Toppling Goliath - Chicagoland (2020)

Great, you’ve opened the door for a maelstrom of One-eyed Willy references.

 

I traded a Eunoia Batch 1 for an Assassin (plus Hypermash Hydra). I don’t regret the trade in the sense that Assassin was a huge tick for me. But wow was that beer a letdown. Merely fine to good

 

That’s pretty damning. Do you think it was worse than the Eunoia you traded to get it? Assuming you’ve tried b1 before

 

Assassin is the most disappointing "whale" I've ever had.

 

Since 2016 KBBS has been $100 per 12 oz bottle and assassin has been $50 per bottle and MD has been $50 per bottle. I’m confused how they “continue” to jack up the prices if they’ve been stagnant the last 4 years

 

I would agree. And I love a straight BA stout with barrel expression. I found it to be thinner than expected and with nice barrel character without being special (2 year Reserve, BCBS Boxed, Mehndi, etc). It turned me off from even chasing the variants. Nothing wrong with it but I don’t think it would do that well blind here in Chicago

 

Definitely. And this isn't just my penchant for pastry stouts talking, we had a number of regular ol ba stouts that night and it was behind all of them. Including 2019 BCS

 

Wholeheartedly agree with the Assassin assessment. Traded a Eunoia B2 and Curvature B4 for a Assassin ‘20 and Coconut Medianoche. Never had Assassin before and wanted to knock it off my list. Decent barrel but man, dark fruit galore. Reminded me a lot of Darkness.

Traded Eunoia B1 for a Maman ‘19

 

Thankfully you had the Coconut Medianoche to save it because that beer was great

 

Yet to crack it...

 

I think the barrels Goose uses are probably in the "well over $100" range, and they also have to be transported to Chicago, which I'm sure adds a lot to expense. That article is 2.5 years old also, and prices are likely even higher now. It doesn't entirely explain a 70% price increase, but if you're expecting that only one thing drives price increases (or even cost increases), you're not looking at it correctly. Everything is likely more expensive now than it was 6 years ago. Maybe they're looking for more profits too, but BCBS's price per ounce is reasonable compared to most other BA offerings on the market, especially considering the quality.

 

How many barrels do major spirit makers go through in a year? Tens of thousands? They can't reuse those. They have to be disposed of and that costs money. I don't think GI is paying what you think they are. If they are taking a large logistical headache off of some of these distilleries it is also for the benefit of the distillers. If I'm a major distiller, selling a few $100 barrels to hundreds of breweries is still a logistical nightmare as that isn't their business. They want to clear out old stock as fast as possible to get new stock in and I think they will let GI have these for cheap to get them out the door in one load.

 

I'd love to see how much they actually pay because, like you, I think that they're probably getting them for much less than people think.

 

When you average it all out its about $100 per barrel.

 

Yes, but how many of those barrels are high quality bourbon barrels? I don't think GI (or other breweries that want to produce good BA beer) are buying barrels that held Jim Beam for 3 years. My understanding is that any distillery that has quality used bourbon barrels sees a lot of competition for them, and it's driving up the price of barrels.

 

That's less than I would have thought, but still significant.

 

On the open market a used Buffalo Trace barrel is $200. Wild Turkey is $150-$170. Heaven Hill I think does deal directly with breweries but I don't think that means they are getting rid of barrels for $20

 

Capitalism drops the price of most things. Just not luxury products. Do you shop at starbucks? Do you buy an iPhone? Do you buy the cheap milk or the expensive milk at the grocery store?

 

Enjoying

Enjoying the thread. Tldr, they will charge what people will pay knowing secondary markets. Not crazy!
But uh, this capitalism stuff... It doesn't make things cheaper inherently, and to the extent it does, it's not always for good reasons. Nowadays it's been a race to the bottom to pay employees nothing, abuse undocumented labor. Moreover, environmental damage isn't accounted for in most cases (see your gallon of gas being cheap while islands across the world... Plus Miami... Go literally underwater).
My beer related point is basically that I don't personally expect BA stout producers to reduce prices at the cost of employees. If bilking fools for $100 a bottle yearly helps ensure TG employees have good salaries and benefits then so what if not everyone can afford KBBS? The usual problem with poorly regulated capitalism is they will charge insane prices to line the pockets of the executive class and continue to screw over low level brewers and admin staff. Not sure what TGs business practices are personally though.

 

Does anyone else here remember when TG's IPAs were not hazey? Pseudo and King Sue used to both be clear west coast style citrus bombs. The OG bombers of DDH Pseudo and DDH Galaxy Pseudo could make a room stink like you just opened a jar of fresh weed buds and waved it in everyone's face. They were immensely flavorful for how crushable they were and are an extinct dragon I still chase to this day.

Why do I bring this up (yet again)? Because greed or avarice or capitalism or whatever ruined those beers. The beers that helped build that shiny new facility in the middle of BFE Iowa were cast aside in favor of chasing the HazeCraze when they went national. I personally do not like hazey IPAs of any kind and it's none of my business what TG does. From a practical perspective it makes perfect sense to make products that sell. But what really rubbed me the wrong way was Clark taking to Twitter and claiming those opaque snowglobes looked "just like they did the first time Mike brewed them" (paraphrasing from memory) when any of TG's longtime fanbois in WI and elsewhere who were drinking those beers out of 3 day old self-distro'd bombers (not the BrewHub FL stuff) could tell you that was pure barrel-aged horseshit. For me that was the moment TG was out of the tasty beer business and into the hype-train business. "Screw those old recipes that made us stand out, garnered praise far beyond our business's footprint, and put us on the map, we need to be making the same damn juicy haze everyone else is!"

I mean if we are going to go way off into the weeds on tirades about capitalism ruining things I literally cannot think of a better example in beer than TG. I was pumped to tick Mornin Delight in 2017, but at $100 for a 4 pack there should be zero issues with "weaker years" or inferior batches. Then the pivot to haze and I was out for good. More for y'all I guess!