Session #146: On Value

I used to go on and on about many things but one of my biggest beefs in years past was the broader beer discussion not only ignoring but rejecting much of the normal considerations of value. Especially relative value. You look at any critical discussion in wine, info tech, cars, pop music, clothes, food… anything… and there is someone telling you X is pretty much the same as Y but it only costs 78% as much. That’s the entire basis of consumer focused writing. Except with beer.

So it was with a large helping of interest that I read that our host Ding’s subject for this month’s edititon of The Session was value:

On the whole, I have found value in most of my purchases. That isn’t to say that all of the purchases have represented value for money, they haven’t, but I can still find tremendous value in what many people would categorize as ‘ridiculously expensive beer’. Value most certainly does not necessarily correlate with cheap either (although it could), rather it means when I part with the cash, no matter how large or small the amount, does what I receive in return meet or exceed the value of said cash? Subjective? Sure, but we all have our own sense of value.

Eighteen years ago, when this blog was a bit of a thingier thing, I wrote a piece with the title “Are Craft Beer Prices Too Low? No, They Are Not Too Low” which got a lot of attention in the comments from a lot of interesting people. It is an artifact of the era. The era of “Hooray!!!” As with the best of public and, like the psalms, responsive readings of that time I learned a lot from what was shared in the comments.  Unfortunately, I lost the ability to link to specific comments from way back when the platform for this here blog got shifted but suffice it to say that there was a range of ideas from:

Do I ask my Quebecois cheesemaker to justify the price of his or her cheese? No.

and on to:

…distillers do get asked to justify the high prices on whiskies (and even whiskeys) these days. They have a simple answer: it’s really good, it’s really rare, and we had to keep it a long time before we made any money on it.

plus:

It would be great to see more actual brewers chime in on this forum, because I think some of this talk is just absolutely ridiculous.

It all looks a bit charming from almost two decades on. I think if we consider (i) what has happened in recent years to the previously irrationally exuberant fine wine market as well as, obviously, to the whole  craft beer industry and (ii) the greater acceptance about the role of manufactured scarcity and, in a few cases, straight up avarice from those plumping the brewery for resale along with (iii) (as also seen in the comments) the genuinely held dreams of brewers fully convinced that they were making art not beer then, well, we can agree that a great rebalancing shift has occurred in the market. And it is one which allows drinks consumers to assert a greater and saner role in determining the relative value of what they buy. We are in a new era, one that pre-Obama era drinks trade might never have imagined.

So where are we now in terms of appreciating value in 2025? First, there is actual consumer generated response which creates downward pressure on price points for beer at home and in the taverns. I look to no higher authority* than The Tand on this point who wrote this very week:

If you charge an outrageous £7 a pint for @TimothyTaylors Landlord, it should be toppest of notches, not poor. (Hoop and Grapes, Aldgate.) You really shouldn’t be doing this. Get a cellar services team in to check procedures and temperature. Shocking. Started off peeved about this is. Now as I struggle through this pint, I’m hopping mad about it. And no, the beer isn’t off, just totally badly presented and the price – words fail me.

The tone! None of the “let’s get out there and raise all boats, lads!” talk circa 2009 in those fighting words. That’s raw reporting, that is.  And it didn’t stop there. The Mudge ripped back:

The average British adult only drinks about 1¼ pints of beer in a pub each week, which really isn’t very much. Drinking a lot of beer in pubs, such that it has a significant impact on your personal budget, is very much a minority pursuit. Many pubgoers are there primarily to have a meal, and if you’re happily spending £17.95 on a braised lamb shank, whether your pint of Landlord is £4.75 or £5.50 is neither here nor there. 

What the hell has he got against lamb shanks?!?  Whatever it is, I think we can agree that lamb shanks merely stand in for the consumption of all other forms of entertainment. Clearly. Which leads us to the observation that the recognition of relative value’s role goes beyond whether this beer is as good as that beer but can be had for half the price and lands squarely on the reality that the question of whether this night on the beer is as good as going to that concert or that game – or to that park or for that nap for that matter.

We still need to beware. There are still forces of anti-valutarianism about trying to grab every penny from us that they can. Just this very week, Jeff** witnessed two flailing attempts to pump desperate transfusions into the bloated corpse of IPA:

Northern IPA, an idea apparently concocted by the Lallemand Marketing Department to sell a new yeast strain, “incorporates the clean drinkability of the modern West Coast IPA with a more prominent yeast aroma profile.” Meanwhile, Matthew Curtis forwards Savo(u)ry IPA to describe a single beer from Norfolk—that’s in East Anglia—using MSG for the purpose of “stimulating your umami receptors.” All right, then!

Chemistry. BAH!! Nothing thoughtlessly opens the badly battered wallet like claims to better chemistry. Consumers take heed!  This is the sort of thing you are up against in your quest for a decent drink at a decent price. We must protect the innocence of our precious umami receptors while we can.

What is value? Freedom. That’s what.***

*I can’t apologize to The Beer Nut on this hierarchical point, given he too wears the “the” of authority, but certainly note that he wrote this very week “It’s not unpleasant, but it is extremely basic. Is it an effective substitute for the price-conscious Madrí drinker? Sure, why not?” by which we can infer his sensitivity to the combined effect climatic, inflationary and authoritarian imposition of tariffs all weighing down upon the lowly consumers’ shoulders,  pushing the mind towards critical marketplace analysis and away from happy lappy advocacy. 
**Not “The Jeff” I would note. Not yet. Oh, and here‘s what The Mattyman wrote.
***Finis. Amplifer fluens. (Applause!) Te relinquo.