The Price of Craft Beer

[cegan09]

The prices are what they are because there is a market willing to pay it. Nothing more or less. I know tons of people around here who see nothing wrong with paying $12-$20 for a 4 pack of the latest hype IPA. And as long as people keep lining up to pay that, the prices aren't coming down.

same with everything else. Barrel aged stuff sits around in warehouses taking up space, so you have to cover that cost. And people at this point equate "barrel aged" to "expensive".


Find the beer you enjoy at the price you're willing to pay and be happy.

 

[ksut1547]

So I went and got my Super Bowl haul this morning. This was in the same location as what I mentioned before...
View attachment 555799

I wouldn't give $.10 for one of those.

 

[bobeer]

It's crazy to see people lining up to pay $20 a 4 pack at some of the local breweries around here. They'll put a limit of 4 or whatever cases per person per style and people will max it out every time. I can't imagine spending that much money on friggen beer...
I'll go a step further... I hear the beer club at work talk about the hoarders too; the first 30 people in line who buy out the majority of the beer... Or the folks that wont tell you where the bottle shop is that has what you're looking for because they don't want to give up their secret beer spot. The whole thing makes me laugh and makes me happy I brew my own so I don't have to deal with all this new school of thought over beer. Beer is meant to be shared and enjoyed neither of which, from the sound of it, isn't going on now-a-days in the commercial beer world.

 

[biochemedic]

+ Aged on fruit
+ Sour/wild beer

(Often in combination)

Yeah, and a lot of the sours I have seen are some weird anti-corollary to the cost of high-ABV beers...I've seen multiple sours that cost 3-4 dollars per can/bottle, at 3-4% ABV. Now, I'm all for the place of session beers in the world, but at that ABV it's like drinking pop (or soda, for some of you, or "coke" if you are really weird and live in Atlanta)

 

[FuzzyIguana]

It's like diamonds or Harley Davidson. It's not quality, scarcity, or cost to produce. It's just marketing.

THE EXACT reason I sold my Harley. It's stupid how much they charge for anything.

 

[triethylborane]

It's crazy to see people lining up to pay $20 a 4 pack at some of the local breweries around here. They'll put a limit of 4 or whatever cases per person per style and people will max it out every time. I can't imagine spending that much money on friggen beer...
I'll go a step further... I hear the beer club at work talk about the hoarders too; the first 30 people in line who buy out the majority of the beer... Or the folks that wont tell you where the bottle shop is that has what you're looking for because they don't want to give up their secret beer spot. The whole thing makes me laugh and makes me happy I brew my own so I don't have to deal with all this new school of thought over beer. Beer is meant to be shared and enjoyed neither of which, from the sound of it, isn't going on now-a-days in the commercial beer world.

Are you blaming "commercial beer" for the lack of sharing of beer among consumers and the dearth of enjoyment of said beer by those consumers?

 

[ancientmariner52]

There are people who get a great deal of pleasure from the "I've got some and you don't, ner, ner, ner" thing. I just feel sorry for them.

 

[bobeer]

Are you blaming "commercial beer" for the lack of sharing of beer among consumers and the dearth of enjoyment of said beer by those consumers?

Huh? Not sure how to answer that, haha. I'm not blaming anything. It's just a change in culture I have noticed over the past 5 years or so. The area I live in though is all about status symbols and how exclusive you are so ymmv based on your local.

 

[MHBT]

Oh, so it tastes like Cabernet Sauvignon.

A bit more nutty

Huh? Not sure how to answer that, haha. I'm not blaming anything. It's just a change in culture I have noticed over the past 5 years or so. The area I live in though is all about status symbols and how exclusive you are so ymmv based on your local.

I hear ya when my local beer store gets maine lunch in you need a passport, birth certificate, social security card, to get a bottle

 

[triethylborane]

Huh? Not sure how to answer that, haha. I'm not blaming anything. It's just a change in culture I have noticed over the past 5 years or so. The area I live in though is all about status symbols and how exclusive you are so ymmv based on your local.

I asked only because I was curious as to how you would respond. Its much the same where Im at.

