I recently spent quite a bit of money on a beer which isn't even ready for sale yet. And it's got me pondering the direction of craft beer in this country.
I don't have a problem with the price as such, it's more the delay. And I'm not pissed off or anything, but I wonder what this means for the craft beer market.
The idea of an en primeur wine purchase is that you guarantee yourself bottles of a hard-to-come-by wine from a future vintage at the current release's price. That's not the case here. They're just getting my money a month earlier than they would otherwise. And I get... exactly the same as if they made it for sale once it was ready to sell. There's still the exact same likelihood of it selling out before I get to ordering.
Of course if I ran a business and could get everyone to pay a month before delivering a product I'd do it too. It's good business.
But I wonder whether this is a harbinger of crazier things to come.
Are we headed down the path of bottle limits, people queuing for hours for beers and Ebay? Do Australian micros even want to court that kind of craziness?
It's a nice problem to have I suppose.
[Incidentally, one of the more hilarious things I've read on the web was a guy who intended to camp out overnight in front of a brewery before a release. In Minnesota. In January. Luckily people told him there was a fair chance of, you know, death with that plan.]
