Blatant Brewery coming to CT

Blatant One was very good on draft, the regular offerings are solid.

 

So by your standards a new brewery should start out with six packs right off the bat? The head brewer from Notch had a great post about how it is really hard financially to make 12oz six packs when you are just starting out, and he doesn't move his beers from 22oz to 12oz until it is economically viable for him. I'll have to look for that post or ask him about it. I bring this up because we are talking about Blatant and they are new, they don't even have their own brewing space.

 

The majority of their sales are draft, so i think everyone can agree that it will be a nice hoppy addition to have at a bar. Their on premise draft pricing has always been very competitive, and is usually line priced with other crafts.

 

Come now, don't act like only new breweries exploit the bomber markup (e.g. Rogue), nor that it's impossible for new breweries to hit the ground running with competitive pricing (e.g. Two Roads, Jacks Abby), nor even that expensive automated equipment is necessary to cut costs (e.g. NEBCO up until this very month, canning everything by hand).

That said, of course I'm more willing to cut a brewery slack on its pricing scheme when it's brand new and trying to get a foothold, and I'm personally more likely to shell out for an overpriced beer if I can see that doing so is helping a little guy get started, but frankly the reason they need to charge more isn't "being new" so much as "being undercapitalized." A business plan that calls for entering a competitive market with untested products priced significantly higher than those of tried-and-true competitors doesn't fill me with confidence, and barring some more personal rationale (e.g., being friends of the brewer, being local, etc) I don't feel any obligation at all to help subsidize a business that got in over its head.

Of course, if there are enough people who look at the bomber market as being wholly separate from the sixpack one, and don't compare the pricing of the two at all - even for basic styles like xPAs - then it makes TONS of sense to stick with it. If I were a brewer and saw that selling my Pale Ale for $.23/oz in one format would yield me praise ($5 bomber, so reasonable!) and in another scorn ($16.50 sixpack for an APA? WTF???), you can be damn sure I too would choose the strategy where I could get patted on the back for charging a higher price.

I don't blame the brewers for making the best of a situation that we consumers have created, and just hope that it means that enough of them will get rich enough to start offering sixpacks at prices that I find more reasonable. And if you enjoy supporting fledgling breweries by buying their bombers, then by all means continue to do so. Just don't get so offended when people like me point out the fact that you're letting bottle size blind you to the price of the actual liquid inside.

Cheers!

 

No one questions the brewery's rationale. It's BAs that say "$5 bomber what a steal" that's hard to understand. You'd never go to a bar and say "hey, $4 for an 8oz pour of Sam Adams--that's a great price since most other 8oz pours are $5-8."

Anyway, Blatant is good stuff, and you can avoid the bomber tax by getting it on draft.

 

Point missed

 

That is very narrow thinking that you think all new breweries have all the same capital when they start out. And also...when Jack's Abby first started bottling.....they started bottling in bombers.

 

When did I say that I think all new breweries have the same capital? I believe I specifically said that the need to charge relatively high per-ounce prices in order to get by was a sign of undercapitalization, which I contrasted with well-capitalized start-ups like Two Roads. I completely understand why an undercapitalized new brewery would feel the need to make a higher margin on its products, but I fail to understand why that should make me feel sorry for them or feel obligated to pay more for their beer. They are free to charge whatever they want, you're free to pay it, and I'm free not to - and to point out why.

I really don't see why we need to be arguing about this.

P.S. Didn't know about Jack's Abby bombers; they obviously didn't take too long to switch over to 500ml bottles, many in affordable 4-packs, since they've only been around for two years and I've been drinking them for more than one.

 

I can't keep going in circles like this.

Blatant makes a good IPA.

It is mostly on draft.

Sometimes they bottle.

I'm out.

 

He didn't miss the point at all, but made a rather apt analogy.

You've repeatedly stated that $5 bombers are a good deal relative to $12 bombers. That's every bit as illogical as saying a $4 halfpint on draught is a great deal just because there are also $8 halfpints.

In both cases, similar (or identical) beers are available for much less in an alternative packaging format. We ultimately drink beer, not bottles, so what really matters is the price per unit of liquid relative to other comparable brews, not the price of a container relative to other similar containers.

Sam Adams is Sam Adams is Sam Adams, so why claim that it's a good deal at $.23/oz in a 22oz but a bad deal at $.23/oz in a 12oz?

 

I think they hand-bottled a batch or two of Kiwi Rising. I don't think they ever put bombers on their bottling line, but those details were lost in the Great BA Site Crash of 2012.

 

Seems meh, descriptions of their beers leave much to be desired.

 

I see way more draft than bottles around here and I think it would be the same in CT so this packaging discussion is a little silly.

 

The bottles went on hiatus last summer, with bottling finally resuming this April.

 

I liked Blatant One a lot. Surprised it didn't get more love around here.

 

I saw an IPA bottled in May the other day. Any clue how often they bottle?

Blatant One was a top notch DIPA. I had to do a lot of searching in the Boston area for who had it because once it was tapped it didn't last very long.

 

Lord Hobo had it for a couple weeks when it came out.

 

I know I was drinking it there and Publick House. Then Deep Ellum had it and when that was gone it was harder to find because most of the other bars in Boston had already sold out. Lord Hobo got the last keg or held on to one to tap a few weeks later.

 

I drank B1 at Kinsale last December. 20oz pints all night ling during my fiancee's company holiday party.

 

How many did you drink? Forty?