Would you line up for Ontario beer?

[Bytowner]

I think the "HF experience" would simply not be tolerated in Ontario, regardless of quality.......a brewery would be vilified in ON for that.

And that there is the problem

Why exactly?

I don't think there's a relationship between willingness to jump through hoops to get beer and the quality of beer an area produces. What does Ontario gain from having a population willing to line up? It's certainly not required for a brewery to be profitable. I don't see any upside to it.

[Masterplan]

What I don't get is why the brewers aren't maximizing their profits? If you've got a 2 hour long line up everyday for your product, your price point is too low.

Increase your price lower your demand to the point where you still clear your product but without the ridiculousness of long lines...

[PeenSteen]

I think the "HF experience" would simply not be tolerated in Ontario, regardless of quality.......a brewery would be vilified in ON for that.

And that there is the problem

Why exactly?

I don't think there's a relationship between willingness to jump through hoops to get beer and the quality of beer an area produces. What does Ontario gain from having a population willing to line up? It's certainly not required for a brewery to be profitable. I don't see any upside to it.

I would line up for world class, best in style beers if they were produced in Ontario. It's silly that if world class beers were being produced in our own backyard we would be annoyed by the inconvenience of taking a drive and lining up for them. I would do it gladly, if you aren't willing to do so that is fine by me.

[PeenSteen]

What I don't get is why the brewers aren't maximizing their profits? If you've got a 2 hour long line up everyday for your product, your price point is too low.

If your talking about Hill Farmstead you have greatly overlooked how high the quality of the product is

[Craig]

What I don't get is why the brewers aren't maximizing their profits? If you've got a 2 hour long line up everyday for your product, your price point is too low.

If your talking about Hill Farmstead you have greatly overlooked how high the quality of the product is

Has he? Sounds like he just thinks they should raise prices until supply meets demand.

[Bytowner]

I would line up for world class, best in style beers if they were produced in Ontario. It's silly that if world class beers were being produced in our own backyard we would be annoyed by the inconvenience of taking a drive and lining up for them. I would do it gladly, if you aren't willing to do so that is fine by me.

But you can get world class beers without lining up for them. Great beer doesn't require line ups and line ups do not automatically mean there's great beer at the end of them. People have been creating excellent beer for decades without the necessity of daily line-ups for regular offerings. People are still doing it.

Whatever you think of Ontario beer, the lack of line-ups doesn't actually say anything about the quality of it, just as it doesn't anywhere else in the world.

[TheSevenDuffs]

I would line up for world class, best in style beers if they were produced in Ontario. It's silly that if world class beers were being produced in our own backyard we would be annoyed by the inconvenience of taking a drive and lining up for them. I would do it gladly, if you aren't willing to do so that is fine by me.

But you can get world class beers without lining up for them. Great beer doesn't require line ups and line ups do not automatically mean there's great beer at the end of them. People have been creating excellent beer for decades without the necessity of daily line-ups for regular offerings. People are still doing it.

Whatever you think of Ontario beer, the lack of line-ups doesn't actually say anything about the quality of it, just as it doesn't anywhere else in the world.

Your statement in itself is accurate. However, if you are trying to present an argument that there is an abundance of world class beer available in Ontario, you are way off the mark (in my opinion).

[Bytowner]

Your statement in itself is accurate. However, if you are trying to present an argument that there is an abundance of world class beer available in Ontario, you are way off the mark (in my opinion).

I'm not (though I would), it was just to point out that the below exchange strikes me as strange. There is nothing noble or necessary about line ups for beer.

PeenSteen wrote:
Cass wrote:
I think the "HF experience" would simply not be tolerated in Ontario, regardless of quality.......a brewery would be vilified in ON for that.


And that there is the problem

[PeenSteen]

I agree with the statement that there is nothing noble or necessary about standing in line for beer. I'm just saying that if Ontario had a brewery as good as HF I would be OK with lining up for something that good. I think it is silly to be upset or outraged that a high quality product with a low production volume is in such demand that it requires waiting in line for.

[rejtable]

I would line up for world class, best in style beers if they were produced in Ontario. It's silly that if world class beers were being produced in our own backyard we would be annoyed by the inconvenience of taking a drive and lining up for them. I would do it gladly, if you aren't willing to do so that is fine by me.

To me the HF issue is less about the volume of people lining up and more about the inefficiency of the process of getting the beer. If they are doing everything they can to move people through their cash and there are still lines, great, have at it. But by just about any account, they aren't doing that, or are moving towards it very slowly.

Pre-filling growlers only makes total sense to me, and if I was in line for two hours because they won't do it, I'd be cranky.

I went a year ago, was told I had to line up in the same line as the growler folks even though I only wanted bottles and left. For my personal value system, his beer (and nobody else's either) is not worth the wait. Sounds like his new bottle line is at least half way to being decent, although I don't understand why the growler people should have any impact on the bottle people.

