Breweries Trending Up and Down

Up:
Hop Valley - a brewery making hop forward lagers and a whole bunch of other great styles
HUB - basically everything they brew is great. best happy hour menu ANYWHERE. I think I paid 10 bucks for a salad and about 32oz of beer. now about those prices on bombers and six packs. . .

Down:

Rogue - I want them to go out of business their prices piss me off so much
DFH - they don't make a single beer that i can drink more than about 4oz of

 

Up for me
Shorts - Knocked it out of the park in 2013, almost a release a week. In SIX PACKS for reasonable prices.
Sierra Nevada - Some great standards mixed in with interesting releases
Bells - The more beers I try, I am always surprised how good 2 Hearted is when I go back to it.

Down for Me
Stone - Their best beers are in bomber format including Enjoy By which is not worth $27 a 6 pack equivalent
Great Lakes - Like Stone, I enjoy their beers but they are not worth a premium
Green Flash - They just came to Michigan but I used to get in Ohio, no Rayon Vert in 4 packs, other beers are replaceable.
Dogfish Head - Still enjoy Festina Peche and love Aprihop but large formats are barely drinkable, $12 4/pk for a pilsner? I'll pass

 

Not speculating on anyone's success here, but I agree with the anger over the missing Rayon Vert 4 packs. I've actually been craving it lately and would have bought several 4 packs in the last month but everywhere I look it's gone. Green Flash makes some great stuff, but Rayon Vert was always their crowning achievement in my eyes.

 

I was thinking Belmont Brewing Company

 

Are you really reaching this far to justify spending $25 on 22 ounces of beer? If you are, then I think I've made my point and I am done here.

 

Why do people have to blast Green Flash lately? Is it just about the prices? Their beers still taste good last time I checked.
Now the Rogue bashing, I get ...

 

I thought it was funny how closed minded you were, completely dismissing a beer out of hand because of its price. You could've said that there is a time and place for such beers, however you repute them outright. Have you ever bought a bottle of champagne or high quality wine or whiskey? How about an automobile or house? Some things cost more than other things. Some things are of higher quality than other things. Just because you will not pay a higher price for quality, does not mean that you are correct. And you misquoting the price of Westy 12, is not only hilarious, but proves your strawman argument incorrect. $85 for 67 oz.(Westy 12 brick) is more expensive than $75 for 66 oz. (3 bombers).

 

Does that mean you think they are trending up or down? It seems like people in Austin can't shut up about them and they are getting a lot of attention outside of Texas but the rest of the state seems miffed by the decisions to pull back distribution from the rest of the state in favor of other markets.

 

If you are able to get through Westvleteren's phone line the 2 crates of 12s comes out to 104€. This is the price of the 48 beers, plus bottle and crate fees. Currently you are looking at 104€ being $145 roughly. This is about $3 a beer or $18 for a six pack. If you can't get through the beer line and buy a six pack at the cafe run by the monastery you will pay 20€ for it. 20€ is roughly $27 for the same six pack. The bricks were marked up going into the States. Buying the beer from tourist beer shops you will usually pay between 10-12€ per bottle.

 

There are very good beers out there with a very bad price/quality ratio compared to other available beers, and I think that's a valid complaint about the quality of a brewery if all their good beers are very expensive.

 

As a fellow PSU alumni (Class '89!), I hope you didn't major in econ. Anyway, that a brewery doesn't want to expand production is not a flaw, it's just a decision.

The point being that you complained about high prices for beers that are rare, yet distributed widely. That is simple supply/demand. Then you complained about beers that are rare, but have limited distribution yet these tend to have reasonable pricing. Pick one.

 

Econ 101: when discussing beer, there is no such thing as price gouging.

 

I thought about trending DFH down, but Sam is so damn likeable...

