2015 Goose Island Bourbon County Stout $$ question

If I'm a retailer I'm not getting rich off the dribble of BCBS that your allocated me. I make my money all year providing others beers besides GI stuff to my customers. Pay to play ? I'd tell GI to stuff it and I'd never order any of their core beers, IMO they are the definition of mediocre. Should be lllegeal, at best it's bad business. Even worse is the retailer sending on that sixer of GI to the customer.

 

I got mine a few days early and only got one BCBC and one Barleywine
The BCBC was $11.99
The Barleywine was $14

 

Rare was $65 at Total Wine and $75 at World of Beer.

 

That also means they could have been selling it easily for 75/85 $$ a bottle.

 

I find the BBA Narwhal to be very different from BCBS. Enjoy them both but prefer the Narwhal.

 

Binny's in IL, got regular for $9.99, Coffee and Barleywine for $11.99, and Rye for $23.99.

It's great beer, but with Central Waters Brewer's Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout out soon at about $20 a 4-pack, and tasting oh so close to regular, I'm going to buy much more CW.

 

Its my favorite barrel aged beer, I don't go crazy with other beers through out the year so I let loose on Black Friday. For me the juice is worth the squeeze and will continue to seek it out every year. Sure $10 and up to $25 for the variants that were available to me may be excessive to some but to me its worth every penny.

 

BA Narwhal is a great beer. However, At $.60 an ounce its not a huge price difference than BCBS even with the price increase.

 

People wanting to report stores for selling bcbs at a high price is just wasting their time. Last year blanchards liquors in west Roxbury Massachusetts had an auction for their bourbon county products. The store even had the balls to promote it as a tasting and listed all the bcbs variants in a flyer made for the event. They ended up just sampling goose island ipa and the rest of their shelf turd terrible line up. The variants they listed were sold in the sneaky auction they faulsly promoted. It was an event promoted by goose island as part of their migration week on their offical website. Their whole staff including a brewer were in attendance of this auction. I cursed and flipped out on the manager of the store in front of the goose island reps and asked what their msrp was and the GI staff just said they had nothing to do with the auction. Yet it was on their website. Ohh Ya, i also asked what charity this auction benefited which had no response from either the store or goose island. I haven't shoped there since and won't buy any GI products. It was just so rediculous that multiple goose island reps present for the event only said I'm sorry theres nothing we can do we have nothing to do with this. THEY DONT GIVE A DAMN. Fuck GI

 

I was 63rd in that same line and the last bottle of Rare was bought in the "fivesome" ahead of my group. I was going to buy it if available but definitely a hard purchase to justify to Da Boss.
As an aside the Tops Liquors sale was more satisfying than chasing limited releases from Firestone Walker. I spent 2.5 hours in line at Tops (roughly 7:30 - 10:00) versus the recent angst of driving around the greater Phoenix area chasing down 5 bottles of FW XIX the previous week. Less painful all in all and would like to see the FW releases done in the same fashion!

 

Yemenmocha, are there any beers you chase any more?

 

Not in the sense of waiting in line in the cold, but some require more seeking out and attention to TapHunter. You guys should be happy, as I'm one less guy in line on Black Friday, and one less guy buying up Parabola, Abacus, FW Anniv, Abyss, Dissident, etc. (all of which used to be available on shelves depending on your budget, years ago). I'm done. It sounds like a cliché, but there are enough great shelf beers to keep me happy so it's not a huge loss that some make it out to be.

I seek:

Andechs doppelbock when it appears on draft.
Founders Harvest Ale
Alpine Beers (though getting much easier now that Total Wine sells them, and in sixpacks)
Bell's Black Note
Bell's Hopslam Draft
Stone Enjoy By whenever it cycles through (love that one)
Victory DirtWolf Draft
Rodenbach on Draft
Fuller's ESB, London Pride, London Porter on draft (rare these days)
Full Sail LTD bottlings when they're bocks or pilsners, had a few good ones in recent years.
Four Peaks Hefe-Weizen which was kicked from the main lineup a year or two ago. I resent them for doing that.

