$15 pint of pale ale

I'm really fascinated by Bull Jagger. Maine Beer Company won me over a bit with delicious Peeper and Zoe, so I get them occasionally even though they are very expensive. I tried the Portland Lager and the Baltic Porter from Bull Jagger and I just can't understand that at all. They taste fine but not for the price.

 

I got a Festina Peche at a bar one time. When it came to pay, I wanted to vomit it back in the bottle, as they were charging 8$/bottle. From what I recall, a four pack was cheaper than that.

 

Do you think it is strange that this thread repeats itself every week?

 

We get Grey Sail in CT. Flying Jenny is definitely my favorite in their lineup, although it hasn't displaced fresh-off-the-canning-line Sea Hag in my regular rotation. Cheers!

 

Those are pretty much the only 4 stops I make when I go to Boston and totally agree with the order and info.

 

Lord Hobo currently has FW16 on draft. $8 for 12oz. I had no problem paying that last night.

 

Because the majority of people on these threads are pretentious snobs that whine when their beer doesn't taste like Heady Topper

 

I haven't bashed any NH breweries, I just said they cannot be compared to what a lot of breweries in the midwest and west coast are doing. Take a trip, drink the beer, and you'll know what I'm talking about, whole other level of quality. And I honestly don't care about credibility from a bunch of strangers.

 

Wait...the guy who posted this just called everyone else snobs?

 

There is something really sexy about your posts.

 

Heady was put out there as a price comparison. Had nothing to do with taste. If you read the posts no one has said a negative thing about the beer MBC produces. Just wondering about pricing strategy, which goes directly against there own "drink it fresh" mantra. Tough to move product when you're over double the cost of comparable beers.

 

The brewery can't control the prices that individual accounts list, once that account owns the beer, they could triple or quadruple the markup, which is why you see popular or rare beers at ridiculous markups, and when you live in or around boston, you should be used to paying premium prices.

 

Some things in life are certain. The sun always rises, MBC beers are overpriced, and trollers gonna troll...

 

It is interesting that the only beer in town marked up that much is made by MBC.

 

you call us pretentious for wanting something to be twice as good (or at least "better at all") in order to justify paying twice the price. i would call you stupid for thinking that's what 'pretentious' means. you can even google it and check online dictionaries and stuff like that; there's no excuse for this kind of thing these days.

also, again, the major problem is that the price keeps MBC from moving, which keeps fresh MBC out of stores, which keeps MBC beer mediocre. if they can't price it appropriately, that's not our fault; it's their fault. you know, if people would pay me $20,000 per bottle and you gave me 6 months to prepare, i could make you a better beer than you've ever had. is it your fault that this isn't going to happen for you? are you pretentious for not giving me $20,000?

re: breweries out west making better beer than here in the northeast, 2 responses:

1) MBC makes a pale ale, a DIPA, a stout, and something like cascazilla. how are they being separated from the pack, especially when you can get those styles done better by several breweries already mentioned?

2) ask people out west how they would compare HF, NEBCO, and other breweries whose beer they trade for with their own breweries. american brewers are making great beer from coast to coast... i mean, i'd love it if i could go to drake's or alpine for hoppy pale ales (or funky buddha for bizarro beers, or [insert breweries from every region for every style]), but in saying that i'm not saying i'd pay twice the price for an alpine nelson clone on the east coast. NEBCO, lawson's, HF, and at their best MBC all make beers just as good or better. i don't need to spend $7 on an IPA--and i sure as hell don't need to spend $7 on an IPA that's 3 months old.

 

MBC goes out to the distro at an inflated price. Honestly, it costs them around $.66 to make a bottle of Peeper. Where does the extra mark up come from?

 

I don't know how you can say that those comments are not bashing. I've been to the West Coast--there is some great beer being brewed out there, and there's some great beer in this area as well. It's not like it may have been 20 years ago--there's great beer being brewed all over the US, and much of it at affordable prices, which is what this is really all about.

For double the price of other beers, people have a right to expect that a beer is going to be at least significantly better than its neighbors on the shelf. Now, obviously we're paying a premium for craft beer over Keystone, and I think everyone agrees it's worth the price because of the quality difference. What people have a problem with is that MBC's prices are so much higher than similar beers. People on this thread are saying they like the beer, they like the brewers, they want to drink their product and support them, but they need the prices to come down in order to do that more often.

There's nothing pretentious about that. In fact, the only pretentious thing I've heard on this thread is being told that we need to travel, get out to Chicago or the West Coast to try some innovative beers, and that the beers we all like are "depressing" or "mediocre;" and that if we want good beer, we have to shell out double price for your favorite local brewery.

 

I was more referring to the prices of kegs we are seeing these days. over $200 for domestic sixtels is not completely unheard from breweries around the US. and certainly plenty of the Shelton's products from Europe are coming in pretty pricey.

I am not saying it is good or bad.. just reality. I sell my half barrels of IPA for $150 to bars. I have a hard time keeping them in stock. Should I raise my price?? For my family, I probably should. The consumer will still be paying $6-$6.50 a pint for my beer, not matter if I charge $150 or $175. love bar math...

on a side note: I do like Maine Beer Co, and don't fault them for their pricing.

 

I can see your point about talking about keg prices since the genesis for this thread was the price of a pint in a bar, but obviously most consumers don't share your behind-the-scenes knowledge of how kegs are priced.

I appreciate you sharing your knowledge, but I still don't think you've mounted much of a defense for MBC. You've stated that you have no trouble turning over your IPA at $150 a half-barrel, and suggest that you might be better off raising your price to $175 - a 17% difference that would have only minimal effect on the final pint-ordering patron. That makes total sense, especially if you're having trouble meeting demand at the current price. I doubt anyone on here would complain about your beer being drastically overpriced.

For MBC, though, we're talking about wholesale prices of $110-125 for a sixtel for their APA. Even using the lower end of this, that's still 120% more expensive than your (presumably and hopefully profitable!) IPA, and as the situation at Meadhall amply demonstrates, there's simply no way for a bar to deal with a 100%+ price difference without drastically raising the price.

And, again, what conceivable difference does it make that completely different beers are even more expensive? If Shelton Bros. import a keg of Cantillon and I see it for $15/pint, of course I'll jump at the opportunity and call it a fair deal. If they were to charge the same price for, say, Beersel Lager, I would call it a ripoff because there are plenty of Pilsners (imported and domestic) that sell for a third of that. Unless you can point to other domestically-brewed APAs that routinely sell for over $110/sixtel (or $330/half-bbl), you're still comparing apples to oranges.