22 Gbp for a pint? Really? Clone anyone?

[Linalmeemow]

Question (maybe poll worthy?):
Who here would pay £10 for a Westvleteren 12?

Me, and I have done. It's where I learned that no beer is worth that kind of money for a single bottle. It's lovely, I'm happy I tried it to test its reputation but it taught me that for every beer like this there's a close approximation for a quarter of the price.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I live in a tent, a basic 2 man tent. Why are idiots buying homes...

2 man you say we could only dream of a two man we used to have to take it in turns to sleep in our one man tent but they were happy days.

 

[Braindead]

Drinking a can of £8 Garage Brew co's SOUP DIPA right now and enjoying every moment of it.
Give me this over 6 cans of Fosters.
I work hard, I dont go out on the town anymore blowing insane amounts of money on crappy booze and things that keep me up all night.
So I treat myself when I feel like doing.
Plus I like comparing what the big boys are brewing compared to what I can brew

 

[SmallSpacesBrewing]

Personally I can't Compare wine and beer. Most wines are tradition, a lot of the wineyards work hard all year for theirperfect grapes.

I prefer beer most of the time, but a glass of good wine is an experience.

I love that we get the chance with homebrewing to make all this great beer though. Its really great. Buuut I must say that I hate the fad, or word craft beer.

 

[Sadfield]

Personally I can't Compare wine and beer.

Me neither, beer is such a more complex and varied product.

 

[Leon103]

Personally I can't Compare wine and beer. Most wines are tradition, a lot of the wineyards work hard all year for theirperfect grapes.

I prefer beer most of the time, but a glass of good wine is an experience.

I love that we get the chance with homebrewing to make all this great beer though. Its really great. Buuut I must say that I hate the fad, or word craft beer.

Same you can say about the hop farmer, the maltster etc

 

[Clint]

Another price pusher is the rarity of a product...or the lack of it. True some ingredients may be more expensive but the bulk ingredients such as malt won't be...to tie up one of their brew lines with a one off it still has to pay...

 

[Slid]

Me, and I have done. It's where I learned that no beer is worth that kind of money for a single bottle. It's lovely, I'm happy I tried it to test its reputation but it taught me that for every beer like this there's a close approximation for a quarter of the price.

Re the discussion on Westvleveren 12 quoted. The recipe is well known, as is the myth / belief that this may be the very best beer ever produced. As always, the truth is merely that which people choose to believe, or have no choice but to believe. The ingredients are nothing special and even the yeast might be sourced with next to minimal effort. James Morton's book gives a very good outline of how it might be cloned.

I decided to go first off for a toned down version - the W 12 recipe for 20L diluted down to 25L. a sort of Westvleveren 8

So, will this be worth 20 Euros a bottle? Or 15 Euros a bottle with it being watered down and all? Or basically nowt, given I have no licence to sell and have no wish to do so?

 

[Linalmeemow]

Re the discussion on Westvleveren 12 quoted. The recipe is well known, as is the myth / belief that this may be the very best beer ever produced. As always, the truth is merely that which people choose to believe, or have no choice but to believe. The ingredients are nothing special and even the yeast might be sourced with next to minimal effort. James Morton's book gives a very good outline of how it might be cloned.

I decided to go first off for a toned down version - the W 12 recipe for 20L diluted down to 25L. a sort of Westvleveren 8

So, will this be worth 20 Euros a bottle? Or 15 Euros a bottle with it being watered down and all? Or basically nowt, given I have no licence to sell and have no wish to do so?

You're quite right, and as I said this is where I got off the hype train. Beer is hops, barley, yeast and water. Unless you're doing something magical or using an expensive technique that makes your beer uniquely worth stumping up for then I'm not paying through the nose for it.

Edited to add: St Bernardus 12 is similar to Westvleteren 12 to the point that there really isn't any point paying the 4x extra in my opinion. The only thing that drives the cost is the scarcity, and sadly none of that money goes to the monks.

