All Ninkasi, All the Time

It's weird, sometimes the name of one brewery pops up over and over in the course of a few days. Last week, Ninkasi kept invading my consciousness:

• The brewery started shipping 6-packs of Total Domination IPA and Spring Reign Pale Ale.
• The East Burn Beer Belly Dinner for March featured Ninkasi.
• One of my favorite beers at the Lucky Lab Barleywine Festival was Ninkasi's 2010 Critical Hit.

The ticket pictured above is from a 6-pack commemorative party two Saturdays ago.  Heh heh, "drinketfaster".  Take that, Ticketbastard.  I heartily applaud Ninkasi's move to six-packs.  The $12-13 SPE price on Total Domination 22-ounce bombers always rankled me.  It looks like the six-packs are going to have a regular price of about $10, usually on sale at $9?  I'll take it, especially if Believer gets down to that price.  By the way, the other day Zupan's -- which I always think of as having ridiculous beer prices -- had Ninkasi bombers for $3 (SPE $9.82).

A few days after that, this past Thursday, Carla and I went to the Ninkasi dinner at EastBurn, hosted by brewer Jamie Floyd.  If you haven't been to one of these monthly dinners, pick a brewer you like and go to one.  $35 gets you a really nice 5-course meal, 5 or 6 beers, and congenial company on the back porch.  Proceeds benefit Ride On.  Thursday most of the Ninkasi offerings were pretty standard:  Spring Reign, Believer, Total Domination, Tricerahops.  The dessert was served with side-by-side samples of Oatis and Vanilla Oatis, the latter dry-hopped with vanilla beans, which add a delicate sweetness to the already smooth oatmeal stout.  We also got a taste of Ninkasi's 2011 entry in Eugene's KLCC Collaboration -- a sessionable pale ale that Jamie hopped with Hop Union's Falconer's Flight hop pellets.

Friday I snuck over for a brief session at the Lucky Lab's Barleywine Festival.  I hope to write a little more about the fest in a couple days, but as I said above, one of the winners in my book was Ninkasi's 2010 Critical Hit.  It was a classic take, located on the Old Foghorn/Bigfoot branch of the barleywine family tree, with decent but not overpowering alcohol heat and massive hops.  I preferred the fresh article to the 2009 version, which was still good, but quite a bit cloudier and with less distinct flavors (maybe a little oxidation already creeping in also).

Speaking of Critical Hit, I won an EastBurn hoodie at the dinner Thursday night by answering -- close enough -- Jamie's trivia question about how he came up with the name Critical Hit.  Luckily, Jeff Alworth had mentioned that bit of information to me recently:  it's a Dungeons and Dragons double-damage dice roll.  Pretty cool name for a barleywine, actually.  Er, not cool, but apt.

Just four years ago, who could have foreseen Ninkasi's meteoric rise to become the brewery with the biggest-selling IPA in Oregon?  That is, who besides Jamie and company?  Keep your eye on them:  the six-packs are going to propel them even further in their goal of Total Domination.

Six-Pack Equivalent iPhone Apps

Earlier this month I introduced you to Lindsey's Android phone app for calculating six-pack equivalent (SPE) prices.  The SPE is a handy way to compare prices when beer is served in various quantities.  When I wrote about Lindsey's app, there was a general outcry from the other 99% of smartphone users that there should be an iPhone app for calculating SPEs.

I'm pleased to announce that there are now not one, but two iPhone SPE apps, thanks to two enterprising readers.  First out of the gate was Shawn Bernard, whose ad-free SPE calculator will set you back a mere 99 cents.  A competing app by Mark Rickert is an ad-supported free Six-Pack Equivalent calculator.  Full disclosure: I have a gentleman's agreement with these guys to kick me back 10% of everything they make over $50K on these apps.  I'm gonna be rich.

Meanwhile, Lindsey has been busy, and he now has a "Buy Me a Beer" ad-free edition of his Android SPE app, selling for $2.  Of course, if you're an Android user and you don't want to buy Lindsey a beer, or buy me 1/500,000^th of a beer, he still offers an ad-supported free version.

The Bomber Price Penalty

The thing that got me started comparing and tracking beer prices was the observation that it usually costs you more -- ounce for ounce -- to have your reusable growler filled at a brewpub than it does to buy disposable bottles that have gone through packaging, wholesaling, and retailing.  This growler price penalty is apparently due to the fact that bars have a different business model than bottle shops and groceries.  But there's a related pricing issue that doesn't make any sense at all:  the disparity between the retail prices of 22-ounce bombers and 12-ounce bottles sold in 6- or 12-packs.

