NW Brewery Bottle Archives/Libraries/Vaults

I think the best person(s) to respond to this would be a brewer (part of the reason I haven't bothered to throw in my two cents on this). However, as no one else has responded in the past couple of days, I'll throw in a couple thoughts.

One of the things I enjoyed during the bottle share over at Fremont earlier this year, was when Matt took us all on a tour of the brewery. Frankly, I was struck by the amount of inventory on hand, in particular the pallets of KDS, Bbomb, etc. I figured we'd see a fair amount of current release stuff, but as the KDS and Bbomb releases took place some time ago, I was surprised by the amount of bottles still on hand. Unfortunately, I didn't think to ask Matt why there was still so much of this beer in the warehouse, or what the implications were of keeping so much expensive beer on hand.

In addition to BA beers still sitting on pallets in the warehouse, Matt also showed EdwardAbbey and me a separate library room. I think there were several vintages of most of the BA beers Fremont had made over the years, and I want to say that Matt told us he made the decision to create a library several years ago. Don't quote me on that (we were shown around after a pretty extensive bottle share), but I think that's what he told us. I got the impression that this wasn't something he decided on right away, but only after it became more financially feasible (as the brewery started to do better and make more money). I'm assuming that there's a considerable extra cost in keeping around so much extra inventory, and the same thought crossed my mind that I gather crossed yours as well. What a luxury not to need to be so tied to cash flow that you can afford to sit on this much beer.

So last but not least, I'll make a quick wine analogy. Some years ago (like about 30), I went on a VIP tour at Jordan winery in Sonoma/Alexander Valley (I was working at a wine store at the time, hence the "VIP" treatment). At the time, Jordan wines were considered some of the more expensive wines made, and they were one of the few wineries that were doing any sort of library release program (and pricing). The owner of Jordan had very deep pockets, which is part of what made their business practices feasible. Anyway, every year they released a new Cabernet, the previous vintage would become a library wine, with a built in price increase. The previous vintage prices would be increased as well (across the board). I was told that part of the reason for the yearly price increase had to with the way their inventory was taxed. Winery inventory is apparently taxed once a year (every year), and then of course it also meant that the winery's money was tied up that much longer as well. It was Jordan's position that the yearly price increase was simply made to offset the additional tax on their wine, and also the cost of keeping their money tied up for that much longer. Maybe the laws are different for beer, but I would assume that breweries face similar concerns when it comes to keeping around an extensive library.

Conversely, I would add that I've been to a number of wineries over the years that would bemoan the fact that they often times had to release different varietals before they really wanted to, just because they needed the cash flow. I currently belong to the Robert Biale wine club, and while they're considered a pretty successful and well to do winery, they don't seem to have much of a library. I get the impression that the cost of maintaining a library is pretty prohibitive, both from a tax and cash flow stand point. Based on my experience at Jordan, I get the impression that you need to have pretty deep pockets, and a lot confidence in the desirability of your product, to intentionally hold back a certain amount of beer/wine for anything other than QA purposes. I would assume the same likely applies for breweries as well.

 

Thanks for chiming in with more accurate information, and my apologies for not doing a better job of quoting you. My memory tends to get a big foggy an hour or so in to most bottle shares.