 

[jheinikel]

Prairie Artisan Ales bottles are always $8-12. Sometimes, I think the price is crazy to help draw hype. Jester King has been putting out $20-25 bombers for some time and they sell out every time. They even do a lottery system now. Some are worth it, some not.

 

[ancientmariner52]

"Jester King". Kinda says it all. Reminds me of a documentary I saw on Alexander Calder. As he bustles about building his ridiculous "mobiles", he has this constant wide grin. I can almost hear him thinking, "As long as they keep paying fine-art prices for this crap, I'll keep building it." A fool and his / her money, eh?

 

[MapleGroveAleworks]

I've been priced out of craft beer retail. Half of it is IPAs or stouts, and the other is overpriced bombers. I'll stick with my keezer at home drinking any style I fancy brewing.

 

[deadwolfbones]

On the one hand, I miss the days of craft 6-packs for $5.99, but on the other the quality of craft beer (in general) seems to me to keep going up, and the best beers (esp. barrel-aged stuff and wilds/sours) rival wine for sophistication and surpass it in creativity, to my palate.

You don't see many people complaining about $20-30 bottles of wine, do you? Depending on ingredients and aging, beers can be even more expensive to produce, but usually sell for less.

 

[bobeer]

I asked only because I was curious as to how you would respond. Its much the same where Im at.

Yea, there's not much to say about it really other than I'm glad I can make my own beer so I don't have to deal with the "hypesters" (Yea, that's a term I just made up; Beer Hype+Hipsters=Hypesters, haha)

 

[FuzzyIguana]

There are only a select few craft breweries I buy from anymore, and it's not because I claim to brew better beer - it's because clone recipes are almost as good (sometimes better).

The exceptions:

Toppling Goliath's PseudoSue (Iowa)
Toppling Goliath's Sosus (Iowa)
Rhinegeist's Truth (Ohio)
North Coast Brewing's Brother Thelonious (Cali)

 

[mr_stout]

Wow, I did not think this thread would get so many responses.

deadwolfbones, The was the $30 dollar bottle of beer you bought x15 times better than the one that you bought for $2 dollars? The price of expensive beer does not coincide with the amount the flavor increases.
What I am trying to get at is that it seems that if you can get a great beer for $2 ( or less ) per bottle why even bother buying anything more expensive? Why even think of buying something more expensive? It means that you are unnecessarily paying way more than you need to which does not seem logical.

Higher ABV and special ingredients do contribute to a slighty higher cost in production but not that much.

Of course, super wealthy people can by whatever they want but most people are not in that category.

I mean... it depends entirely on the beer in question. Some $30 beers I've had were absolutely worth it, some weren't. Ditto the $2 bottles I've bought.

Drink enough and you'll figure out which breweries to trust and which not to waste your money on.

 

[shelly_belly]

I gambled $12 on a 4 pack the other day and I think I won.

 

[deadwolfbones]

deadwolfbones, The was the $30 dollar bottle of beer you bought x15 times better than the one that you bought for $2 dollars? The price of expensive beer does not coincide with the amount the flavor increases.

What I am trying to get at is that it seems that if you can get a great beer for $2 ( or less ) per bottle why even bother buying anything more expensive? Why even think of buying something more expensive? It means that you are unnecessarily paying way more than you need to which does not seem logical.

Higher ABV and special ingredients do contribute to a slighty higher cost in production but not that much.

Of course, super wealthy people can by whatever they want but most people are not in that category.

You can get a great beer for $2, but you can't get a great fruited sour, barrel-aged RIS, or monster Belgian quad (just a few examples) for $2. If all you want to drink is pale ales, nut browns, and Irish stouts (again, just examples), then by all means, never pay more than $2 a bottle.

Do I think some high-priced beers have a higher margin than most low-priced beers? Absolutely. But this is for a number of reasons, including the volume at which they're produced (sours and wilds have a smaller market, barrel-aged beers take more time and equipment) and the cost of production. Specialty markets always command a premium price.

You don't have to be super wealthy to drop $30 on a bottle of beer, it's just a matter of priorities. How many non-super-wealthy people happily spend $800 on a new iPhone they don't need every year?

