3 Floyds permanently closing Munster brewpub

Yes

 

Personally, I don't think that's greedy. But we have to factor in that it's Three Floyds who will be making these decisions.

 

Those greedy bastards who charged $10 for 72oz of ZD when other brewers were giving us 64oz for $13 for their ipas

 

I'm with #TeamMoreBarrels when it comes to DL. I don't think distro is the answer for regular, because it would take some of the luster off the beer, but even I, as a member of the Diabeetus Squad (people who like really sweet stouts) rarely drink it in non-BA form anymore, so it's basically a waste of a ton of beer. The "bad" variants are part of the fun imo, so I'd honestly even support more variety of weird variants, if it meant less bottles of non-BA gathering dust in my back room.

 

Agree. They'd have no problem selling a BA 3 pack for $200.

 

Silly me. I must have imagined the $40 BA bombers they had for years. Could it be that they have a history of pricing their special releases in a very different way then their mass distribution?

 

Is there any place that doesn't massively upcharge for BA beer? I'd love someone to put together an exhaustive spreadsheet of price per ounce for all the well known, well regarded BA breweries out there. I did some rough comparisons between 2-3 breweries in other threads when similar discussions came up, to help put things in perspective, but the topic just keeps coming up and I can't keep all that top of mind, for some strange reason...

 

It would take a revolutionary brewery, yes.

 

FUPA Gods, unite!!!!

 

I would have to agree with Phil on FFF pricing the barrel aged stuff way ahead of the curve in prior years. It was priced up their with BCBS Rare long before other barrel programs started.


That being said, FFF with these 4 packs is probably giving the highest quality barrel aged beer to price per oz ratio now.

 

Is Rev's price per ounce significantly lower? I can't imagine it is. I mean, the premium price of a 4-pack is justified so I'm not complaining.

Yeah back in the middle ages of craft brewing FFF might have raised a lot of eyebrows but what's the price per ounce of a 4 pack of BA Behemoth vs its bomber counterpart? I know people go wild when they see "price drops" based on format changes, but that's never moved my needle.

 

Well the 4 pack is a new and welcome decision. But they were doing 40 dollar bombers just a couple years ago. That's much higher than the norm for other breweries

 

I mean $40 is high, but not that much higher. Which breweries are you thinking of? Most breweries sell in smaller packaging, so while the cost seems "cheaper," per ounce it's not that significant. There aren't a lot of breweries selling BA stouts or barleywines in 22oz or 750ml packaging anymore.

I don't know why, but Hill Farmstead Aaron came to mind first. The 2018 release in 500ml bottles was $22. That's $1.3/oz vs $1.8/oz for a 22oz silkscreen BA Behemoth. That is, if indeed BA Behemoth was $40 back then (I can't clearly remember price or format off hand). Granted, that's a notable difference...

However, the 750ml bottles I bought last year were $30, so they were actually cheaper than Aaron, at $1.18/oz.

Don't forget, there's a measurable added premium to buying bottles at Hill Farmstead vs. FFF. Almost nobody lives "near" HF. The trip is an undertaking for just about anyone.

I'm also having trouble remembering all the bottles FFF sold at $40. I'd be interested in digging into it further, but like I said, at this point, this sort of discussion has taken place in so many different threads here I really wish someone had a master sheet. It'd be awesome to see.

All that said, *in a world* where Toppling Goliath and Side Project are setting the ceiling (not to mention Voodoo and Westbrook having previously set sky high on-site prices), even $40 BA bombers seems tame. At least it's not really an issue anymore. And while I'm fine with large format BA DL remaining at "$50"/bottle, perhaps they can go with smaller format on that front as well. However, if they want to keep waxing DL, that'd probably be prohibitive.

 

Well, all their packaged BA beer is < $1 per ounce. Deth's Tar and Straightjacket are ~50 cents per ounce. I appreciate not everyone may favor Rev's BA beers but this can be said for just about any brewery - there will be people who aren't fans of a particular brewery/beer. However, beer preferences aside, less than $1 per ounce on BA beer is a relative steal imo.

 

I like your optimism!

I am just skeptical with the changes they have been making. The brewpub is permanently closed and those employees have moved on. The distillery tasting room is still closed. They are doing fewer unique to-go batches of beer and seem to be focused more on distribution. Having expanded to several new states recently and hinting at more to come. Moving more beers into 4-pack formats for distro.