 

BCBS regular is the only one we got here in C. Springs.... alas. Got a couple (2 bottle limit). shockingly, I've never had it... even with my time in Chicago. Not sure how long I'll hold them before drinking...

 

Shared 1st bottle last night and tasting great! The only reason to wait would be to make sure you have another person to share it with because it is meant to be shared and it is over 14%.

 

Madison, WI best prices found
Reg = $9 (up 11 cents/oz or $32/case from last year)
Coffee & Barleywine = $11 (up 15 cents/oz or $43/case from last year)
Regal = $19 (down 1 cent/oz from last year)
Rare = $50 (Almost $3/oz - compare that to your favorite beer)

Due to the bottle format & change in cost, I bought 1/3 of what I usually do. There is other great beer that has a much more attractive price point for me.

 

I just bumped into a floor stack of 5 cases of BCBS in a supermarket that usually has just an OK beer selection - $8.99/bottle - no limit - the nicely hand written sign on the stack incorrectly read "Bourbon Country - 25oz" -

 

picking mine up tomorrow at DEP. limited to 1 per person. $11.99 for the stout.

 

In Lawrence, KS I was able to find bottles of Regular with ease--I didn't start looking until late afternoon and had no lines to navigate--at $8.99 and $9.99 per bottle. Compared to the $24.99 price for a 4-pack of BCBS last year, that's a negligible increase in price per ounce:

• $8.99 for 16.9 ounces translates to 53 cents per ounce
  
  
• $24.99 for 48 ounces translates to 52 cents per ounce

Point being, if you are seeing ridiculous per ounce price increases in your area, more likely than not you have the distributors and/or retailers to blame. Distributors and retailers who see the format change as an easy place to hide a massive price increase and know that consumers either 1) won't care, or 2) will blame the price "gouging" on Big Bad ABInBev and their profit-hungry, soulless executives.

Obviously, I can't compare on the others since I didn't see any in retail this year, but it seems like the general idea was to keep Regular as close to the same price as possible and increase the price on the others to a degree in line with the perceived value of those others. Barleywine increased a little, coffee increased a little more, rye/prop increased more than that, and obviously Rare was the biggest per-ounce increase.

By doing it that way, they don't price out/turn off potential new customers who are hearing all about this "Bourbon County whatchamacallit", while also trying to capture some of the value that is being lost to the secondary market on the more sought-after varieties.

I'm not sure I agree, and I've never really understood the huge backlash that this practice is met with on this site. As long as the paired product isn't old or shitty, then I see it as a harmless practice. Because at the end of the day, the consumer still gets a return on the money they spent on that additional sixer or whatever the pairing is.

Now if they are using that to move out-of-code product, that is a different story. But I'm sure there are plenty of customers who would rather have the option to buy BCBS + a sixer of fresh GI IPA than no option to buy BCBS at all because their local store didn't sell enough GI during the year to receive BCBS.

While I'm sure it will annoy some customers, I think most will be amenable to it as long as the paired product is a good product in and of itself. I completely disagree that it should be illegal. Customers should bear some responsibility for refraining from purchases that they aren't okay with. There is nothing predatory about asking someone to buy X to get highly-sought-after-product-where-supply-can't-meet-demand Y. It's certainly a better option than compensating for the lack of supply by charging an exorbitant price for Y.

I don't personally work in retail, but my experience in talking to those that do is that they typically use an across-the-board % markup. So higher-priced items will have a higher net margin, but the margin would still be the same percentage as anything else.

And as we've seen on this board, stores that step outside of their standard percent markup get ripped for "gouging". So in many ways, these limited release beers are likely more hassle than they are worth from a bottom line standpoint, given the increased man hours that are likely necessary to deal with the chaos. However, the flip side is that your reputation as a "quality" bottle shop can take a hit if you don't carry any of a release like BCBS. So many retailers may see the increased % markup as a necessary evil.

 

Just snagged four bottles at the new Harris Teeter in Charleston for $14.99. Two more unopened cases sitting there too...

$15 is high, but I'm new to the beer hunt and was thrilled to find some after getting screwed in NJ over the weekend.

 

It's like wanting to buy ticket to Star Wars The Force Awakens, but being made to buy the three prequel movies on DVD along with it to get your tickets.