Destroying a beer's legacy...

Really? Your earlier years of vagabond travel though Europe and the US while enjoying beer, food, people, local culture don't qualify as even the least bit obsessive?

 

I've never heard of an obsessive vagabond... seems almost oxymoronish...

 

Very well put. This post should be sticked somewhere on the site.

 

I was lucky to have an awesome Dad. By the time I was 30 I had settled down and gotten married. I don't believe I was obsessed, the world was calling.

 

Then you do undwestad what motivates them and why. They can, they want to and don't believe they are osessed. They have more money than time and so pay for conveience.

 

Of course I understand. But I think it to be an odd indulgence. But I really don't care what they spend their money on. I never have liked that piece of the market. It reminds me of drug dealers that I've known.

 

The value of hype is highly variable and fickle. There are beers that are released one year to sell out crowds only to be mostly ignored the next release. For a beer like KBBS that's probably not a problem unless the price was jacked up high enough or they had a bad batch. CBS the first year it was distributed near me it was only available if you got to a store at open time and waited in line. The next year it was sitting on shelves, they sold it at the grocery stores with no limits. There also isn't that much variation year to year in these beers, you can certainly have better or worse years but for the most part year to year CBS or KBBS is the same beer. What's going to bring someone back year after year to buy your beer, especially if you are raising the price. So basically I don't think a brewery is guaranteed to retain demand year over over, especially in today's market where there are so many hyped releases. For the most of us if we miss one or we are priced out of one we can simply wait a week for the next one.

Scarcity is a marketing device, I don't disagree with you on that. Well scarcity when there's an exclusivity to acquiring the product, which in these cases there is. I still contend the pricing decision is a much more complex decision. Especially given we know breweries could raise prices and still sell out, yet they don't. Generally speaking most breweries don't greatly raise prices on hyped beers. Some like KBBS do but I think that is not the norm, though feel free to correct me.

I also don't think anyone willing to spend $1200 on a beer really has much care for the legality of the black market (its more the grey market). Honestly, what's more of a deterrent to buying an expensive beer? Whether you are getting it on the second market or that it costs $1200!

 

Yeah I know, I should have probably replied to the message you quoted rather than yours. Cheers!