Talk about liquid assets. At the new Big Board burger joint on H Street NE, you can watch beer prices rise and fall in real time on a large digital screen mounted to the wall. The more pints you buy of any particular brew, the farther its cost will drop. So you’re left standing there, frothy glass in hand, staring at the screen, kind of like a trader tracking equities at the New York Stock Exchange—only slightly less drunk.
That’s the idea, anyway.
On a recent visit, I was stoked to see that New Belgium Ranger IPA, a popular Colorado product that is relatively new to the District, was down 50 cents to $6.50 per pint. You know the saying: buy low. Bartender! Pour me a Ranger! It turns out the discount comes at a high cost. The keg is already kicked. Bummer.
My next two choices, Chocolate City Cornerstone Copper and Allagash White, have a similar story: The price had dropped until the keg ran dry. Double bummer. I hemmed and hawed, scouring the prices of somewhat less compelling libations. Yuengling for $4.50, Peroni at 75 cents off—no thanks. I finally settled for a Guinness. Price: $7. No discount.
“Isn’t that depressing?” grumbles the guy beside me at the bar. “I switched to whiskey.”
Modeling your bar after the running dogs of Wall Street might seem like a terrible business plan in the current cultural moment, with protesters occupying Zuccotti Park and ricocheting stock prices imperiling 401(k)s everywhere. But in D.C., evoking the glory days of the bubble seems apt. Around here, the cost of suds generally seems to go in one of two ways: high and higher.
I had just gotten back from a trip to Asheville, N.C., where craft beer is cheap, around $4 or less on draft at most places. That the rustic watering holes of a sleepy town in the Smoky Mountains charge less per pint than the finer establishments in the nation’s capital should come as little surprise.
But I’ve experienced similar sticker shock in San Francisco, where cost-of-living markers, including the average rent ($2,305) and average home price ($808,481), exceed even those of the pricey District. I nearly blew a bottle cap one night at a Haight Street bar called Toronado. One Flemish red ale, the Bockor Cuvee de Jacobins Rouge, was priced at $5. At D.C.’s Smoke & Barrel, the same beer costs $9.
Rare imports, of course, can be expensive anywhere. What’s most outrageous, though, is the difference in local beer prices. On my trip to San Francisco, many of the West Coast beers hovered around $4 or $5 a pint—and not just at the divey Toronado, either. Even the more upscale Monk’s Kettle offers local drafts for a Lincoln or less: Sierra Nevada Foam Pilsner for $5, Lagunitas Little Sumpin’ Wild for $4.25.
Yet, in Washington, where drinkers can now sample D.C.-brewed beers for the first time in 50 years, even the local brews aren’t particularly cheap. DC Brau Public Ale costs $6 on draft at The Big Hunt. At Tonic in Mt. Pleasant, the price is $7. The local brewery’s second effort, DC Brau Corruption, runs $6.50 on draft at both Meridian Pint and ChurchKey. All this for a brew that doesn’t even have to cross the District line!
Ask craft-beer folks about prices and they tend to stress their product’s artisan quality. Of course you can find some cheaper swill, the logic goes. But it’ll be made with rice or corn instead of barley and other fine grains. A can of National Bohemian, for instance, will set you back just $3 at Smoke & Barrel—and a mere $2 at the Raven. To craft devotees, that’s like opting for a McDonald’s burger.
“You can buy a very cheap hamburger, one that’s full of flour, oatmeal, and soy protein, but it’s not a hamburger,” says Jim Caruso, CEO of Flying Dog Brewing Company. “If you want a steak burger, you pay for a steak burger. They are two entirely different products. The former is produced to be as inexpensive as possible. It’s a commodity. It’s automated.”
And yet, sanctimony about quality will only take you so far. A pint of the popular Belgian-style ale Flying Dog Raging Bitch from Caruso’s Frederick, Md. brewery costs $7 at Meridian Pint. Go to Baltimore, pull up a stool at Magerk’s Pub, and you can slurp down a pint of the same superb suds for just $5.
Why is good beer so frickin’ expensive in this town? I gulped down the rest of my $7 Guinness and tried to find out.
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Economic cycles also seem to have little to do with beer prices. The good times have resulted in more supply and not dampened demand, but it's not like food/drink prices are all that elastic -- beer hasn't gotten cheaper in hard-hit cities. I know that it hasn't in the Midwest, the cheap-beer paradise I moved here from.
Now granted a PFC at the time was only making about $80 or $90 a month, but you could still experience a lot of wonderful brews for very little money. I used to hitchhike around the Swabian and Bavarian countryside on Sunday afternoons, trying a local brew at each little Dorf, I collected the "Bierdeckeln" (coasters) and must have had a hundred or so from different breweries. The USO even organized a tour of a local brewery for us.
