Framboos value

You seem to be missing the part where I'm comparing it to other rare, difficult-to-acquire lambics.

Edit: One of my friends was recently offered a Framboos for JCN, 750ml Blabaer AND Blauw. Fucking ridiculous.

2nd edit: And there is nothing stopping Armand from making more batches of Framboos. It is just a framboise.

 

First, it was nice to meet you! Second, yeah, this is important. There are lots of things that made this a bitch to get back, the fact that we could only bring a finite amount in our luggage was the main thing (we barely, barely managed 27 bottles, and that was with eating $70 on a 12-bottle shipper). But the same thing can be said of a lot of these only-in-Europe beers.

Also, as an aside, why is it that every person who went to S&B besides me has Blabaer hookups? And all the other damn Americans beat me to it at Mikkeller. Frustrating!

Maybe I'm crazy, but I thought JCN was the most ridiculous beer of last year. I know not many people were trading it, but it was a 1600-bottle release and people have been asking absolutely ridiculous stuff. It and Crianza are weird comparisons because that whole "age the lambic in strange barrels then blend" thing just doesn't really result in a better beer (in my opinion, at least, but I think that Crianza is pretty widely regarded as no better than Classic Gueuze and JCN was pretty much the same).

Anyway, I know you're right. Most of the value of Framboos is the cache of the name. Maybe Armand will start brewing it all the time (although I doubt it, I think this was done as a special favor to Mikkel and Jeppe). Maybe it's trading worse than it should be. But anyone who really wants it will get to try it, is my bet, and probably won't have to give up anything crazy.

 

Nope, not missing any of that. Just pointing out that people who went don't want to trade there's. There's no expectation of that, and the problem has nothing to do with rarity or gouging or anything. It just has to do w/ a small number of bottles actually for trade. I actually hope Armand does release more. I don't care about rarity of these bottles since i'm not trading them. People who have theirs, want there's.

I wish i had a bunch of JCN, too.

 

I agree, JCN was/is really hard to trade for. And Framboos appears to be twice as bad.

Crianza is actually one of my favorite Cantillon beers. I find it very noticeably different/better than than their standard gueuze. I'm also a big fan of 50N4E, though, so maybe I just like the cognac barrel lambics.

 

I'll have to take your word for it, having actually traded neither beer (well, I'm trading one Framboos, but that has been in the works for forever).

Fair enough. I guess I'm not!

 

FWIW, I had a Crianza side by side with a 2010 Classic Gueuze two weeks ago and there was a very noticeable difference. Crianza was exceptionally more funky despite showing very minimal cognac character.

 

I never said you couldn't tell them apart, I think you absolutely could. I said I don't think it improved anything (hence I prefer classic gueuze to either JCN or Crianza). Again, this might just be me being weird.

 

I asked Armand if he would make it ever again last week, he emphasized this was a one-time brew specifically done for Drikkeriget. Same with Armand/Tommy blend. The A/T blend was essentially for continuity's sake, as PP/LA had a presence at S&B, and to have two brewers from the festival collaborate makes for good beer festival fodder. Interestingly enough, it also came to light that while Tomme Arthur indeed visited the brewery and tasted some of the lambic earlier in the day, it was 100% Armand blending the gueuze that evening. The infamous label misspelling may have been a faux pas, I like to think it was more tongue-in-cheek however.

 

So in your opinion, this isn't going to turn into nail polish remover in a hurry?

 

The consensus was that A/T blend stole the show as far as special bottles made for Sour & Bitter were concerned. To me it was a notch under Millennium. As with the lot of Armands gueuzes, this is poised to age gracefully.

 

A notch under? I thought it was way better. It was the best gueuze there by far, imho. Comparing it to the fruit lambics is a bit weird, but in terms of pure enjoyment I think it's close to or better than any of them.

And for the skeptics out there, I brought back two bottles and won't be trading either, so I have literally nothing to gain by talking it up. I really did think it was that good.

 

Good to know! I was being facetious, given Lost Abbey's fumbles, but I guess that didn't come across.

 

it seems somewhat obvious that people offering crazy things are mainly doing it for the name (surely it's not that much better a beer than other stuff armand et al have put out in belgium in the past 10 years). [edit: i'm guessing the praise from trusted people who have tasted it helps too, but come on, that it shares a name with one of the most sought after beers in the past would be the elephant in the room if people weren't naming it as a driving factor, value-wise]

however, as for what traders are asking for, people need to understand that there isn't an objective fact against which you can compare their ISO:FTs. if some guy will only let go of new framboos for dave, that's what it takes to get framboos from that guy--period.

"but, it's gonna be made again! and maybe it's not even good! and and and"

so what?

 

I thought largadeer had a pretty good point about one-offs suddenly being less valuable (not even the same value, but significantly less value) than a re-release. Especially given that, as you implied, Cantillon is on the whole more desirable than 3F. I realize trade values aren't always rational, but I am surprised anyway.

 

i'm pretty sure the implication / outright statement (too lazy to check) holds that when push comes to shove, some of the framboos that made it back here will be offered up for such 1-offs. just a guess.

edit: e.g. "man Beer X is so good, i'd never give it up except maybe for Beer Y [AKA something i know is unfair to offer for said beer which i love]." (3 months pass, hot shot beer comes out) "i have some Beer X i'll give you for it!!!"

edit2: terrible edit sentence edited for clarity.

 

I think there are two distinct ways of thinking about this.

Some people (be they from the US and flew to S&B or Europeans who had a easier trip) choose to use Framboos as trade material to acquire other extraordinarily rare, one-off beers created a long time ago. Basically, this is the value-maximization trade paradigm. I see no problem with this of course, arguably this is what most (though not all) people are looking to achieve when they trade. And as we've seen, the trade market seems to support this type of valuation.

On the other hand, other people plan to drink it, or trade it for some hard-to-get beers they otherwise wouldn't be able to try. This is sort of the quantity-for-rarity/quality paradigm, or the utility maximization trade.

Every time a major release happens we see this same split in trade structure. I have no problem with either, though I tend to fall in the latter camp simply because I have very little desire to try the Ms, Loeriks, etc of the beer world. So when the question of valuing a rare beer comes up, I tend to think it's an unanswerable question since we all do not share the same outlook.

Of course, everything above only applies to trade valuation. $ valuation can easily be answered on ebay, though even there it's worth noting that valuation is relevant only to a small portion of the BA community since many folks avoid Ebay altogether (and auction vaulations have a host of other issues associated with them).