 

[mr_stout]

otoh, "There's a sucker born every minute"
[Nobody actually knows who said it first]

Cheers!

day_trippr said it right "There's a sucker born every minute".

 

[JLump]

I mean, if I owned an artisan brewery producing sours/exotic, long aged beers and people are will to pay $20 for a 22oz bottle, that's what the hell I'm going to charge. Like its been said before, this is simply what the market is willing to pay. I also think that a lot of what people are paying for is not necessarily the raw sensory experience of the beer itself, but the mystique of those types of beer. They are similar to wines in that regard and share their price point as well.

Personally I LOVE most sours which is why I started brewing them. If you can stand the wait, they are really no more expensive to brew, lol.

 

[Transamguy77]

I mean, if I owned an artisan brewery producing sours/exotic, long aged beers and people are will to pay $20 for a 22oz bottle, that's what the hell I'm going to charge. Like its been said before, this is simply what the market is willing to pay. I also think that a lot of what people are paying for is not necessarily the raw sensory experience of the beer itself, but the mystique of those types of beer. They are similar to wines in that regard and share their price point as well.

Personally I LOVE most sours which is why I started brewing them. If you can stand the wait, they are really no more expensive to brew, lol.

Well if your talking beers like that then the price has to go up, all that beer has to be stored somewhere and that storage is taking up warehouse space that still has to be paid for. So if a beer ages for a year the cost of that floor space needs to come out of that profit.

 

[mr_stout]

I mean, if I owned an artisan brewery producing sours/exotic, long aged beers and people are will to pay $20 for a 22oz bottle, that's what the hell I'm going to charge. Like its been said before, this is simply what the market is willing to pay. I also think that a lot of what people are paying for is not necessarily the raw sensory experience of the beer itself, but the mystique of those types of beer. They are similar to wines in that regard and share their price point as well.

Personally I LOVE most sours which is why I started brewing them. If you can stand the wait, they are really no more expensive to brew, lol.

A 22 oz bottle is a little less than two 12 oz bottles. $20 dollar for that is a lot of money. I guess non-brewers would have to pay that price if they wanted the beer. BUT, since we are brewing our own beer, lucky for us, we can just make it ourselves...

 

[GPP33]

Two thoughts:

1) why does a beer that’s 3x as expensive need to be 3x as good. It you can get yourself into elite company by being 1.5x as good then you should be able to charge elite pricing. It’s not a linear correlation. If no one else is making beer 1.5x as good as the masses then once you reach that threashold you are on the favorable side of the supply/demand curve. My parents house is easily worth 2x what mine is but it’s not 2x bigger or nicer. The formula 1 team that goes 202 vs the one that goes 200 is paying a lot more than 1% more to get there, the road biker who saves .00001% in weight by buying some titanium part is paying more than .00001% more than the next guy. As you encroach on the limits they become exponentially more difficult to reach.

2) a lot of the expensive beers are things like crazy wilds/sours/barrel projects which I’d imagine turn out bad a lot more than a basic pale ale. When you pay $1/oz your paying for more than the beer in that glass, your paying for all the beer that didn’t turn out so good on the journey to those delicious and unique 12ozs. Anyone can find a recipe for pale ale/stout/hefe/Kolsch/pils etc that is guaranteed to be delicious if you have even the slightest clue what you are doing however not everyone can pull off these more complex beers and I’d wager a bet that not many get it right on the first try, the second or even the third.

The shitty part for the consumer is there’s no cheap way to distinguish the winners from the losers.

 

[SoCal-Doug]

It's reasonable to expect a surge in price for the following:

• High alcohol content. Anything with high OG goes up in price due to the higher malt usage and the extended fermentation and maturation time. Imperial Stouts and Barleywines come to mind.
• Crazy dank IPAs. At high hop bills they start to feel in the budget.

Whether they are your alley compared to usual beers it's up to you but those would be immediate suspects if they were at $2 per bottle.

dank and grossly overhopped swill will sell at crazy high prices because they are a fad. put a skull or something midevil on the label and call it something cool like "alien phlem" and you got a winner!

think about things like "the pet rock" and eating tide pods or the new thing, snorting condoms. once those kids hit 21 years old, they go right for the ipa's.

