KBBS is released December 15th, $100 for a 12oz bottle

People do it for wine.

 

I don't think it was auction style, I believe they sold a number of bottles at $2,000 a piece and that was always planned on being the price. They were surprised at how quickly it sold out since it sold out in a few hours when they expected it to sell out in a few weeks.

Also worth noting, they recently reduced their on-site price from $1,500 a bottle to $800 a bottle if you need that tick. The bartender said it was to counteract the secondary price getting too high but that seems odd since I don't think bottles of Dave are even moving on the secondary market. My bet is that it was reduced based on how it's tasting at this point since they are known to price based on taste, not rarity/age when it comes to their vintage bottles (price usually goes up on older bottles to a point then the price starts to go back down again when you get to the really old stuff that's over the hill).

 

Ok, people aren't keen on going to the middle of nowhere for 12 oz. of beer and a bowl of ice cream.

Neckbillioneards? Did you just make that up? If so, awesome!

I literally stumbled upon it (ok, maybe not literally, I didn't trip). I was at my local store at the counter buying beer, and I saw three bottles of different vintages of Pappy on the counter. I'm a regular customer there, and they said, "We're about to tweet out that we're selling this, you want one?"

I'm not a huge bourbon guy, but I called my roommate and we decided to buy it. About five minutes later (probably less), the other two bottles were sold as people were camped out across the street ready to buy it.

I'm not sure if this is the case anymore, but at the Extreme Beerfest they usually had Utopia. Unlimited samples of that were worth the price of the ticket alone.

Yeah but how many bottles of wine go for $500? $100 for a 12 oz. bottle of beer is a bit of an outlier wouldn't you say?

And is that beer now worth $85 more? Does it cost them that much more to produce it? Did the recipe change so drastically that it tastes $85 better? I'm going to go out on a limb and say no.

 

Well no sh*t deadsincebirth! I completely agree with mmmbeerNY. I'll never pay a price gouger, and it would be effective against gougers if no one would. Maybe then they'd charge a decent price for their beer. I'll never even consider a TG beer until they stop doing this.

 

I really don't have an opinion on it that would change the direction of this thread, but wanted to share these:

 

I mostly agree, but if you're in the Des Moines area, Barn Town is pretty good.

 

It's definitely an outlier. It's also an outlier in terms of quality, too, being that its certainly an elite beer. I do get the argument about wine being snooty and pretentious and people wanting to keep beer from being that. As this is an outlier, I really don't see it shaking up the industry and will just be a really expensive option for the lesser crowd that can afford it. Decorah is close enough to Chicago, Des Moines, Omaha, and Minneapolis that there's for sure going to be enough people chasing the small number of tickets going on sale.

The good thing is that there's definitely plenty of amazing alternatives out there that are closer to $1/oz face value and certainly much less than KBBS on secondary. I don't see how people continue to be so entitled as the consumer. If you want KBBS, this is what it takes. If not, move on to the next one.

 

Since I haven't seen it come up yet in any of the 3 KBBS discussions going now, I have to ask what people think the over/under is on the KBBS wax being too hot and compromising the bottle caps like what supposedly happened to the most recent SR-71 release?

 

I will purchase this beer only if they let me pay with pennies.

 

My only experience with Pappy was the store got in a case of the 23 year. First time they'd ever gotten Pappy in their history (open for about 5-7 years). I was the top beer buyer at the time, but was not considered for their Pappy allotment. The owner personally called the top 12 liquor purchasers and each one opted to buy their bottle.

I have heard you can get pours at one of the big beer festivals. Extreme Beerfest and Rare Beer Fest are the two festivals I'm considering going to in the future, I just rarely travel with the express purpose of trying beer. This fall/winter's beer weekend would be the first occasion for that, and that's only because I'll be on my rest phase after a marathon and won't have to maintain a training schedule while on a drinking trip. I'll have to take a deeper look at attending those beer festivals this year!

 

Is it really an outlier in terms of quality? See my post below...

And then this post and my response...

 

They are, they're just not convenient where I live and when they do package their IPA (which is rarely), they do so in similarly expensive bombers.

 

I haven't been to the Extreme Beerfest in years, so I couldn't say. They also had it at a random local beer fest in the Boston area (Somerville) and that was only $30/ticket.

So I've had it multiple times. Tastes like cognac. Not sure it's worth the price tag for a bottle, but it's worth having it if you see it. You can also buy a pour of it at a few bars around Boston.

 

I'll be in Boston next April, so I'll keep that in mind.

Funny how Utopia lingers around Boston as does BCBS in Chicago.

Cheers!

 

*Utopias

 

Well, they probably make more than 1000 bottles of each (definitely BCBS obviously). Utopias ranks 223rd on the top beers list, and regular BCBS is 17th (I was surprised it's still that high).

Maybe if they made less, you could only get them for one day, and they were available only in Antarctica, then they would sell faster.

 

Yeah, this is what I've been driving at.

For the sake of easy math let's say they're selling 1000 bottles and somewhere north of $30 for a 12oz bottle the real backlash kicks in, they're going to make ~$70k on this sale, which sounds like a lot, but considering their wider audience is in the many thousands of beer buyers, you don't need that many people buying less (or in your case, none) to match that $ amount, and that's before you factor in the long term ill will.