 

[Slid]

You're quite right, and as I said this is where I got off the hype train. Beer is hops, barley, yeast and water. Unless you're doing something magical or using an expensive technique that makes your beer uniquely worth stumping up for then I'm not paying through the nose for it.

Edited to add: St Bernardus 12 is similar to Westvleteren 12 to the point that there really isn't any point paying the 4x extra in my opinion. The only thing that drives the cost is the scarcity, and sadly none of that money goes to the monks.

Well said. Perhaps this is the reason for taking this HB thing a bit further than some good, economical beer. The pursuit of excellence?

 

[Linalmeemow]

Well said. Perhaps this is the reason for taking this HB thing a bit further than some good, economical beer. The pursuit of excellence?

That's partly why I do this, though I've hit a plateau at the moment - my beer is good, I think, and has steadily got better over the 3 1/2 years I've been brewing but doesn't seem to have improved much in the past 6-12 months.

 

[SmallSpacesBrewing]

Same you can say about the hop farmer, the maltster etc

Yeah OK but the hopster and maltzer don't make beer. They grow ingredients.

 

[robbym123]

Brewing my own has really changed my perspective on what I am happy to buy.

I know that I can brew a good point of best bitter, kolsch, pilsner, IPA, saison etc, for under 30p a pint, well under that when I take the time to source ingredients cannily.

When I compare this cost to the £4-5 per pint that an average crappy pub would charge down this way for a crappy pint if beer I don't see value for money, so I barely do it

If I am drinking out and about I would rather drink in an environment I like ( Cobbett's, our local micro pub is fantastic) or drink a beer where I percieve the quality to be higher than I could achieve - ideally both!.

For what it is worth I think a decent RIS is relatively easy to brew well and definitely not worth an inflated price. I think there is maybe some confusion between strength of beer and quality/brewing skill. It does frustrate me when I see a beer costing more, simply because it is stronger, when the additional ingredient cost to achieve that strength does not justify that increase.

Also often buy a beer if it is a style that I am not familiar with, but might want to brew. Recent example being Brut IPA ( now that is just a gimmick, tasted nothing there that you couldn't achieve by adding sugar to an IPA recipe....)

Westvetleran (undoubtedly spelt wrong!) is a bit of a special case. Given the lack of supply when you pay £10+ for a bottle you are paying for the convenience of not having to drive to Belgium to the official source. I would rather wait until I happen to be over the channel and buy a case for 1.75 a bottle.

 

[Leon103]

Brewing my own has really changed my perspective on what I am happy to buy.

I know that I can brew a good point of best bitter, kolsch, pilsner, IPA, saison etc, for under 30p a pint, well under that when I take the time to source ingredients cannily.

When I compare this cost to the £4-5 per pint that an average crappy pub would charge down this way for a crappy pint if beer I don't see value for money, so I barely do it

If I am drinking out and about I would rather drink in an environment I like ( Cobbett's, our local micro pub is fantastic) or drink a beer where I percieve the quality to be higher than I could achieve - ideally both!.

For what it is worth I think a decent RIS is relatively easy to brew well and definitely not worth an inflated price. I think there is maybe some confusion between strength of beer and quality/brewing skill. It does frustrate me when I see a beer costing more, simply because it is stronger, when the additional ingredient cost to achieve that strength does not justify that increase.

Also often buy a beer if it is a style that I am not familiar with, but might want to brew. Recent example being Brut IPA ( now that is just a gimmick, tasted nothing there that you couldn't achieve by adding sugar to an IPA recipe....)

Westvetleran (undoubtedly spelt wrong!) is a bit of a special case. Given the lack of supply when you pay £10+ for a bottle you are paying for the convenience of not having to drive to Belgium to the official source. I would rather wait until I happen to be over the channel and buy a case for 1.75 a bottle.

For one there are higher taxes for stronger beers so that adds costs

 

[Leon103]

Yeah OK but the hopster and maltzer don't make beer. They grow ingredients.

