The silent majority finally speaks

We should be willing to pay more for certain beers under special circumstances but you know the expressions about 'Fools and their money'.
The last thing we want for beer is for it to morph into the fine wine auction market. Ebay is bad enough.

 

They probably asked questions phrased in such a way to make people think they were asking if they cared about the price difference between craft and macro. I can't believe 75% of craft drinkers don't care about price. If that was the case, stores wouldn't constantly have Ten Fidy and Allagash Curieux on the shelves for months and months. Heck, I unwittingly purchased a 1 year old bottle of Cockeyed Cooper from Whole Foods, and they generally have an excellent turnaround time on their beers due to limited space.

 

I don't think "one in four beer drinkers" is a result worth celebrating. We need to get it up to more like three in four. Then the second great shakeout will already be well underway.

 

Price is one thing. Value is another. I am willing to pay a higher price for something that I want to try or to treat myself for a special occasion. On the other hand when a brewery goes from 6 packs to 4 packs and only drops the price by $1, that in my mind is not value [hint hint Green Flash West Coast IPA]. Buying a bomber when the same beer is available in 12 oz. is not value.
Comparing local beer stores for the best price on the same beer is value [presuming the freshness dates are the same]. From what I have read during my time on these threads this, I believe, is the majority opinion.

 

Were attributes such as uniqueness, innovation, etc. actually options on the survey? Are the actual survey questions available?

 

From this side of the pond it's abundantly clear that price really doesn't make much difference. In a pub, good fresh cask ale is significantly cheaper (by around $1 a pint in many cases) than macro lagers yet most drinkers plump for the latter.I can buy the same beer in a supermarket for half the price it fetches on cask-I don't hesitate to pay the extra because the cask version is so much better.
In a beer festival I help in we charge a flat price per pint regardless of what it is.Normally beer is priced by strength (the alcohol is taxed pro rata) and people said that all the customers would all go for the strong beers.We noticed no effect on drinking patterns or choices over all the years we have run the festival.

 

I'm price sensible to a degree. I saw a bottle of Simtra the other day and had to grab it (at $9.50 a bottle). I enjoyed the hell out of it, but I wouldn't pay that price again.

My not wanting to overpay really comes into play when I consider buying a beer a second time.

 

While I agree that the whale hunts get a bit out of hand and absurd, when did uniqueness, innovation, and experimentation become bad terms to you? I get the desire for something "drinkable", but I don't understand your chastising of what most would call options.

 

A little rough around the edges, maybe, but . . . this.

I was actually thinking about related topics earlier today. If we look at figures like volume of craft beer sold and money spent on certain brands by volume, then I think we'd get a different picture.

Say you drink ten pints of beer over the course of a week. I'm willing to bet that the average craft beer drinker is not making 9/10 of those pints up with $15 bottles of Parabola or $10 pours of PtY. My guess is that for the AVERAGE craft beer drinker (i.e., not the kind of very vocal, high-volume spender that is disproportionately visible on a site like BA), maybe 7-8/10 of those pints are made up of DFH 60, SNPA, Eddy Fitz, Finestkind, Two Hearted, anything Lagunitas, etc.

So, go ahead and tell me price doesn't matter for more than 1/4 of craft beer drinkers. I will call bullshit.

 

I've got maybe 50 bottles in my cellar that I didn't care how much they cost when I got them. Some of them I was just glad to be able to find.
The day to day stuff in my fridge I place a value on, cost as related to quality. It's full of Smuttynose, Stone, good locals, things like that.
I paid $85.00 for a six pack of Westy. It takes a bunch of $12.00 twelve packs to make up for that!

 

I'm a BA, so I plan to spend more on quality product. I have no issue with that. I know that many of the whales are great, but I don't want to spend the time hunting them. Just a personal thing because I'm willing to settle for the alternatives I have at my disposal. I have to be sensible with my spending, so I drink less so I can drink better.

But I still find myself spending about 75% percent of my craft budget on brews that would be considered more in line with value. Standard offerings from Lagunitas, SN, SA, Bell's, Founders, NB, german imports, etc. I don't mind spring a bit more for that other 25% to try a large format that is new to me or return to something I know is top notch. I like the treat, but if I didn't limit I could see the cost getting out of hand really quick. At least what is a sensible amount for me.

So as stated before and knowing that there are many other BAs with the same approach, 1 out of 4 sounds a little like BS to me. I'd love to know where that sampling came from? Regardless of the potential slant, still interesting enough.

 

See? This is what I'm talking about. If money weren't a factor, we'd all be homeless, brain-dead beer aficionados paying thousands of dollars a month to have slow-drips of imperial sour ales aged on wood that went extinct 50 years ago.

 

Price should never matter because money is a means to a end, and also I believe that people that make mony matter SO much have issues that lie deep, but that is another subject for another time...

 

Issues that lie deep? Look man, I'm not debating you on a philosophical level here, but in a market economy money matters. Like, by nature of the system.

 

I just paid $10.99 for a pint bottle of Stingo, fantastic deal! It's all relative people.

 

I mean, y'know. Moderate hyperbole here.

*they really should call it "superbole," because that captures the fun of hyperbolization so much better.

 

I would love to see the actual survey. I am suprised that the % was so low.

I would have fashioned the question:
"When purchasing craft beer which of the following statements do you agree with :
(Check all that apply)
I want an honest beer at a fair price."
I would put that as the 2nd. Or third choice and I bet I get at least 75% favorable response.

 

BT is like water to me. Light, refreshing, thirst quenching.

 

A website called Save on Brew did a survey and your surprised the result was that drinkers wanted to save money?