Bourbon County 2015 Speculation

@Lazhal - sure, they make a lot, but they also distribute to most of the country. I think they can probably sustain a much higher price point given they plan to expand distro again this year (apparently; that is the rumor I heard). Not sure how high, but I saw single bottles of regular for $10, so $1/oz for regular is probably sustainable, and they can probably ask at least $1.50 for variants. If it takes a week or two to clear all the shelves instead of a day (or an hour in some places...) it is still good business for GI...
The good will / backlash issue from beer geeks is probably the only issue I can think of; I think a format change for the bottle is a workaround for that. People don't even pause for a $15 bomber, so a $15 16oz bottle of BCBS? I bet they still sell out.

@jlsims04 - agreed - perhaps $2 is a bit aggressive, but that is what barrel variants of DL cost, and it is on top of a ticket price as you mention in your next post. If the new bottles are 16oz and the regular is $15, I don't think people would pause for very long to pick up a Coffee, Vanilla or a Prop at $25...

 

Actually there is quite a bit more of DL variants than you might think.
@blue-dream kindly provided these bottle counts for DL variants for this year:
Bourbon - 603
Bourbon Muerte - 504
Cognac Coffee - 576
Bourbon Vanilla - 1107
Aquavit - 1026
2 Yr Portuguese Brandy - 387
Bourbon Cherry Cocoa Nibs - 160
Earl of Biggleswade - 648

That is a total of just over 5,000 bottles.

Now I am not sure (since I wasn't there!) but I thought all of them were priced at $50 regardless of the variant. and from what I understand, they make about 20-30,000 bottles of the regular each year - 15-20% of their production is a variant...

Sure, BCBS is on a different scale, but it is also distro'ed to the whole country. At $1.60/oz you end up with a $25 16oz bottle for variants like Prop or Vanilla. So maybe $2/oz is a stretch, but I can easily see people still lining up for a $25 bottle.

Hell, in Chicago at least, the bombers were ~$28 this year; that is $1.27 an ounce, so the above is only a 23% price increase. $2/oz would only be a 55% price increase. We aren't talking ridiculous price rises, and by shrinking the bottle a bit they can keep the price very close to last year and just give you a bit less.

 

Sadly, I think we would still see the mules just because the secondary price/trade value would double with it.

 

Agreed. Time will tell. It is fun to speculate but in the end we will have to wait and see!

@edmaher - sadly you are probably right. The kind of price needed to stop hoarding and mules would be pretty damn high. Higher than regular customers would tolerate probably. If it sells out, it will attract the traders, mules and hoarders...

 

No. It wasn't.

 

Entitlement. You want more

 

Cassia is the botanical umbrella under which a number of tree species live - various types of cinnamon are under that botanical family. There is one other kind of cinnamon from a different family, but the word is used interchangeably. 90% of the cinnamon in the USA is Cassia cinnamon, so yes, prop did have cinnamon in it; they just bothered to use the correct botanical name.

Try actually reading my posts; feel free to point out where I say that market pricing means I get more.

 

I don't like this. This smells like AB trying to get cute and creative with the packaging. Think of all the other special bottles/cans macro companies have come up with; Miller's vortex pour bottle, Coor's Light blue Rocky Mountain can, throwback bottles, etc. It's what's inside that counts, not the glass. I like the sleek, understated current bottle.

 

People totally don't line up from all over the country for a shot at some dark lord. Oh wait. They do. That example just proves that a higher price point really won't make it appreciably easier to get.

Vanilla rye was $30 in CT, some retailers marked it up as high as $60. They still sold instantly.

A price increase would just make it more expensive, and possibly might make it even harder to get due to people hoarding it due to increased trade value.

 

Just wanted to offer a little clarity here. I did not read every single post in this thread, so I apologize if this has been mentioned. Bourbon County allocation is not based on how much "regular" Goose Island the distributor sells. It is based on sales of a few specific brands of Goose Island. I would imagine this varies from place to place, but to my knowledge this is the general practice. Some distributors may choose to set their allocations to retail based on the same brands they are restricted to, and some may allocate to whomever sells the most Goose overall. Then again, some may just allocate based on none of this, but I imagine AB would have something to say about that.

 

I'd bet more often than not that, those specific brands you're talking about are are their "regular" beers. There was a retailer from Michigan that posted a thread a while back saying his bud rep told him they needed a better selection to get any BCBS; all they were missing was Honkers and harvest ale.

 

I don't care how much they cost...but with a smaller format hopefully we can get more than last year...reducing the bottle size and keeping the limits at 1 would blow

 

The specific brands I know to be tied to Bourbon County are Sofie and Matilda. The point of my post was that it is not based on all of the regular brands, and is tied to only a few specific ones.

 

I think the disconnect is that you are thinking about all people who purchased VR as beer geeks like us. I think (this is from memory) they had about 200 rye barrels for VR, which works out to ~50-60 thousand bottles of VR... It isn't actually that rare - a lot of every day beer enthusiasts buy bourbon county and the variants.

Put it this way - if you walked into a store and saw 20 bottles of VR on a shelf right now for $30, you would buy the lot... but if it was $60 a bottle? You might buy them all, but many other people would just buy one or 2.

Also, you mention trade value - if anything a higher price would make the beer less trade-worthy, as the sticker price coupled with the fact that it isn't that rare makes it just not that hard to get. Look at a beer like Tweak from Avery. At $12 or $14 a bottle it was easy enough to find on shelves when it came out - people didn't buy cases of it, but I bet they would have if it was more like $6 a bottle.

This is all when talking about a highly desirable variant like VR. Now think about the regular - in an interview Mike Siegel mentioned they made about 3,000 barrels of Bourbon County and it's variants. The regular makes up the majority, so that is something like 300,000 4-packs of the regular BC. We aren't talking about some rare beer - just a very desirable one, and price would absolutely slow things down. Sure there would still be hoarding and people buying cases and cases, but less so than now.

 

I heard differently from a buddy who works at a Binnys in Chicago - it is the total volume of Goose Island. It might vary by distributor though, so who knows what they do in each state.

It is absolutely a lever they use to drive volume of everyday beers though - guaranteed it is tied to something in the portfolio.