2021 is for sure out, and we will likely see another drive-through format like last year. But if they can continue to sell just the beer at $170 a pop without the work of putting on the whole fest I think they may stick with that.

 

Unless they're going out of business, (which, as you point out, quite the opposite seems to be the case), I can't imagine any of this being permanent, especially now that they're out of their deal with the devil (investors). Draft pours on-site are a cash cow. Once things are back to normal, I'd expect at the very least a new pub to go up. I can't imagine craft beer without the granddaddy of bottle release festivals making a comeback.

Straight Jacket and Deth's Tar are a hell of a deal, no doubt. Mineshaft Gap and Deth by Cherries are significantly higher, at around $.8/oz. Again, that's pretty awesome relatively speaking, but I'm guessing the packaging probably helps in cost. However, I'd be curious to see if the aluminum shortage will affect their pricing soon, because it seems like some breweries have been impervious to it, while others have already had to change strategy. Either way, I know several people who have turned down Rev 4-packs because of how intense the price looks next to 6-packs of any other cans. I know, it's asinine if you're taking all facts into consideration, but the "cheaper" cost in smaller packaging cuts both ways.

Rev really crashed the scene getting ahead of the game not just on packaging and pricing, but dedicating the space for barrels and having volume regularly available. Not many breweries have really done this for "core" barrel aged line-ups--I think we all know who the big boys are, at least in the Great Lakes--but those who have done it are largely pricing similarly or at least competitively for their bases, but then there's the potential moral conundrum of conglomerate ownership. There's no doubt Goose Island can't be seen as anything else other than revolutionary when considering how massively they ramped up this type of practice so early on in American craft beer. Either way, not many breweries can dedicate that kind of time and space to age beer.

While FFF may have blazed some trails, I think they took longer to really ramp up specialty programs like this, while other breweries had the benefit of seeing trends and strategizing to focus their efforts a little more on these programs than breweries traditionally would earlier on in their lives. Now we see breweries opening up with the sole purpose of aging beer (well...supposedly), and ironically charging out the ass for them (ala Horus). Not every brewery could read the tea leaves that BA beer would be here to stay and wouldn't be a losing investment. I think FFF, not unlike several other breweries their age, saw these beers more as a commodity and a treat or a gift to their most loyal fans more so than a product line they could regularly offer and see returns on.

 

For anyone who cares about the data point, a 750mL of BA Behemoth was $40 at the brewery as far back as 2012/2013.

 

Well, everyones' favorite pricing punching bag, Mikerphone, usually has their BA stouts in the low 30's for a 750 ml. And non stouts are even lower than that, a 750 of their BA oat wine was 27. Riverlands' last BA bomber was 25. Hubbard's Cave usually has their BA 750s at $30 flat. I can't think of any place that I've bought a BA beer at lately that is as highly priced as FFF used to be.

But the thing that annoys me the most about them and TG, is that, ideally, as you become a hugely successful brewery you would make these beers less expensive. This is what we've seen from Revolution, Pipeworks and Half Acre.

 

True, and they have. But the speed with which younger breweries get to that point versus older breweries goes back to my point that FFF didn't build themselves with this type of product in mind, whereas younger breweries had the benefit of precedent, trends and inspiration to better prepare themselves for these products from the ground up.

We don't know what kind of expenses FFF incurred at the time these older beers were priced, but breweries don't usually price beer based on what they should be in today's market, but based on what it cost them to produce at the time. Sure, there are some that have intentionally taken a loss to avoid bad publicity, but they've been few and far between.

Toppling Goliath is an outlier in that they have expanded massively and presumably increased the space that they can produce this kind of product, but still choose to price beers at the tippy top of the scale. Side Project, on the other hand, is much smaller, like TG used to be, while also being one of the most in demand barrel aged breweries in the world. It's going to take some time for their prices to fall, and I don't see them expanding much in the short term. Hype and demand strongly come into play in scenarios like that.

And with that in mind, that's another thing that comes with price drops and availability: a fall back to earth. With hype levels dropping, now is the time that we will begin to find out just how sustainable all these barrel programs will be. Quality barrel aged beer being available nationwide is only just becoming a thing, and we're already seeing beers that used to be trade bait turding it up on supermarket shelves. Can breweries like Jackie O's, who put a lot of stock in their barrel programs, keep it going at such volume over the long haul?