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et me start by saying that this is not another "beer X is too expensive" thread. What "I’m more curious about is how the recent flood of $30-40 bottles of beer are effecting the craft beer industry. Thanks to the three tiered system, there are in some instances importers, as well as brewers, distributors, and retailers all trying to make money off of beer. In my neck of the woods, the 2 distributors are overall pretty bad ( I can’t stand the distro in CT and if I ever open a brewery, it will not be in CT) and routinely drop labels. For those labels, they can never again be distributed here unless the distributor who has a lifetime contract with the brewer decides to give them a second chance.
That’s where the question about price potentially hurting the industry comes into play. I was at a few beer stores today and all of them have Bogedal bottles retailing for between $30 and $40 per bottle. These are beers that do not keep well. Many also had a 12oz bottle of IPA for $30, lots of basic Italian beers in the $25-40 range as well as the usual lambics that fell into that price range. The thing is, I never see any of them selling with the exception of the lambics on occasion. I’m friends with a few managers and they all tell me that they wish they never bothered to stock any of them because they are just not selling.
Do you all think that the fact that these aren’t selling and that the retailers and distributors lare osing interest in carrying these more pricey beers will lead to them not willing to take a chance on ANY new beers regardless of what they are?
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I don’t think so.
As an exercise: Name 20, $30 bottles of beer that you can buy right now in your local market.
Now name 100 bottles of beer you can buy right now in your local market at any price under $30 and then keep going. To "hurt" an industry shouldn’t you be at least 20% of the market?
It might be different for your area, but where I live you have to work to find a $30 bottle of beer:
Deus (under $30 most places)
Bush Prestige
Baladin Xyayu
Flying Dog Gonzo, Ralph Steadmen Autographed
.............
Can’t think of any more. There just aren’t many $30 bottles where I live (though I am probably missing some). How many are there in your area?
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I think it’s going to correct itself shortly because the brewers are going to realize that they can’t get the prices they’re asking for (LA excepted because it seems like people would spend 40 bucks a bottle for Tomme Arthur’s toilet water and come back for more). 30 bucks for 12 oz of beer is inexcusable and unjustifiable and I look forward to the day it stops.
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Every time I see one of those flat, dusty bottles of Angels share on the shelf, I shed a tear.
Ahhh, when it was $10 and delicious.....
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Right now:
6 different Bogedal beers,
a dozen or so Italian beers (c’mon, solan, chime in here; I know a lot of these are on the shelves in Florida)
2 from Brewdog
5 from Drei Fonteinen
6 or so from Cantillon
1 from Sam Adams
several from Allagash
a few from Flying Dog
Some local brewers have imperial stouts in the $20-25 range
At one store in particular, the top shelf of an aisle that is 10 feet long is dominated by beers that are at a minimum $20 or more and many are $30 or more.
On the flip side, up here, I can only think of a handful of bombers under $9 and only a few non-macro sixers under $12.
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There’s also stuff like this which retails for $25 a bomber locally:
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/wintercoat-double-hop/40492/17111
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There’s also a bunch around rom BFM that are in the $30+ range.
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Honestly, I don’t think it hurts the industry any more than ridiculously expensive wine (compared to the bulk of the decent wine that is actually sold and accounts for the majority of the volume in a wine shop) hurts the wine industry. Or any more than expensive restaurants hurt the reasonably priced local places. It was inevitable that for craft beer to be seen as a good value there would have to be something to gauge it against. I think it’s actually good for people (and again, I mean the general beer buying populace, which RB/BA/other such geeks are decidedly the exception to, even amongst regular craft beer fans) to have something that makes craft beer look like a reasonable choice price-wise, while still giving them other more expensive options (because as we all know, expensive does not automatically equal good). More choices, even when they seem dreadfully expensive, are not really a bad thing.
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I don’t know about NY, but CT distributors and retailers have both been thinking of scaling back what they carry because they have been losing money on a lot of the expensive beers.
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Alan has virtual exclusivity on all the Italian stuff. You seldom see it here in Tampa. We don’t get the Bogedal beers here and the expensive Brew Dog stuff just started coming in. I haven’t personally seen any 3 Font stuff over 30, but then we don’t get as much here. And the Cantillon stuff is also pretty sparse. And the only Flying Dog I have ever seen here over $20 was the autographed one.
As far as American stuff goes there isn’t really anything at or over $30. People griped about (but still bought) Black Ops at $25 to $28.
My buddy Dave just brought up that Hebrew 13 at 13% abv was both awesome and $5. That is more my personal experience living in Tampa. $15 is high priced. $20 is about max for top of the line and $30 is very rare. But there is tons of quality to be had in the $12 and under range.
As a percentage of available beer where I live, not very much is over $20.
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As a comparison, Hebrew 13 retails for $9-12 here. $15-20 is the norm. Under $9 for anything that is not from a basic 6er is the exception to the rule.
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