Some do, some don't. Same can be said for wine makers

 

[Sadfield]

Surely it's the same as situation? Hawaiian edition Speedway Stout isn't widely available in keg, particularly on a different continent and 5,478 miles from where it is brewed. Incidentally, 330ml of this beer works out a £12.78, quite close to the acceptable price of Westvleteren.

Beer tax is linked to abv, so stronger beers will always be higher in price.

 

[Sadfield]

Breaking it down this is a high quality, imported, limited availability drink, made using some expensive ingredients. Sold at £7.50 in it's standard serving. Hardly any different to a good wine, fine whisky, brandy, coffee etc. No big deal.

Wouldn't buy it though, as I don't like coffee.

 

[Gunge]

So now the dust has more or less settled, let's sum up. £22 for a pint of beer? LOL!!

 

[Llamaman]

Question (maybe poll worthy?):
Who here would pay £10 for a Westvleteren 12?

Maybe, but probably only once (*). Apparently St Bernadus 12 is very close, at a fraction of the cost.

There is no right or wrong answer to this question - there are clearly diminishing returns, and different people will have different price sensitivities. I don't tend to spend more than £4 a bottle (and usually much less), but would go higher for something really special/unusual that I might never try again.

That said, I think there is a lot of beer around at the moment that is poor value for money (not to be confused with expensive). To put it bluntly, I think there's a lot of 'craft' breweries producing a product that is often not better than, or even inferior to, that produced by larger breweries - yet retailing at a premium. Now, some people may choose to buy the 'craft' product anyway, as they like to buy small/local. Fair enough. But I'm more interested in the product, and I have to say I've yet to try an ESB than can better Fullers (£1.79), and most IPAs IMO struggle to better Vocation's Life and Death (£5.25 for 3).
I'm happy to pay £4 a bottle for a world-class Belgian quadruple. I'm less inclined to spend £3 on a 330ml 'craft' pale ale that is inferior to a £2 500ml Adnams Ghost Ship. And sadly, that's my experience in many cases.


(*) My understanding is that the monks don't like people reselling the beer and profiteering, which is what has put me off buying a bottle so far.

 

[AdeDunn]

I always feel torn on topics like this. On the one hand, it pains me how little value people place on the time and effort people put into producing a quality product, always bringing it down to "I want it cheap, and can get something else cheaper from blah blah! So give it to me cheap or I go there!", usually then pointing at some mass produced pish, or worst still garbage produced by people right on the borderline of slavery, living in total poverty, in a country where this is the norm... On the other hand, some people take the absolute pee with how much they try to charge for things for sure! I had a bottle of Brewdog Jet Black Heart the other day, it was pish! The bottle of porter from Lidl that was a fraction of the price, and brewed by Marstons if I remember correctly, tasted considerably better! As in it actually had some flavour!

If something tastes better, I don't mind paying a bit more. If something tastes worst, or the same, then unless the cheaper product is produced by slaves in a poorer country, then uhm no I don't see why I should. Everybody has to have a cut off point, a this far and no further point, or you just get price gouged by the greedy. On the flip side, been too frugal kills small business, and drives production to poverty stricken countries, where employment is closer to slavery.

I sat and drank 3 bottles of Dos Equis last night, £5 for a 6 pack in Sainsbury's, and tastes better than Brewdog Kingpin any day... I could have bought the El cheapo lager even further down the shelf though, would have tasted like water, but heh it was cheaper.... Last time I looked for Dos Equis though, I could only find it online, going for something like £15 a 6 pack... Price gouging.

Llamaman is spot on though, there's a lot of "craft" beer appearing that's ruddy terrible! When a Guiness milk stout tastes better than a craft one, you know the craft brewery have gotten it wrong.... Since when did milk stout taste sour????

Let's all be honest here though, craft brewing has forgotten it's roots! It's forgotten that the US craft brewing scene started out with US home brewers, who got the idea from the UK home brewing scene.... Who are we again? lol