Is barrel aged beer overpriced?

No, I don't think so, and I'm generally cheap. If it's good. The joy derived from a $20 or less barrel aged stout is much worth it. I always buy BCBS for about $10 and really should buy more, it's always good (when not infected). I've had a ton of forgettable $10 bottles of wine, I'd rather spend that or a little more for a good barrel aged beer. Heck, I spent $100 on a KBBS+flight+rental car+bunch of beer that weekend and enjoyed it thoroughly! YOLO

 

That’s really a perfect statement, completely agree.

 

This is exactly why I buy Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout, and I miss Smuttynose Robust Porter, and beers like Bell's Kalamazoo Stout. There are great dark beers everywhere that have seen no time on wood that are delicious and thoroughly satisfying.

 

Thinking back a few years, wasn't BCS around $28-35 a 4pk?

 

Love Kalamazoo Stout.

 

One friend of mine at a large national brewery told me that 1 of 8 barrels of their’s aged longer than 6 months tests positive for contamination’s, but rarely have the contamination’s made any flavor impact at that point. They taste the barrel and if it’s good, it gets blended with the rest of the barrels and gets pasteurized. The lack of testing for contaminants is very prevalent and problematic. The difficulty of testing without expensive equipment is problematic too. Culture plates are a good start, but often they don’t tell the whole story of what’s going on in the barrel. Personally, I just assume everything that touches wood is contaminated even if it doesn’t test positive and I pasteurize it. I also believe that pasteurization has a positive influence on the flavor of the beers I do this with.

As for the OP... I love barrel aging, but I wouldn’t bother with it if the margins were the same or even close to the same as IPA’s or any “normal” style. I can justify the extra work and having a climate controlled barrel aging facility because the demand for these beers is enough to charge a higher price. Next week I’ll be releasing 5 barrel aged stout variants where the base beer was 15.7% ABV. It took more than three times as long to brew the base beer due to the techniques used to get the gravity up there. I spent hours filling and moving barrels, then we had significant electrical costs keeping those barrels in a climate controlled structure that was purchased and built out specifically for barrels, spent hours racking the beers out, doing all the packaging, all while trying to maintain my normal production which creates a significant drain on my home life... So in short, the demand and hype might be what make the beers expensive, but there’s a lot that goes into it that justifies the expense even if the raw materials cost isn’t significantly more expensive than any other beer sold at half the price.

 

Not sure about "a few" but 10 years ago I paid $21 for my first 4 pack of 12oz bottles.

 

There it is, and nice to see a brewers angle to this. I suppose I shouldn’t bitch about BA Stouts given the work involved as you mentioned above and beyond material costs. Can a place like GI or Founders do this with significantly higher margins than yiu can there in AZ? I’m thinking technology here and the availability of what might be unlimited capitol.

 

When I toured Goose Island’s Barrel facility, it was perhaps the most impressive thing I’ve seen in a brewery. It was 2014 and they had a huge warehouse with 10,000 bourbon or spirit barrels and 3,000 wine barrels. It was immaculately clean, controlled at 55°f. They had 3 warehouses like that for barrels. I’d imagine the cooling costs of those warehouses was astronomical. They also had a unique process with the air in the warehouse. If I remember correctly they had sterile air filtration for incoming air and they had the air inside the warehouse constantly being exhausted.

While they are definitely set up to do the work more efficiently and in larger volumes, I wouldn’t be quick to assume that makes their margins better. When I release a bomber at $20, that’s a direct to consumer transaction. When Bourbon County releases, I actually don’t know the price... never bought it, but it is sold for much less than the price the consumer sees to a distributor.

 

Thanks for the trip report! Adds a valuable perspective on the care they take...

 

On a unit price comparison, AND if you take into account the time/effort/space issues discussed, the 20$ + NEIPA 4 pk seems to be far more overpriced in these parts.

 

But now you're ignoring the underpaid farmer of all those extra hops

 

If they were underpaid, how do the good ones continue to afford to plant more acreage, convert other crops to hops, and/or buy more processing equipment?

 

it was said in jest. I should have clarified that I generally agree that on the question of overpriced styles the near universal upcharge for hazy ipas seems the most aggregious to me, but ultimately I feel like the beer market is pretty well priced. There's something for just about any budget that is tasty. Some brands are over priced to me, usually because of a cost/quality metric that is personal to my tastes. On the topic on barrel aged beers, I think for the reasons already cited there is a lot of baked in costs/risks for the brewer that earnestly endeavors to make them. Add in the demand for them and I'm not surprised they often exceed my price tolerance.
Hazy IPAs, on the other hand, carry some certain increases in ingredient costs but are otherwise very similar in their demands on the brewing infrastructure to other beer styles. And the comfort with which mediocre producers of that style slap 4 and 5$ per can price tags on them makes me pretty cautious with trying any of them from unknown, to me, breweries.
But as long as the demand stays high and that keeps hop growers and (more importantly, to me) hop breeders invested in their craft I can't complain.

 

Yes BA beer is overpriced, keeps the riff-raff out.

 

good info. thanks for sharing! didn't want to chime above for fear of chafing anyone's undergarments. pages back there was discussion about the double barreling (11 year & then 12 year barrels). your comments coincide with something i suspect.

this remains absolutely speculation but i suspect part of the story is GI received 11 year old barrels at a point the barrels were ready/available. the 12 year old barrels likely were ready/available at a later point. (guessing) part of their plan was deliberately getting the beer off the same wood, because as you kind of eluded to - after X months it sounds like the loss rate increases. hence, there's a good / logical chance the double barreling was about integrity (less time sitting in each wood vessel) more so than sheer gimmickry to inflate consumer cost as suggested.