Commercial Beer worth the cost?

[Pyg]

(I meant commercial Sour, but screwed up title)

Every week I venture to the local bottle shop by my office and try to pick up a bottle or 2 of a sour for SWMBO.
Since this is her preferred style I have tried to get a different bottle each time.
She enjoyed the Crooked Stave, some more than others.
She really enjoyed Trinity "7 day sour".
I have been picking these bottles up at a minimum cost of $9 a bottle.
Crooked Stave ranges from $9 to $16, trinity is about the same. I tend to go no further than $10 a bottle.
I have continued to walk past the cascade bottles, but not sure I want to spend between $35 and $44 for bomber of sour.

so, for those of you who have tried the more expensive bottles, is it worth my time and money?
especially considering SWMBO's sours are now taking up a bulk of my weekly beer budget.

(full disclosure, I am home-brewing sours, but it is aging) [emoji482]

 

[Auger]

Every week I venture to the local bottle shop by my office and try to pick up a bottle or 2 of a sour for SWMBO.
Since this is her preferred style I have tried to get a different bottle each time.
She enjoyed the Crooked Stave, some more than others.
She really enjoyed Trinity "7 day sour".
I have been picking these bottles up at a minimum cost of $9 a bottle.
Crooked Stave ranges from $9 to $16, trinity is about the same. I tend to go no further than $10 a bottle.
I have continued to walk past the cascade bottles, but not sure I want to spend between $35 and $44 for bomber of sour.

so, for those of you who have tried the more expensive bottles, is it worth my time and money?
especially considering SWMBO's sours are now taking up a bulk of my weekly beer budget.

(full disclosure, I am home-brewing sours, but it is aging) [emoji482]

Hah, funny to see this. I went to Cascade in Portland, they have some fantastic beers. We tried a few flights, have no idea what we spent there but I'm sure it was a lot.

I picked up a nice selection of beers over the weekend, checked out and the total was $70+. It didn't phase me much until I thought about it and realized I bought much less than I usually do. Get home and check the receipt...$30 for a 750 of Cascade Kriek. WTF....I gotta pay more attention to prices when I'm shopping apparently. I will probably enjoy the crap out of the beer, but not sure anything will get me thinking $30 for a 750 of beer is a good deal.

 

[bbohanon]

YES! Beer is expensive and it will eat a hole in your pocket quick!

Sounds like a pipeline issue to me..you just need to keep the pipeline more stocked for keeping your own sours avail so you are not having to shell out for them retail price-wise.
Craft beer is continuing to get more and more expensive around these parts as well which to me is just that much more of a reason to keep a solid pipeline in place so my own beer taps are flowing and my wallet stays in a healthy state.

 

[bonecitybrewco]

The way I see it, sour beers are now a premium item and are being priced as such. It is heading very much in the direction of wine and that's not something I can agree with. It is most certainly an art (one for which I have no taste for, so I am obviously biased) but I, personally, would never, EVER spend that much on a single bomber of beer. Then again, I would never spend more than $50 on a bottle of wine.

 

[PADave]

I can't justify buying beers in that price range. I'm not into sours, but I do realize what they take to make. It would be really hard to spend on one bottle what I could get a case of decent beer for. Or better yet ingredients for a couple cases. But someone must be buying them. Maybe for a special occasion or something, but on a regular basis, no way.

 

[berndawg84]

Well that's just how much sours cost...I live in Denver and some of CrookedStave bottles cost $7 or so, others more. Sours are simply expensive...are they worth it? As a regular purchase, no, but once in awhile, yes. It's not sustainable I think to make sours your typical purchase, unless you're rolling in dough. But places like The Bruery or Casey Brewing make such great sours that yea , I think it's worth it. But for me a sour beer is only about 1 out of every 10 beers I buy. Sounds like you're in Colorado...Epic has a sour IPA while not a pure sour is delicious. And it's only about $10 a 6 pack.

 

[IslandLizard]

Frankly, I think $30+ for a 750 of beer is 70% marketing, 30% beer, if that. I saw those Cascade bottles while my jaw dropped to the floor. As said before, they're following wine marketing antics, and the sky's the limit.

It's all hype!

Even $9-12 for a bomber is highway robbery, some exceptions noted, yet, still overpriced.
$12 for a 6-pack is more reasonable, although I prefer to find <$10 6-pack hidden gems.