 

[bbohanon]

Dont get me started on the price of craft beer lately..its absurd what alot of the craft breweries are selling these days in relation to the quality you get for that beer.
There is only one or 2 craft beers I will fork over my money for as I know exactly what I get with them time and time again..
I have just been disappointed too many times after spending 14.99 on a 6-pack and getting sub-par beer as a payoff.

The problem is what many of the previous posters have said..they are charging what people are still willing to pay. Most of the friends I have that are "crafties" don't even know the difference in good craft and "meh" craft. They chase the popular breweries "lastest release" and have their money in hand before they even get to the counter to buy it not knowing if its worth a damn or not.

 

[deadwolfbones]

Personally I LOVE most sours which is why I started brewing them. If you can stand the wait, they are really no more expensive to brew, lol.

Same! But there are some things even homebrewers (usually) can't do, like blending different base beers to make even better sours (as blenderies like Cantillon, etc, do).

 

[Staticsouls]

All my friends are hype beasts. The nice thing is I never buy into those ridiculous releases, but they always bring them in exchange.

 

[Crasher06]

I buy locally, mostly, and the costs are a little high but I'd rather spend a couple of extra dollars versus the bad old days when Bud and Miller were the top (sometimes only) choices. No slam against them, particularly. I just think honest competition encourages excellence. Sometimes not. But market forces should eventually prevail.
Plus I get to see what types of beer the local water may be best suited for.

 

[Lefou]

Find the beer you enjoy at the price you're willing to pay and be happy.

...and you know what? I did [find beer to enjoy at a good price].

How about Meijer in Richmond, Indiana?
They were running an Easter Bunny Sunday sale after 12PM on Leinie "Canoe Paddler". Got 12 for a little over $10. Not exactly "craft beer", but I picked up 24 bottles for less than what it would've cost me for two six packs in NJ.
I was happy ... and I shared some for good measure.

 

[mr_stout]

Two thoughts:

1) why does a beer that’s 3x as expensive need to be 3x as good. It you can get yourself into elite company by being 1.5x as good then you should be able to charge elite pricing. It’s not a linear correlation. If no one else is making beer 1.5x as good as the masses then once you reach that threashold you are on the favorable side of the supply/demand curve. My parents house is easily worth 2x what mine is but it’s not 2x bigger or nicer. The formula 1 team that goes 202 vs the one that goes 200 is paying a lot more than 1% more to get there, the road biker who saves .00001% in weight by buying some titanium part is paying more than .00001% more than the next guy. As you encroach on the limits they become exponentially more difficult to reach.

2) a lot of the expensive beers are things like crazy wilds/sours/barrel projects which I’d imagine turn out bad a lot more than a basic pale ale. When you pay $1/oz your paying for more than the beer in that glass, your paying for all the beer that didn’t turn out so good on the journey to those delicious and unique 12ozs. Anyone can find a recipe for pale ale/stout/hefe/Kolsch/pils etc that is guaranteed to be delicious if you have even the slightest clue what you are doing however not everyone can pull off these more complex beers and I’d wager a bet that not many get it right on the first try, the second or even the third.

My response:

1. You really should get what you pay for. It should be a linear correlation.
2. I am not paying for the mistakes of brewers that do not know how to brew. Why should I?

 

[grampamark]

My response:

1. You really should get what you pay for. It should be a linear correlation.
2. I am not paying for the mistakes of brewers that do not know how to brew. Why should I?

I'm guessing you don't work in marketing.

Price, in an open market, is largely determined by supply and demand. Demand can be "inelastic" (clean water, toilet paper, gasoline, the things people will buy at any price) or "elastic" (things people want rather than need).

For items for which demand is elastic, demand can be created by marketing ("it's new! Improved! Buy now, supplies are limited!") or, more subtly, by word of mouth.

Craft beer definitely has elastic demand. Nobody dies if they don't score a six pack of Heady Topper. If the proverbial "everybody" is saying "You have to try Heady Topper. It's da bomb", there are enough folks who just have to jump through how ever many hoops they have to, just to find out for themselves if that beer is as magnificent as "everybody" says it is.

