Which beers are most profitable?

I would suspect that AALs which are brewed is massive amounts have the highest margins.

 

Without a doubt best margins and most profitable.

 

The ones dipped in wax with foil labels and hyped the most.

Enjoy

 

I’m gonna guess that the brewer is a bigger factor than the style.

 

Based on what I see on the shelves, #2 must be IPAs (assuming we're talking about craft beer) . In an ideal world #1 is all the same since the brewer will adjust the price based on expected volume and costs.

 

Both of the above. It doesn't have to involve wax or foil, but the brewer who gains a reputation for his/her beers which then allows pricing well above brewery costs to produce those beers will have the greatest margin and profitability. However, the total profitability of a beer can suffer if there is a restriction on the amount that can be produced (i.e. only so many barrels are available to be able to release an unlimited supply, or certain ingredients are scarce). Treehouse beers have no such restrictions other than their brewing capacity, so that brewery is an example of wealth being built. So, given the popularity of IPAs/NEIPAs, etc. I voted IPAs for both categories.

 

None of the above; depends on the brewery

 

Margin means . . . .what? If you have a brewery, there are fixed costs: rent/mortgage, property taxes, utilities, water/sewer, wages, licenses, equipment maintenance. You make a bunch of beers with varying additional costs. Unless you make just one product, the best margin depends critically how you apportion the fixed costs. For retailers, higher markup products are usually slower sellers than low markup products. Retailers have fixed costs too, and margins at big retailers are assigned roughly by $ of net sales per foot of shelf space. I'm sure the accountants at the bigger stores could give you some information, except that the info is probably a trade secret.

 

The ones with the biggest advertising budgets.

 

One aspect to keep in mind is that with Barrel Aged beers a certain portion of the beers are wastage in that the beer becomes infected/contaminated and those barrels will need to be dumped. One brewery told me that something like 30% of their barrel aged beers are dumpers. I would presume the higher prices for these beers are in part to account for this wastage. How this impacts "margin" I have no idea.

Cheers!

 

Macro brewers produce their AAL beer with high gravity and literally add de-oxygenated water post fermentation. This is one way to increase the volume of a massively expensive factory and thereby increase profit.

Your neighborhood brewery is not doing this.

As for margins, the cost to produce (including labor, materials, marketing, electric etc.) is not directly representational of the sale price. In other words, a barrel aged stout might cost you $10 per serving and a PBR $5, but PBR is not half the price to produce as that stout. There is price pressure on top as well as below.

I'll add that small brewers are not always good business people, and many do not put all that much effort into analyzing their production. More like they try to make good beer that sells and if they are making a profit they are happy. I see this quite a bit actually.

This is just one guys observations. Actual commercial brewers will have better data.

Cheers

 

For a local/small brewer, hard seltzers are king of profit margins. For actual beer, I’d guess low ABV ales that use basic hops and no dry hopping would be cheap and fast to make and still charge same per pint.

 

I remember sitting with an ‘industry guy’ at a local brewery as he ran through their tap list while talking about material costs. My take away was that the lightly hopped ales—specifically blonde and mild ales—had the greatest margins.

 

Agree Combined with lower ABV as less malt quantity is required.

 

When someone says "good margin" your next question should be "good for who, the consumer or brewer?"

 

Hydrogen?

()