestly, now I think about it I'm not surprised.

Free Beer was given out (I think at Alegarten) once since the Recycle Beast last asked for it, too. So because the Recycle Beast had asked for it once already, tons of people hoarded even more in case it was ever asked for again. I did, but I don't use an autorefresher so I only had patience for about ~2k but I still have most of those sitting in my vault, just in case.

I wasn't aware they released them a second time. Did they not learn from the first time around?

Apparently not :/ I want to say it was last year at Alegarten? I'm not sure but I know I didn't participate in the cruise (I had just joined like a month earlier and had no idea what was going on) and I had heard about the ping group for free beer at the Recycle Beast so I grabbed some the next time it was available.

I almost want to suggest they just nuke them all and then find a different way to release them in more limited quantities. But I know that wouldn't please everyone either. There is a ridiculous amount of the thins though.