Fremont Brewing/Pine Box 1st Anniversary beer!!!

After $30 for BW 14 I've crashed & burned on $20+ bottles. Passing for a while.

 

I opted for the Schooner Exact brown sour and the "First Nail" stout. Both were great.

Some Fremont guy was there and he said they were worried they put too much cinnamon into the beer. I wouldn't say it was too spicy but it was very cinnamon-forward. With barrel characteristics, it might be kind of a mess. I guess we'll see next year.

PS - I hear that Schooner may start bottling their sours. They're on the tame side of sourness, which I personally like.

 

its so cute how they put on a big event and its mostly oregon beers

 

I kind of wondered about the cinnamon element, particularly OakedCanuck's "cinnamon bomb" comment. The label clearly urges aging of this beer (for "several years"), which I expect would tend to mellow out the cinnamon. I wonder if they put the advice to age this beer based on their concerns that it's too cinnamon-forward fresh.

I also was somewhat taken aback by the price (originally I was thinking I'd buy two if it was $15 or less), but I figured I hoofed it over there in the middle of my work day and unfortunately didn't have time to try a glass on tap. I'm pretty burned out on the high-priced bottles lately too, gonna try to maintain some discipline for a while...

 

When I called Fremont yesterday, they said bottles should go on sale at the brewery next week, probably with a 2 bottle / person limit, $15/bottle.

 

Regarding the wacky pricing of these anniversary beers, it would be interesting to get more detail on the deals these places strike with the breweries.

My understanding is that the deals are in the $20,000 - $40,000 range depending on the scale of the order and the pedigree of the brewery. I guess that's a scary bet for a bottleshop or bar to make but I feel like they shouldn't be trying to profit hugely off these special releases. I doubt it cost Pine Box $20/bottle or Bottleworks $30/bottle.

 

D'oh!

 

Wow, so Pine Box marked it up 33%? What a bunch of dicks. Glad I didn't buy the limit.

 

Gives the name of this beer a whole new meaning.

 

Can't tell if you are joking. 30% is industry standard...

 

What's the deal with all the SeattleBeer<Animal> untappd names anyway?

 

Partially. Isn't that mark up applied by bottle shops after the beer goes through a distributor? (honest question, I'm not sure on how that works). Did this beer go through a distributor between Fremont and Pine Box? If so then ya, I can see the mark up if Fremont sold the beer to PB for $15.

But if PB just marked it up an extra $5 just because it was a special event....knowing that Fremont will be selling it next week....

Whatever, I enjoyed the beer.

 

I can tell you exactly what happened. Fremont's wholesale price is 10.49. At Fremont they take a 30% margin for to go sales at the brewery. = 14.99.
Fremont sold that beer through Odom distributing by charging 10.49 to Odom. Odom took a 25% margin bringing it to 14$. Pine box took a 30% margin: grand total 20$
Colin I'm not "correcting" you or anything!! Just thought I'd share how this works
Cheers,
Dan

 

Ok thanks Dan for the clarification! I kinda figured they went through Odom resulting in the price bump.

Cheers!

 

I drank the beer. I liked the beer a lot. I bought two bottles. I just wish I would've known that I could've enjoyed it on draft at the party and picked up bottles later. And after a couple beers and a pizza I wasn't thinking clearly and tipped based on the total bill (which included $40 in "retail"). Expensive night.
But good.

 

So just curious, how does this differ (if at all) from the Bottleworks anniversary beer? My understanding was that Cascade sold bottles for $30. Bottleworks sold bottles for $30. Does Cascade self-distribute? And/or is there another reason there was no difference in price between the brewery and the store/bar celebrating the anniversary?

 

Why would an anniversary beer have to be distributed? Is this required by WA State?

 

Cascade self distributes so they just dropped their price by 30% to sell it to BW. They then probably took extra margin to sell it from their barrel house.

every beer must be distributed self or otherwise. Fremont goes with Odom not self I guess.

 

Kind of strange, though. I know Capitol Hill is all the way over there, but, you'd think they'd just bring the cases over. Or at least have PB come and pick them up.

I'm assuming this won't be available at bottle shops in the area? Just Fremont and PB?