Article on Internet Resale of Beer

[Bytowner]

Something that's revisited constantly, but it's always an interesting topic:
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainm ... page=1&c=y

I'm on the side of the brewers in the article... or, rather, I'm supportive of the local nature of beer and the important role breweries play as community members. I feel like we've started to lose something from the scene since it's blown up over the past couple years and I think it's kind of sad.

[RayOhm]

The way I see it, having your beer resold on EBay for megabucks is like free promotion to the brewery.

[munrets]

I'm interested in what people have bought online. I've made two eBay beer purchases in my time:

1. Six Westies (Blonde x 2, 8 x 2, 12 x 2) ages ago once I started reading about beer.
2. Recently: a pair of 10th Anniversary Ruinations

Somehow I feel dirty about doing so, although I'm not clear why I feel that way. After all, supply and demand, etc. I guess I feel bad that my money (that is, the ridiculous mark up I've paid) is not getting back to the brewery. But then, I don't really have any realistic way to get my money to the brewery.

Anyone else?

[Belgian]

"You've got people purchasing your beer with no intention of drinking it," Shaun Hill of Vermont's Hill Farmstead brewery told me after seeing a bottle of his Mimosa sour ale sell last month on eBay for $199. "It's pretty disheartening."

Why? Somebody else buying it wants to drink your beer - maybe hold a special honorific tasting - so the money's kind of irrelevant. Get over it Shaun. You're not God, and you're not fighting some battle for good and evil here. In complete honest truth, Nobody done you no wrong - you just take things personally.

Sounds whiny and ridiculous for brewers to try and control what happens to their beer. There's a wildfire market for some brews which mythologizes and promotes the hell out of the brewery.

Why not revel in the popularity, as is done with the Dark Lord brewery release people fly down and buy tickets for?

Or, better yet - brew more of the brew that is such an emotional problem for you & help diminish the mythology. I guarantee you will be both richer, and have less to whine about.

Do something. Take some action, or shut up about it. Empower yourself instead of playing a victim. And of course thanks for making the beer in the first place.

[Cass]

I think this has come up before. Hasn't Westy for years been through re-sellers buying from the brewery and distributing it to different countries, Canada included? And then it gets sold through "official" channels like bars?

Anyway, kind of the same thing...

[Belgian]

I think this has come up before. Hasn't Westy for years been through re-sellers buying from the brewery and distributing it to different countries, Canada included? And then it gets sold through "official" channels like bars?

Anyway, kind of the same thing...

In a clever way, the St Sixtus monks have embraced the Dark Lord model to limit the exploitation, instead of whining a lot.

Since the beer is just basic income to sustain the Abbey, not a 'hot' commodity to them they would just as soon not have the world's attention or exploit the brand.

Interesting confluence of the secular & monastic worlds.

[TheSevenDuffs]

I'm interested in what people have bought online. I've made two eBay beer purchases in my time:

1. Six Westies (Blonde x 2, 8 x 2, 12 x 2) ages ago once I started reading about beer.
2. Recently: a pair of 10th Anniversary Ruinations

Somehow I feel dirty about doing so, although I'm not clear why I feel that way. After all, supply and demand, etc. I guess I feel bad that my money (that is, the ridiculous mark up I've paid) is not getting back to the brewery. But then, I don't really have any realistic way to get my money to the brewery.

Anyone else?

Are you talking about any on line purchase or e Bay? Those are two totally different things IMO. I have made numerous on line orders but most have been through on line stores at normal prices. That said, I have also ordered a couple of beers off of E Bay at inflated prices. While that is not my preferred method, sometimes it is the only way to try certain beers. That said, with the recent shut down of E Bay beer sales, I guess it is back to trading...

[grub]

"You've got people purchasing your beer with no intention of drinking it," Shaun Hill of Vermont's Hill Farmstead brewery told me after seeing a bottle of his Mimosa sour ale sell last month on eBay for $199. "It's pretty disheartening."

