Brewery Pet Peeves (2023)

So this is interesting cause a beer I just bought at the store was $10 a four pack, an american brown ale from my favorite local place. At the brewery it costs $14...This case may have been a mistaken label but routinely their other traditional style beers sell for $11 in house and most stores only charge $10. Needless to say I just buy from the store now, I still don't understand this.

 

went to a local brewery mid day so they probably just cleaned but the place smelled so strongly of bleach or cleaning supplies I could enjoy the beer. Every time I think of that place all I can think of is that smell.

 

Give it some time....

 

In terms of pet peeves, mine is easy to ignore without social media, but I see them shared here a lot...I can't stand long poetic and artsy posts about beers with accompanying artsy pictures. I wish places would just let the beer speak for itself...if you brew it well, they will come.

I forgot this leads me to this...a brewery website that isn't up to date with cans or taplist because all they use is social media.

 

This bothers me too. Side project will sell you a half pour for half the price plus .50. I'm good with that.

 

It's a bad idea to undercut the prices of the stores who are willing to stock and sell your product, beer or otherwise.

 

I have the same peeves as some others have expressed: over-priced can pours and noise. While I find a lot of object to with the practice (isn't the whole point of craft brewing that you are passionate about the beer? How then can you consider a can pour equal in value to a draught pour and charge me the same amount?!), the first is just an annoyance and I can always ignore it.

On the second however... We (as a society in the US) seem to have mistaken loudness for community in some senses. I've seen in across many spaces, with weddings being one of the worst offenders, but bars/pubs gaining fast. It it isn't loud, we must not be having a good time. What BS. At craft breweries the focus should be on the beer and people. How can it be so if you can't even hear the person across from you?


On breweries selling to-go cans for the same or slightly more than you can get in your local I'm a bit torn. In some cases I appreciate being able to cut out wholesale and retail so that as much of my beer dollars goes to the brewery as possible. But this argument only holds water for breweries I really want to support. It is tough paying the same price or a bit more when I have to do all the work to get the beer and bring it back home. On a side note, I also like knowing that, for the most part, I will have a far superior cold chain (especially in summer) if buying directly from the cooler at a brewery.

 

So sort of like "hey, you buy x y z from us we'll cut you a deal so you can sell it better price?" Thus make more money and stock our beer in the future...is that sort of what you mean? If so then it makes sense that this is the case, I think...

 

Oh silly me. I didn’t realize the handles on the bag were decorative. I guess holding a cold soppy wet mess of paper is the solution.

 

The justification I've heard for not undercutting your retailers/distributors is that it gives businesses less reason to support and carry your product. If a consumer is buying local, and the local brewery is cheaper than stores / distributors get it, then there is no reason to spend money at those stores when purchasing that brewery's product.

This isn't just in beer. If you look at running shoes, or other products online, a lot of the time the store brand website will still feature full prices, meanwhile you can find the same pair of shoes for 10-30% less on various running shoe retailers.

EDIT: @skelliott beat me to it.

 

I'd love to see John Taffer do a Bar Rescue for that place, multiple forehead veins would pop at a "reserved for owner" seat at the bar

 

I agree I don't love drinking canned beer at a brewery taproom, but I don't think it's unreasonable to price to-stay cans to compete with draft pours, especially since plenty if not most breweries specifically forbid consuming their to-go products on-site anyway.

 

I mean you’re right about the shoes thing, I just thought it would be different with some of the smaller to mid sized breweries. I would think that typically the average crowd at a brewery is mostly comprised of local ish people, and If the brewer has statewide distribution or to even a handful of states, I don’t think a grocer, especially a chain grocer, would take too much of a hit from a brewer selling it for a dollar or two less in person. I’m no economist however and if I’m wrong I’m wrong

 

You learn something new every day....it seemed to be a pet peeve mentioned a few times so it makes sense why the brewery charges more now. Thanks.

 

Generally I'd agree that beer should be cheapest at the source, but I can see an instance where for a supermarket maybe it's a loss leader, or they have big enough margins where they can absorb more of the overhead, whereas for a small brewery those sales are their bread & butter.

 

I've seen this numerous times, especially at smaller breweries -- they can up X amount, but it sells faster on draft. So, they end up doing can pours at regular pint prices in order to offer that beer at all.

And, the customer just opening and consuming products sold specifically to-go onsite can fall afoul of local liquor laws ... presumably this varies state-to-state.

 

I didn't realize there are so many things I don't particularly care for. Aside from unreadable, or no can date, no short pours, kids (I don't mind well behaved dogs), only filling their own growlers, not selling sinle cans to go. I find scrolling beer menus and non-working QR code, as well as happy hour 20oz pours, annoying.

And on a related note, beer bar where 90% of what on tap is faux Budweiser.

 

You're saying the local retailer is going to stop doing something that's profitable for them - selling a given beer- out of pure spite? I have my doubts about that, to say the least. It also borders on price fixing, which is unethical if not illegal.

I'm not gonna stop thinking that if a brewery sells their $16 retail four pack of IPA to the distributor for $8, they should be more than happy selling it directly to me for $14, and if they're not satisfied enough with $6 extra profit to give me a little break too, then I'm not going to reward them for their intransigence.

I'm not sure the running shoes analogy works all that well. If I go to nike.com instead of Foot Locker, I'm not doing any more work to get the product. But it is a lot more work for me to go to a brewery than to pick up the cans during my weekly Wegman's trip.

 

I find QR codes annoying in general, and flat plain refuse to use them.