Ram Brewery Side Note Releases

Not only are they scarce(not the reason I drink them).....They also are damn delicious(reason I drink them)

 

I think it's another example of people confusing correlation with causation. Really good beers tend to be more rare and/or in higher demand, but that doesn't necessarily mean rare=good or that a relatively common beer sucks.

I could fill 100 bottles with piss and they won't sell, whereas people line up for BCBS even though there are literally thousands of bottles. Shaun could double or triple production and those beers still wouldn't last long.

 

Totally true (I assume; I haven't had any RAM beers outside of one I tried at Stout Fest 2 years back), but it's also true that scarcity marketing does work in these sorts of situations. I'm sure Chaos would sell out if the beer hit Chicago, but tickets to the festival sold out in less than a minute flat, specifically because you're giving beer nerds a do-or-die level of FOMO.

 

I was getting a little cracked pepper (spiciness) on the finish when I had a pour at the release and believe that was the CTZ hops that were added in the mix.

This helps pin down some flavors (and reasons for them) for me sometimes.
http://www.homebrewstuff.com/hop-profiles

 

Yup, it seems to be working for all sorts of breweries putting out great stuff. Aslin, Monkish, Tree House, Veil... All of those have been putting out incredible beer but because it's so scarce, people have to wait 4 hours in line to get a couple of 4 packs. Idk if it's purely worth the wait since I've gotten pretty good deals in trades, but it's getting a little too insane.

 

But is this scarce marketing or is it just a scarce product? If Treehouse could scale to meet demand, wouldn't they? GI would make at least enough BCBS to satisfy Black Friday demand if they could, but that would mean more capital expenditures into barrel warehouses and such. Not everyone has the ability to instantly scale or the desire to.

 

I was trying to highlight how the scarcity of beers really drives up the demand. I know TH is making a new building at least, but from what I hear from Monkish traders is that Monkish seems content with how they're doing things right now. Anecdotal though.

 

Yeah, but it would still take a sizeable difference in production to make a real difference. How long would it have taken for another 200 tickets (400 bottles) to sell? 5 minutes? How many thousand DLD tickets do they sell in less than an hour with people still looking for tickets? How many people entered the TG lottery to pay $200 for 3 beers?

I really don't think bottle counts drive things that much. It's more about general hype, which is part rarity but also part ratings. There are plenty of 100-bottle releases that don't move the needle, there has to be some kind of quality/reputation behind it.

 

I'm not sure about the other breweries, but doesn't Tree House produce like 11k barrels a year? That's basically the same as Pipeworks. You just don't have to drive to the middle of nowhere in Massachusetts to get it.

 

I'm not saying there doesn't have to be quality, I'm just saying that quality is not the only factor. In a super crowded beer market with LOTS of quality beer, this is one of the ways to stand out.

 

If you circle it back to the brewery on the title of this thread - I don't think RAM could possibly make as much as Goose Island does if BCS. But the article strongly implies they are doing so on purpose just to make it rare.

 

I honestly don't buy it in this particular case. There are plenty of cases in which I think the scarcity marketing thing is a significant factor, but I would imagine RAM can't ramp this stuff up that much, simply because these are side projects to begin with.

 

Seriously, like a brewpub that makes Buttface Amber Ale has all these barrels laying around and extra space for them.

 

Yeah but if you wrote "NE IPA" on those bottles of piss dopes would line up for them all day

 

I didn't get the sense that was the implication, but maybe I'm just naïve. I felt it was more of commenting on the culture in general (which is true) and this was an example of how people go nuts for something that is limited. But, I seem to be in the minority.

As for places purposely keeping things scarce for marketing purposes, I really don't think there is much of that going on. These businesses don't know if their stuff will sell, so they can't just come out and make a ton of something, plus they typically don't have brewing or barrel capacity to do much more It's not like we have Sierra Nevada or Founders making stuff on a micro level just to make it seem limited. Sure, there are things like KBS from Founders or Black Note from Bell's, but they still make quite a bit of that stuff compared to smaller breweries. And on the flipside, you get Founders coming out with a barrel aged beer they (supposedly) think will do well in Lizard of Koz, and it is a shelf turd.

This article is kinda like saying Lin Manuel Miranda created marketing scarcity for Hamilton because he didn't put the show on at Madison Square Garden.

 

On the other hand, I do think can be a part of a marketing strategy if done right.

People mention Dark Lord, but if they got rid of the festival and put all 40,000 bottles or so into distro at $20 a pop, I bet within 2 years you'd find it sitting on shelves for a least a couple weeks. The one day scarcity thing definitely plays a factor. (Take the awesomeness of the fest of it, and just think about the bottles).

Remember when people would line up in Gary to pay an arm and a leg for 18th street bottles? Funny how that stopped once they upped production a bit.

 

Anyone going to icbg winter beer fest? Shaun posted that Chaos and NE slapper will be pouring at the event.

 

Has anyone been to RAM lately? I was wondering if the NE slapper is still on at this point.

 

I'll be in the area next Saturday. Do we suspect they'll have any NE IPAs on tap by then/still?

 

I was told the last keg was put out on Tuesday so it should still be going

No we do not suspect it