The Pricing Wars.

If you have any curiosity in the world of beer pricing, there's a pretty heated discussion going on over at the good beer blog. It seems some are of the notion that the pricing of some beers are set arbitrarily high. Should beer be commoditized? Or is it a value added product worthy of our hard earned consumer dollars?

Give me an experience, not a style.

Last week I had the pleasure of drinking beer for an exam. Yes, a beer exam. A little barleywine. Some robust porter. A bit of saison. And a German pilsner. I know what you're thinking, I want to take a test like that. Wrong. The test was the BJCP exam, a three hour, 10 essay question marathon. BJCP stands for Beer Judge Certification Program. The BJCP is the one governing body for judges who taste and evaluate beer. You'd think with 5 years of homebrewing experience and 1 and 1/2 years of commercial brewing experience that this test would be relatively easy, right? Wrong, again.

What, you ask, makes this test so difficult? The primary reason is this test focuses on specific style parameters. You know, things like the differences between oatmeal stouts and sweet stouts or Bohemian pilsners and German pilsners. Very specific boundaries, things I usually don't pay any attention to.

Sure, this is great for identifying and differentiating beers. However, from a creative standpoint, it is a roadblock. Whether I'm tasting beer or making beer, I tend to reject anything that confines my vision or enjoyment and try to focus on the experience itself. Yes, I'm a non-conformist. I look at beer as an exploration, a path where I get to have a vision and then navigate those flavors or aromas into my beer, not a path where a style navigates or dictates my beer.

I took the exam because I know it is important. It is pushing me and many others to learn more about our craft. And I know that being an educated consumer of beer is vital to being a great brewer. But in the end, having creative vision and then executing that vision is what pumps the lifeblood into this renaissance of beer.

Stone Brewing Going Solar.

Stone Brewing is hoping to be harnessing solar energy by early 2008 (read here). They say up to 54% of there electrical energy will come from the sun. Great news. Next question, when does sustainable agriculture start becoming a priority for these breweries? I know it's more expensive, but if sustainability is such a goal, slowly introducing organic beers doesn't seem like such a bad idea. I brew with all organic ingredients at home with great results, I'm sure they could do the same.

The Future of Craft Beer.

Great op-ed by Garret Oliver in yesterdays New York Times. He seems to be a leader in beers current renaisance. In the article he talks about the merger of Miller and Coors and craft beers current state in regards to this move. It's worth a look.

Commodity vs. Value Added

As a consumer I'm always looking for the best deal possible, as most consumers do. However, I am willing to pay more for a superior product. When it comes to wine, many wine publications often rate wines higher if they are a better value. For instance, if two wines were similar and one was $10 and the other $100 dollars, the cheaper one would get a higher ranking. Nonetheless, quality is always given the foremost attention.

When I first started to think about this value oriented system, I was wanting to write about a beer I think is one of the greatest values out there, Mission Street Pale Ale, which you can buy from Trader Joes for $4.99 a sixpack. A bargain. Is this really a good thing, though? When I started to ponder this, especially in comparison to wine, I realized almost all beer is cheap. Why is this? Why can a consumer expect to pay less money for beer than wine?

Well, I think it comes down to beer being a market commodity. Wikipedia defines a commodity as "something for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a given market." Simply meaning that after prohibition, industrial beer producers standardized beer as light, minimal character, cheap, fizzy, and nondescript. Beer was pretty much the same across the board, it didn't matter if it was Bud, Hamms, Coors, Pabst, or whatever other American light lager you could find. No value was added to the product and consumers could expect to pay a curtain, cheap price.

Wikipedia also states that "commoditization occurs as the market evolves...many products which formerly carried premium margins for market participants have become commodities." I believe this evolution can be circular. In the case of beer, small producer are looking at fermentation as art and thus adding value back to a product that 30 years ago in America was all but barren of creativity. Stephen Beaumont posted some interesting thoughts on this yesterday on his blog. I echo his enthusiastic statements that beer can be just as wonderful and complex as premium wine. In the last 25 years, and especially the last 5 years, the market has become revitalized by brewers looking to make new, unique, and interesting beers.

Bringing this back around to wine, an American industry which understands promoting it's brands as value-added products, a portion of this industry has begun to digress with retailers like Trader Joes going to town with it's $2.99 two-buck chuck Charles Shaw wines. A premium product being pushed into commodity status. In a sense, I am answering Stan Hieronymus' pondering on the beer versus wine pricing market, ultimately coming to the conclusion that it is consumers assessment of whether the product is value added or merely a commodity.

So, yes, as Stan points out, you can buy an award winning wine in Charles Shaw for cheaper ($2.99) than you would pay for award winning Mission Street Pale Ale ($4.99). But, the real issue here I feel is establishing your product as a value added product and not a commodity. Wine, long established as a value added product, has begun to digress in some sectors recently. Beer, on the other hand, has just begun to see the fruits of the value it has progressively added to it's products over the last 25 years.

Bio-diesel in the brewhouse.

I came across this article in BeerAdvocate. Michigan Brewing Co. is partnering with Michigan State University to run their brewhouse on bio-diesel. They are not the first to do this, but it is exciting to see more breweries moving toward alternative energy usage.

From what I understand it is a fairly simple process of changing your burner head on your steam generator/boiler to be compatible with bio-diesel. If you have access to bio-diesel (which MSU will be providing for them), then you are pretty much set to burn the new fuel.

The only other brewery I have heard of using a similar process is a new one up in Oregon called Hopworks Urban Brewery.. From what I understand they are totally sustainability minded, even making decision based on things such as food miles (meaning energy used/distance traveled to put what your eating on your plate).

It's great to see brewers out there make healthy decisions in there business endeavors.

Oh My mega corporate beer domination!!!

In a move to compete with Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors plan to merge into one corporate entity. This consolidation means that the beer market in the US will be dominated by only two companies. Ironically, Pete Coors said this will better position them with consumers who are looking for greater choice and differentiation. How, I ask, can consolidation equal greater diversity in the beer market?

On a brighter note, this move seems to point to industrial breweries in the US feeling the pressure of the advancing craft beer market, a segment that is growing at 9-11% a year. If your interested you can read the article here.

Give me your funny tasting beers.

Twelve hours ago, in a friends loft in downtown Los Angeles, my hand glances across the side of an opened, full bottle of beer. I pick it up and read the label, 2005 Thomas Hardy Barley Wine. "Is anyone drinkin' this," I ask. "No, they said it tasted funny," someone responds. I pour the bottle into a glass, thinking it seemed out of place surrounded by the Stella Artois, Singha, and Charles Shaw's two-buck-chuck Cab littering the counter. Hmm, smells pretty damn good, a pleasently aged, rounded malt lifts out of the glass, followed by vinuous white grapes and alcohol warmth. I drop some on my tongue and swirl it off the roof of my mouth, it echoes off the insides of my cheeks and glides down my throat. Caramel. Vanilla. Leather. A ting of acidity. A lingering heat from the alcohol strength. WOW! tastes funny, I think, maybe next to the Stella, but this beer is phenomenal. Complex. Unique. Funny, I think again, then vocalize, "if anyone else comes across funny tasting beers, pass 'em on down to me. I'll take care of 'em." Ahh, what a great night.