Pricing vs Availability

Rollom, you're sounding far too sensible.

 

The Sculpin example is a good one for me here in AZ because the sixpack price is around $14 and now I can get as much as I can afford, always fresh, and I don't have the availability problems that I have with other options. I just have to pay about $3 more per sixpack but since I absolutely love this beer it is worth it to me. I would pay more for Ruination, Union Jack, Two-Hearted, and Odell (but not many other IPA's). I think there isn't enough price differentiation out there when there could be.

 

With beers that can stand to age, I'm in agreement that brewers should probably raise prices to curb some of the demand and reign in the secondary Ebay and gray-market sales.

With hop-forward beers raising prices is a bit trickier. Brewers generally don't want those beers sitting on shelves, aging, and potentially turning into something they don't intend it to be, especially in this day when everyone has social media at their fingertips. I think most brewers realize it's better to keep their hoppy beers relatively cheap, so that they sell quickly/reliably and then make up their revenue in the production side of the business. For example, I'll bet Bell's would rather keep the price cheap and be able to depend upon every single bottle of Hopslam selling within 1-2 months of release, which I'm sure is still very profitable for them; than raise prices and risk their product sitting shelves, possible poorer reviews on websites like this, or worse, out-of-date beer coming back to them.

 

that's a good over/under

 

id rather them go to a draft only, no growler model than raise prices. id actually rather have all beers that cant stay on shelves for more than a couple days go to draft only no growler.

 

This is essentially what the concert\Broadway industry has done.
Instead of selling all the tickets and watching scalpers sell them at inflated prices. The artist promoter and/or venue holdback choice tickets and sell them at scalper prices., Ticketmaster has a program in place where they can adjust prices according to demand in real time.
This type of system generates more revenue but it also runs the risk of alienating and angering your customer base. While many people would gladly pay triple for KBS, there are others that would stop buying all Founder's products because of them "taking advantage"

 

The Bruery already does this and as a consequence some of their stuff sits longer (not BT obviously).
Also, their pricing does make some folks jaded towards them.
I can see the prices creeping up a bit on some releases, I hope it doesn't get out of hand though. Even though we miss out on some releases due to rarity, it also feels good to score when you can grab some limited stuff at reasonable prices. Then trading comes in to play.
I DON'T want the wine pricing scale for beer, but I feel it is coming eventually. Plus high prices on rare beer makes one less likely to try new things, which is perhaps the #1 joy of craft beer.

 

yea grassroots store here in the Riverside area of Jacksonville, fl. Has like 6 bottles about 5 deep and it been there for at least 3 months now. Bruery stuff

 

12 oz not I. I did once pay $4 for 1 and shipping from Chicago. that hurt. never again. I did it once.

 

No.

 

not me I do the math 22 oz at HOW much is when I go wow, rip off land. 1.83 beers at 8 plus is a total rip. still if you want it, your screwed its what it costs now days. Still my Dupont 750ml has at $8 reduced my purchasing it as much as I used too.

price goes up I buy less and less.

 

yea I told this story about this women how bought the most expensive beer in a bomber in a total wine store for her BF bd and he was not anything but a BUD drinker.

I wish I had a picture on his BD when he opened that bottle of Deus. Who knows might have converted him,. but odds are not likely.

besides not many are on that read these threads....

 

If a $25 bottle scores a 4.5 rating here, it will sell out immediatley. If the same brewery releases another $25 bottle and only scores a 3.7 rating, it will sit and collect dust!

 

so you got to wonder how many fake accounts over rate beer....if you think its NOT done I got a bridge in the desert to sell yea. way to many 1 review and done accounts. I wish they PURGE them all.

 

I think you're assuming that beer should be widely distributed. Heady Topper is clearly in high demand, but it's not hard to get in its local area and it's not expensive either. They just don't care to send their beer outside of their local area and I think that's a good way to do things. I can see why that might be frustrating to people in certain geographical areas though...

 

does that not depend on the AMOUNT they make? if they make 1000 bottles and its sold locally, its the resellers that screw folks.

 

The thing about HEady is that it IS difficult to find (if you don'e live in the direct area.) The demand for that beer is so high that they can't keep up with it. Even if they wanted to distribute to NYC and Boston, they just do not have the excess supply to do so right now. Maybe once they open up the off-site retail space, they'd be able to stuff a couple more fermenters in there - but it still won't be able to keep up with demand. Tough life being voted one of the best beers in the USA now - EVERYONE wants it.

IN regards to the question as a whole, though, it's a tough decision for a brewery, and sometimes they can't predict what the demand will be on something. If you told the Kimmiches 3 years ago that their eer would be the most in-demand beer in America, they would have laughed, I bet. Things like KBS, BCBS, Dark Lord and so on have a build-in demand, they could certainly charge more for that without affecting the abilty to sell out. The question is, where is the level of equilibrium, from the economic standpoint, where they cost is raised enough to balance off demand? Would $50 for a 4-pack of BCBS be too much? It would be for me, but not for others here. $75? $100? Same with KBS, $5 per bottle? $10, $25?
You see the point?
Then you have Dark Lord which was one of the most in demand beers just a couple years ago, people were reselling bottles for hundreds of dollars. Should the brewery have charged that much, since that was obviously what people were willing to pay? I have no idea what the resale market is for it now, but I still bet that the $15 it sells for at the brewery is way lower than that market.