2019: resolutions, predictions and reflections

I'm pulling for you! I'm pretty sure I've got a few years before my arc of beer nerdom reaches that place. I feel like (i.e. no factual basis) I'm on the downslope though.

 

This would be a reach goal for me. I doubt I'll ever get to that point this year, but definitely want to clear out the cellar; cutting it in half would be awesome. I'm starting to track what I have; that always tends to help me use restraint on my purchases.

 

If I were to attempt to get my cellar to zero this year, you could start inscribing my tombstone.

I agree that it's a great goal and I'd like to get there, but there's no light at the end of the tunnel yet for me.

 

Same. I will do a decent job drinking it down to a more manageable level, but then Pipeworks does a new BA release, or BCBS happens, or I visit a brewery out of town and I cancel out a month of drinking.

 

Just curious...what do you guys do! Buy the beer for display or save for a special day? I can't think of any beer other than the Dark Lord variant I get every year that sits around.

 

Or make a simple trade and someone porch bombs you with a ton of extras.

 

Trust me, it's taken me a couple of years to get to this point. At times my beer stash would grow a bit but then I'd shrink it back down further so that the general trend is always downward over time.

I think it was two years ago I looked at my beer stash and there were well over 100 bottles in there of high ABV, predominantly large format stouts. I use to keep them around for the shares or special occasions with friends but those rarely seem to materialize on any kind of a frequent basis, and so the bottles just kept pilling up. All the meanwhile, they were sitting there without me even having tried many of them.

At one point I got sick of looking at them and decided I was going to start drinking them, with or without others to share with. In some cases the beers were very much high quality, but in plenty of cases I flat out just didn't like them. They were either not good to begin with or maybe the adjuncts in them dropped off dramatically (I found that I didn't like the adjunct beers I had held on to far more frequently than the straight up stouts). This personal finding further reinforced my determination to drink what I had and not hold on to anything unless I absolutely wasn't able to drink it. Now what's predominately in my stash is straight up BA imperial stouts with 5-6 barleywines and sours.

1st world problems, I know. But I'm still annoyed I ever let it get to the point where I felt it was out of control.

 

Wow, that is an amazing story. I have always subscribed to the "drink fresh" mantra with beer. I think anyone takes a risk when you start throwing beers in a cellar or closet to be opened a year or two later, especially when those probably are not cheap beers.

 

I got heavy into craft beer after having been heavy into wine drinking (and collecting) for years. So, that collection mentality carried over and I targeted beers that could age (BCBS, Expedition, etc.). Now instead of having hundreds of bottles of wine to drink, I've also got hundreds of bottles of beer. I've vowed to never let me myself go down the bourbon path...it could lead to darker times.

 

There was a time not too long ago when you had to buy every barrel aged beer you saw because they were so scarce. You might go 6 to 8 months to a year without opportunity to buy one. Some waited for Black Friday, others drove up to the frosty barrens of Michigan, still others waited in online queues to get the rights to purchase tickets to a festival that would then give them a scratch off ticket with a slim chance of winning the rights to buy a barrel aged beer. Desperate times indeed.

 

I'll simply make a prediction that the faltering stock market in conjunction with China's slowing economy will put a cloud over the United States that will eventually slow our economy and put us into a downturn - that's just the first part - which will lead to slower sales of expensive beers such as barrel aged beers, inoculated sour beers, heavy ingredient beers including items like vanilla, coconut, cocoa nibs, coffee, hops, etc., and so on.

This is not to say that people will go back to buying 30-packs of economy beer, nor that they'll stop going out to bars and restaurants, just that on the whole they'll buy less of those expensive single bottles and 4-packs.

That change should lead breweries to ratchet back, and I think we'll see a bit of a return to more regular beers whether we want it or not.

Will this see fruition in one year? No, but I believe the path will be set, and to be honest I think we've been headed in that direction a bit anyway, but this will force brewers hands.

 

Here lies @croush . Solo-domed too many Ten Fidy stovepipes. Die-uh-beet-us.

Wait, cellars don't come with you in the afterlife? Because I've got this bottle I've been saving that would pair perfectly with Purgatory. This is bullshit. Who do I have to get angry with on the internet to fix this? Preferably through an on-line chat because talking to people be hard.

 

You are assuming rational thought has been going into this. Don't.

 

I was basically doing LIFO on my hops. Usually isn't a problem because I often do get down to zero hoppy beers left. But once a beer got lost behind some stouts and I realized I had a 1-year old heady topper on my hands. It was surprisingly still very good.

I could switch to weighted average cost method on the stouts. Could be interesting, it would probably involve some sort of cuvee and either a lot of re-capped beers or a combined funeral with @croush once he switches to bourbon

 

At least for me, I have the intention of drinking everything, but it doesn't always happen in a timely manner. Especially since all the stouts tend to come out October-December. I was down to 50 or 60 in August. But then I brought 14 bombers and a case of cans back from GABF, and I got almost 3 cases of Bourbon County stuff, then Pipeworks released 6 Jones Dog variants, and I have too much again. Plus there's still a bottle purchase here or there.

I try to drink the older and/or heavily adjunct stuff first, so I don't have a ton of old stuff. I can count the 16's on one hand. They're all stouts too, IPA's don't last long.

 

Well this thread is really setting up 2019 to be a downer.

I'm not sure an economic downturn would have quite that impact. It would almost certainly thin the herd of breweries - we all know there's a ton just riding the current wave - but the cyclical nature of things means that there would also be opportunities for innovation. My completely unscientific and fact-less theory is that the last recession actually spurred the fantastic growth we've seen in craft beer. Is it a coincidence that that's when a lot of the market leaders we see now (I'm talking medium-large independent breweries with sizable distribution footprints, Rev and HA being local examples) got their start? As a relatively affordable luxury good, we saw people willing to take chances on new breweries who were finding voids in the market and filling them. Many dabbled in and elevated styles that people dismissed decades (centuries?) ago. American beer was once considered inferior and canned craft was quirky, but it's all taken for granted now.

Overall the quality and availability of beer has increased considerably, and I would argue that although the $8 6-pack is long gone, the value of what's available today is unbelievable. There are places which are charging at the high end of the current market which might see difficulty in a recession, depending on their ability (or inability) to adapt and how much they're leveraged. But I doubt we'd see more "regular" beer as a market response - if anything, a downturn would (and should) bring out more innovation and over-the-top creativity as scrappy brewers compete. Would it look like what we have today? Probably not even close. But that evolving nature is also part of the fun in this industry.

 

I'm somewhat on the other side of this argument. Seeing how a brewery like Hop Butcher weathers a recession would be interesting. Their business model is built on $16 4-packs. They lack a staple shelf beer that drinkers know is quality and cheaper when the budget is tight like Half Acre, Revolution and Pipeworks offer.

Alcohol is one of the easiest items to either trade down or cut out when the wallet feels a little light.

 

Isn't the ole' joke "When the economy is good people drink, when the economy is bad people drink more?"

If stuff isn't selling due to a recession perhaps the answer is to make cheaper alternatives, something like an affordable session ipa, or use alternative ingredients that reduces cost for the brewer and pricing for the consumer. These larger breweries would also need to get creative to fill excess capacity. Partner with craft soda or other craft beverage folks.

 

I'd really encourage people to try and hit some of their old favorites in 2019. I did this a bunch in 2018 and it was super rewarding. I passed on a ton of the hyped NE IPAs for six packs/cases of things like Sierra Nevada Celebration/Pale Ale. I got quite a few bottles of Blackout Stout instead of expensive BA pastry stouts.

Honestly, it really helped remind me what great beers the beers that got me into craft a decade ago are like.