The hot new thing in craft beer? Good old-fashioned lager

Yeah for sure. And as far as draft beer is concerned I get that this is a good money maker so I don't expect to see too much variance until you start getting into the really big beers. But six+ pack wise, being competitively priced becomes extremely important for beers that can be basically just a step up from an AAL.

 

Yes, but are Great Lakes & Jack’s selling their Lagers for less than the rest of their own lineups? The idea that Lagers should be cheap stems from the fact that Adjunct Lagers are cheap. Craft Lagers shouldn’t be expected to compete with Bud pricing. Around here the brewery making the best Lagers is Chuckanut, in my opinion, and a half barrel of Chuckanut is like $185 vs Bud’s $120.

 

I'd go out of business in a few months if I sold my IPA's for the same price I sell most of my lagers.

 

Our beers in Tombstone start at $5 per pint for onsite consumption. Because of this, we make a better margin on lagers than IPA's. Higher gravity beers like Russian Imperial Stouts, DIPA's, and TIPA's are still $5, but you get a 10 oz. pour. For cans though, most of our lagers are either $8 or $10 per 4-pack whereas most of our IPA's are either $10 or $14. DIPA's and TIPA's are $12-$16. Personally, I think all of those prices are reasonable and "competitive." I never expect to pay less than $5 per pint from regional or local breweries. I don't even complain when it's $5 for big craft breweries like Sierra Nevada. The price per ounce of beer isn't necessarily economical for onsite consumption compared to offsite, but you're paying for service and the experience so in my mind it's worth it.

 

Agreed, people don’t tend to rate to style. One of the reasons I really appreciate that this site shows where a beer ranks in its style. Let’s me know if there’s a dunkel or bock etc in an area that I need to try.

 

Care to elaborate?

 

I can’t get into too many specifics, but our cost of ingredients for IPA’s is almost equal to our wholesale price of kegs of lagers. Sure, we sit on lagers longer, but it costs little to store a beer and keep it cold. Hops for IPA’s on the other hand are a huge expense. So you might see a pint price at the brewery that is equal for IPA’s and lagers, but there’s no way we could sell IPA’s as low as our wholesale price for lagers. Our retail to go lager price is also lower priced than our IPA’s to go. If we sold our IPA’s that low in cans, it would actually not make any sense for us to package the beer at all... working on low margins

 

IPAs were pretty cliche at one point too and that's turned out ok. It will all be fine pal.

2016 is very pre lager buzz. Jack's Abby has been brewing fantastic lagers for a while now and created no buzz. It wasn't Founder's Gold, Night Shift Nite Lite, and whatever other craft AAL that created the buzz. It's these smaller breweries like Suarez focusing on the style.

QUOTE="islay, post: 6786974, member: 184611"]I do think that it's great that a self-professed Other Half fan like yourself can appreciate core beer flavors; many can't (either never could or have lost the palate for the stuff). For the long-term sake of craft beer, I hope Suarez and the like, along with the token lagers at the hype factories, are able to ween some image-conscious newer or lost craft beer drinkers off of the gimmickry. That may be the way that we get an overdue return to beer-that-tastes-like-beer: By imitating the cultural trappings and buzz-based marketing (special releases, eye-catching labels, aggressive social media strategy, trendy taproom atmospheres, etc.) of beer-that-tastes-like-juice/desserts.[/QUOTE]

Again, someone like you grumbled and said IPA (and even craft beer in general) was just a gimmick at one point and I'd say it's turned out ok.

Don't be daft, I used them as an example. Similar happenings are all over.

 

Thanks. I'm wondering how specific that is to your circumstances.

How do you think that would change at different volumes though? For example, if you brewed more lagers than IPAs, would the time and space factors for lagering be more significant in your assessment? What if all of your brewing volume had to go into cold lagering storage for two months rather than just one or two beers in a portfolio... and you didn't have beers with quicker turnaround in the mix? How would that change your assessment of the cost of space and time needed? In addition, I wonder how different this would be for a brewery that didn't spend as much time and money on the hops for their IPAs as your team. Similar to how uncompromising one wants to be with hop procurement, I would think that the same is applicable for lagering times. In that case, it would be the cost difference between lagering for 3 weeks vs 8 weeks (for example).