It doesn't matter if the beer (or whatever product) is X times better than an alternative, or even better at all. All that matters is that a certain number of folks will stand in line and pay the asking price, just to find out what the hype is all about.

If the product really isn't that great, the people who made a BFD out of it aren't going to admit they were wrong. Marketing relies on some fundamentals of human nature (not willing to admit they've been hosed being one of those), so the hype goes on, even if the product doesn't live up to its overblown reputation.

For everyone who, like Mr. Stout, presumably, won't pay a premium for an inferior product, there is someone who will pony up the price of admission because, well, that's what all the Cool Kids are doing.

Welcome to Marketing 101.

 

[JDXX1971]

My wifey just brought home a 25.4 oz Founders CBS @ $24.29 plus tax and CRV. So at roughly $1.00 an oz I have high hopes for this one. But really what does that make a keg of killer home brew worth????(I also have high hopes for my 4 gallons of Chocolate Bourbon RIS I have aging) Just sayin, you know.

 

[S-Met]

Remember that beer has alcohol and usa likes to tax alcohol. Some State's more than others. Seems other countries feel thie as well. Price+transport+storage+production+taxation or fees on every one of the steps in one way or another.

Setting aside the bs that I just stated, heres more:
premium beer is not made for every palate.
May not be at appropriate age, temp or served in the wrong glass.
May be poorly made?
May be amazing to someone else.

I have no problem spending too much for a beer, cheaper than getting at the bar. Besides, $10-15 is nowhere near as much as I've spent on mediocre wine.

As for brewing: some single bottles may cost more then brewing 5 gal of clone, but that assumes that I want to drink 5 gal of it. It also assumes that I didn't want instant gratification.

 

[GPP33]

My response:

1. You really should get what you pay for. It should be a linear correlation.
2. I am not paying for the mistakes of brewers that do not know how to brew. Why should I?

1. You’re a single consumer that is welcome to pay what they feel is appropriate for the product. Lots of other people apparently feel that something a little better or a little more unique is worth a lot more $. It’s not something that’s unique to beer, it’s common in every industry.

2. What if we don’t call them failures but R&D? When you buy anything you are paying for the R&D/development that went into it. Not everyone can brew a perfect beer every time, yes even the pros. The trials/tests/studies that breweries invest in coming up with the perfect combination to make something unique and amazing are R&D costs and they must be wrapped up into the costs of the final product or they won’t make any money.

 

[shelly_belly]

I stopped in a brewhouse in West Point Ga last Sunday that was metered pour your own. $.40 -$.50 per ounce. No thank you.

 

[mr_stout]

From now on I only buy the best tasting beer that cost less than $1.50 per 12 ounce bottle.

 

[RPh_Guy]

My untappd unique count is 1702.
I'm moderately tired of paying for mediocre beer/cider/mead/wine at any price, especially bottles that have oxidized.
Paying $5-6 for a pint at a brewery or $6-10 for a flight doesn't seem worth it for just the beer. For me what makes it valuable is the entertainment and excitement of trying new things. I've been to about 60 breweries and still enjoy visiting new ones.
FYI, if you just buy bottles you're missing out on a whole lot of local craft brew since many breweries don't bottle.
Also, I'm happy to occasionally pay for quality sours (yay for dregs) and wet hopped beer of any style because they're so scarce. Too many barrel aged beers I've had are underwhelming.

Having tried so many commercial beers, I have really specific flavor targets for what I want from the style when I brew it.
Homebrewing has really been a great experience. I don't always hit my target but it's almost always good beer anyway. Cheers to everyone on HBT for your help!

 

[Conehead]

I stopped in a brewhouse in West Point Ga last Sunday that was metered pour your own. $.40 -$.50 per ounce. No thank you.

That seems a reasonable price doesn't it?

 

[radwizard]

If Craft Beer is gouging me and taking advantage of me, and Macro is evil (and also taking advantage of me) - I'm not exactly sure what I am supposed to do...