Can Cantillon be found in Germany?

@mjtierney2: Not at all. All in the spirit of debate.

@digita7693: Meant as a joke...but I'm quickly beginning to think it could be more serious than I initially intended.

 

I'd say that hipster angst is one of the hallmarks of young adult western Europeans, and it probably is more widespread here than it is in the US even. The horror, the horror.

 

“there seems to be a burgeoning artisanal coffee culture a la Portland that is thriving in certain areas.” Germany is undergoing a craft coffee movement in addition to their craft beer movement!?! Woo-Hoo!

There is absolutely nothing wrong with freedom of choice! The customer gets what the customer wants in a free market economy.

Prost!

 

As the Germans say, "So einfach ist das nicht."

EDIT: Also see here. In my experience, 9 times out of 10 the bottle shop/beer bar "experience" is inferior to obtaining and consuming beers at the source.

So, depends on the customer as to whether s/he is always right...but it is clear that some of you want "Deutschlandia" -- and want it NOW!

 

I look forward to getting into a shouting match with you at Faust!

 

Da lassen wir die "Fäuste" fliegen!

 

It is unfortunate that some BAs are having ‘difficulties’ finding the beers they want at local beer stores and beer bars.

Two beer stores that I frequent always have Spaten Lager available and there were tons of Spaten Oktoberfest available this past season.

When I want to drink US brewed hefeweizen I get to choose between SN Kellerweis, Sly Fox Royal Weisse, Victory Mad King and Troegs Dreamweaver year round and seasonally Stoudts Heifer-in-Wheat, Victory Sunrise Wheat, plus innumerable brewpub offerings.

I recently had Celebrator and Aventinus on draft and both of those beers were sublime!

Yeah, when it comes to a large selection of quality made beer that is tasty my biggest challenge is deciding which beer to select and drink (and enjoy).

As a beer consumer I am thankful for the US having a free market economy: tons of US produced quality beers plus a large selection of imports to select from.

I am reminded of a post that @einhorn made in a past thread concerning finding Brettanomyces Lambicus Berliner Style Weisse in Munich; he replied: “I believe you will have better luck finding this in Pennsylvania.”

Cheers!

 

How's this for another example: my local bottle shop no longer carries Schlenkerla Maerzen, just the Bock and Doppelbock. Hmmm...wonder why?

 

I have three bottle shops (within a 5-10 minute drive) that carry Schlenkerla Maerzen by the bottle albeit at a non-low price for the bottle.

I can also purchase a case of Schlenkerla Maerzen at my local beer distributor which is ¾ miles for my house; I have walked there on occasion but I will admit that at the end of the walk my arms are a bit tired from carrying a case of beer.

Cheers!

 

Guess we can't all be Phillandia...you guys must have an extra dose of Freedom up there.

 

For those of you who are inclined to travel to experience good beer then Philadelphia is an ideal place to come.

I am reminded of a conversation I had at the 2013 NHC in Philly. I was waiting in line to attend the Club Night event (homebrew clubs brought tremendous amounts of homebrewed beer which they share with the NHC attendees). The gentleman in front of me was from Kentucky and he told me how he went to Monks Café with some buddies earlier that day for lunch and some beers. They purchased two different big bottles of Cantillon (which are regularly available at Monks).He mentioned the particular brands; I think one was Kriek and I can’t remember the other one. He and his buddies paid a pretty penny for those beers (I winced a bit when he mentioned the price) but he responded with: We can’t get beer like that back home so we decided to buy it here. He then added they were all very happy to get and drink the beer since they were so yummy.

Cheers!

 

Back in the 16th century our king Gustav Vasa was keen on importing German and Finnish beers, even though he had his own royal breweries at his disposal. I also recall a German duke or king spending good money on transporting beer from one part of Germany to his court in order to get the beer he wanted, although at one point he was convinced to build his own royal brewery nearby to supply the court with beer (can't recall if he wanted white beer or brown beer) due to a cost benefit analysis. Nowadays regular consumers are buying imports or trading for faraway beers which provides them the beer that they enjoy, in those instances where they can't find what they are looking for closer to home. Is there some aspect of the grass being greener at work here? For some, there might be, but on the other hand they are deciding for themselves what to spend their money on and their object of expenditure is hardly any stranger than buying an imported piece of cheese or charcuterie. It's hardly outside the bounds of normal society, or history.

 

Maybe trading once resembled what you describe. Nowadays, however, it is a complete shit show. Ever make the mistake (as I did) of reading the trading threads/sites? I can only hope for your sake that you havent.

 

My view is that people will trade for what they want, not that they necessarily will get a fair deal in doing so. I leave it up to the individual though to decide whether the deal is fair or not. If you decide to get screwed and hand over piles of cash for a single consumable good, then I really can't help you. Most likely you will have money to burn and if you won't burn it on beer you will burn it on something else. I don't have that kind of money and I stay far away from any trades in expensive goods.

Now if you object to these trades because they balloon the value of these beers, and you want to buy these beers for less money, I can understand your concern, but to me it's no different than someone producing "art" and charging a fortune for it, and finding people that want to pay that kind of money for their product, as well as instilling a want in people who can't afford the product. Again, I don't have the money and I don't let myself being led down that path of hype and usury.

