Limited Distribution - A Net Positive For Craft Beer?

thrill of the hunt

 

I like hunting.
But, some stores take it too far. When retailers start hoarding bottles, and raising the price 70-90% on rarer beers it's time to stop shopping at those stores.

I'm lucky enough to have a lot of retailers around with good selection, and it's growing as well.
It's fun hunting though, just scored some White Oak Jai Alai.
It took me a while to get good at it, but you just need to find retailers that care.

BA is good for finding out when to start looking for special bottles, and facebook is good for following brewery news.

Also, there are a lot of regularly available beers that you can't normally get you can trade for fairly easily. Pliny comes to mind, all I had to trade for those were some Great Divide Yeti variants. It was my first trade ever too, guy was super nice.

Local breweries are even cooler when they make solid beer. I've made a lot of good friends over the past year, even took a road trip with some of them to CCB for Brandy Huna.

I've found the best thing about getting special beers that aren't normally around is sharing them with good friends, especially those who truly appreciate what you have.

Tracking down those beers is part of the fun, you gain a sense of pride and accomplishment, as petty as that may sound. Ah well, it's fun for me and I don't plan on stopping until I die.

 

As much as I hate to say it, I do like the hunt. It's fun to get a chance to head out of town or be on a business trip, walk into a random store and score an awesome local brew. If I had BCBS, or Hunahpu at my fingertips year round would I enjoy them as much? Yes.., but really? or would I then be looking to score some other beer I can't get my hands on?

 

speaking of hunting....which one of you bought up all the Jai Alai on Letspour this morning!!?

 

I kind of like it too. As someone who is fairly obsessive, and likes keeping lists of the beers I'd like to try, I'd be completely ovewhelmed if all states & breweries distributed to my little part of East Central PA. And it's great when I go to visit relatives in Minnesota, Maryland or Tennessee, and can find new and interesting stuff on the shelves thst never makes it to PA.

That said, I'd be pretty happy if New Glarus started to ship to PA

Cheers all,

 

I much prefer the brewery distribution model, as limited as it is, of Alpine, Kern or Alchemist. Sell beer at fair prices in your immediate market.

I don't support breweries like Nebraska, Prairie, or Mikeller, where their prices are so high they can't sell their small output to their local market, but have to penetrate into just about every craft beer buying market to sell their beer.

 

I think the answer changes for people based on what they have access to. If you have access to a lot of great beers then you might like that it has a limited access for people. On the other hand if you live in a place like south GA like I do, and there is a very limited variety of beer, it can get frustrating when you see everyone talking about an awesome beer that you have no access to. And you can't trade for it because you can't get your hands on any "rare" or "limited" beer to trade for others. Your only hope is to travel, which can be very expensive. And when you are a college student paying your own way, traveling is not a luxury that can be afforded.

However, maybe when I get older and I get to travel more or move to a place where I can access and trade for limited beer, my opinion might change. But as for now I wish some beers had a wider availability.

I wanna try EVERYTHING!

 

I think limiting production is beneficial to the beer world, but really not for the reason you outline. To me, diversity is good. I'm a fan of there being more smaller breweries that stay in their local market vs the established breweries expanding.

Think about it, if we have a brewery like Sierra Nevada we get, at most, 30 or so beers at any given time that see widespread availability. Replace that sort of output (700k bbl/yr IIRC) with modestly sized microbreweries that have about the same variety, let's say 5k bbl/yr & 20 different beers, and you get 2,800 different beers, amongst which there are bound to be some stinkers, but also some real gems. I'll take that kind of variety over mass-produced consistency any day.

There do need to be some heavy hitters sending their beer across the country, because this keeps the local guys honest and makes them produce a competitive product.

Everybody doesn't need to have access to every beer. It just wouldn't work. Too much bottling and expansion leads to stores full of shelf turds. That's a problem we already have and I'd hate to see it get any worse.

 

I get little pleasure from hunting down beers....it's time and gas-consuming. I want to DRINK beer, not have them for a ride in my car.

I'd love to be able to buy Heady, Pliny, etc. Trading by shipping seems like too much time/money consumption for me. I'd prefer it if I could pick these up at my usual beer shops.

I actually can't understand the hunt-being-part-of-the-fun sentiment. Different strokes, I guess.

 

Local distribution has many advantageous, as already described, but the Byzantine nature of alcohol laws courtesy of both State and Federal government often prohibits breweries selling directly to consumers online. This is infuriating to me.

 

It wasn't me but there is a crapload of Jai Alai around right now in S. Florida.
ABC had 4 six packs left, and a local Crown had about 6 of them.
I can only speculate the other locations are similarly stocked.
I predict the demand for jai alai won't outweigh supply too much longer and it will be easier to get.

 

That is quite an ethnography that you are trying to piece together. "Does access have a qualitative impact on a larger 'craft beer experience,' beyond the actual enjoyment of simply drinking good beer?"

You first have to identify subsets of craft beer drinkers, because for most people consuming craft beer, the answer would be no, simply because they are not aware of the sprawling and fragmented networks of beer distribution. These are the people who probably order Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada or any of the larger regional brewery beers and even when they travel, will most likely order the same when available, over any beer exclusive to the region that they are traveling in.

Then you get into the niche consumers who will not only try to taste everything available in their own region, but will likely jump to an unknown brand when traveling, even if a familiar favorite is on tap. Then you get to the niche within the niche, which are the people who will get involved with trading. In a different industry, I have spent decades servicing the niche and niche within the niche types. Now the one thing with niche markets is that you are dealing in products that get a premium margin, because of the exclusive nature and the added resources usually involved in handling. The reality is that anybody who wants a bottle of Pliny The Elder, could get one with relatively little expense or effort to set up a trade. And while there are plenty of people (the niche within the niche) that do trade, still the majority of people in the greater niche can't justify the additional cost and time to bring it to that level.

So to your question, I think that the answer is obviously yes for some and even for those there are going to be some that take it to another level, but for that subset of the niche consumer, you would probably have to look to studies on collector mentality and motivation, because that is more inherent in this individual and for them (some may call them tickers), they likely have... or have had... or will have... collections of other things. There is a level of satisfaction and enjoyment that comes from the collecting itself, even if it is something intangible, such as the experience of having tasted something.

 

it's just one of the only beers that I would consider breaking my monthly budget for, ya know

 

Are you saying you wish all beer was just available locally near the brewery?

 

To an extent I like the hunt, but in general would prefer it was easier to find what I want. Its not particularly convenient to drive to Wisconsin every time NG or AA have a new beer out nor is it to drive to Chicago or Madison to find any FFF, because websites typically don't keep a lot of FFF in stock online due to demand. I wish it could be easier but in the end I just end up stocking up when I go.

 

It's a huge plus for local breweries because their consumer base doesn't know as much about what else is out there.

I can't wait until the better breweries with great growth are in more markets and there's finally, FFS finally, a weeding out on the shelf space where we can finally see some of the better ones stay and the mediocre ones die.

Although some bottle shops and "have it all" mega stores will still have everything, think of what your craft beer selection could look like at grocery stores. Man I would love to see Russian River, Founder's, Cigar City, and others kick off some of the beers that are on the shelves here.

 

No. I wish breweries didn't have the business model of... high prices that few people buy, but wide distribution in order to sell it.

I mean, has anybody on this site ever repeat purchased Nebraska Hop God?
I'd much rather they sell it at $6 a bottle, they could sell it out locally.