Modem Times

Alesmith does, and some of the guys on here may crucify me for saying this, but typically the week before BPT there will be a keg put on without announcement for the regulars to try. There are times they announce, but it is very very infrequent.

 

I guess I'm gonna miss this month's rent... but at least I'll be swiming with nilla and coconut whalez

 

I'm definitely with you on wishing there was a way to taste this stuff before laying out this sort of money but I wouldn't really compare this to the Bruery's monthly releases. The Bruery is producing way more of their product than MT is for these small releases.

 

Jacob's point is thought provoking, and I really appreciate it. Makes me think of something another brewer said when some buddies and I were at a tap takeover of theirs. They had one brew in particular that was like $10/6oz or some such, which we were bitching about, even though it was barrel-aged/brewery-only, and he said, "Man, this bar paid like $600 for that keg. I told them they should've priced pours even higher!" We laughed...and took a sip from our $10 mini snifters.

The question that comes to mind, though, with the notion of luxury goods/premium price points is that there are world class examples of luxury goods that are very economically priced. I mean, Cantillon sells Fou Foune for something like $8 USD/per at the brewery. In Germany, world class lagers are almost always <$1 USD, and Lord knows extended lagering times don't do anything good for profit margins. Hell, $10 Firestone specialty beer as of only 6-7 years ago, as @grilledsquid noted (and which are still fairly "cheap" for what they are @ $15-$17.) So, I wonder if some of this is cultural, perhaps? I don't have an answer, to be honest, and I'm a big old cheapskate, so I'm not really the target demographic for stuff like this. But I tend to wager that, in addition to paying for skill/hard work/etc. with luxury goods, particularly in this country, you're also paying for cachet, convenience, and general cultural/market forces (i.e., a growing group of craft beer types willing to pay premium prices).

 

There's an inherent assumption that the cost to produce a BA beer/sour is the same for FW as it is for Cantillon as it is for MT, we know that can't be true. Volume drives pricing, look at the bottle counts of these MT beers and compare them to anything from Cantillon or FW, clearly they are not in the same league when it comes to sheer amount of volume being produced. This has an effect on pricing. Doesn't make one beer better than another but niche/boutique items always cost more. If someone wants to decide that they will only buy BA/sour beers that have been produced in massive quantities, that certainly is a way to save some money.

 

It says "Danksauce Whales" on the tap handle, so it's not that much of a stretch for people to think that's the name of the beer.

Conversely, I was at Live Wire the other night and a woman asked for "Lomaland" and the bartender had no idea what she was talking about. She eventually pointed to the handle and the bartender was like, "Oh, the saison. It's called Lomaland?"

 

True, but don't they usually tap beers most of us have had before? Like BA Speedway variants? I suppose in some cases they tap beers that no one has tried before, but I feel like it's fairly uncommon to tap a beer no one has had prior to a bottle run (if the brewery does intend to bottle that batch).

 

Yeah, my question, was more rhetorical, like expressing incredulity that it happens, but I guess not as many people are as geeked out as I am. Some people just want to drink a good beer and not worry about it, but it is a little confounding that this kind of thing happens with Untappd, because I'm assuming these people aren't ordering a "Danksauce Whale," right? For example, I imagine they had to order what they're drinking, and usually the name of the beer is listed somewhere. Then again, to your point about Lomaland, maybe some people are ordering on the basis of style, and simply check it in based on the tap handle they saw the bartender use.

 

But, surely, 6-7 years ago, the bottle runs for FW specialty beers were fairly small? And yet, lower prices. I don't have any data, just surmising. As for Cantillon, again, that pricing has been that way for ages, and I don't think the production numbers are so different than it'd cause such a difference in price. (This link from 2012 suggests 3,000 liters of Fou Foune produced annually, with a total output of 4,000 bottles.) Niche items may cost more, to be sure, but I guess the question is a matter of scale. Again, though, doesn't both me a whit whether folks want to drop $30 for a beer -- they earned their money, they can do what they darn well please with it.

Edit: This RB link has some banter suggesting FSW 11 was 6,000 bottles at MSRP $16.99. So, even as far back 11, there was a good bit more produced than MT.

Double edit: I think Jacob should charge even more, to be honest. When you have BPTs that are finished in a matter of minutes, seems to me the market will bear a higher price (and is, basically, asking for it.)

