Your thoughts on Alpine's decision?

I voted for mixed bag.

On one side I agree with the brewers frustration. I bet it sucks for him to see his product being exploited like that. I visited Alpine last year (on a San Diego trip) because I had heard about their brews and had tried a couple of them. I was impressed at their small size but how packed their cafe was and their small little tasting room. This small brewery makes awesome brew not only for their size but just in general. That Odins Raven stout is delicious and all their hoppy brews are top notch.

On the other side Im sad that this has pushed the brewer to react this way. It seems like a slight overreaction. There are tons of others that have had his beers by traveling to Alpine, CA and they are not locals. Some of their brews are also available at stores in the San Diego area.

All in all I guess he shouldnt make such good brews .

 

I wasn't talking about the smiley, the statement in general seems childish even if you take out the smiley.

I know it's all in good fun, I'm just being pragmatic here...like I usually am I never take anything personal. I'm basically saying my opinion is that as much as I hate it, our opinions don't matter, only the brewer's and his locals' opinions do.

I wholeheartedly agree with your last statement. That's what I'm saying, it's all about priorities and it seems this particular brewer has none of his beer on eBay pretty high up there. His brewery is still at a scale that he could afford to make everything DONG and it wouldn't hurt his business. It would just piss off all of us that aren't locals which again, wouldn't matter since we don't keep him in business. He really only needs to be concerned about himself, his employees and his locals at this stage.

 

I think even eBayers get pissed off by that. There are countless beers that won't sell if a user puts the starting bid near what the highest bid in the history of the past few months is.

 

Pretty clever move by a local. Now they just have to put a few more bottles up on eBay and they can enjoy Expo being tap only!

 

Very true. They are so tiny yet so busy that Im sure that they can just live off their local sales.

 

I was going for light-hearted, not childish; please accept my deepest apologies.

I would imagine that plenty of his locals like to be able to take his beer home, so this threat to end growler AND BOTTLE sales is a pretty big deal not just to traders across the country but to locals as well. I know if my local brewery decided to make one of my favorite beers a DONG just because a couple bottles showed up on eBay, I'd be pretty disappointed - bottles are almost always cheaper than draughts on a per-ounce basis, and the convenience of being able to enjoy terrific beer in the comfort of one's home can hardly be overstated.

It's the brewer's prerogative if he wants to make good on this threat, of course, but to say that the opinions of his customers (both local and far-flung - Alpine distributes many of their bottles directly to a store that does lots of mail-order sales) don't matter is a bit misguided.

 

that pretty much is their flagship beer. I think they should hike up the prices, at least for now, beer nerds will pay any amount for any beer as long as it is hyped

 

That's exactly what it is, the age old dilemma of a few idiots ruining it for the bunch. Most people don't thread shit on trade threads but the ones that did ruined it for us not too long ago because the brothers felt strongly enough about preventing it. Same situation here. It's not a new concept but yea, it sucks for the rest that aren't responsible for having it be implemented

 

"some serial killer in Miami puts chopped up body parts in them before dumping them in the Ocean?" Hey! Leave my other hobbies out of this!

 

Oh I gotcha. I see what you mean with simple solution but how can you as a brewer justify getting rid of your best selling brew. I don't have specifics but Im sure Exponential and Pure are some of their best selling brews. Especially with their locals.

 

what is their best selling brew anyways? would this be it if it was offered as a regular do you think?

 

No need to apologize, I was just saying what it came off as. Since you only replied that, it literally made me picture of when a kid/immature person has no logical argument left and just says something that has nothing to do with it and says something along the lines of so there, sticks their tongue out and crosses their arms. That's the exact picture that went through my mind when I read it lol

Therefore, that's why I said its his locals opinions that matter, not ours. If the change makes them outraged enough to boycott the brewery, he's in deep shit. If most just decided they'll visit the brewery more often, then he has nothing to lose. Its not misguided, I'll bet you anything they would still sell out without a single out of cali person wanting their beer when they're not in cali. I have a couple friends there and Alpine is even hard to get there...bottles seem to fly off shelves. So its not misguided at all to say that our opinions and by our I mean the far-flung customers, which I'm included in, don't matter when it comes to Alpine's business/revenue/profit.

I think you might be overestimating Alpine's size and underestimating the local demand and by that I mean the whole state of california's demand.

RR already distributes to PA and I think other states? So when talking about them I agree, we do matter.

 

I think it would.

So. Your point is: Slow production of other brews and make PH and/or EH more often? Sacrifice your other production brews to concentrate on these?

BTW I'm not being facetious I just want to understand your point.

 

That's precisely what I wanted to go through your mind, but in a self-conscious, sarcastic way - hence the tongue-sticking-out smily. I just thought your deep-thinking pronouncement that my opinion didn't matter was laughable: obviously no random internet poster's opinion matters in a practical way, and to suggest that I thought otherwise was unnecessary.

The only context in which my (or your, or any other BA's) opinion could possibly matter is within the confines of this discussion thread, and that's the only point I was trying to make with my cheeky (you say immature) post.

I think we can safely drop this whole thing, and agree to enjoy whatever delicious Alpine beers may or may not cross our paths in the future.

Cheers!

 

Best selling isn't the only part of the equation, its also how fast you can produce it and what your profit margins are on them.
What beer do they make the most profit on over a year making the most they can is something I'd be curious to know but I doubt even Alpine has ever calculated that.

 

if you want to please people and quell the hype factor yes, would it be the best business decision? questionable. Regardless if people have thier panties in a bucnh about the growler fills and bottles just move near the brewery if you like it that much, otherwise live without it.

 

well it is an ipa so it isn't hard to produce, it does take a fuck ton of hops though which would be the problem.

 

Haha well this is a case of misinterpreting then because you can't hear or see the other person through a forum post. I'm sure I wouldn't have interpreted it as immature if we had been chatting at a bar over a beer.

Definitely, I enjoy the hell out of any Alpine I get because I know not even Cali BAs can get it whenever they want.

 

I'm totally on board with not bottling it again. In fact, don't bottle any beers because it's like playing the Fantome lottery.