Don't start in on me with comments like "if you want it, just pay the price, otherwise shut up".  I'm not saying that no bomber is worth the price.  But it is worth pointing out that: 1. The exact same beer costs more in big bottles than in small ones, and 2. Similar products such as soda pop or liquor are priced in the opposite way -- bigger packages cost less per ounce than smaller ones.  To illustrate the point, I'll show you the price difference for a few beers I saw recently at a big grocery store in Portland, and also a similar comparison of Coca-Cola prices (Pepsi prices were identical).  We'll use the legal tender of It's Pub Night: the U.S. dollar and the Six-Pack Equivalent (SPE).

• Anchor Steam:
  
  • bomber: $3.39 (SPE $11.09)
  • 6-pack: $9.29
  • penalty: $1.80
   
• Deschutes Mirror Pond:
  
  • bomber: $2.89 (SPE $9.46)
  • 6-pack (sale): $5.99
  • penalty: $3.47
   
• MacTarnahan's Amber:
  
  • bomber (sale): $2.69 (SPE $7.43)
  • 12-pack (sale): $12.99 (SPE 6.50)
  • penalty: $0.93
   
• Sierra Nevada Pale Ale:
  
  • 24 oz. bomber: $2.89 (SPE $8.67)
  • 6-pack (sale): $6.99
  • penalty: $1.68
   
• Widmer Hef:
  
  • bomber: $2.99 (SPE $9.79)
  • 12-pack (sale): $11.99 (SPE $6.00)
  • penalty: $3.79
   
• Coca-Cola:
  
  • 2-liter bottle (sale): $1.67 (SPE $1.78)
  • 12-pack (sale): $5.00 (SPE $2.50)
  • discount: $0.72

For each of the above beers, I took the lowest big-bottle price and compared its SPE to that of the lowest small-bottle price. That highlights another aspect of the bomber trickery: bomber prices are marked down less frequently than 6-packs or 12-packs, which are on sale almost every single day at big groceries. In case you're worried about apples-to-apples comparisons, even if I use non-sale six-pack prices for those matchups where the bombers weren't marked down, the bomber penalty is still 80 cents for Deschutes and $1 for Widmer, though Sierra Nevada did fall into line with about a 52-cent discount.

Nor was the Coke pricing a fluke -- there was a similar discount at several groceries around town. By the way, even though I translated the cola prices into SPE, the grocery shelf tags at most stores give you comparison prices in pints. Kind of backwards -- I usually think of cans of pop, and pints of beer.

Spread the word about the bomber price penalty. The fact that no other product is priced with a volume penalty instead of a volume discount leads me to believe that bomber pricing is simply a swindle.

That Is Cheap

Not long ago I was mocking the little beer store on Hawthorne just east of 20th for their pitiable selection. But today Dave radioed me that every bomber in the shop was for sale for just $2. So I scooted around there and found a few things that were well worth the $6.55 SPE that represents. Sure, that's not much less expensive than the usual MacTarnahan's/Pyramid bomber price, but even a 20-cent markdown lowers the SPE by 65 cents.

And that's a hellacious price on Prima Pils and Sinist0r. Dave has even rounded up $2 Total Domination bombers there before, though they didn't have any today. The shopkeeper told me that they try to clear out the stock over the weekend, starting Thursdays, so you might check in there late in the week to see if they have any bargains.

Small Are Beautiful

I'm talking about bottles, of course.

Back in college or shortly thereafter, my friend Bret was contentedly sucking down a can of Milwaukee's Best Light at a party when he was accosted by a preppy kid who told him, "Life's too short to drink cheap beer!" as he waved his 7-ounce Little Kings bottle in Bret's face.  In one of the finest comebacks on record, Bret shot back, "Life's too cheap to drink short beer!".

Setting aside the multiple ironies of that exchange, I want to talk about two beers that have recently been repackaged in smaller bottles than before.  Three cheers to Bridgeport for making Hop Czar cheaper and shorter.  It makes more sense to sell a 7-8% beer in six-packs of 12-ounce bottles than it does to sell it in 22-ounce bottles.  Anyone recall what bombers of Hop Czar sold for?  I'm thinking it was $5, or an SPE of $16.36.  The six-packs have been on sale around town for $7 -- less than half the price.  Hop Czar is now a constant fixture in my fridge.

It's one thing to open a 22-ounce bottle of 8% beer, but Rogue was selling their big beers -- like the 11% Russian Imperial Stout -- in even bigger 750 ml bottles (25 ounces).  The news that Rogue's XS series would now be sold in 7-ounce bottles took the Twitternet by storm a few weeks ago.  It's obviously a much more reasonable size for such big beers.