 

Yep, no buzz ever for Jack's Abby. It's basically unheard of outside of Framingham. It's the quintessential hidden gem, second only to Other Half, of course.

 

It should be noted that you choose to make your IPAs far more expensive than IPAs need to be by concentrating on sexy hops ("Made with Apollo oil, the highest quality Citra hops possible, and Mosaic Lupulin Powder"). You mainly seem to utilize hop types in high demand and/or low supply and that thus are way more costly than many other varieties that are perfectly well-suited to the IPA style. I also suspect you expend a lot of those hops to contribute to aromatics more so than their traditional use for bitterness. You could easily shave a lot of cost off your IPAs, or -- for that matter -- add a lot of cost to your lagers, if you chose to utilize your resources differently.

I'm not suggesting you're doing anything wrong from a business or even creative perspective, just that you're knowingly and intentionally making strategic decisions that result in higher business expenses accruing to your IPAs.

 

That makes sense. Thanks for the info.

 

It’s still all about the quality, a poor lager is just that, there’s certainly no magic there. Same with any ipa, brew a great one and it will sell, the shelf is saturated with poor efforts. I don’t believe there’s any secrets in this business.

 

So maybe I'm just an entitled dick, but I'll happily pay 5 bucks for a quality lager. I mean, I'll pay 8 bucks for the stout too, but, hell, why not both?

 

I don’t think anyone minds paying for a quality beer, it’s the mediocre “name” beer that’s the problem. Regardless of style imo.

 

A) No, that's not the point at all. The point is that @islay doesn't understand the lager renaissance (among other things, but that seems to be common knowledge around here) and that many of us have our own local brewer dropping killer lagers. I cited my example. You chimed in from left field with a comment that has no bearing.

B) Why does it not matter that someone is making excellent lager regardless of distribution? Are you arguing that a great brewer making excellent beer in a particular part of the world is irrelevant to the entire rest of the world if the beer isn't distrod to their door step? Good luck with that one, see Hill Farmstead, Tree House, Cantillon, Russian River, etc

 

I don't think it changes that much. You need more vessels for lagers to make the same amount of beer so your capital investment needs to be higher resulting in a longer return on investment, but that's a relatively minor expense in the grand scheme of a brewery. A single fermenter or lagering vessel can be paid off within a couple of batches turned through it. Where most breweries get into trouble is funding a brewery with debt and then expanding before being out of debt. Those loan payments can kill you.

I would point out also that very few breweries lager for 2 months. With proper yeast management (pitch rate, pH, aeration, purity of culture, nutrition, temperature control, etc.) and with modern technology there should be no benefit to such long lagering times. I would not be comfortable with ever sacrificing quality for a quicker turnaround time and I've never seen 2 months as being anywhere near a necessity with the exception of breweries that messed up earlier in the process.

That's a pretty basic way to phrase it... I would say: "it should be noted that I choose to make beers that sell." The varieties have little to do with it... I work on hop contracts for years in advance so right now, per bbl I pay about $18 more ($9 per keg) for Citra vs. the average price for Cascade. We could certainly switch hops to a bittering addition and reduce the aromatics, but that means we brew entirely different beers with an entirely different target flavor profile and that those beers simply won't sell. So in short, I can make a cheaper beer with no problems, but I will also watch sales disappear.

There's also the matter of expectation of a style. Today, if you brew an IPA and it's not extremely hoppy, it simply will not be an easy sell. On the other hand, if you brew a Pils and it's not exceptionally drinkable or "crisp" then you won't get sales. Those styles lend themselves to being brewed in a certain manner and a Pilsner is less expensive to brew. I can also brew a Double IPL and make it more expensive than an IPA easily, but the expectation of the beer for the consumer is more in line with drinking an IPA or DIPA. The consumer drives the market at least as much as the producer and I would actually argue that the consumer drives it far more than the producer.

 

Says the guy who is on record proclaiming that cask beer is inherently bland, flat and tasteless.

If only the world could harness the power of your own self regard.....