Doing Our Part to Bring Down Prices

Or Yugos -

 

If one could rely on highly-priced beer to have the same consistent level of quality as Ferrari and Lamborghini, you might have a point, and people might not complain about high prices so much.

Personally, though, I’m done with paying fantastic prices for mediocre beers.

 

Pretty much my thought as well. While the most I have paid to this point is circa $25 for BA Old Raspy, and to me that's fine if it's something that has been on my must get list for a while. Otherwise I'm likely not going north of about $15. Since most Hardywood BA'd offerings are no more than $13-15 bucks, that's seems like a sensible enough price point for me to cut most stuff off at. Meanwhile, show me ADWTD for $35 and I'm probably digging out cash again.

 

Good analogy, except that I don't need gas to get myself to work.

 

Life is too short to drink cheap beer.

 

I'm cheap (or maybe poor) by craft-enthusiast standards and I'll routinely ignore big bottles that cost more than ten bucks. I increasingly miss out on stuff that's probably really good, but I'm happy enough to drink other stuff that's really good at a lower price.

EDIT: Wait, I'm doing my part to lower prices? Wow, good for me!

 

I voted $20. That said, I rarely will pay that much - most of the time it's in the $10 - $12 range for me.
I will spend more for beers that are worth it, and won't buy ones that aren;t - as others have said, there are beers that I wouldn;t pay $5 for a full keg (not even considering BMC.)
I also really don't think many breweries are charging ridiculous pricing - there are very few that are really raking in the dough.
It takes ingredients, time and expertise to brew these top shelf beers, and once those are paid for, they price it accordingly (this also doesn't take into account retail stores inflating the prices they charge [and private sellers don't even factor in])
IMO some of those biggest beers are even bargains considering what it must take to brew them - Dark Lord at $15 at the brewery, for a massive, barrel aged coffee beer? Abyss, DFH 120 and WWS, etc etc.

 

Quality and desirability (personal thing - ie how much I want to try the beer) pretty much make price irrelevant for me. I am much more annoyed by the hassle of tracking beers I want down.

You mention FFF specifically, so I am curious what you think overpriced is. Zombie Dust is usually about $15 a 6 pack here in Chicago, and a lot less if you buy direct from the brewery (but I can't be buggered driving down there). It is damn hard to find, but based on your categories above a 6-er of Zombie could be $60 and still be OK ($10 per bottle...).

Frankly, I love Zombie, and wouldn't care what the price is, and I would think at $30-40 a 6 pack you would start seeing it actually sitting on shelves, which from my perspective would be awesome - since I wouldn't have to do any extra work tracking it down, I would just have to pay.

Time has value to me - the reason I don't spend all day running around town wasting my time looking for the cheapest deal on everything is that I value my time more than a few dollars. I would dearly love not having to run around town looking for beers I like if they were more expensive but readily available at the store...

 

Here's the big problem with threads like this, it doesn't take into consideration that, often, the brewery will have the largest percentage of the cost of the beer with, potentially, the smallest cut of the retail price.

To make a beer, the brewer must have enough capital for the brewhouse, employees and ingredients. To distribute the beer, the distributor needs trucks and a warehouse. To sell the beer to me, the store needs a storefront and employees. In the great state of Ohio, the store has a legally mandated 25% markup, they sell a bomber for $10, they're pocketing a guaranteed $2 in gross profit. This will vary widely by state, but in general, 15-25% is a pretty safe range for store gross profit.

The distributor will get a 20%-40% piece of the pie, so for all of you playing along at home, of your $10 bomber, $2-3 goes to the store that sells to you, $2-4 goes to the distributor, realistically leaving $3-6 in the brewer's pocket for making your tasty beer. While the $3-6 is the most of any of the 3 tiers, remember, they also have all of the manufacturing and raw materials costs. So, while this may shock you all, in general, brewers really only make a modest profit and aren't getting rich off of you...

An obvious follow-up is "but mwa423, what about when I buy a six pack at the brewery and it's the same price as at the store! ZOMG! I'm being screwed by small beer! They should sell six packs in the tap room for pennies, like they do to the distributor!"

Well, this is an instance where a brewer has much higher gross profit, but you can either have a state law issues (Ohio being my favorite example, they legally have the same minimum markup off of wholesale invoice price in the brewery) or a good business issue. Stores will drop your packages like a rock if everybody in town could buy the same six pack at the brewery for $5 that is being sold in the store for $10. Retail accounts don't really appreciate being undercut like that.

