How the PA Limited-Release Lottery works
The PLCB Limited-Release Lottery — entry windows, how winners are picked, and how to enter from FWGS.
For the most allocated releases — think Pappy Van Winkle, BTAC, Old Rip — PLCB doesn't put bottles on shelves. They run a Limited-Release Lottery on FWGS instead.
How it works
- PLCB announces a lottery with an open and close date — a fixed entry window, usually 24 to 72 hours long.
- During the window, anyone with a free FWGS account can enter once per product. There's no fee to enter.
- After the window closes, PLCB draws winners at random.
- Winners are notified by email. They have a limited time (usually 7–10 days) to pay and pick up at their chosen FWGS store.
You can enter as many lotteries as you want; you can win more than one. You can't enter the same lottery twice with the same account.
Where Bottle Hunt fits in
Bottle Hunt surfaces every lottery window we detect on the Lotteries page:
- Open now — windows that are accepting entries right now, with a live countdown.
- Upcoming — windows that haven't opened yet, sorted by open time.
- Past — windows already closed.
Each lottery card links out to the FWGS terms page where you actually enter. We don't run a lottery; we surface PLCB's.
What we don't know
PLCB doesn't always publish bottle counts ahead of the draw, and we surface only what's available on the public lottery page. If you see "bottle count not captured" on a lottery detail, that's why — the entry terms link will have the official allocation.
If you'd rather hunt allocations that don't go through a lottery, the drops feed catches the FWGS Whiskey Releases, and the products list ranks every hunt-worthy bottle by how many PA hunters are tracking it.