A few links for your weekend beer reading pleasure:
– Shouldn’t stronger beers be sold in smaller bottles? I understand all the reasons why they aren’t, but Don Russell’s discourse on big beer bottles had me asking myself that question.
– You’ll want to put your thinking cap on before considering the questions Alan has, starting with What Is Actually The Enemy Of Good Beer? Give them some thought and leave him a comment.
– Nice that the Houston Chronicle wrote about Saint Arnold’s new downtown brewery. Nicer still that 51 people took the time to comment.
– When trends collide. Alexander D. Mitchell IV relays the news that a) the Baltimore Sun is retiring the “Kasper on Tap” beer blog because “did not attract a large enough audience to sustain it” and b) the Washington Post has made Greg Kitsock’s beer column a monthly status rather than biweekly feature.
Given the recent apparent success of Baltimore Beer Week and the fact that more newspapers around the country regularly feature beer stories this seems a little curious. In Texas, which has been as hard a place for small-scale breweries to get a foothold as anywhere, 51 readers comment on a story about Saint Arnold. In The D.C. area, an early bastion for better beer, the newspapers can’t figure out how to talk with beer drinkers. This is another reminder that newspapers are in disarray.
Hale’s has always done our barleywine in 12 oz bottles and my glass supplier tells me there’s a brewery in California that is interested in 375ml corked finish bottles.
I think it has to do more with customer familiarity with paying more in that sized format. Winemakers have always had the option to bottle their wine in 12oz bottles and put them in a 6 pack, but never have. For that matter they have always had the option to put their wine in cans and sell it in a 24 pack.
I know I’m creeping into Rule #7 territory here, but if the liquid we’re making costs more to make than the wine does, then we’re going to need all the help we can to break even on it (or maybe turn a profit?).
Higher packaging costs have always been something consumers don’t think about. In fact good-looking corkable 375ml bottles may cost more than 750s.