Monday, February 4, 2013

The Price You Pay

Does the cost of beer affect your perception or appreciation of it?

Dollah', dollah' Bill y'all.
I've read number of articles recently, that point to yes. Recently, both Alan McLeod of A Good Beer Blog, and Max Bahnson—better known as Pivní Filosof—have come right out and said that beer, most certainly should be judged not only on its quality and ingredients, but also on its price. It wouldn't be out of the question for some breweries inflate the price of their product to generate a certain buzz about it. An artificially induced, price tag je ne sais quoi. Yeah, it's ridiculous, and as consumers we're pretty dopey for buying into it but, honestly I don't think it's much of an issue for me.

Beer doesn't have to have a value-added element for me. I'm not buying a car, I don't need to know it's gas mileage versus it's break horsepower. I do enough shopping around at home and at work—I have to get lowest bids from printers and price estimates from plumbers all day, everyday. I don't want that from my beery experiences—ya' know why?

I want beer to be fun.

Beer, for me is like a carnival game—I'm probably not going to win, but I'm going to have fun trying—even if drop a little money, and I know that going in. I'm willing to pay the price for, as Alan is so fond of saying, sucker juice, because it might fun. If it sucks, oh well, it's just beer. I'm fine with the scam—because I know it's a scam. It's not about winning the goldfish or knocking down all the bottles. It's about saying, "Hey, that beer looks fun, let's give it a whirl"—maybe I'll end up with a fuzzy pink panda bear, maybe not.

I'm curious as to what everybody else thinks about beer and the all mighty dollar.

10 comments:

  1. Good call, I'm with you all the way on picking beer because I've heard good things or even better if I just like the look of it. I do weigh up the price as its still important to a degree, but hopefully not the deciding factor high or low

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  2. Sure, it's fun to realize later after you open the bottle at home that you got sucked into a beer that tastes pretty much the same as another at half the price. Because I get income from beer writing and the tax man allows for expenses against it, I am far too aware of how often giving the whirls are offered. Shelted was another word for this in the import realm: http://beerblog.genx40.com/archive/2012/may/tobesheltedis

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  3. Someone left a comment on the blog post you've linked with the quote "Price is what you pay, value is what you get", and there lies the whole issue.

    I don't mind expensive beer, I don't have to buy it, if I judge the price to be too high, but if I do buy it, they should at least try to give me some value for it. Problem is that quite often you will have spent some pretty moneys on a beer, and what you get is something that quality-wise isn't that nearly as good as, or not that much better than, another comparable product that is much cheaper. The Westvleteren XII case is a good example of that. Great beer, no doubt, but for the price of one bottle, I can buy myself three bottles of the comparably good St. Bernardus 12 or Rochefort 10, anytime I well bloody please. Now, if I were in Belgium, sitting at that famous café by the brewery/monastery, that would be another story.

    Alan has made a good point about packaging a few times. I've seen beers in fancy pants bottles, with fancy pants labels, sold in nice boxes, with the name of some celebrity chef or another on the label, that are pricier than a top class escort, but when you read the description (if there is any to begin with) all you see is a rather average beer.

    As I've said elsewhere, be wary of brewers more willing to explain their branding than their beers...

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  4. Maybe I'm naive, but in the long and short of it, what does it really matter? At the very worst you drank just an okay beer and you're a few bucks poorer.

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  5. Well, because to be a beer writer you are not a few bucks poorer but many bucks poorer over the course of a year. I have spent thousands on beer over a 12 month period. And if I am reporting on the integrity of a brewer and recommending someone (some thousands actually if Google Reader is to be believed) buy something, turning a blind eye to ripping off consumers for the quality of the product is a failure of my own integrity. Because, remember, if you are sitting in that particular Belgian bar Westvleteren is actually pretty cheap. Because all beer costs not all that much to make.

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  6. I fear you think my opinion carries more weight than it actually does. Being a "beer writer" is a far cry from a guy who has a blog and likes to write about beer.

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  7. My agenda is not to evangelize or recommend—it's too drink great beer, think my thoughts tell my story and along the way.

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  8. Then maybe you are missing that you are in the part of the collective story of all those like you who get the brewers rubbing their hands with glee, the poorly informed and perhaps the willfully so. But surely that isn't true. What other products cause you to waive your ability to understand value?

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  9. With glee? Those sonsabitches.

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  10. Who skims without glee? Ever seen a sour faced jet setting brewer?

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