Why? Somebody else buying it wants to drink your beer - maybe hold a special honorific tasting - so the money's kind of irrelevant. Get over it Shaun. You're not God, and you're not fighting some battle for good and evil here. In complete honest truth, Nobody done you no wrong - you just take things personally.

Sounds whiny and ridiculous for brewers to try and control what happens to their beer. There's a wildfire market for some brews which mythologizes and promotes the hell out of the brewery.

Why not revel in the popularity, as is done with the Dark Lord brewery release people fly down and buy tickets for?

Or, better yet - brew more of the brew that is such an emotional problem for you & help diminish the mythology. I guarantee you will be both richer, and have less to whine about.

Do something. Take some action, or shut up about it. Empower yourself instead of playing a victim. And of course thanks for making the beer in the first place.

The idea is that you've got some middle man buying up these limited releases and having no intent to drink them. Instead they get them solely with the intent to put them on ebay and make a ton of money off of the poor guy who really did want to drink it but doesn't have a way to purchase it direct from the brewery. He's far from the first to discuss this issue, and I completely support brewers in this. Three Floyds hardly revels in the popularity - they're just as unhappy about having Dark Lord on ebay as everyone else.

How is it ridiculous to want people to drink your beer? That's the definition of why we make it! Share it with your friends, trade it with another, mail it to someone else as a gift. Enjoy it! Nobody cares about being mythologized, and what good is being promoted if it means the only way for customers to drink your beer is paying $200+ on ebay for a single bottle?

Brew more? Most of the time that's completely impossible. You only have so much money to buy fermenters, so big of a system to fill them, so much time in the day, etc. If it were that easy, don't you think everyone would just do that? All the big names increase their production every year, but it's still never enough.

In the years I attended Dark Lord Day, the #bottles available would rise anywhere from 50-100% year to year, but the number of people coming out to the event was rising at more like 500-1000%. Every year it sold out. Every year people walked away unhappy. The biggest jump? The year that the local news broadcast a story about how much money you could make with it on ebay. 50% of the people in line had no idea what it was, just that they could make money. Some opened the beer and immediately dumped it because it wasn't Coors Light. Others immediately tried to sell it for 10x retail while still on the property. How is that good for anyone?

The efforts to make DLD better (by curbing attendance, enforcing tickets, etc) has actually made the event worse. It's a shadow of its former self. It used to be the beer event of beer events. I'd drive 9 solid hours each way and not even care if i got Dark Lord - the event was so great it was worth it. Tasting, trading, sharing. the true spirit of proper beergeekdom. Now you line up inside the fenced compound with none of its former glory. Haven't been the last two years and no intent of going back. Would any of this have happend without ebay? I highly doubt it.

It's no different than concert ticket sales + scalpers. People that want to go to the show (or drink the beer) want to do it at retail price and have the funds go back to the artist (brewer) and not into the scalper's pocket. Artists want their fans to attend and not have some schmuck in the parking lot with a fist full of tickets(bottle).

More and more ticket sales are starting to move to things like requiring the purchasing credit card to enter, which certainly means you're only going if YOU bought the ticket. Can't really do that with beer though. The only option is trying to stop the sales on auction sites and encourage customers not to buy them. If there's no profit, there will be no market and everyone will get them like they used to.

As a brewer, you just want to get your beer into the hands of those that will drink and enjoy it, and not into the hands of those who just want to ransom it off to the highest bidder.

[munrets]

I meant that I bought the mentioned beers on eBay.

And eBay has shut down beer sales? I had not heard. A quick search just now shows stuff still being sold albeit much less than on previous searches. Hmmm...

[grub]

And eBay has shut down beer sales? I had not heard. A quick search just now shows stuff still being sold albeit much less than on previous searches. Hmmm...

there was a massive purge recently, and i've heard they're monitoring it more closely.

