Why is The Bruery Fruet $36?

Because they can. Also because it's delicious.

 

Because the Bruery could charge $50 for a bottle of Bud Light Chelada and half of BA would insist that it's a great beer and reasonably priced.

 

$28.99 in NYC at the Bowery Whole Foods

 

Righttt...Their business plan was to price it high to keep out the hoarders from buying it all.

 

Yum, $30 for diabeties! Underattenuation on their big beers seems to be their motto. Gross. This stuff is just sitting on the shelves here.

 

I agree that their beers are incredibly sweet, but in a barrel-aged Barleywine/Old Ale I'm 100% OK with that. Black Tuesday, on the other hand, I found sickening.

 

the 100% versions of coton and cuir were $30 as well.

 

For whatever reason (error me thinks), multiple stores around here are pricing these exactly like the 25% anniversary beers (i.e. Cuir 25% was $18.29, so is 100% Fruet @ $18.29) . . . so what I wonder, is how much, if at all, these retailers are selling this beer unknowingly below their wholesale cost?

Generally, the answer to why something costs something, is usually a combination of supply, demand and logistics.

 

Fruet is absolutely delicious. Not a beer I'd buy multiples of due to cost but I traded for one and it was worth it.

 

I cannot wait to try Fruet tomorrow. It was priced at $36 here, but that is not what I paid for it. All I am going to say is that if you haven't made friends with the Manager/Beer Buyer at your local store: DO IT. Also, if your local store doesn't offer a discount at all on anything, ever, maybe find another store.

 

well once past about 15 a bomber over that price has to be either the best beer ever, or its pure hype and rare factor trying to sucker the tickers and idiots in. the exceptions are rare cantillons and some super great imports.

 

I MIGHT truly want it, but that price puts me out of the running for 1 bottle.

 

For $30, would you rather have a bottle of Fruet or 18 bottles of Zombie Dust? It would be great if everyone refused to buy this beer so they would hopefully learn their lesson. As long as people are buying it, they are going to continue to **** us with their prices.

 

I've been waffling on buying a bottle of Fruet. I'm hearing that it is phenominal so I think I will take the plunge.

And one aspect that I haven't seen discussed much in this thread is the solera method they are using with these anniversary releases. Wines, sherry, and liquor which use this method are often on the upper end of price slots. Glenfidich 15 is a fine scotch made using the solera method. It typically retails for 25% more than similarly aged and quality scotch.

There is a lot of time involved in the process, which must be paid for. Also, I would imagine that it is a very risky process with beer because they could lose years worth of work with an infection (I am uneducated on the amount of loss due to infection in liqour and wine barrels.)

 

But if one is actually choosing to purchase it, does not that make it consensual?

 

That's why I said that it would be awesome if everyone stopped buying their expensive ass beers

 

I think you missed the point of his post.

 

I found this pretty interesting. My first thought was that this process seems somewhat silly unless aging for several years. Does anyone know how many years Fruet was aged for? The article also mentioned this:

"Wine [or beer] produced from a solera cannot formally have a vintage date because it is a blend of vintages from many years. However, some bottlings are labeled with an age for marketing reasons. It is unclear whether such age indications denotes the average age, or the age of the oldest batch."

So do the Fruet bottles indicate an age? Various ages for multiple bottlings as described in the description of the process? Is there any more info given on the age from the Bruery?

Also, regarding others' comments outraged at the price, I for one think that it is a very cool option that we are given regarding how we choose to spend our money. Thank goodness we can buy either 18 Zombie Dust or 1 Fruet or any other combo of any other beer for that matter. Great times to be a beer geek!!!

 

My understanding is that they brewed this beer in 2008 as Papier, and then started to age some of it longer. Then in 2009 brewed more, blended it in with the Papier, bottled some of it and kept the rest aging. And so on, until now with Fruet. So there isn't really a good definition of "age", as you expect. (Unless you mean "how long was it in bourbon barrels?" I bet that's separate from the solera blending.)

I don't believe they claim any age for Fruet. Just that it's the 4th anniversary beer. I think by now the Solera has gone on long enough that it's no longer silly, although even with Coton it was probably very noticeably different than either aged or fresh Papier.

Agree. I find complaints about pricing to be inane.

 

Ohhhhh... So the solera began with Papier and has continued and each anniversary release is the most recent bottling from the SAME solera? Am I following you correctly? That would make sense, and, now that I think of it, sounds similar to something I heard a long time ago about the Bruery Ann'y beers each containing a portion of the previous Ann'y release. The light bulb has come on! But, yes, the bourbon aging also adds another question but separate from my original solera confusion, haha.