But instead of halving the price as Bridgeport did, Rogue took advantage of the switcheroo to raise the price about 5%.  At Belmont Station, the big bottle of RIS sold for $16.49, and the new small ones are $4.79; the SPE went from $46.82 to $49.27.  Which is even more surprising when you consider that the big pottery swing-top must be a much more expensive package than the regular-old glass bottles with a cap.  The beer is good -- I bought one of the 7-ouncers and drank it even though the bottle (wisely) recommended aging for a year -- but it's not $50 six-pack good.  That's more than $10 over the SPE for Deschutes Abyss.

Apparently Ninkasi is building a new bottling line that will let them move into six-packs.  When they do, watch out! Total Domination usually has an SPE of $13.09 -- I think their retail sales will go through the roof if they bring out $7-$8 six-packs.

Since I mentioned Abyss above, what do you think about Deschutes putting some of their bruisers like Abyss or Mirror Mirror into smaller bottles?  They could go Rogue and have a little higher margin if they went from $12 bombers to $4 sevens, or they could give us a break and sell them for $3.50 and leave off the wax coating.

Anyone heard of any other breweries moving to smaller formats?  Shorter, or cheaper, or both?

Captured by Porches Friday Rye Ale

Hats off to Captured by Porches Brewing Company for entering the retail market with returnable bottles. I picked up a bottle of CBP's Friday Rye Ale at Beermongers a couple days ago; their flagship Invasive Species IPA is also on the shelves. It's a nice bottle, a 750 ml swing-top; the deposit is $1.00 per bottle. According to CBP's blog, making bottles out of recycled glass is only 30% more energy efficient than making them from raw materials. So the effort to reuse bottles is a welcome return to common sense.

That's all well and good, but if the beer isn't any good, then who cares? I'm happy to report that the bottle-conditioned Friday Rye Ale is really well done. It's tangy and hoppy, with a dry bitterness that lingers on the tongue. The bottle I had was super effervescent at first -- it didn't pour with a huge head, but the bottle opened with a loud pop, and the first sips filled my mouth with very fizzy fine bubbles. The night before I had a Wry Pale Ale at Laurelwood -- very tasty, by the way -- and the Friday was at least as good as that, maybe even a little better.

The bottles are priced near the low end of the bomber range -- $3.80 at Beermongers -- but because they are a little bigger than 22-ounce bombers, they have a cheaper SPE of $10.79 compared to $12.44 for a bomber of the same price. I'd be happier if the price was closer to six-pack price, but it's a start.

Now I'm eager to try a bottle of the IPA. In the past I wasn't very impressed with Captured by Porches, but it had been awhile since I had their beer, so this delicious bottle of Friday Rye gives me hope that they're moving onward and upward. [Update 2010/02/12: Well, I did try a returnable bottle of the IPA, and it's as I remember it. Tastes homebrewy; muddled flavors and too sweet. Stick with the Rye.]

Portland Beer Price Index: Autumn 2009

Announcing the results of the first Portland Beer Price Index (drumroll, please...): the average price of a six-pack of Oregon craft beer in Southeast Portland is $8.85. A 22-ounce bomber averages $4.90, and 16 ounces of quality draft beer will typically set you back $4.27. Not very fascinating information, but my real goal is to calculate the PBPI four times a year, so we can watch price trends over time. That might not turn out to be very fascinating, either, but from where I sit in the United States of $9 Six-Packs, I wish I could see the trend that took us here from five dollars or less.

Since the PBPI is based on regular retail and non-happy-hour prices, you can almost always get something a buck or two cheaper. In the future, I might also collect sale prices on the same day that I gather the regular prices, but I didn't want to get in over my head on this first mission. Here is what went into the index:

• Six-packs: Bridgeport IPA, Caldera Pale Ale, Deschutes Black Butte Porter, Full Sail Amber, Terminal Gravity IPA, Widmer Broken Halo
• Bombers: Hopworks IPA, Laurelwood Red, Lompoc C-Note, Ninkasi Total Domination, Pelican IPA, Rogue Shakespeare Stout
• Stores: Beermongers (bombers only), Belmont Station, Fred Meyers, New Seasons, Safeway (six-packs only)
• Bars: Bailey's Taproom, Barley Mill, Belmont Station, Deschutes, Green Dragon, Hopworks, Horse Brass, Lucky Lab, Vincente's Pizza
• SPE: Six-pack equivalent prices: bombers, $16.04; pints, $19.22
• Not included: bottle deposits, bartender tips

The retail beers were chosen to be respectable craft brews from a variety of Oregon breweries. It's a little Portland-heavy, but it does include things from eastern and southern Oregon, Bend, the coast, and the Gorge. I also wanted selections that were likely to be widely available. The brand-new Beermongers surprised me with a curve-ball, though: so far they only carry one of the six-packs on the index. I couldn't even choose substitutes from the same brewery, because they didn't have a single beer from Caldera, Terminal Gravity, or Deschutes (?!), and their only Full Sail was 12-packs of Session. Safeway -- less surprisingly -- also came up a little light, with none of the indexed bombers, and a couple of gaps in the six-pack list.

