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With the exception of IP, I think all of the collaboration beers I’ve had have been overpriced. Most are ok, none are great. I’m done paying for a brewers vacation to Scotland, Belgium, or the US.
Seriously, the current collaboration fad must die.
Wake me up when small craft brewery collaborates with BMC to take advantage of the cheap grain, cheap hops, huge capacity, and insane QC to produce a great sub $12/12pack. That would be a collaboration.
These $15-20 collaboration beers are just paying for trips abroad and/or marketing gimmicks. How about collaborating to figure out how to brew cheaper beer with bulk grain/hop/yeast buys. How about sharing brewery reps at festivals, etc? Craft brewers should collaborate to figure out how to make things cheaper not just so you can charge more.
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Avery Collaboration Not Litigation that Avery did with Russian River was only $6.99 when I got the first batch. And the Valley Brew Collaborative Evil done in nine versions with the other breweries is quite nice and interesting. Steve is keeping the collaboration local to the US so it cuts prices!
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Originally posted by OldStyleCubFan
<rant>
With the exception of IP, I think all of the collaboration beers I’ve had have been overpriced. Most are ok, none are great. I’m done paying for a brewers vacation to Scotland, Belgium, or the US.
Seriously, the current collaboration fad must die.
Wake me up when small craft brewery collaborates with BMC to take advantage of the cheap grain, cheap hops, huge capacity, and insane QC to produce a great sub $12/12pack. That would be a collaboration.
These $15-20 collaboration beers are just paying for trips abroad and/or marketing gimmicks. How about collaborating to figure out how to brew cheaper beer with bulk grain/hop/yeast buys. How about sharing brewery reps at festivals, etc? Craft brewers should collaborate to figure out how to make things cheaper not just so you can charge more.
</rant>
If this is at all sparked by the Olde Rabbits Foot all I will say is you have no idea the money and time that went into making that beer come to see the light of day. If it cost to much just don’t buy it.
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Priced at what the market will bear. May be overpriced to you, but not the market as a whole.
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Frumpty….that’s kind of my point... when brewers collaborate, you end up paying for the PITA accounting issue, ABC issues, additional transportation costs, hotels/flights for brewers, etc. I don’t doubt it cost more money to collaborate with the current model but the result is what I see as a bad value, thus overpriced. You are paying for more than just the beer for these collaborations.
Some people might not mind paying the premiums for these beers & if brewers can keep selling them to pay for trips, etc…go for it.
I still contend the result of collaboration is overpriced beer. It would be nice to see brewers collaborate in a way to bring down the cost of craft beer.
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Originally posted by OldStyleCubFan
<rant>
With the exception of IP, I think all of the collaboration beers I’ve had have been overpriced. Most are ok, none are great. I’m done paying for a brewers vacation to Scotland, Belgium, or the US.
Seriously, the current collaboration fad must die.
Wake me up when small craft brewery collaborates with BMC to take advantage of the cheap grain, cheap hops, huge capacity, and insane QC to produce a great sub $12/12pack. That would be a collaboration.
These $15-20 collaboration beers are just paying for trips abroad and/or marketing gimmicks. How about collaborating to figure out how to brew cheaper beer with bulk grain/hop/yeast buys. How about sharing brewery reps at festivals, etc? Craft brewers should collaborate to figure out how to make things cheaper not just so you can charge more.
</rant>
We craft brewers will start listening to these sorts of uneducated complaints when craft beer starts to even come close to within reach of quality wine prices.
Producing really exceptionally interesting and delicious beer is really expensive and labor intensive. I was just at Cantillon, and let their be little doubt about the amount of labor that one batch of beer can entail. Holy shitballs!
Collaborations are definitely a new fad, but one in which not only do we as a group get to see what two artists can accomplish together, but also allows those artists to truly gain an understanding of each others craft.
There’s a market for brewers to spend time and money on the production of truly unique beers and until that market dries up, we’ll continue to do it. Most all of us are charging what most connoisseurs would consider fair prices. And if you are not a connoisseur, then what the hell are you doing on this site anyway?
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most special releases now = overpriced.
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Originally posted by erway
Originally posted by OldStyleCubFan
Using Cantillon is a bad example when most of their bottles are around 4-6 Euro at the brewery(unless prices have gone up dramatically in the past year).
I’m all for the free market though; price the stuff wherever you want. But I’m already starting to set limits on what I’ll buy. Very rarely have I had a beer worth $15 a bottle, much less 30+. All the Lost Abbey stuff collecting dust can serve as an example.
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If I was a brewer, I’d want to collaborate with other brewers. It seems like it could only lead to better brewers in the end.
If I don’t want to buy the beers because they’re unaffordable, then that’s fine. I’m not thrilled by the prices, but so often they’re no worse than other limited and/or barrel aged beers. Brewers learning from each other is not the problem though, so they should keep that up.
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I’m a huge sucker for collaboratives. Some are disappointing. Some are fantastic: avery/russian river collaboration, stone/nogne o/jolly pumpkin holiday ale. Almost all the mikkeller beer we hold dear to our hearts like weasel are all collaborations. The upcoming cigar city and the bruery should be outstanding. They are more expensive, but the overall purpose is not to create more expensive beer for the hell of it. The extra price is what we are willing to pay to see experts from around the world work together and share secrets in order to make the craft beer movement push forward on a macro level. It gives me great pleasure to see people working together rather than suing each other. Sam Adams and other macros would never do a collaboration even though they have hundreds of people on staff that claim to know everything about beer.
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Originally posted by tarheels86
I’m a huge sucker for collaboratives. Some are disappointing. Some are fantastic: avery/russian river collaboration, stone/nogne o/jolly pumpkin holiday ale. Almost all the mikkeller beer we hold dear to our hearts like weasel are all collaborations. The upcoming cigar city and the bruery should be outstanding. They are more expensive, but the overall purpose is not to create more expensive beer for the hell of it. The extra price is what we are willing to pay to see experts from around the world work together and share secrets in order to make the craft beer movement push forward on a macro level. It gives me great pleasure to see people working together rather than suing each other. Sam Adams and other macros would never do a collaboration even though they have hundreds of people on staff that claim to know everything about beer.
As a brewer who’s always in for some collaboration, I couldn’t agree more. I can and will not speak for others, but we always try to set a honoust price on all our beers.
Collaboration does bring some extra costs, and I’m not talking about travelling costs. But the overall point is, if a beer is overpriced in your opinion OldStyleCubFan, don’t buy it. IMO a lot of cheap beers are overpriced as well. Hell, some should be given for free, and even then I would need to think about wether to drink them or not.
Craftbrewers do collaborate to limit costs, but they can do that without making a collaboration-brew or telling the whole world. It can only be done local as well, there is no point in collaborating with say Brewdog to get cheaper grains. We could collaborate by eg exchaning barrels or something. This kind of collaboration does happen, but often no one beside the brewers involved knows about this.
I have learnt a lot by collaborating with other craft brewers, and I hope they learnt something from me too. And even if not, we can only hope a good brew and a longlasting friendship are the result of any collaboration.
Cheers,
Glenn c
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