Personally, I've never yet met a beer I'd way 2 hours for.

[PeenSteen]

Shaun Hill is very, very particular when it comes to the way his beer is kept. I'm sure it's a freshness/refridgeration issue that he is concerned with when it comes to pre-filling growlers, I'm not saying that I agree with that since the beer would be sold that day in pre-filled growlers or not.

Also, they will fill other growlers from other breweries as well I'm sure people do reuse previous HF growlers, so maybe that has some effect on the decision to pre-fill.

[Craig]

Shaun Hill is very, very particular when it comes to the way his beer is kept. I'm sure it's a freshness/refridgeration issue that he is concerned with when it comes to pre-filling growlers, I'm not saying that I agree with that since the beer would be sold that day in pre-filled growlers or not.

Also, they will fill other growlers from other breweries as well I'm sure people do reuse previous HF growlers, so maybe that has some effect on the decision to pre-fill.

I'm sure that part of it is him wanting to let people reuse growlers. You can say a lot of stuff about Hill, but one thing that is obviously true is he's keeping the price of his beer a lot lower than he could. Forcing people into 3$ for a 750 and 10$ for a growler every time would get in the way of that and it's hard to hate on him for trying to save the locals some dough. The guy obviously cares about his local customers.

In a perfect world, they'd figure out some way to let you hand in an old growler and take back a full one at little or nominal charge. That actually seems pretty standard around here, where breweries just charge growler deposits rather than selling them outright. But then the brewer has to take charge of sanitizing and such, which they might not be willing to take on.

I can't think of a reason why they don't just pre-fill even just a third or half their supply for the day. Then the locals could still fill their own and save a few bucks, but people from out of town who want the branded bottles anyway can just pick 'em up and stroll right out. Maybe every now and then you'd get some people who are a little annoyed that their only choice is paying extra for a growler they don't want, but that seems like a small price to pay if it speeds up the line by a half hour for two hundred people.

[Belgian]

In Spain we had so much wonderful wine for so little $. And the craft/micro brewery biz is growing so quickly there! That exploration was a great part of our trip.

Yeah France has the problem of a Wine Lake (surplus) and on top of it the French are buying Spanish wines because they are cheaper, and good! This is probably why you can buy a nicely-made Bordeaux in Germany for 3-4 bucks.

Ontario wine pricing is evil for the average consumer, since we're talking about everyday consumables and the quality level we should expect. Lining up or a feeding frenzy for 'the best' is strictly a First World Problem, not a real concern like being robbed for inferior plonk (yes, LC we saw what you did there.) But we digress.

[Kel Varnsen]

I'm sure that part of it is him wanting to let people reuse growlers. You can say a lot of stuff about Hill, but one thing that is obviously true is he's keeping the price of his beer a lot lower than he could. Forcing people into 3$ for a 750 and 10$ for a growler every time would get in the way of that and it's hard to hate on him for trying to save the locals some dough. The guy obviously cares about his local customers.

In a perfect world, they'd figure out some way to let you hand in an old growler and take back a full one at little or nominal charge. That actually seems pretty standard around here, where breweries just charge growler deposits rather than selling them outright. But then the brewer has to take charge of sanitizing and such, which they might not be willing to take on.

That kind of makes sense. Prefilling growlers means you would have to keep a fairly decent inventory of growlers on hand. And if space is an issue at the brewery that might be a problem. Plus from what I remember the growler deposit on their swing top 2 litre bottles is $10, so forcing people to buy their prefilled growlers and pay that deposit, when they can just as easily use their own seems like it would piss people off as well. Not only locals but people who come from far away. Those people might not want to drop $10 on a growler that might never get filled again.

Plus I am not sure if this is still the case, but I know for a long time it was a cash only business. So having to deal with deposit returns and that kind of thing might add another level of complexity to the transactions that they don't want.

[JerCraigs]

I think the "HF experience" would simply not be tolerated in Ontario, regardless of quality. As A pointed out, HF doesn't pre-fill growlers so it's massively inefficient to get their beer to consumers. Regardless of the quaint-ness of the experience of going out to a farm, a brewery would be vilified in ON for that.

I have been to HF once and it took us about three hours to get in and out, but we also got a TON of beer. There was nobody there when we arrived but a ton of people by the time we started ordering growlers. Based on the signs on the wall they could have told us to take off after exceeding the five growler limit, and they didn't so we appreciated that. I hope I can make it back someday.

That said, any other brewery would be told to get their s**t together. They are rapidly reaching a point where they need to have a better bottling line, and more bottles available, but I'm not sure they really want that. Personally I'd have bought even more if it was bottled instead of growlers that needed to be consumed so quickly.

It drives me bonkers that Great Lakes is doing their releases at noon on a Thursday, but they also have giant lines of people buying a case where I'd probably only be getting a six pack or less depending on what it is. It works for them. There are a ton of ways to do limited releases, and none of them will make everybody happy.