For the pint prices, I took the most typical price of a pint-like serving at the place, and converted it to an SPE price based on the glassware. The average of all of those is the $19.22 SPE reported above; then to make it intelligible, I converted it back to a price per 16 ounces, since that's the most common way for people to think of a pint (even though most of the time you're served a little more or a little less than that).

Notice that the bomber SPE isn't far from what you'd pay for pints in a bar. And that's the average, so it's really just barely below the most economical imperial-pint establishments: Lucky Lab, Horse Brass, and Bailey's. Tips will increase your costs, but some of the best beer specials around town come in way below the bomber SPE: Tuesdays at Roots ($9.47) or East Burn ($9.60), or Mondays at the Lucky Lab ($12.32). You could tip lavishly on top of that and still spend less than on bombers. Support your local pub!

Next quarter's PBPI will be out right around Christmas.

Fresh Hop Frenzy

It was the night the lights went out in Portland. When the Pub Nighters moved from Bridgeport to the Rogue Public House last night, we found a startlingly dark bar, the result of a blown transformer somewhere in the Pearl. Probably not what Rogue had in mind for the Portland debut of their Chateau Wet Hop fresh-hop ale. Due to the darkness, I didn't have to show my Rogue identification papers to receive a 75-cent discount on my shaker pint. It still cost me $5 -- Pow! That hurt after the $4.25 imperial pints of Hop Harvest at Bridgeport. That's an SPE of $16.11 for Bridgeport vs. $24 for Rogue -- but not as bad as the $27.60 SPE that Rogue would charge to undocumented drinkers in its territory.

But the best SPE for us last night was at Deschutes, where some lucky timing and mistaken identity got us our beers on the house (we did tip the bartenders handsomely). Deschutes had the same power outage as Rogue. The lights came back on just as we arrived, but they had already decided to close for the night and make sure everything was back on track after the outage. We blurted out that we were there for the Hop Trip, and for some reason that got us ushered into the bar with a company sales rep, who told the bartenders to set us up. The Hop Trip was quite good, but it turned out they also had fresh-hopped Mirror Pond and fresh-hopped Hop Henge (!) both on cask. Oh my goodness. The fresh-hopped Mirror Pond is as good as it was last year; I have to proclaim it the new Fresh Hop Champion. Amazingly fresh flowery flavor, on top of the just right pale ale body. The fresh Hop Henge was also fabulously good, big and chewy, and hoppy of course, but without the almost gritty hoppiness of some of the Hop Henge experiments.

No one I talked to last night -- the Pub Night gang, plus Beer Advocates Josh and Sean that I ran into -- was very impressed with the 2009 Bridgeport Hop Harvest, but for me it was exactly what I'm looking for in a fresh-hop ale. I'd compare it to this year's Full Sail Lupulin, which I consider to be one of the best. There's kind of a honeyed quality to the best fresh-hop beers, that isn't entirely due to the malt. Contrast that with the Rogue Chateau Wet Hop, where the fresh hops didn't really bring anything noticeable to the flavor.

I've got to hand it to Charles and his iPhone. I was totally unprepared for a Pearl pub crawl, and I didn't have the Beer Mapping Project codes in my phone for anyplace but Deschutes. Thanks, buddy. My obsessive need to update my twitter map would have driven me insane.

Don't miss out on the fresh-hop Mirror Pond and Hop Henge at Deschutes. It's a wonderful experience.

Your Thoughts on Beer Prices?

I'd like your input on an idea I've been kicking around for a little over a year. After I published the map of Portland growler prices, Jeff Alworth suggested the notion of the Growler Price Index, or GPI. He figured that the average cost of a growler around town was $10, so if you saw one cheaper than that, it was a good deal.

Taking Jeff's idea one step further, I'd like to compute quarterly price indexes for beer in Portland, so that we can watch price trends over time. It seems like the following indexes would be interesting:

• Retail six-pack index
• Retail bomber index
• Pub pint index
• Pub happy-hour pint index
• Pub pitcher index
  
• And, yes, growler price index

The retail prices will be the average of non-sale prices of a collection of year-round Oregon beers, at a few representative Portland outlets. Similarly, the pub prices will be taken from a few beer bars, based on the usual price of a pint. For instance, an imperial pint is usually $4.50 at Bailey's Taproom, though of course some selections cost more. Pub prices will be normalized to six-pack equivalents, using either the fill line on the bar's glassware, or by taking the volume of the glass and subtracting two ounces for head/air.

