King Henry and other "rare" beers

^ This
I am lucky enough to have 2 bottles of both now. And I enjoy them so much I wouldn't trade either of them even if offered a true rarity.

 

the game changer was when goose island put it on retired status on their website. once people knew it would remain a one-off and it was delicious all bets were off. even if they dont make it again id love to see them make prince henry again an bottle it

 

*checks Jim's Whale list*

*sees GI BCS Rare on it*

What?

 

King Henry was originally released at 3 bottles per person. http://beeradvocate.com/events/info/50042

It was then widely distributed. Some reasons that it seems rare are:

1. Limited Distribution (case per store, or case per chain, 2 bottles per store, etc)
2. Purchase limits (1 per customer)
3. Hype
4. It was aged in Rare barrels (see #3), although around the release most people had just heard PvW
5. It is a really good beer (my opinion)
6. Many people received one bottle, so they held onto it for dear life and used it to leverage as much out of trades as possible
7. Many people who received bottles were newish traders
8. Word of mouth got around regarding #5

So although it isn't rare, it is highly sought after. The same thing has happened in the past with Black Tuesday and Dark Lord. GI, just like Founders with CBS, thought they were doing the craft beer industry a service by spreading out distribution so thin. Unfortunately, it seems to have caused quite the fuss. If both had been released in the same fashion as Beatification b5, we would probably be looking at a very different scenario on the trade forums.

 

Didn't he take it off?

Below:

No need, I found the link of at least one version of the list out there and it is still towards the end.

 

Girlfriends are replaceable. (shed probably take the beer or smash it to spite you)
Once brewed beers are not. (you have one waiting for a specific occasion)
You get engaged, you drink bottle.

Lesson of the day: ask for her hand in marriage, keep the girlfriend, and drink the beer.
Wow. That was hard.

 

Nope. I wish we didn't have to link to images on the web so I could screenshot it and post it.

 

Dr. Drew taught me everything I know.

 

Well said, sir! Cheers!

 

that's how it works when a 'retailer' has no other method to dispose of inventory and is incurring ongoing costs. in this case, they can drink it, sit on it for a while (basically free, because it is a minority belief on this site that most beer doesn't age well, and therefore few people see aging beer as losing flavor / money), and then try to trade it again later or ebay it.

someone else said this in another thread, and i agree: there are probably more unopened bottles of kh than beatification out there, even though they were the same batch size and beatification came out more recently. in a couple of months i could say the same about framboise de amorosa.

you really aren't going to see 'corrective' market action on beer trading values until some disincentivizing mechanism becomes mainstream. in all likelihood, about 5 years from now there will be ~6k bottles of rare and king henry (each) all sitting in cellars having gone downhill. such a shame.

 

You are correct, though I was simply speaking from a here-and-now trading perspective. Certainly a person could drink, age, or sell their bottles of KH, but those options won't do them any good if they're hoping to trade it, right now, for huge quantities and/or whales.

 

*Checks Jim's Whale list*

Wouldn't want 50% of the beers because unless I personally know who stored them, I wouldn't trust they were stored correctly based on age. Just another thought.

 

i'd bet a good portion of those are past their peak regardless of storing, but if you really enjoy fapping it to rarity, that list is for you...

 

QFT

Taste is not the point.

 

actually, my point is that people CAN and DO age their beers - purportedly to drink, but obviously having a side benefit of increasing in trade value due to attrition. and i think it is way more common to store for trade value than people are letting on, especially with the advent of noobs who think king henry is the next dave.

until it becomes a mainstream view that aging beers is often pointless, so that the only reason one would be aging is naked desire for increased trade value, you're not really going to see any improvement in that behavior. i honestly think there's an explosion of <1 year craft drinkers who have a shit-ton of kh and rare that are just going to let it go bad. and they probably don't even care because they're just "passing through" the beer world. sigh.

 

That list does take into account taste and whether or not the beer is "over-the-hill". However, since I don't have a constant stream of those beers to crack into every couple of months, I have to base it on hearsay and I don't have time to update it as much as I would like. Case in point, stuff like 03 BA Speedway, PvW 50/50 have dropped considerably from where they once were because of many reports of them being past their prime.

And there is a difference between a "wale" and a whale... Dave = Wale, Rare being next to last on that list = Whale.

 

I had access to 2 cases of KH off various shelves (bought 4). It's not rare...it's delicious, but not rare. Hell, I talked to a guy who had 30+ at one point and another who had over a case.

Not. .rar.exe

*Also in the camp that the beer is unlikely to improve*

 

There are people out there who don't ask an arm and a leg for it.

I had three, traded three because there were other things I wanted to try:
1 for a Framboise for a Cure
1 to a regular trading partner in a huge box for some Lawson's stuff
1 for a Peche 'n Brett