Night Shift Whirlpool & Morph cans

Had Whirlpool at the brewery and though it was hoppy goodness with a great nose.

 

I paid $12/4pk at the brewery last night and saw Redstones post this morning they got some cans in. Had Morph (Constable) on tap and it was fantastic, same goes for Whirlpool. Tons of peach and citrus on the nose (as the can suggests) and they're so crushable.... So to answer your question, YES I would definitely track some down!!

 

Looks like Wormtown bought up all the 16oz cans...

 

As @mikeywtc mentioned Morph is a re-brew of our Art - Constable. Suggested retail price is $12/4pack. Pretty much all of our liquor store accounts are getting at least a case of each beer. Enjoy.

 

$3 per can at CBC Newton - limit 2 cans of each per person.

 

I picked some up at CBC Braintree. One 4 pack pp. I wish these were in tall boy format.

 

$12/4-pack of 12 oz. cans is steep for these beers.

 

steep, but not crazy. Just a bit more than Be Hoppy right? That's premium pricing for a local, small batch, well made product. I can get behind that.

I registered my displeasure at Trillium putting out $13, 25 ounce IPA's, but these are cheap enough that I'm happy to support a local business. This is about half of what those Trillium bottles run. Granted Trillium also has cheaper bottles. but I far prefer to have 12 ounce formats than bombers.

 

Julio's has a 1 4-pack pp on both of these. Get me while they are hot, gotta ask for em .... Last bunch of people purchased when I was there earlier

 

"Get em" not "me" ..... I ... am .... not hot ......

 

Had to bring up Trillium pricing in this thread? Wish I could get my hands on some Whirlpool cans. Delicious beer.

 

To me Be Hoppy is a world class IPA. These beers are tasty novelties, but not on the same level.

 

Drinking a Whirlpool right now and loving it! $11.50 per 4-pack at CBC Belmont, one per. I wish they were 16-ounce cans. Don't think I'lll be buying more at that price. That said, I payed $16 for a growler of Congress Street IPA at Trillium yesterday and will happily do it again

 

Going to have to seek some of this out.

 

I hate that I have to keep ranting about how some breweries price their beer, but Nightshift just went from 16oz cans down to 12 ounce cans a 25% drop in volume and kept the price the same. This equates to $18 per sixer of a session beer in whirlpools case. I had this beer on tap at the brewery before and didn't feel like I was getting hosed paying like $5 for a 12oz pour since its basically bar pricing, but now I'm suppose to pay $3 for that to drink it at home straight from the brewery. There are too many great IPAs available for far less to justify that price.

When heady hit the market it was that price for a case of 16 ounce cans of beer with 2x the abv. I know enjoying beer is not about getting crunk, but the fact that they likely had to use nearly twice as much malt would justify a higher price. I don't know but I don't think I will be supporting them much longer if their pricing scale doesn't change

 

They should put them in bombers and sell them for the same price/oz; no one would balk at a $5.50 bomber ... Because, for reasons that are completely beyond me, most folks seem to accept higher prices in larger formats, even for beers that shouldn't be in large formats (which is pretty much any IPA/DIPA except maybe a one-off...)

I don't think Heady is a fair comparison because 1) Vermont costs are likely lower than MA costs (at least for real estate and other similar costs); and 2) Heady is the best value in beer, bar none. But you are absolutely right that if they are asking the same price as before but in a smaller format, that doesn't make much sense. Either stick with the 16 ounce format or if that's not possible, go to six packs and provide a better value.

 

The NE forum never fails to have a handful of threads complaining about pricing. Since its about my beer I figured I would add my 2 cents. We are not getting rich off cans. We decided to can beers because we think its a fun format and better option for certain beers(hoppy beers, session beers, etc) not to become billionaires.

• These cans are our cheapest offering by far! $12 for 48oz of beer. Our cheapest bottles run $10 for 25oz and when we bottled our DIPA we sold those for $12 for 25oz. How is this such a terrible price?
• Comparing pricing from one brewery to another might make sense to your wallet but every brewery has very different costs. Yes, heady is the same price but we don't have the same costs as the Alchemists or even Wormtown. Rent, utilities, materials, labor, cost of living, etc are all dramatically different. Not to mention that the Alchemists is roughly 8 times bigger than we are. Along those lines our beer is currently brewed 50 gallons at a time. It takes close to 30 hours of brewing for us to produce 20bbls of beer (which was the batch size on each of the cans). Breweries like the Alchemist produce that in a matter of hours.
• The cost to can these beers is extremely high. We don't have pre-printed cans which adds a significant cost, we have to pay for a mobile canning service, and pay a premium for the other related materials involved due to the small quantity being canned.
• The ABV has a fairly small impact on the cost of the beer. Just cause a beer uses less grains doesn't necessarily make it cheaper to make. It still takes the same amount of labor to brew, the same utilities, tank space and the same amount to package. That's roughly why session beer costs nearly the same as DIPA.
• The reason we switched to 12 oz cans is multifold. First, it allowed us to produce more cans so more people could enjoy the beer. Second, we personally prefer that size. And lastly, after we did a deeper cost analysis on our first canned beer we realized we hardly made any money. So we need to re-evaluate our pricing to make it feasible for us to continue.
• We are getting closer to firing up our new 20bbl brew house that will help lower the costs to produce our beers. As we continue to can more beers we will also be buying supplies in greater bulk and further reducing the cost. But for now $12 a four pack is the best we can do.
• Lastly, I fully understand how hard it is to earn a dollar (shit, I would make more money working at McDonald's than owning a brewery). I want nothing more than to price our beer fairly. Overall I think we do a pretty good job of it. For example, our sours and barrel aged beers are cheaper than many bigger breweries.

Hope that give you all some insight into pricing. It's not random, we are not trying to rip you off, we are just trying to make a living and sell beer we love to drink. As they say on these threads all the time, if you don't like the price don't buy it.

Cheers,
Rob

 

Thanks for weighing in, Rob. Always great to hear the perspective of the business owner.