Beer Infinity Beer, Brewing & Beyond
| There is an ancient debate among beer geeks about “forced scarcity”–the idea that breweries do special releases of special beers in limited volume just so they can charge twice the money for it. Riffing in part on a discussion we recently had on the Beervana Podcast, Bryan Roth runs down the main points. He even uses one of my quotes from the podcast. But the most interesting part of all that was Patrick’s response. Patrick is, in addition to being the co-host of the podcast, an econ professor at Oregon State. And his response was both surprising and illuminating.
To set it up, I was arguing that I wished consumers understood how expensive it was for breweries to make barrel-aged beer. That would help them judge whether a $15 bottle of beer was “worth” the price–particularly when compared to a $15 bottle of double IPA that may have been comparatively cheap and easy to produce. Patrick said that, from an economics perspective, I was missing the point. (All bolds are added for emphasis. … |
Source: Beervana
Read the full article here.