Ideally I would gather these prices 4 times a year, on the solstices and equinoxes -- the upcoming equinox is what motivated me to finally ask for help. With the caveat that this has to be a doable chunk of work for me, and it can't be all things to all people, I would like your advice on the following matters:

1. Which beers go into the retail six-pack index and bomber index?
2. Which retail outlets do I gather the prices from?
3. Which bars do I gather the prices from?
4. Do brewpubs go into a separate category than non-brewing pubs?
5. Is the happy hour price the lowest pint price at the place (e.g. Roots $2.50 Tuesday) or the daily happy hour price (Roots $3.50 happy hour)?
   

Here are my proposed answers, please comment and let me know what you think:

1. Six-packs: Bridgeport IPA, Deschutes Black Butte, Full Sail Amber, Terminal Gravity IPA, Widmer Broken Halo. Bombers: Hopworks IPA, Laurelwood Red, Lompoc C-Note, Ninkasi Total Domination, Rogue Brutal Bitter.
2. Retail stores: Beermongers, Belmont Station, Fred Meyers, New Seasons.
3. Bars: Bailey's Taproom, Belmont Station, Green Dragon, Horse Brass, Vincente's Pizza.
4. Brewpubs: Barley Mill, Bridgeport, Deschutes, Hopworks, Laurelwood, Lucky Lab, New Old Lompoc, Roots, Widmer Gasthaus

What changes would you make, either to the details or to the whole scheme?

Beermongers Now Open!

Only a couple of months behind schedule, a new bottle shop has opened at the corner of 12th and Division: The Beermongers. Last night they were celebrating the "soft opening" with balloons and a keg of Ninkasi Total Domination. The shop currently has about 185 kinds of beer on the shelf, with room to bump it up to about 250. Beermongers is open 11 AM to 9 PM, seven days a week.

You might ask yourself, what's a success strategy for a smallish beer store in Southeast Portland? They're not far from New Seasons on Division, which has a really good beer selection. And they don't plan to match the 1000-beer selection of Belmont Station. So what is the angle? Surprisingly, Beermongers plans to compete on price, with prices lower than Belmont, New Seasons, convenience stores, or even Fred's or Safeway. I never would have come up with that idea, but it sure warms my penny-pinching heart.

The proprietors are Sean Campbell and Craig Gulla, a couple of longtime McMenamins employees, seen here ringing up a $9 12-pack of Session Lager -- that's an old-timey SPE of $4.91. Craig told me that the plan is to keep the everyday prices low, and not rely on special sale prices. That's a nice price on Session: on my way home I stopped into New Seasons and saw it priced at $12. Some other low prices I noticed were:

• Bridgeport IPA: $6 6-pack
• North Coast Old Rasputin: $7.80 4-pack
• Unibroue 750ml bottles: $6.35
• Paulaner Salvator: $2.05 half-liter

[Update 2009/09/23: Turns out these were extra-low grand-opening prices. Session is now $11-something, Bridgeport $7.20, Paulaner $2.50. Not those original 25% discounts, but still good prices.]

The space itself reminded me a lot of By the Bottle in Vancouver, and the beers are arranged by style similarly to By the Bottle and Belmont Station. Even though there are plenty of snob-worthy beers, Beermongers also stocks Bud-Miller-Coors and Pabst, priced aggressively. They have an on-site license, so future plans include a small bar with three or four local taps, and a little bit of seating if you want to sample a bottle right off the shelf. Craig said they also plan to stock a small selection of reasonably-priced wines to cater to multi-beverage households. It would have saved me a trip to New Seasons last night, so I think their instincts are good.

I've heard two different rumors of pubs that might go in across the street from Beermongers, so this corner of Ladd's Addition might be a happening little beer area in the coming years. Best of luck to The Beermongers in their new venture!

More Thoughts on 2009 OBF

There's probably not much more I can tell you about this year's Oregon Brewers Festival. I already wrote a bunch of picks and pans based on Thursday and Friday visits. Our houseguests from Austin -- Bobnoxious and family -- didn't arrive until Friday evening, so we made yet another foray into the OBF on Saturday, along with the brave or merely foolhardy faction of the neighborhood beer gang. The heat and the crowds eventually ran us off, though Bob and I stuck it out until almost 5. Despite the crowds, I love the OBF. Get there early and have a great time.

