Monday, March 21, 2011

Portland Beer Price Index: Spring 2011

Now that the days have once more lengthened to challenge the nights, here is the Spring 2011 installment of the Portland Beer Price Index.  This thing has been going for nearly two years now, so I finally can replace the squirrely graphic I've been using to label these posts with one that contains actual data from the survey: the average retail shelf price and "on-sale" price of bombers in the survey.  As always, I ask you to remember that this is not a rant about how expensive beer is, it's just a project to watch how prices change over time.  Click here for a full explanation of the PBPI.

Here it is:
  • 6-packs: $8.78, up 5 cents
  • 22-ounce bombers: $5.03, up 4 cents
  • 6-packs (sale price): $8.31, up 18 cents
  • 22-ounce bombers (sale price): $4.95, down 3 cents
  • 16 oz. draft: $4.29, unchanged
  • 16 oz. draft (happy hour): $3.52, unchanged
I have to admit, I haven't been to every pub in the pint-price survey all that recently.  But I don't know of any prices that have changed since last quarter.  On the retail side, this survey marks the second one in which Beer Valley's Leafer Madness has replaced Pelican IPA.  I expect to make two other changes next quarter: I'll include Ninkasi's Total Domination in the 6-pack survey, and I'll start averaging in the prices at Pearl Specialty Market, since they sell everything in the survey at pretty reasonable prices.  I'm collecting the new data for Ninkasi and Pearl this time, but not figuring it into the numbers since I can't compare them to last quarter.

Look for the next PBPI around the summer solstice.

    4 comments:

    1. I find the breast-like shape of your line graph offensive.

      ReplyDelete
    2. I thought it was obvious that I had drawn a naked woman with bluish skin and a rather large rump arching her back seductively on a red chaise lounge.

      Guess I'm not as good an artist as Ezra.

      ReplyDelete
    3. Having been chastened by my post, I wasn't going to be the first one to point out the obvious....

      Bill, how does the price of six-packs look over the two years of the Index? More or less flat?

      ReplyDelete
    4. Jeff: Here's the PBPI graph for six-packs. Like you said, the shelf price is more or less flat, but sale prices seem to be becoming less generous.

      ReplyDelete