American brewers had somehow gotten Congress to pass a law requiring the service clubs at American bases in Europe to stock American beer. Needles to say, there wasn’t a big demand for canned Bud or Coors when you could get fresh German lager at these prices. So they’d have “nickel night” at the clubs, the day before payday each month, and unload the American swill for a nickel a can.
You could even buy beer from vending machines in the railroad stations, and of course it was perfectly legal for a teenager to buy beer - I think you were supposed to be 18 for hard liquor though.
Not sure if I envy or pity you young beer drinkers. You certainly have a wide variety of American craft beers which hardly existed in the sixties (though I do remember drinking Anchor steam beer in California in the late sixties). Some of these are excellent, I grant you, (Penn Pilsener, Fat Tire) but a lot of them seem to be just weird flavored, fancy-labeled creations for Gen Y Yuppies who can’t tell real beer from alcopop.
And even if you go to Germany, you won’t find the variety of small town local breweries that existed in the sixties; the same economic factors that killed most traditional American local breweries has resulted in consolidation of the German industry - I read some time ago that there are now only about 2,000 independent brewers in Germany versus over 6,000 forty years ago. Is there a craft beer revival in Germany? I dunno, I’d hope that there are still enough local breweries that it wouldn’t be necessary.
And in a free market (which seldom exists in alcohol markets because governments often require monopolies, which they don't even allow in other markets), distributors actually decrease costs as they provide a more efficient movement of product to final destinations. If each brewery in the US had to buy its own trucks and pay its own drivers and fill a van with only its own products to deliver to bars, there would be much higher costs than moving this very heavy product to a central distribution center and then having the distributor move everyone's barrels to the bars. Of course, again, costs are not relevant to the selling price, only to whether or not a company can stay in business.
The only thing that affects the *price* is supply and demand. If there are enough people who want to pay $15 for a pint of Coors Light, then there will most likely be a bar selling at that price. Of course, in DC there is much more demand for bars than there are liquor licenses issued, because there is no free market in alcohol in the District. If anyone could get a liquor license or if no license were required, there would certainly be much more pressure on bars to lower their prices (demand would not be outstripping supply).
Of course, and you touched on this, the primary product that bars sell is NOT beer (or wine, or liquor), it's atmosphere, the entertainment of hanging out with lots of other people in a crowd. It's exciting! And there's also exclusivity which is much more in demand in DC than in San Francisco. Charging $7 for a Guiness means the clientele doesn't have to deal with those pesky bicycle couriers who, when I lived there 6 years ago, hung out at Common Share in Adams Morgan. Common Share was a dive that served excellent beers and liquors for exactly $2 a drink, no matter what the drink. But Capital Hill interns who make even less than bicycle couriers wouldn't be caught dead there so instead went up the street to Madam's Organ and paid at least 3 times that, and Common Share went out of business, while Madams Organ is still there.
"Rustic watering holes....Sleepy town" Huh?
I'm a musician and had a gig in Asheville last night. If you thought the place is quiet and sleepy you either visited at 7:30 on Sunday morning or you have personal habits that would make Hunter S. Thompson and Charlie Sheen freak out and cry. Incidentally about the time you were in Asheville I was in D.C. All I can say about the place is I understand WHY you would willingly over pay for beer.
It's not just the craft beer that's pricey, either - there are some places that charge absurd prices for what should be cheap beer. This is a broader issue than just high prices for good beer.
So, suck it up, drink good-quality beer from small(ish) producers, and drink less of it. When you're drinking Bell's you don't need a whole six pack or freakin' case like the Natty Bo drinker does. 2 is great, 3 even better. Your body will thank you for it.
Now sure there will be some trendy bars that will charge more for everything, not only beer but cocktails, food, etc. If you don't like their prices, don't go there. I don't mind supporting a bar that cares enough to give me high-quality booze instead of schlock for $4. And sure, Toronado is one of the greatest bars in the world and I wish there was one on my block, but honestly I can't figure out how in the world they're selling a real Belgian beer for that money. They're clearly doing the world and their customers a favor but those beers (and transportation all the way from Belgium) are expensive, so don't be too hasty to knock everybody that has a higher price.
http://www.monkpub.com/tap_downstairs.html
The author needs to make sure he's comparing apples to apples here. He doesn't talk about the pour size at Toronado or in fact anywhere in the article. $7 for a pint or $7 for 12oz makes a big difference too. I still say Toronado throws his whole article off with what looks to me like a loss leader or otherwise insanely low price.
Great article! Informative, well researched, good anecdotes. In the end, all I could do was congratulate myself for moving to Asheville (and this weekend Beer City has Moogfest!). Listen to Barack: escape the Beltway, visit Asheville!
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