Saturday I tried to sample beers from some of the smaller Oregon and Washington breweries that I had missed on Thursday and Friday. Most of the offerings were disappointing, including several that I simply dumped out after a sip, but a couple of winners were the Kraken Imperial IPA from Old Market, and the Old Man River Oatmeal Stout from Riverport in far eastern Washington. Old Market's IPA was big, oily, and orangey, very well done. I haven't been a fan of their beer in the past, but their website brags about a new 15 barrel brewhouse, so maybe quality is on the rise there. Riverport is a new one on me, but their OBF stout was dark, roasty, and just right.

The other mission on Saturday was the OBF Buzz Tent. The Buzz Tent offered a kind of PlatinumPlus festival experience, where a $20 punch-card offered 8 tastes of special beers curated by beerfest guru Preston Weesner. You had to show your card to get admission to the tent, which offered a shady, grassy respite from the bigger crowds in the main tents. With no lines -- or very short ones -- and some of the brewers on hand to discuss their featured beers, the only thing it lacked was restroom facilities.

Only 1000 Buzz Tent tickets were to be available for noon-4:30 sessions on Friday and Saturday. But the tickets didn't sell out this year, and Saturday afternoon Ron Gansberg was standing at the gate trying to hawk some more of them, and on Sunday no ticket was required, just double tokens for tasters -- hey, that's cheaper than the $2.50/taste with the cards. It was an interesting experiment, and according to Preston it will be back with improvements next year.

Talking about the buzz tent prices, it's interesting to compare the six-pack equivalent prices of the various OBF options. By far the most reasonable SPE is for the single-token 4-ounce taste: $18. That's really not bad, practically like happy-hour pub prices, maybe cheaper when you consider that most servers go a little over the 4-ounce line. On the other hand, the 4-token charge for a full mug is less of a deal. In my unscientific Pyrex experiment, an OBF mug brimming with water was just barely 14 ounces. Let's say that a beer pour is 13 ounces, then the SPE is $22.15. The buzz tent samples were quite a bit more expensive: SPE of $45 -- that's just slightly more than the SPE for strong special beers at the Green Dragon, but a much better deal than 3-4 token samples at the Portland International Beerfest. [Update: Hops and Barley Blog has an ingenious solution to the full-pour problem. Best of all, you can apply it at any festival where the SPE of a taste is less than that of a full pour.]

To sum up, here are some things to keep in mind for future OBFs:

• get there early -- preferably Thursday or Friday -- and beat the crowds
  
• full mugs are not as good a deal as single samples
• buzz tent is a good way to get out of the crowd and taste some special stuff

Six-Pack Equivalent Calculator

In my frequent tirades against high growler prices, I make the claim that the cost of filling a growler with beer should be in the ballpark of the price of a six-pack of similar quality. They serve the same end, namely taking some beer home. Thus was born the six-pack equivalent, or SPE: a way to wrap your mind around the cost of filling a growler.

Even though no one would expect beer consumed at the point of sale to be priced similarly to a retail six-pack, the six-pack equivalent is still a useful way to compare prices in a situation where the volumes offered are different. For example, in writing up PGE Park, I compared the SPE of PGE's 12 and 20 ounce cups ($45 and $29.70 respectively). Or you could compare the price of imperial pints at Bailey's Taproom with that of cheater pints nearby at Henry's, and see who gives you a better deal.

To that end, here is a six-pack equivalent calculator (below). [Update 2011/01/01: My neighbor Lindsey has now turned this into an Android phone app! Fitting, because he originally inspired the SPE by comparing growler prices with single-bottle prices. Further update: Now there are also two iPhone SPE apps.]

  Someone is selling beer in

64 ounce growlers
750 ml bottles
22 ounce bottles
0.5 liter (16.9 ounce) bottles
12 ounce bottles or cans
33 cl bottles
7 ounce bottles

glasses with 20 ounce fill line (Brewers Union Local 180)
glasses with 0.5 liter fill line (Deschutes)
glasses with 16 ounce fill line (Belmont Station)
glasses with 0.4 liter fill line (Hopworks)
20 ounce glasses (19 oz. of liquid)
16 ounce glasses (15 oz. of liquid)
cheater pints (13 oz. of liquid)

servings of   ounces
servings of     liters

15.5 gallon kegs (1/2 barrel)
7.75 gallon pony kegs (1/4 barrel)
5.16 gallon (1/6 barrel) kegs
5 gallon Cornelius kegs
5 liter mini-keg
1 gallon container

---

singly
in quantities of

---

  for the price of

$

---

  

  The six-pack equivalent (SPE) price is:

It helps put a lot of things into perspective. For instance, I was surprised to find that my $11 bombers of Mirror Mirror cost me an SPE of $36. Compare Sierra Nevada Bigfoot for about $11/six-pack at the 7-11. Or consider that Full Sail Session -- because of the 11-ounce bottles -- has an SPE of $6 for an $11 12-pack. Not as good as the $5.50 if the bottles held 12 ounces.I was just guessing about how much actual beer is in 20- or 16-ounce glasses, figuring you lose about an ounce for the head on the beer. Anyone have any scientific data?