 

For whatever reason, I see a lot of places that list Modern Times' beer by style, rather than name. Like instead of Fortunate Islands, the menu will just say "Modern Times Hoppy Wheat" or something similar.

See https://untappd.com/b/modern-times-beer-hoppy-sessionable-lager/1093506 for an example.

 

It's something I've considered (even though no one else I'm aware of does it), since I'm a big fan of transparency. The biggest problem, again, is volume. Every sixtel of barrel-aged whatever we package is 30 bottles we don't have available. We've made a big effort to package enough draft to be able to serve the beers at the release party, but to have enough for a release party and an "en primeur" tasting would really cut down on the bottle numbers. I'll revisit the idea once we've scaled up production.

Yeah, this has been an issue from the beginning, and I truthfully do not understand it. And yes, I have had people tell me, "Oh man, I drank one of you Danksauce Whales at the airport and it was awesome!" Why is "Danksauce Whale" more noticeable than "Special Release" on that tap handle? I have no clue. It's baffling.

Scale is a big part of this (Firestone will produce 300,000bbls to our ~18,000bbls), but there's also differences in business philosophy and cultural assumptions at play. Some people prefer to think of special releases as brand building exercises, or as means of rewarding loyal retailers, or a whole host of other things, and as consequence, they apply a different economic rational to their pricing. And in some countries, the assumption is that certain goods will be cheap because they have a long history of being cheap (like coffee in the U.S., for instance), or perhaps there is a weak local market but a strong export market (as with sour beers in Belgium, for instance). So even though they're similar products, there are a lot of other factors influencing the final price point.

Cheers & thanks,
Jacob McKean
Modern Times Beer

 

You are slicing them in half first, right? Right?

 

Wait, you're supposed to take the vanilla beans out of the plastic wrap before putting them in the beer???

 

I think that Alesmith's shit show days are beyond us; no crucifixion necessary. Besides, they do this in the middle of the week, and w/o much advance warning. As long as I'm a 10 minute drive from my workplace to there, I don't care. LOL

Oddly enough, tasting Beer Geek and Brandy BA Old Numbskull before the release made me buy fewer of them than I would have. I don't regret that for the Numbskull (just don't like pure brandy aged - OK mixed with bourbon), but Beer Geek ended up tasting a lot better a few months out. The grumbler fills last week made up for that, though.

 

Well said. The cultural one is so interesting to me -- 500ml bottles of world class German lagers/pils for <$1, and the locals would be aghast if they cost much more. Even pub pint pricing in England -- locals scoff at terrible London prices, and yet, even with the awful exchange rate, they're still only $5-$6 USD, which most US folks would call pretty darn reasonable. (And that's for a 20oz pint!) Fascinating how all this stuff develops.

 

As far as I am concerned, anyone can price what their items what they want to. It is the consumers who choose to pay what items are being priced at.

Right now my absolute top price I can afford to pay for a beer is about $20. I just don't have the means to go above that right now. Would I buy something at a higher price? Yes, but I just can't. This is the limit I set. I would just rather have meat for dinner rather than paying for beer and a cup o noodles.

Seriously, we all value our time and our skills. None of us would ever go do something if they were not paying us what we felt was fair for what we were doing. My job is low salary, but high reward with commissions if I get a good booking. I think it is worth it for some lean months to have a several months of feast. If it wasn't worth it I would have found another job by now. Just like the carpenter who gives a quote, is countered too low, and then they walk away. Best to lose a job that you wouldn't make money on, than to waste your time and potentially lose out on a good job because of the lesser one.

There is no one that stays in business that prices their work at less than their cost. Sure you may take loses at the beginning when you are first starting to get established, or if you have an item that sells so well you can afford to take a loss on a product while it is still in testing.

I don't think you even need to use coffee as an example in the US. You could just use beer. I mean look at what a case of BMC costs. About the same as a 6er of something that I would prefer to drink. People just expect beer to be cheap. There are so many things that go into pricing that trying to justify it is a pointless exercise because people just don't seem to be able to wrap their heads around it.

 

Why does this stupid forum block every damn link to the outsiflde world now?

 

Is that a rhetorical question?

 

Either these sold out in less than one minute or there is a BPT issue.

 

Got my bottles, so easy. Thanks Modern Times & thanks BPT.