O'so 7th Anniversary Party

I'm assuming that those are not prices listed next to the "categories".

 

Anyone else still on the fence for attending? It's a long drive, $15 cover, +$100-ish for bottle allotment & whatever pours cost, plus a night-time drive back to MKE. But... Door Kriek bottles.

 

And how is it? Worth $20 a bottle?

 

I'm not sure how I feel about so many $20+ BA & sour releases from relatively young breweries. Sure, the beer has the potential to be phenomenal, but very few breweries hit it out of the park within the first few years of barrel-aging any style of beer, let alone sours.

Brewers are taking advantage of a huge market demand for these beers, so I understand why they would be tempted to charge $20+ per bottle- they're trying to maximize profits on a limited supply of beer. $20,000 sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but O'so & Funk Factory are surely splitting that profit (likely around $12,000-15,000 total) and undoubtedly re-investing it into their respective breweries. That money could very well pay for quite a few batches at the Funk Factory. But the bottom line remains- when is a beer worth $15? $20? $25? (or even $35, as Beachwood's latest BA ale is selling for). Or is knowing that you're supporting a brewery/project you enjoy enough to make up for any shortcomings in the beer?

 

Honestly, I didn't even look at the Door Kriek price- I just committed to buying the bottles when I heard they were being released. When I bought Le Terroir, there was no price sticker, so I essentially did the same thing there. I do get sucked in by hype, mostly because I want to try to figure out what the hype is all about. With Door Kriek, it's all about discovering how Funk Factory is going about it's business.

It's taken me about 5 years, but I'm finally discovering that I don't particularly love sours, especially to the tune of $15+ per bottle. I was drinking a TRB Fields Forever and enjoying it, but stopped in the middle to realize that I really just wanted a sixer of Celebration. I'm sure this demotes me back to level II beer nerd, but why do I still have trouble laying off a second bottle of a sour I didn't love just so I can put it in my cellar for 2 years? Unfortunately for me, American brewers are just now getting good enough with sours that even a guy who doesn't love sours thinks that many of them are too good to pass up. Ka-ching.

 

What do they do with the specialty kegs that aren't empty?