 

I generally ask myself if I really want to do this when the cost of a bomber gets up around the cost of my first car ($25 - it was a Corvair). That said, many of the sours, lambics, barreled aged beers and higher gravity beers are expensive because they require more equipment and take up more warehouse space while they are sitting around in barrels. I appreciate that and am willing to pay more for them.

 

It's crazy how that works sometimes. Zombie Dust is relatively common around here. Most bars have it on tap frequently, and we get weekly shipments on Wednesdays like clockwork. On one hand, it's easy enough to get... and on the other hand, at $25-$30/6-pack, it never lasts more than an hour at the bottle shops that get it.

We get weekly shipments of all kinds of 3F bombers, too.. and most are reasonable priced. (I'm calling $15/bomber reasonably priced, but some people wouldn't)

I'd LOVE to own a Corvette ZL1, but it's not in my budget. I'm not boycotting Chevy over it, though, so they lower their prices to fit my particular lifestyle.

 

If there are examples of the same styles of beer, but at much lower prices, then why the need for Bruery etc to be priced more accessibly? Make do with all the other great options.

I voted $45+. Not because I have a massive desire to spend as much $ as possible on beer, but because I have (and would again) paid that much in certain cases, where I deemed it was worth it.

I know when these debates come up, the people who want certain beers to be priced higher are chastised for wanting to take the beer away from the honest, blue-collar working man. But it's not like that at all. If I have $50, I would rather be able to walk into a store and buy 2 x Beer Y for $25 a bottle, than hypothetically be able to buy 5 x Beer Y for $10 a bottle (but in reality buying zero). For me it's not a case of spending more money overall on beer, but being able to buy it when I want it, with the "catch" being that I would have to be much more selective with my purchasing.

 

Wow $25 for Zombie is pretty high, no wonder it shifts fast here in Chicago at $15... Looks like the ceiling on price is pretty high for it to last more than an hour

 

Get it to me in NH regularly and I would pay it in a heartbeat...for a little while...though it is admittedly high...

 

Holy shit! How dare you have a sense of reality!!

 

Well, I paid $35 for an 11.2 oz bottle (or whatever the measurement of the bottle was) of Westie XII whilst in Aruba last November, so I'm not sure what that equates to with your poll. Was it worth it? Every single cent.

For what it's worth, Zombie Dust is $10/6-pack at the brewery. Find someone to trade with because $25/6-pack seems a bit ..... overt.

 

Yep - and I would pay $30 for a 4 pack of heady very happily if it was on the shelf in Chicago - for a while. I guess the 'newness' drives that a lot, but even every day, I would pay $30 for Zombie dust, I just wouldn't have it all the time, perhaps only a few times a year as a treat.

That is what I find really weird with the pricing as it is now - the effort to find the beers is the real cost. The value of time is being ignored in a lot of these debates.

As @rollom says, one of the big pushbacks on the idea of higher pricing is the 'blue collar' beer is a common man's drink, and the average Joe would be priced out. To be honest, the average guy with a full time job and a family has no more time than me to waste hunting beers - if anything he has less time than me, I don't have kids.

I have to think for the average Joe, the net result of pricing is irrelevant - all the desirable hard to find beers are unattainable regardless because they are sold out within an hour of the truck arriving while they are still at work. At least with higher pricing they would be on the shelf for the special occasions where everyone can afford to splurge. If a $30 or $40 6 pack a few times a year is going to break the bank you probably can't afford to have an extensive craft beer hobby anyway.

 

I paid $40 for my one bottle of Westy XII. I wouldn't make a habit out of it.. but for a one time purchase I found it to be worth the money!

In regards to the $25-$30 Zombie.. we're in a college town, so as kids here "learn" about craft beer, inevitably the first thing they run to is Zombie Dust. It's kind of a running joke around here.

 

Are we talking about a C3 or a C6 ZL1... Because if we are talking about a C3, then none of you are being even remotely realistic - I mean, you only need 1 kidney for a start, and some things are worth selling a child for...

 

My personal cut-off point is $1/ounce. And that's for a beer that I expect to be exceptional. A beer that I go at the the highest of possible expectations, and that damn well better impress the hell out of me. Anything over a buck an ounce, I'm not buying, even if it comes with a bikini model.