Is rare/limited beer killing the regulars?

You must find your own personal balance. Contemplating your avatar might help.

 

I guess some of it's a numbers game- you try enough, you know what you like, and then you know that a $10 6er is not going to be blown out of the water by a $23 bomber, 99.9999% of the time.

You have to look at who's generating the hype on a lot of these beers- often times they're n00bs. No thanks.

 

Never had it, but no, it's not worth what it's trading for, to me at least.

 

What beer do you drink? In your opinion, what's some good beer?

 

Agreed. I bought a bottle of Fruet last week and then remembered why I don't chase whales. For me, there's plenty of beer out there that I can try that doesn't break the bank.

I bought a bottle of Collage the other week and that was a purchase I was pretty glad I picked up, and at like $12 it wasn't too awful.

*Editing in that I realize Fruet isn't a whale

 

Smuttynose IPA is bangin'. Big fan of Allagash White, Prima Pils, Ayinger Weizenbock, Grey Sail Flagship, Narragansett, anything Schlenkerla, esp. the helles lagerbier. When I go out, 80% of the time it's to my local brewpub, Trinity, and if not, I'm drinking Harpoon, Long Trail, Brooklyn, or Boston Beer Co. most often. For specialties, I'll drive to NEBCO or Capt. Lawrence for growler fills.

I did the rare beer thing. I chased a lot. I ticked a lot. I left grossly disappointed and have really been digging easy-access beer. God knows there's a ton of it these days.

 

No. Is there a brewery in existence that makes more money off special releases than regulars?

As for my personal drinking, lately I've been saving special stuff for tastings and drinking regulars most of the time. (Well, I count Pliny and Row 2 as regulars.) I'm totally with Shogo, 99% of the special releases are no better than beer I can get any time. I'll keep trying some of them, but at this point I'm not bothering with most.

 

I think this is one of the key issues here. I know lots of people that see any bottle over $10 and don't even think about purchasing it because it is "just" beer. So while the number of people purchasing limited releases may be increasing, we are definitely still in the vast minority. Also, like others have said, if you enjoy the occasional >$10 bottle than chances are you genuinely enjoy beer and probably pick up a lot of other stuff too.

 

The rarity is the hidden flavor that makes it better

 

Only on the beeradvocate top 100 list.

 

To answer the title... in a word, NO.

 

I've REALLY limited my rare beer spending. The chase was tiresome and not always worth it. Also beer cellaring is insanely overrated so why bother stockpiling all this crap? I like the breweries that are more interested in making honed-in, quality beer and not catering to beer geeks most of the time with tons of limited releases, seasonals, and one-offs with no tried-and-true recipe. I will cave in for Hill Farmstead because I think it's actually worth it and the chase is somewhat minimal for me, compared to most. Other than that I'd be fine with raging on cases of Heady Topper and Narragansett for the rest of my life.

 

I'll agree with you on this- I never get why people will have 300+ bottles with no duplicates. To me, the object of cellaring is to see how a beer changes over time- if you only have one bottle of said beer, what the fuck are you doing aging it?

I have two beers in my cellar, Cantillon Classic and Pretty Things Barleywine. Building 5year verticals of each, depending on how they taste I might push it to 10.

 

Speaking for only myself, I live in the middle of BFE, so sometimes when I do come across good beer (which usually means I'm far from home) if I don't buy multiples of bottles for another day, I may not have them ever again. . . so I keep them in my cellar/house/fridge etc. . . not because I think they will get better, but moreso because I just hope they stay relatively the same and might be enjoyed again (without having to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to get it).

 

Agreed on both points. The large majority of beers out there do not benefit at all from age, there are only a handful that I will really get behind. Very few people seem to know why they are even aging the beer or what they are hoping to accomplish by aging it. If you cannot answer why and what your objective is you should probably reconsider the practice.

 

In some case they truly do. Pliny the Younger is a classic example. Vinnie has stated that it takes 3x as long in the tanks as a batch of Elder, but since he doesn't sell it for 3x the price he is losing money on the batches of Elder that couldn't be produced due to Younger taking up tank space.

 

I don't think the rare/limited beers from a brewery have much of an impact on the regular beers of that brewery (I'm thinking of Goose Island and Founders as my example).

I don't go crazy chasing the limited releases but I have managed to grab more than my fair share of them over the years.
I keep my beer purchasing pretty well balanced (4 pack of BCBS, 2 King Henrys and a 6'er of 312 Urban Wheat).

I'm just trying to figure out a better way to justify all the money I spend on beer to my wife!

 

I'm not sure I'm in the majority, but my "cellar" is more of a menu and a queue than it is an aging mechanism. I have probably 100-150 different beers and a total of maybe 200-250 total bottles. Much of this is fairly limited and/or not available in my area. I enjoy trying new beers and enjoy sharing beers most haven't had with my tasting group.