I seriously doubt though that most trades are like this, and I do believe that alot of trades provide a clear benefit to both parties, in providing beers which the other person wants in exchange for beers of similar value. They may not be the most discussed about trades, but they do exist I think.

 

@Crusader: It's not so much the ballooning of price, but rather that of hype/rating that results from these practices -- kinda like the Wall Street traders inflating the value of certain companies...you might call the practice in beer Whale Street traders

Let me give you just one example from a local brewery, Westbrook. A couple of years ago, they brewed an Imp. Stout called Mexican Cake. Not a bad beer -- but definitely nothing special (typical of the brewery in general).

Fast forward to this year and the release of barrel-aged Mexican Cake. The trading boards started to light up with pre-trades from people who knew they were driving down to wait in line for the beers to be released. When they are, this small group guys as many of the beers as allowed until all are sold out. None for the locals, none on the shelves, none left to try for anyone but a few traders....

The trades then emerge for the other "whales" (hate that word, BTW) on the Top 250 list. In order to drive interest in the BA Mexican Cake, the traders began hyping Westbrook, the brewers, the base beer (which in many places was still on the shelves around here), any and everything they could think of -- ALL BEFORE ANYONE HAD EVER EVEN TASTED THE BEER.

So, the beer finally comes out and the locals get it and actually, you know, taste it. Cue the perfect 5 reviews. The trading boards stay lit up...and the hype spreads as the boxes are swapped.

Fast forward to now: Barrel-aged Mexican Cake, from a brewery less than 4 years old, is now in the Top 5 new beers of the world according to BA users...and is destined for the top of the regular rankings as the reviews roll in and the rarity increases. Meanwhile, beers like Orval and breweries like Heller-Trum disappear completely from these "best of" lists

Now, replicate this across the U.S. and you have an understanding of how a large subset of our "craft beer culture" works. Add to this the fact that anyone just getting into "craft" beer gets BA as one of the top hits of any online search...and the cycle continues.

Sound like fun?

As Stahlsturm pointed out earlier, this is the nature of the American beast. But it doesn't mean I have to like it

 

I think we can both agree, based on your posts at least, that valuations of a commodity can be based on complete bs, increadibly inflated, and the only factor keeping the valuation afloat can be hype and the desire of a minority to make a profit from buying the commodity in the first place. I would like to reiterate my point though about separating the urge to get something you don't have (a king wanting a beer from another country, or a modern day consumer wanting a beer from another country) on the one hand, and greedy sellers on the other hand trying to flip a consumer good into an absurd amount of profit. I understand the drive for the former, I despise the desire of the latter. Two different groups of people, one with a benevolent desire, one with a malignant such.

 

It seemed as though you were initially making two separate points, on the one hand you were scolding those who weren't complacent with the availability of beer where they lived, and looked elsewhere for beers of their liking. Then you brought in the moral aspects of beer trading, whether trades and valuations are fair or not. I believe these to be two separate questions.

 

I wasn't scolding those who look elsewhere -- rather making the separate point that as a result of the hype generated by trading and the lists on sites like BA, a lot of the availability of good local beer becomes hard to find, as everyone is trying to "out-innovate" the next guy to gain shelf space. To again use the Westbrook example: after some of the early hype, I went out in search of their beers. I saw they had brewed, among many others, a Maerzen and a Schwarzbier. Now, based on the near unanimous accolades and praise heaped on them by beer geeks, I assumed that these beers would be very good examples of two of my favorite styles. After shelling out $9 for a 22 oz. bomber of each, I come to discover that both are (IMO) wholly mediocre and hardly resemble the purported style(s) they are brewed as.

So, now that I am out near $20 (or the equivalent of nearly $60 for a 12-pack, or $120 for a German crate) for 2 beers, I go on BA -- where I initially encountered the hype -- and make the point that this is basically a sham. For that, I get called all kinds of names and told to simply go back to my German favorites if I don't like it. So, turning back to some of my German favorites, I now find them gone from the shelves, replaced by yet more $9-12 Westbrook (and other) bombers.

To sum up: no BA Mexican Cake, as it's all snatched up; no decent local interpretations of my favorite styles, as they are all overpriced, 3rd-rate imitations; and a number of my old standbys gone from the shelves. And the 3 new breweries in planning in my city: all have similar "innovative" styles listed as their core lineup. I can hardly wait....

What am I left with? Some good IPAs, and -- luckily -- Olde Mecklenburg 1.5 hours up the road. I keep hoping for someone to open a place where they have nailed some base styles before getting innovative. Until then, I'm sticking to homebrewing, where I have now placed nearly all of my hopes given the current climate.

 

Totally off-topic: but since I learned about Olde Mecklenburg brewery, I always have to think about Ryan Adams. I'm a huge fan of his music. A few years ago, there was this song called Carolina Rain when he sang "I pulled into Mecklenburg on'em trains". Wondering what this was about, I found out that there is a Mecklenburg County in North Carolina, his original home. Now he's been a NYC-guy for a couple of years.

 

I guess I was caught up with this post

It made it seem as though you wanted to decide what type of beer people should want and get, and it made it seem as though you wanted people to focus on their local offerings instead of trading. But I've obviously misread you here.

I do sympathize with the loss of the type of offerings which you enjoy, in exchange for styles of beer which you don't enjoy quite as much. If the standard of lager beer was to be reduced over here and replaced with hoppy IPAs I too would feel a sense of loss.