Pizza Boy releases

$30 a bottle seems high when compared to a lot of other releases in the general area. Tired Hands is $15-16/500ml, Forest and Main about the same, Troegs $20-23/750ml, and Bullfrog released the Grrrz bottles for $25/each and those certainly had the quality to be $30 each but weren't priced that way.

I'm sure these beers are good, but releasing 5 'variants' of a 6% sour with different grapes and charging $30/750ml for each is a little rough. $30 for a BA saison? Side Project, SARA, HF, etc charge less that that, and no offense to Pizza Boy, but those places have a lot more cache and are still charging less.

Plus, with a quantity of bottles going into distro, stores will have additional markups, and there are going to be a lot of $35-40 Abascio Cell bottles out there.

I guess the market will decide if these prices are fair, but seems a little out of line to me.

 

Although a lot more than last time going into distro, they will likely sell just fine even though they are ridiculously priced. Several shops had the AC for 35-40 last time around.

 

I agree with you in the short term but I disagree long term. There will be an initial demand to try these bottles that will see the first wave of bottles last only a short time on the shelf, but unless these beers are world class, future releases will sit on shelves.

For example, take Eclipse. Eclipse used to fly off the shelves around here because people were really short on options for good BA stouts. There are now lots of options and the $30 price tag makes Eclipse bottles sit on shelves for months now. If it was a world class stout it would sell @ $30, but the general opinion is that it's "good not great" and I fear that same thing being true with some of these PB releases. Permasmile is totally worth $30 a bottle. Abascio Cell? Not so sure.

 

Totally agree, in fact I thought this round of distro would be cheaper prices for this exact reason. Instead the price for base beers went up from 25 to 30.

 

They aren't a Huge brewery and I'm sure the barrels, brewing the beer, cost of bottles, labor/labeling ect, and dumping some batches that may not have turned out cost a significant amount of money. Terry is one of the best brewers period and does sours very very well. With all that being said 30$ is steep. Especially when there is no lower priced option, they are all 30$. I would gladly pay it for a few of them but wouldn't grab them all or anything. Maybe they are priced that way as a barrier to keep people from buying them all up and hoarding them, who knows.

 

I rather not pay $30 a bottle but the reality of today's craft beer scene is most of these bottles will be gone within weeks if not days of hitting the brewery or retailer(regardless of quality, but I'm sure each will be worth at least one try at $30, I've tried a few already). More power to Al and Terry.

 

Is the "reality of the craft beer scene" such that there's nothing of comparable quality for a cheaper price available in the seller's market?

 

Definitely worth a try, you've tried the most current batch already (likely at the brewery I'm guessing)? How were they?

 

I agree with most of your post re: pricing, but I think this comment is a bit cavalier.

If anything Pizza Boy (or the man behind the brewing at Pizza Boy) has been at it longer than Side Project, SARA, and HF and has knocked out more tremendous beers in his day (including all of the Bullfrog gems from back in the day) than Side Project and SARA. Isn't that worth something in the "hype" game.

 

Hey guys, this is sort of on topic since it involves Pizza Boy. A group of friends and myself are headed up to PB right after Christmas, and I was wondering if there are any other spots nearby to visit as well. We are coming from Philly and planned on hitting Troegs, but we plan on skipping that (we have been there before) if there are other options around.

 

Reality of the craft beer scene is there is a tremendously greater demand today than in year's past for pretty much every style.

 

x10 if you can cellar them..

 

Tried the Golden Sour and Plum (very good), the AC Pinot Grigio was pretty winey. Anxious to try the BA Grasslands as I really like regular Grasslands also the 2 Funkers. Could have tried more at the brewery but at $30 I prefer to be at home with some stinky cheese, killer dried meats and the smoke of my choice.

 

Yeah, going to call bella vista soon to see how distribution will be going for this round, would like to try any of them haha.

 

IIRC Al mentioned dropping about $16K on these empty wine barrels

 

The Mixed Grape and Blush were a couple that stood out as favorites to the group of us that went up and shared six of the bottles.

 

The Mixed grape is awesome.

 

Terry? Yes, absolutely. Not meant as a slight on his beer at all. I don't have all the info - are these exclusively his beers?

 

Yeah, Terry is the brewmaster at Pizza Boy. All of the old stuff from Bullfrog was also him (e.g., Black Cherry Bomb, Blue Cheer, Beekeeper, Frambozen, Jaspers, etc).

 

Yeah, I knew about the old Bullfrog stuff, but some of the PB stuff is Al's beer and not Terry's, right?

I've really enjoyed just about everything I've had from Pizza Boy and have everything good to say about Terry/Al/the beer. I just think the pricing is out of line compared to other 'big guys' who seem to be at the top of their game.