 

Trending up:

Victory - Hop Ranch absolutely blew me away (I wish this wasn't seasonal), but if DirtWolf remains year-round that is just a killer move that Victory really needed. I really enjoyed Oak Horizontal and if they fine tune their barrel program it could be something good with the new brewery. Return of Old Horizontal is great, too.
Voodoo - Their entire Barrel Room collections have been killer in the past year. I never got too excited about their normal distribution, but they work some magic with their barrel program. I'd like to see maybe on BA beer make it to their distributed line-up but that may be a stretch for 2014.
Prairie - Relatively new to the scene but everything I've had from these guys have been wonderful. Really nicely crafted beers. I just wish we would see more of their beers here.

Trending down-ish?/flat-lined:

Weyerbacher - Really nothing they put out last year excited me. Their saving grace was that Riserva 2012 (released 2013) was probably the best batch they've done. I'm hoping their sour program expands with the brewery expansion because they done some nice things in the past (i.e. Rapture, Sour Black).

I am unapologetically a big Dogfish Head fan, and while I don't think they're trending down they didn't do much in 2013 that really took off or was something really special.

Just my thoughts. Anything can happen this year!

 

I won't blast them but I find all but Le Freak and Rayon Vert extremely ordinary. Just my $0.02 though.

 

Up:
Victory (Everything has already been said)
Allagash (One of the better BIPAs in my opinion is Hugh Malone
Long Trail (Limbo came out of nowhere and blew me away)
Maine Beer Co (Getting better and better)
New England Brewing Co. (It's getting hard to find their beers in their own state)

Down:
Dogfish Head (They just need to focus on making good beer and not being "first" for everything)
Rogue (Almost everything is very meh and they take up too much shelf space at stores)
Weyerbacher (Don't care for much of the lineup)
Lost Abbey (Some quality obviously but not worth the money and some breweries are catching up to them)

 

You're better off!

 

I'm complaining about high prices for 'rare' beer. I'm complaining about the fact that seemingly every brewery thinks they can now come out with $20-$30 bombers. 'Rare' beer has no bearing on my argument. Generally speaking, I have little interest to seek out these beers anyway.

 

A) I did misquote the conversion of the price...it's still $54 a case from them. Taken directly from their website.
B) Your Westy brick was a special project to fund an addition to their monastery, not the norm. It was a one time thing with a lot of moving parts involved hence the jacked up price. And don't forget about the glasses which are probably worth about $10 each.

The point is why pay premium price for 'quality' when I can get a substitute product of equal or superior quality at a fraction of the price?

 

A. You have to go to the brewery in Belgium if you want the beer at $54 a case and you have to make a reservation at least 60 days in advance, to phone lines that are always busy, make a 12 Euro deposit, and wait in line outside the brewery.
From website. V

​

The Westvleteren "Trappist" is sold exclusively at the abbey store, and only after having made a reservation by telephone (+32 (0)70/21.00.45).
Up-to-date Informationfor information regarding when reservations will be accepted for which beer and how much beer can be reserved at any one time.

• At the time indicated, call us using the beer phone number (+32 (0)70/21.00.45).

• Then you can make an appointment (date and time) with the beer phone operator, providing the license plate number of the car which will be used to pick up the order.
  Address of our abbey and beer store is: Donkerstraat 12, B -8640 Westvleteren.
  Busy Signals and Limited Reservations
  Please take into account that you may often get abusy signal when you call to make a reservation, due to the fact that our beer lines are overburdened! You're not the only one who is calling at that moment. Due to our small-scale production, the number of telephone calls is much greater than the number of available reservations. That means it's a matter of having a lot of patience as well as a lot of luck.
  
  B. The brick is the only way to purchase the beer in America. The "jacked up" price is split between the distributor and shipping costs.
  
  Even if you could find a mule to ship you a case, it would cost a few hundred dollars to ship a 20lb large box from Belgium to the US. UPS wants $400 minimum, FEDEX wants $200-450, depending on eta. Dude, just admit you were wrong, it's okay. People say wrong things on here all the time.