Ab Ovo, Ab-stentia
This might be a different story if I lived nearby, but Sheboygan is two hours away. This morning at 8am the Ab Ovo, from 3 Sheeps, went on sale. Bottles are $35 each, maximum of 2, and must be picked up today.
$35 for a bottle of beer. I get it. It's a small batch, costs were probably high for the brew. I know. I'm just going to say this right on my threshold of the part of my price range I'll categorize as "beyond reach." I've seen this trend starting to take shape over the last 15 years or so. Microbreweries naturally have a higher price-point than the macros, but we're moving more and more towards higher and higher end beer. Once upon a time, a beer snob could rather affordably purchase any of the beer choices at the liquor store. $10 six-packs become $12 six-packs, which become $15 16 oz four-packs, which become $15 regular four-packs, which become $20 four-packs. Bombers have an alternate price-point, schewed higher by the increased specialness of a big bottle. But these things have surreptitiously crept up in price as well. $7-8 to $10-12, then to $15-16, then to $20. I hate to say it, but I think $35 will be a fairly normal sight going forward.
Adding to the trends seen at the liquor store are the beers not available at the liquor store. I don't really understand the Wisconsin alcohol distribution laws, but there's an amount of overhead involved in getting a beer to a store, and maybe that's somewhat avoided by having taproom-only beers. Nevertheless the very notion still adds an air of exclusivity to drive up demand in certain circles. On some of the e-mail lists I subscribe to, I've also received invites to annual brewery memberships: "barrel societies", mug clubs, beer-of-the-month clubs, etc. I don't really know what to do with those. I want to join them all, but that's not feasible, so instead I won't join any of them.
Where then, is this trend headed? Here's an e-mail from 3 Sheeps from the year 2035:
We took barley and hops, grown as hyperponic crops aboard a SpaceX BigBird space station at mid-earth orbit, along with some of the last remaining prehistoric glacial ice from Greenland which we then melted down. We brewed this batch on our single-barrel pilot system following our usual recipe for a quadrupel, adding yeast from recently-discovered 135 year-old bottles of Westvleteren 12, believed to be from the private cellar of belgian King Albert I. To accelerate the fermentation by these sleepy old yeast, we added dates and figs picked from bonsai versions of those respective plants. Barrel-aging took place over the course of 9 years: three years each in antique Pappy Van Winkle barrels. The significant evaporation has left only enough beer for 4 bottles, each at about 35% ABV. Pre-orders go online at 3:35am on Wednesday for $135,000 per bottle, maximum 2 per customer.
Wine drinkers are laughing right now. They point to the sky's-the-limit market as the rule, not the exception. Duly noted, it just sorta sucks. I know I'm entering an era where I'm simply going to get priced out of the fun. Beer snobs of the future will resemble the the aristocratic caricature of actual snobs, the same way wine snobs do. And I can't help but think this trend is deliberate. The brewery producing the beer version of a Koenigsegg Jesko will garner significant attention from the Untappd crowd and get hundreds of 5-cap reviews despite only brewing a few dozen bottles.
Would I buy the $35 bottle if I lived in Sheboygan? Yeah, probably. I bet it's pretty good.