Also, let's have a round of applause for those establishments with a fill line marked on the glass: Brewers Union, Deschutes, Belmont Station, and Hopworks.

Give the calculator a whirl. Find any interesting bargains or rip-offs?

Beer at PGE Park

PGE Park is a cute little ballpark. It's handy to have the home of Beavers baseball and Timbers soccer right downtown, in a place you could bike to, or possibly walk to, with a MAX line running right past it. It's completely ludicrous that anyone would think of 1. Moving the town's baseball team out of downtown, or 2. Spending millions of dollars to "renovate" a stadium whose last renovation isn't paid off, and which is actually pretty nice the way it is right now. By the way, some of those millions are tax dollars.

Speaking of high prices, let's talk about having a beer at the ballgame. Your best bet is Thirsty Thursdays, when a 12-ounce cup of Widmer or the like is half-price: $3.75. Here at It's Pub Night, our unit of currency is the six-pack equivalent (SPE), so your Thirsty Thursday SPE is $22.50. On non-thirsty days of the week, let them supersize your beer to 20 ounces for $8.25 -- SPE $29.70 -- instead of submitting to the 12-ounce SPE of $45.

The concession stands in the park are stocked mostly with Miller Lite, with taps of Widmer Hef or Drop Top interspersed. Beer snobs need to be aware of the two locations in the ballpark with better beer selections: the beer garden, and the Beer Here stand between Sections G and H.

Widmer's beer garden, located at playing field level along the right-field line, serves Broken Halo and Drifter in addition to the aforementioned Hef and Drop Top. They also serve some wine and cocktails. The beer garden is a great trick for cheapskates: buy a general admission ticket, show up early, and get a front-row seat in the beer garden. For the price of the bleacher seats with no back, you get cast-iron lawnchairs and a table to set your drinks and nachos on. It's not the ideal location for watching baseball, but for soccer it's almost at the same spot as the premium seats, only closer. Kids are allowed there except on Thursdays.

If you simply must have a non-Widmer beer, then you'll need to check out the Beer Here stand. Wait a minute! That's the name of Mr. Foyston's blog, The Beer Here. That's a nice homage -- I might drop my resistance to the stadium boondoggle if the new ballpark in Lents were to be called It's Pub Night Field. Anyway, the little beer stand between sections G & H has six non-Widmer taps:

• Deschutes Green Lakes Organic Ale
• Diamond Knot IPA
• Mac and Jack's African Amber
• Pyramid Slim Chance
• Heineken
• Tecate

Well, it's not as good a selection as at PDX airport, but it gives you something to work with. I have a soft spot for the Mac and Jack's, a tasty, satisfying beer; Diamond Knot IPA rates a whopping 98 on Beer Advocate, and Green Lakes is quite nice as well. There's not even a slim chance that I'd have the other three, but who knows, maybe someone will like them. The Beer Here also has a few 12-ounce bottles for sale -- there were some Deschutes bottles like Black Butte, and I believe I saw a bottle of Guinness, but nothing really noteworthy. They should stock some 22's of Ninkasi, or the new bottles from Hopworks and New Old Lompoc.

The schedule of Timbers and Beavers home games is here. If you're in the mood to try out a Thirsty Thursday, there's a Beavers game tonight. Play ball!

Cheap Growlers at Hopworks

When I complain about the price difference between six-packs and draft growlers in Portland, I always get comments pointing out that pubs have a different cost structure than bottling breweries. The commenters patiently explain that the only fair comparison is between growler prices and the price of pints or pitchers served at the bar.

That makes sense from the business perspective, but at some point the business perspective has to take into account the customer perspective, which just checks the price of beer to-go. In my original rant, I mused that cheaper growlers "could even be a way to boost pub business: sit down for a pint and get a discount on your growler fill".

Hopworks has a similar sensible idea. Get some food to go, and get a growler discount. Here's how they describe it in their latest email newsletters:

Greenspand-er To-Go Deal! Order a large pizza and growler to-go and get $5 off! In these uncertain economic times it’s nice to know you can still fill up on tasty organic beer and pizza for less than it costs to fill your gas tank.

(Gas tank? What kind of talk is that from the bikiest brewpub in town? Oops, sorry, wrong rant.) That $5 off is the kind of deal I've been looking for. Let's do some creative accounting, and knock all the savings off of the beer rather than credit some to the pizza. That gives you a $10 Hopworks growler for $5 -- a six-pack equivalent price of $5.63. That's a good deal these days.

