Skillet Donut Stout

Except, at $16 a bottle, a case would run you $192. It's awesome, but not quite awesome enough to warrant that price tag. I'll just drink my fill of draft pours on the 30th when they release it on tap.

 

thank you for this info

 

Don't understand why they don't just set a limit. They'll sell it all - it may just take longer. They don't have the hype, so I don't expect big lines, but if everyone did buy a case or two, you'd only get a small number of people drinking the beer.

 

The limit is 2 cases per person.

 

Is this only going to be sold at the taproom?

 

It's nice to see Burial bottling something and having a release, especially for SDS, but.....damn. That price is more than a lot of BA beer releases. Pump the brakes a little bit, and get the pricing back to a competitive point.

 

Yes!

 

If Founders can charge $16 for a bottle of Big Lushious, then why can't they?

 

Not that I think Big Lushious was worth $16 anyway, but maybe because Founders bottles came from Grand Rapid, and they have to factor in transportation and national distro cost, where this is a taproom only release of a very localized brand? Also, with macro operation their cost is already in the bottom-line, where as smaller operation like Burial and other NC local releases we have to chip in more to offset the brewery's cost on release day (staffing and such.) Which is why sometimes I just don't understand if a brewery already have distribution, why add to the overhead and do taproom only release?

 

This donut stout was tasty, but not $16/bottle tasty. The Big Lushious is diabetes in a bottle, so not paying $16/bottle for that either.

 

Because if you want the bottles to retail for $15, you're going to get significantly less than that after store markup and distributor cut. Whereas selling at the taproom gets you a true $15 in your coffers for every bottle sold, easily offsetting staffing. Not to mention the fact that most taproom visitors tend to buy more, whether it's a shirt or a couple pints.

 

How long you think this will last?

 

Asheville breweries tend to have very high opinions of themselves. They think that because locals love them, they must make fantastic beer and thus charge out the ass for it. Unfortunately the latter tends to be true since for some reason, people seem to gobble up these unreasonably priced beers. Pretty much every large format/collaborative beer out of Asheville has been $15+ per bottle, even for relatively inexpensive beers to make. Wicked Weed bottles cost more than Russian River and Cantillon bottles at this point. The only breweries in town that still produce reasonably priced bombers are the older breweries, like Highlands, Asheville Brewing, and French Broad that have been bottling since before all of the new breweries opened. Skillet Stout is good--probably the only beer from Burial that I would say is good--but it's not worth anywhere near $16 per bottle.

 

It's not just an Asheville thing. Any new brewery in the US is going to charge a lot for their beer because they need to make high profit margins right out of the gate if they expect to survive.

 

What's amazing is the Dark Arts at 15% abv was only $4.00 more with a year of ageing. Makes me think this was a deal.

 

Asheville loves to support Asheville. It's great to see local businesses succeed because of such fantastic local support.

 

I do think that the price for Skillet is a little high considering it's not even barrel-aged. But those "reasonably" priced bombers from the older Asheville breweries, with all due respect to them, are not on the same level as most of the beers coming out of Wicked Weed or even Burial.

Also, I've got news for ya...if people are "gobbling up" these beers, then they're not unreasonably priced at all. Beer, just like anything else, is worth what people are willing to pay for it.

 

Except all of the new breweries that aren't charging out the ass for their beers. And the fact that these bottles are costing around twice as much per ounce as the tap versions (e.g. 16oz bottle of Black Angel is $13 while 10oz pour is $5).

Oh, I agree that most of the older Asheville breweries are generally mediocre across the board. That doesn't make WW and Burial's prices any less absurd. And perhaps I'm not in the majority, but I don't agree with a motto of charging as much as you can possibly get away with for a service or good. People buy $7 sodas when they go to the movies, but that doesn't mean it's still not freaking absurd to pay $7 for a soda.