Craft breweries and distilleries

There continues to be an explosion of craft breweries and craft distilleries. Just walk through the liquor store and there are breweries making beers you never heard of and probably don’t want to hear about. There are a lot of bad beers out there. I will never buy more than one bottle or can of a beer I am not familiar with. This is why many stores have single beers for sale. If one is good, I may invest in a 6-pack. However, the price point on many of these craft brews is way too high. When they charge more for their beer than the cost of an imported Aventinus Tap 6, guess which I am going to purchase. The brewers argue that their beer costs more because of the small quantities. If the quality is high, then the high price is justified. Otherwise, they will be another failed craft brewery.

We also have many craft distilleries starting up everywhere. The Austin, Texas area must have 30 or more that popped up in the last three to four years. The one many are familiar with is Tito’s. They sell high priced vodka. Tito’s has done a great marketing job. Vodka is vodka, or primarily ethanol that has been cut to a proof below the 96% that it is distilled to. The quality of the water matters. The type of still used can influence the taste. The primary sugar used matters, potatoes are different from corn or sugar cane, or sugar beets. However, ethanol is ethanol and the name and design of the bottle don’t make it better. They simply affect the way marketing has influenced you. Snobbery does not change the taste of vodka, whether it is poured from a plastic bottle or an engraved glass bottle with a goose on it.

There are many new distillers making whiskey. The prices of most of the craft distilled whiskeys are ridiculously high. Check out Larceny (an excellent whiskey that uses the same grain bill as Pappy.) Then compare it to a craft whiskey. Go for Larceny. The craft distillers have not earned their high prices and likely never will. Just think before you spend your money on that new liquor. If you cannot taste before purchase, why purchase? Are you going to buy a new car without a test drive. That logic should apply for any new product unless the cost is so low as to make the test drive irrelevant.