Is cultism giving beer a bad name?
Interesting conclusion from author, Andy Crouch…
Cultism is giving beer a bad name and is driving a wedge between brewers, beer lovers, and a certain class of scarcity-seeking tickers. One bottle of 2007 Surly Darkness recently sold on eBay for $475. That must make the brewers simultaneously cringe and seethe with jealousy.
Is it cultism? Should breweries price limited products according to supply and demand like other industries commonly do? Thoughts?
Read the whole shebang >> BeerScribe.com.
No, it’s not. For starters, the average consumer is not even remotely aware of the fanatical treatment of certain beers. For “beer” to get a bad name because of this, it would require the average person, and not just the fanatic, to become affected by all this.
Second, scarcity has this effect on the marketplace in virtually any industry- there’s not some magical event happening just in the beer world.
Third, the breweries can complain all they want about the eBay market, but ask the likes of Surly, Three Floyds, Bells, or Founders if there limited releases help their overall brand profile. If they tell you no, they are lying. I am not saying that those breweries don’t make awesome beers across the board, but in a crowded market place, the fanaticism around these beers certainly helps the rest of their beers. I think this is why they haven’t raised the prices at the breweries themselves. I don’t think Sam Adams Utopia has near the following of some of the others, and this could be the primary reason.
It’s dangerously close to giving craft beer a bad name.
First and foremost, the reselling of alcoholic beverages by a non-licensed entity is illegal and a violation of every state’s liquor laws, as well as the TTB.
Second, when said product is sold online and shipped across state lines, it violates interstate commerce laws and becomes an issue for the FTC, along with violating additional TTB/ATF laws.
The high price demanded by resellers DOES NOT help the image of the brewery and does nothing for their additional brands.
All it does is create an abstract supply and demand issue, similar to over-inflated real estate pricing we saw a few years ago.
As an industry insider, I can say with certainty that at least 99% of breweries do not approve of or even kinda like this situation that has arisen. Their products are not being offered to the consumer at a fair price, therefore it becomes, quite often, negative pr for the producer.
The goal of the industry is to create a product in high demand, balanced with the fair pricing that allows craft beer to be an inclusive concept, rather than the extreme geekery and exclusivity that is running rampant in some circles.
We cannot grow market share and take boxes away from the macros if we continue down this road.
@Steve – I completely agree with you.
@Beer Jon – I am just curious how you can say “with certainty that at least 99% of breweries do not approve of or even kinda like this situation that has arisen.”
Whenever these articles come up, claims like this are always tossed around. I just don’t know how a single individual can factually make a claim like this and speak for everyone.
I can say, I don’t have access to the thousands of breweries just in the US, or even all of them in my state. But I do know of several that have said they are flattered when they see a product they have created generate such a large amount of enthusiasm to where an individual would be willing to pay extravagant prices in the secondary market.
As far as shipping alcohol, it’s not an instance that just takes place in the resale in the secondary market. All beer geeks who are into beer trading ship beer on a regular basis.
If these beers are bad for the brewers, why are they continuing to create these situations??? Why not either sell the beer for its apparent market value, or only distribute to where/if the demand can be achieved. Founders is next door to Ohio, and we probably got 1% of the demand for CBS in the area.
I am not advocating the resale of beer illegally, but many of the laws you are speaking of are archaic and need changed, as well. I for one, am strongly opposed to resale on eBay, but the breweries are the one’s cranking out these specialty beers in extremely limited supply. If the FTC or TTB are concerned, they should go after those selling on eBay. You can’t blame consumers for taking advantage of the loophole; fix the loophole.
I also strongly disagree that Dark Lord and its persona does not help Three Floyd’s from an overall customer perspective. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t continue to have Dark Lord Day! That’s a huge marketing event plain and simple.
Also, I disagree that the key to taking away market share is going down this road. The 0.1% of people participating in these tactics have not bought a macro brew in the last 10 years. They are the ones converting every friend they know to not drink macro beer. Creating market share is about converting people who consume macro beer.
You can debate until your blue in the face about the geekery/snobbery associated with beer, but it is not going away. I agree with you, it’s unnecessary and sucks. However, it is not going to change and likely won’t hurt market share. It has existed in Belgium for hundreds of years.
Did Beanie Babies get a bad name when cultism formed around them a few years back? No. Instead we now just laugh at the fools who spent hundreds of dollars on them and they’re now worthless. The point is not necessarily that this will happen to the beer industry (its totally different nature makes me think it’s not), but rather that there are always a few irrational actors in the market that drive prices artifically high, but they will eventually revert to equilibrium. I think people in general understand that this is the exception rather than the norm.
As for brewers complaining about this sort of behavior, I’ve heard enough of their BS. Either stop producing limited beers, don’t bottle them, or produce more. Or just stop complaining.
The gateways for converting macro drinkers, unfortunately, are getting craft beers in Applebee’s, Friday’s,Walmart, and regular sports bars. They are also for the Sam Adams, Dogfish, Sierra NV, New Belgium, etc to continue growing. And they are for local communities to embrace brewpubs in their communities. I see 0 connection between Surly Darkness and the macro drinker. The Surly Darkness fanatic is going to geeky beer bars and likely never even comes in contact with the macro consumer. They don’t buy beer at the same store, nor do they drink beer at the same places when at a bar.
Price is all subjective, a 2007 bottle of surly darkness isn’t worth 475$ to me. I know there was very little produced, but in reality, is that beer ever going to live up to the price tag, for me, absolutely not. If people want to spend an outrageous amount to get a particular beer, i say let them. It’s the same with anything else, but because us craft beer drinkers put the beers in such high regard we see selling “rare” beers for high price tags as sort of a negative situation. Look, if someone tells me they’re going to buy my bottle of cigar city hunahpu’s for 300$ you bet your ass i’ll be selling it in a heartbeat. As far as being cultism, i really don’t think there are enough “extreme tickers/geeks/etc” to really give craft beer a negative connotation. I would say for every 100 craft beer drinkers maybe 3 or 4 are “extreme”
I’m still not sure why breweries don’t elevate the price on these “rare” beers.
I bought one bottle of Bourbon County Rare, leisurely, for $50 including tax.
I didn’t have to wait in a line, or trade or be gouged on Ebay.
I was also totally fine with the price I paid.
Most breweries say that their flagship beers generate enough revenue to fund their bigger / more dramatic beers and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why they don’t price these one-off beers higher than the normal $15~20 per bottle.
I think if brewers aimed for a more realistic price point, like $40 per bottle we’d here a lot less complaining and see much less hoarding / ebay-ing.
If someone wanted to buy 4 bottles of Darkness from 4 different stores for a total cost of $160 before tax… more power to them!
Supply and demand. It’s the law.
Serioiusly, substitute “wine” for “beer”.
@ct, @beerjon
yeah he probably didn’t poll the entire industry, however, given that re-selling alcohol without a license is illegal it’s a safe bet that any official spokesperson asked about it would say they don’t support it.
Pretty much Dave Stokely said.
Only thing I would add is, stop telling customers about the release date. Don’t start another “x Day” gimmick. Just make the beer and release, surprise. If the goons can’t plan their hoarding, then it will drive the secondary market at least a little haywire.
As far as Ebay, that a human being spent $475 on a bottle of 2007 Surly Darkness is simply embarrassing. I am sure that Surly’s beers are excellent. But it is simply not remotely possible that it is that good.