Same with $24 growler fills. You rarely see them under $10 anymore. $15-17 has become the norm. So glad I can brew anything I like in 5 or 10 gallon batches.

 

[worlddivides]

Depends on what you're asking about. If you're asking about specifically Cascade, I can't say because my eyes popped out of their sockets the first few times I've seen the price, so I've never bought Cascade.

Although, when I think of "the most expensive beer companies out there," Cascade is the first company that come to mind. I've seen Cascade beers for $40, $45, $50, and $60. And they aren't even styles like gueuze that take forever to make either.

If the question is "are commercial sour beers in general worth it?" I would say "If you like sour beers, they are."

I buy sour beers maybe once a month. Sometimes it's just one or two sour beers, while other times it's a whole haul. About 2-3 weeks ago, I spent around $75 on sour beers, but I got a decent amount. Got beers by Jolly Pumpkin, The Bruery, Hanssens Artisanal, New Belgium, and 3 Fonteinen. If it had been Cascade, I might have gotten 2 beers.

Now, I do buy beers sometimes where a single bomber if $20 or $25, and I'll even on occasion splurge and get something as expensive as $30 for a single bottle, but it's not that common and I doubt I'll ever actually try Cascade. And my favorite sour is probably Cantillon's gueuze, which is pricey, but not Cascade-level pricey.

EDIT: I do brew my own sours, but I don't brew all the styles that I buy (and it's unlikely that I'll ever attempt to make a "true" gueuze). That definitely helps, though. I will say that sours are in general are more expensive to brew than most beers, but I just started to make a Berliner Weisse, which is cheaper than most beers I make.

 

[filthyastronaut]

Might want to look into some sour mash beers and kettle sours, they tend to be cheaper. Dry Dock's Sour Apricot is really nice and priced around 10 dollars a sixer. You could also make them yourself for quicker turn around.

 

[bigplunkett]

My thoughts as of cost of sours is comparable to wine in time it takes to make. Taking up lots of room when they could use it to push out 15 batches of ipa in the same time period is why the cist is there. You could start making it and fast of you go gose or berliner. I like anderson valleys g I se when i want a sour kn the cheap.

 

[Aristotelian]

I pretty much only buy commercial beer to sample a new style that I haven't had before just to get a sense of whether I might want to brew it myself. Increasingly, that only means sour or brett beers.

At about $10, Jolly Pumpkin are about the most reasonably priced sours I can find.

My local fancy grocery story also has a discontinued bin where I have gotten some great deals. Mostly I wait for interesting bottles to show up in there.

 

[pdxal]

If you are against paying that much for a bottle, don't buy it. I agree, $30-$50 dollars for a bottle is too much.
I live in Portland and go to Cascade about 1-2x/month and believe they make some great beers. Much cheaper on tap, but still expensive. Bottles at the source generally run $20-$30.
As mentioned before price factors in the cost to make it, and most of Cascade's beers take 2-3 years to produce, with a large amount of fruit and barrels that aren't cheap anymore.

 

[MapleGroveAleworks]

Not worth it to me at all. I hardly buy any retail beer though.

 

[oli-aus]

I actually think that some of the more special sours/aged beers should be expensive.
If something's special then maybe you shouldn't be able to justify buying one every weekend. Exactly like wine.
I can imagine this being good for the industry in general if say Belgian geuze was more expensive (it may even recruit more people to craft beer).

Saying that I have quite a lot of aged sour homebrew on hand so it's easy for me to say.

 

[Auger]

Finally got around to drinking that Kreik form Cascade over the weekend, a $30 bottle. Was it good? Yup. Was it worth the money? Nope. Not likely to buy any more priced like that. There's just so much other good stuff available at a more acceptable price point.

 

[bonecitybrewco]

Finally got around to drinking that Kreik form Cascade over the weekend, a $30 bottle. Was it good? Yup. Was it worth the money? Nope. Not likely to buy any more priced like that. There's just so much other good stuff available at a more acceptable price point.

Exactly. I bought a $14 bottle of Rochefort 10 the other day. Great beer? Yup. Worth the $14? Can't decide but likely not. I'm just harvesting the yeast since it's cheaper for me (wyeast at $10 plus $10 shipping)

 

[dallasdb]

Save your pennies my man.

Grab whatever brew you desire and have her drink it through one of these babies.

BOOM! Sour beer for the misses.