So while I was hard at work yesterday, I stumbled upon this article. Ok, so maybe by working hard I mean exploring the internet for tons of useless knowledge on company coin and by stumble upon I mean my beautiful girlfriend sent me this link. And since she is so amazing, I will now take a moment to give her a shameless plug for her site right over here. She, like me, is using writing about what she loves as a means of figuring it all out in life. She is focusing on food and photography. The food usually involves me too because I'm eating at least half of everything you see, and well, the photography is going to be a lot of food. She also is my photographer for this site and since Rob is being paid in all those wooden nickels, I will have to compensate her in other ways, most likely going to be in cheeseburgers. So double score for me, pimped her blog and told the world how awesome and gorgeous she is, that should be enough brownie points to last me a while.
Anyway, back to this article. Well first, go actually read the article so we can discuss. It's ok, i'll wait.....and welcome back. So how about that Pliny the Younger huh? Crazy shit right? I have not had the pleasure of trying Pliny the Younger. While I was in San Fran, I did try Pliny the Elder, at of all places, a generic sports bar called 4th Street Bar and Grill, situated in the lobby of a Marriott. I actually sat in that first chair in the picture. I'm like a celebrity. While in San Fran I learned good beer is found everywhere and everyone knows good beer. It's a west coast thing and conversation for another blog coming soon. Excited? Too much suspense for you? I know me too! Pliny the Elder on tap was.....underwhelming. It didn't do it for me. I get why people love it, but it's not the best beer nor worthy of the hype. My tastes are different, I know this, but I've had much better IPA's than Pliny. I can't speak about the Younger just yet, hopefully one day I can, but I think the allure that comes with both stems from their lack of availability. It's a psychological thing. I am in no way saying that a lot of the hard to come buy, limited release or small distribution beers aren't good. Some are the best out there. But best or not, the lack of availability drives up the demand. People want what they can't have. Was Nirvana as good as people think they are? Maybe not, but Cobain's dead and you can't get anymore music out of him so it creates an aura in a sense. There's something more attractive about it all when it becomes scarce.
As for this "Black Market" created for beer. I don't think it's something brewers should get too worried about. In the case of the beer for charity, I totally see their issue, that's just wrong. But as for people trying to sneak Pliny the Younger out and resell, it kind of adds to the buzz of these beers. Sure, I get that these brewers want to have the fans experience the beer there and don't want others to profit from it, but they need to realize that the 'hard to find' aspect of their beers is what makes them so desired. If Sam Adams never went mainstream I'm sure that people all over would covet finding it and hold it to a higher regard. A perfect example of this happened to me at a beer fest in Boston two years ago. While leaving the fest, amongst the thousands of dudes just drunkenly spewing out of the event center(and chanting USA for some odd reason?), a lovely gentleman, we will call him drunken frat bro, started conversing with me. After all the religion and politics stuff was out of the way, we talked beer,weird right? When he realized I was from New York, after he told me the Yankees suck, he said "Oh man you guys get Yuengling there". This confused me as I have seen too much Yuengling in my travels and assumed it was as generic as Bud. I was wrong, it is only distributed to like 7 states. I never knew this. This guy would kill to get some Yuengling and even said he stocks up whenever he is in one of those states. I personally think the stuffs crap and I have never seen anyone in NY treat Yuengling as anything more than generic. But this guy couldn't get it regularly and thus we have created that aura.
Craft beer has a bit of a collectors mentality linked to it. We start saving and aging bottles in our basement. It adds another level to the enjoyment of the beer itself. And let me say I love it. I recently started my own little collection to age. I will also be seeking out as many hard to find and limited release beers as I can. I won't be going as far as to purchase illegal growlers on the internet, but you can bet one day I will make it out for that Pliny the Younger release. It's all apart of a larger craft beer game and I live to play it.
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