[munrets]

Just came across this:

http://beeradvocate.com/community/threa ... les.31650/

[Cass]

The tickets & scalpers thing instantly popped into my head when I saw the article too. But can anyone think of an instance of demand far outstripping supply and this not happening? It's part of society & our economic reality. Tickets, new video game systems, etc.

I was going to suggest that one option is draught only, but even that with Pliny the Younger was scalped with hand-filled growlers. Gross.

[JasonTremblay]

Brew more? Most of the time that's completely impossible. You only have so much money to buy fermenters, so big of a system to fill them, so much time in the day, etc. If it were that easy, don't you think everyone would just do that? All the big names increase their production every year, but it's still never enough.

A couple other things to add to your fine post ...

Some of these rare / limited release beers don't even make the breweries money. They tend to tie up production (i.e., you lose the opportunity to make your profitable core brands) and be labour-intensive.

If you're talking about a seasonal / one-off sour, the brewery either has to do significant lab work (growing up lactobacillus, pediococcus, and brett), throw caution to the wind and go with a spontaneous fermentation (and risk the chance of an OMG huge drain pour), or spend a rather significant amount of money on brewery-sized pitches from WhiteLabs.

Again, assuming a sour ...

The brewery also doesn't want to infect its core brands with what are some of the absolute worst infections you can unleash in a brewery. The brewery is either looking at 2 of everything (fermenters, conditioning tanks, hoses, pumps, bottling line, one clean, one funky) or is looking at a cleanup on a rather large scale (taking apart said pumps and bottling line, and possibly replacing the hoses).

These beers are, as much as anything, a labour of love.

And I'd be pissed, also, to see my regulars getting the shaft at the hands of beer speculators.

Jason

[ErkLR]

And I'd be pissed, also, to see my regulars getting the shaft at the hands of beer speculators.

I can certainly sympathize with that. It would really irk me to see the people who had supported me end up having to pay far more because they couldn't get in line as fast as some guy who's just out to make a buck.

[JerCraigs]

Three Floyds hardly revels in the popularity - they're just as unhappy about having Dark Lord on ebay as everyone else.
... As a brewer, you just want to get your beer into the hands of those that will drink and enjoy it, and not into the hands of those who just want to ransom it off to the highest bidder.

I disagree with the first statement. Many brewers in this situation bemoan all the negative aspects... but keep selling it exactly the same way. Brewers like 3Floyds and DFH make their money on things like Alpha King, and 60 minute, but they make their reputations on stuff like Dark Lord and 120 Minute etc.

If 3F *really* felt that way Dark Lord Day would stop. They would find another distribution system. I'm not just picking on 3Floyds. There are a bunch of breweries in this situation. Some of the possible "solutions"

- DONGs. Draft only, no growlers. A lot of places have gone this route which is great for locals, crappy for those of us who can't fly in for a beer release.

- Lotteries. Online, give out tickets every time someone buys a case of your regular stuff, etc.

- Raise prices. Some concerts now charge more for the front row seats in order to keep the regular prices affordable. I'd be okay with some version of this. Hell, auction off the rights to get the first few cases and donate the difference to a charity. Or some other variation on an auction to determine market price.

- Bundle it. You get one Dark Lord with every case of Alpha King purchased. Most people would happily take that deal... Less appealing if the breweries other options aren't as good.

- The slow burn. Toss a couple of bottes in their retail store at random intervals, no big announcements. (This is sort of my preference (assuming I get some ) , and is sort of like what Bellwoods has been doing in a way)

The problem is that while all of these options at least partly accomplish the goal of getting the beer into beer lovers hands, but at the price of some of the publicity for the brewery, and in many cases making it harder for non-locals to try it.

The "we can't just make more" argument is a bit weak Russ, for most breweries anyway. What they really mean is "If we double production for SuperRareBeer, we'd have to cut production of LessCrazyRare beer.

For the brewery there starts to be a question of "Who is your market?" New Glarus sells most of their output relatively locally. I am less sure that breweries like Hill Farmstead could sell the diversity of beer that they are right now if they were only selling to the local market.