Looks like Black Star is making a move into doing some bottling, which is a great thing because I have always enjoyed their beers. They posted this on Fb and Twitter today: "We're busy getting some bottles ready for you to take home. We have a limited number of four pack samplers with Vulcan, High Esteem, Recalcitrant Dockhand, and Epsilon. Come and get 'em!"
Hey guys. Thanks for posting this and taking notice of our move into offering bottles. We did a limited number this past week and have completely sold out. We should have more by next week and we are hoping to keep bottles available more often moving forward. Regarding pricing, those beers are priced on draught at $5/pint, $4.75/pint, $5/pint, and $6/10 oz respectively. We do not have a bottling line so we are hand-bottling them one-by-one, which is very labor intensive. I understand that $16 is high compared to production-brewery beer in a grocery store, but we're simply not able to achieve that level of output.
We are going to be offering a limited number of bombers as well, primarily for our Irrational series of beers, but we wanted to be able to offer a mixed pack of 12 ouncers.
You're doing it wrong. What you do is charge $8-$10 for a 22oz bomber, do less work, get more $$$ per oz, and no one will complain because it's a "better value" based on the size of the bottle. Then for barrel-aged beer you charge the same, but for a 12oz bottle because it's "premium," maximize the amount of bottles you get per barrel and people will go absolutely NUTS. Business model: fixed!
That's what I was saying. Bombers cost around .25 each, while long necks are around .15. The beer is just about the cheapest part of the bottling process next to caps.
Before we trounce Black Star anymore, we need to take a step back and look at the big picture by doing some simple math: Brew = good Brew + food= good Brew + food + Austin = great Great beer = excellent Great beer to go = awesome See? Simple! But in all seriousness, let's give these guys a break. I agree $16 is not a price point which I'm willing to spend, but they are headed in the right direction by doing this. They have always been ahead of the curve, so maybe other brewpubs around town will do limited bottlings as well? BK
Lutter was being facetious. a $10 bomber is 10 cents more per oz than what we're charging for 4 packs. it's the secret shame of the brewing industry that buying bombers is just about the worst value you can get. Even a $4 bomber is the equivalent of a $12 6 pack.
I'm just happy to know I might get a chance to bring some back to DFW with me. When Stone charges $4+ for their collaborations 12oz'ers supporting local quality for the same price seems like the easy thing to do...wish you guys would open a joint brewpub here.
Beermail me your name and when you plan on coming by and I'll make sure to set some aside for you so you don't miss out. We also fill growlers.