I would think they'd make a lot more money in the long run working to ramp up production as rapidly as possible and overcome the potential challenges in maintaining quality and sell a lot more beer and win a lot new fans...at the downside of the inevitable complaints (regardless of truth) that the beer would have declined in quality as it scaled up.

They, obviously, feel differently. Or maybe they feel they can have their cake and eat it, too.

 

More than anything, I want to know if anything is preventing them from significantly upping the production on their big stouts, or if they're keeping the volume low because they want them to be rare. It seems like they would stand to make way more money if they made 10x as many bottles and charged $50 instead of $100. That would still be a silly price, but it wouldn't be completely ludicrous.

Also, part of me wonders if TG subscribes to the "any publicity is good publicity" mindset and is charging this just because they want people talking about them.

 

@AlcahueteJ I think it definitely is an outlier. I'm not saying it's the best beer ever made, but it's in the top Tier for sure.

 

It's a price outlier compared to other beers in its tier though.

 

@John_M I'm in agreement with your points. I actually think this batch of KBBS could be the one to draw the "overrated" tag since it is essentially the barrel aged version of Mornin Delight b4, which definitely wasn't on par with B2 or B5 (never had B1 and B3 was just garbage....thank god they didn't put that in barrels).

 

Gotta assume they couldn't make 5,000 bottles of KBBS as good as they could for 1,000 bottles. They scaled up MD b4 and didn't love the outcome, albeit still good, so they scaled back for b5, which turned out to be a great decision. It's also probably safe to say, they want to continue to make a whale instead of a massively produced version of what used to be a whale.

 

LOL!?!? You wouldn't recommend walking around at night in St Louis? Oh boy that's golden... My 6 year old and I have been going on night time walks his entire life. There's some unsafe areas for sure, but it's far from being unsafe to walk at night in the majority of the city.

 

Does everyone bitching about the price realize that the secondary market value of this beer is like $1000? They are raising the price to curb the secondary market. I would rather see some of the absurd profits people make off this beer go to TG than resellers, but thats just me. The market is obviously dictating the cost here.

 

Raising the price would not curb the secondary market; raising the quantity produced would have greater impact on that.

 

Yes people realize what some pay for it, but just because the scum of the beer community does things one way doesn’t mean a brewery should as well. It ruins the hobby, screws over locals, and just comes off as greedy.

 

No way they scaled back latest batch of MD, they seem to have it coming out their ears.

 

Before it was hyped up they were selling it for $25 a bottle and making money....let that sink in.

 

Find something that sells to a particular segment of the marketplace and then . . . make it rain! Seems like a good plan to me.

 

From my experience on this site since 2004 it will most likely just be another barrel-aged stout, and more generally, just another "whale".

I could certainly be wrong though. I can be wrong about many things, see below.

Fair enough, multiple people told me that if you travel outside the main downtown area it can be a rough area. I don't live there though, so I'll defer to someone who does.

I can tell you that I did feel uncomfortable as a Patriots fan at the Wheelhouse during the Super Bowl. But that probably has more to do with how much people hate the Patriots.

For what it's worth I thoroughly enjoyed myself at Urban Chestnut (the one by Pappy's) and would gladly go there again.

 

I took the family out for dinner Sunday and it was $130. Would I have preferred to hit the Taco Bell drive thru and solo a KBBS with my $5 Crunchwrap Box? Oh, hell yes.

 

I'm not doubting this beer is good. But option is one 12oz ba stout or 8-10 different big beers, I'll take the field

FW boxes are on shelf for 9.99 near me and BCBS regular and barrleywine were easy to get last yr. Plus options from prairie, founders, dogfish, and other smaller brewries could all be had without a hunt

 

Boom. This is my biggest concern. I've had MD B2 (presumably the batch used in the last KBBS) and it was the best beer I've had to this date. No other maple stout has been that good. I've also tried B4 and B5 but not B3. B4 was good, but B5 was closer to B2 with the maple but still a bit bigger coffee than B2. If this KBBS is barrel-aged MD B3, it's not going to be #1 on here much longer. If it's B4 (which it probably is, based on the timing between B2 and the last KBBS), then it should be great, but still might be noticeably different than the last one. It's still KBBS though. Hopefully the next KBBS is from MD b5 (and not $150/bottle).

 

I actually don't think it's Morning Delight. I had their term oil which was delicious. I asked the bartender if this was essentially KBBS without maple and coffee. He said no and that it's Morning Delight without the coffee. So with that said I believe Morning Delight and KBBS are completely different recipes.

 

Wait... what? If Term Oil is Mornin' Delight without the coffee then it's basically just a non barrel-aged imperial stout with maple (basically Norseman's Wrath, their base stout, with maple I would think). But that has nothing to do with whether or not it's related to KBBS. From everything I've heard/known, KBBS is barrel-aged Mornin' Delight.

 

I didn't get hardly any maple when I had Term Oil. I always thought Term Oil was more similar to Assassin?

Having Term Oil is what made not at all concerned about tracking down Assassin since man, Term Oil did very little for me.

 

Was it the maple cakes? Just looked it up on Untappd. So I presume it's what I said above but actually barrel-aged. So really kinda like KBBS without the coffee I guess.