I haven't taken advantage of the Greenspander yet, but I love the idea. It's that kind of thinking that can help brewpubs get more of the beer-at-home market.

Portland Growler Prices

A couple weeks ago I was grousing about the high price to get beer growlers filled in Portland. With that in mind, I give you the Portland Growler Price Map, which lists the growler price at pubs around Portland, as well as the Six-Pack Equivalent price:


View Larger Map

Click on the individual thumbtacks on the map, to get details for that location. A lot of the information on this map was stolen from the Champagne of Blogs' growler index, augmented with a few things I investigated on my own.

You Can Help

A lot of the prices on the map were a year or more out of date on Day One. And many worthy establishments are not yet listed. I'll volunteer to keep this updated for the Portland metro area (say, a 20 mile radius), but I need all of you to send me current information. Use the email address in the sidebar: for each pub that you want to update me about, please send the following data:

• Price to fill 64 ounce growler.
• Price to buy the growler itself (if available).
• Whether they'll fill competitor growlers.
• Whether they'll fill 2-quart mason jars.
• The date of your information.

They Should be Cheaper!

About those prices. My feeling is that it's silly to have to pay a premium for something that doesn't have to be packaged, distributed, and retailed. Commenters on the Growler Math post pointed out that pubs have a different business model than beer bottlers, and that economies of scale apply.

Nevertheless, beer drinkers spend some of their money in pubs, and some money on bottled beer -- let's leave our brave homebrewers out of the equation for now. Wouldn't brewpubs like to take away some of that bottled beer market? They should be able to do so if they can offer a growler price that corresponds roughly to the price of a good 6-pack.

Given the price of a 64-ounce growler, multiply it by 1.125 to get the price of 72 ounces of beer, so that you can compare the price with that of a 6-pack. So a $12 growler is like a $13.50 six-pack -- ouch! Canadian prices! On the other hand, an $8 growler is like a $9 six-pack -- not cheap, but increasingly common. I would divert a lot of my 6-pack budget to growlers if the price at places I frequent was $8 or less.

I've just been talking about the dollars-and-cents of beer growlers, but there's also the environmental aspect of reusing the beer container, and cutting down on some of the transportation and refrigeration. Beer writer Stan Hieronymous recently blogged about New Belgium Brewing's report on their carbon footprint. Stan clipped a graphic from the report that shows that 60% of the footprint is from packaging (glass and paper), distribution, and retailing. So you've cut more than half of your environmental impact from your beer drinking if you fill up locally!

Growler Math

How ridiculous is it that there are no longer returnable beer bottles? (Or pop bottles, for that matter.) In this day and age where we're worried about energy and the environment, every bottle of beer you drink is manufactured for a single use, then -- best case -- crushed into dust; worst case, tossed in a landfill.

Two-quart growlers provide you, the eco-friendly Portlander, a way to reuse a bottle, instead of sending it off to be melted and made into a different bottle. Plus you get some good, fresh local beer.

But there's a catch: in general, you get to pay more for the privilege of not using a bottle. For example, the new Deschutes pub in Portland charges $15 for a 64-ounce growler fill, about 23 cents an ounce, quite a premium over the price of a 72-ounce six-pack. Given that good Oregon beers are selling for something like $7-$9 a six-pack -- even good beers from out-of-state are in the same range -- the bottle price is somewhere between 10 and 13 cents an ounce.

Granted, $15 is on the high end of growler prices. But even the more usual price of $11 is about 17 cents an ounce. Why does it cost less to buy a six-pack, with a cut going to middlemen in the form of distributors and retailers, than to buy unpackaged beer directly from the producer?

[Update 2008/08/17]: Lindsey points out that it's confusing to talk about the price per ounce. Instead, consider that a growler holds eight-ninths the volume of a six-pack. So if you would pay $9 a six-pack, you should get a growler filled for no more than $8. An $8 six-pack equates with a $7.10 growler; $7 with $6.20. And that gives the brewer all the extra margin that used to go to packaging, distribution, and retailing. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it seems to show that growler prices could be even lower and still be a winner for the brewery.

According to the excellent growler index on the Champagne of Blogs, there are some deals to be had: $6.95 at Rock Bottom, or $4.95 at Portland Brewing -- oops, now it's $5.95 according to a comment below. If more places had growler fills that were in that six-pack price range, it would be a big boost to environmentally sound beer-drinking. Maybe it could even be a way to boost pub business: sit down for a pint and get a discount on your growler fill.

By the way, that growler index would be a great thing to put on the Portland Beer Wiki. Pubs open and prices change all the time, so it's just the thing that you want feet on the street to update. I would also be interested in growler prices at non-brewpubs: I think that any bar with a beer license could fill growlers if they wanted to.