Best Place to Buy Beer

It took a while to use up those thirty cans of Molson, the plain type, not the Golden.  One of the few brews that really didn't suit me, as fond as I've been of their flagship Golden Ale for so long.  Gone are my student days of the 1970s, carded everywhere even in my then home state of NY where legal age was 18.  Real introduction to various brews came in college in a state where you had to be 21 but I was not.  No matter.  Never carded at a frat or dorm party with a keg.  No craft beer then, but many regional ones.  Utica Club at the state university, Genessee a little farther north, Blatz delivered to our house as my father's preference, Rheingold and Ballentine sponsoring ball games.  At my college, it was Schmidt's and Ortliebs, each also available at home in NY, though from liquor stores, not the supermarkets that were permitted to sell beer in NY.  Then more school in St. Louis.  A dominant brand, for sure, and one that let me sample at their gargantuan brewery, easily accessible to me with a long but doable walk on a quiet afternoon, as long as I listened to Ed McMahon tapes while touring the production facility and petted the Clydesdales first.  One regional, Falstaff.  Coors was the hidden treat.  Classmates would visit Kansas City, as the Colorado brewer would not distribute east of Kansas, then bring home a few cases to sell at an acceptable markup, making it about the same price as getting Budweiser at a pub.  I eventually visited California, enjoying some there, before its distribution went national.

In those fifty-ish years, the regional brands mass produced for local distribution have become far fewer and the national, or even global brands more dominant.  As I raised my own family, beer shifted from a weekend treat or social lubricant to a staple beverage, much as it did for my father in the days when routemen would deliver that case of Blatz to his house every few weeks.  I went to the store.  In my permanent home state, only state licensed liquor stores could sell alcoholic beverages of any type.  And at the time, we had no mega-outlets, just a lot of neighborhood places mostly in small shopping centers.  

Sometimes I would look for the best buy, usually a case of Schlitz or Gennessee.  Sometimes I would upgrade to a Canadian or a European selection.  And I began to prefer bottles over cans, though cans still dominated those brands most discounted.  Even when I ate at a restaurant, the mass produced brands dominated the menu, though as draft beer rather than bottled.  

Craft beer followed.  I immediately took a liking to the variety, even willing to pay a little extra buy a carton with twelve bottles.  Sometimes all twelve were the same brew, but as the smaller companies became more focused on their brewmasters' creativity than on sales volume, some of those cartons contained three bottles each of four different blends.  And I could tell one from another.  When eating out, restaurants adapted to consumer preference for selection.  Mostly worth $2 more a pint to try a beer I've not heard of before.  As beverage menus expanded, a certain reality shown experimentally set in:  how to choose and how to be satisfied with the choice.  Selecting among six usually leaves people more content than selecting among thirty, as a number of psychology researchers have demonstrated.  The breweries themselves, and sometimes brewpubs that made their own beers, might address this by offering samplers or flights of four four-ounce portions.  But for the most part, diners had to choose their pint for the evening.  I started distinguished by familiary which I saw as a demerit, the one line description on the menu as to what the brewing additives included, and the place of origin.  If a place I would never be likely to visit, that's what I often selected.  If it was a place on my travels, I would make an effort to sample the creations at the brewery, which I began to do on many an annual distant vacation and on most shorter day trips.

The stores locally did their best to oblige, though a small operation could only carry limited brands that would sell to customers in the neighborhood.  Then came a mega-retailer.  I had lived in a place previously that had a big box liquor outlet, a place offering more alcohol related items than I could imagine.  And I visited once when I had to host a small reception for my wife's graduation.  But locally, this was a novelty.  Yet a big box branch of a national alcohol retailer opened not only near my home but right off the exit ramp of the highway that brought me home from work each day.  While they specialized in wine, they did not neglect beer.  Their scale enabled them to hire, or at least train, specialists, who would then for a nominal sum sponsor classes to make people like me more capable, or at least interested consumers.  My wife gave me a voucher for a beer class one Father's Day.  I attended.  A merger of appreciation lesson with sales promotion.

Expanded selection with shelves of everything.  And later they brought in kegs, providing a reusable growler free or at nominal cost with a fill-up.  I have one and two quart refillable bottles, which they wash before pouring, then heat seal with plastic when done.  For much of the last decade, I bought mostly twelve packs of brands that could not afford to advertise on TV.  I visited breweries near my home and when I traveled.  I liked the variety, and the premium price would not have a material effect on my retirement savings.

Then in the last year, much disappeared.  Since this particular franchise sells in high volume, what they carry needs to be displayed in large quantities.  If they cannot sell a lot, perhaps their financial people advised them to sell none.  Whether or not that is really true, the array of purchase options has declined, even if the total number of bottles and cans on display has not.  I often begin at the European shelves.  Guiness, Smithwick, Harp all there.  No recognizable British Brands.  Even Newcastle sat on different shelf with the box indicating production in Chicago.  Few from the Continent, though Belgium, Germany, Italy, Holland, and the former Czechoslovakia all with one entry each.  No St. Pauli Girl, though what's sold in America comes from St. Louis.  Japan, Asia, China, the brands you order with that  cuisine in restaurants, apparently not on the retail shelves.  Canadian beers still had Moosehead & Squirrel, and at an attractive price, so I needn't leave the store without purchase, that being one of my favorites.  Molson's display was but a fraction of their varieties, Lablatt not there at all. Mexican beers seemed the shelves to have maintained its varieties.  In the middle, huge amounts of the mass produced American brews, especially surplus of Bud Light, apparently the victim of an organized politically generated boycott, though not yet discounted to restore sales volume.  Less Miller, not a lot of Coors.  Yeungling plentiful in all its varieties.  I ultimately purchased 12 bottles of their Black & Tan, another reliable best buy.  Cheap domestic always gets a look.  Genessee, Schlitz, some Narragansset, and always Pabst whose Blue Ribbon would not be duplicated today.

What I tend to buy, or at least spend the most time assessing value for price, are the beers that were once innovators but whose popularity has brought them to the edge of mass production, or beyond.  Many have been taken over by brewing behemoths.  These have contracted most noticeably.  Most of these now intermediate size breweries prided themselves on creating new tastes.  A few new flavors would be issued most years, sometimees packaged as four bottles each of three varieties in their 12-packs.  Dogfish Head, Sam Adams, Lagunitas, Kona Brewery would have boxes of multiple types as well as seasonal brews for the summer, Octoberfest, or winter festivals.  Not more than one or two varieties per brewer on the shelves at my recent visit.  Annheuser and Guiness have reasons to pride themselves in their processes of making every can of a single type taste exactly the same from batch to batch and year to year.  The variability of the craft beers, its small production quantities, its replacement months or a year later with a different taste, provided the distinction between the megacorporations and the innovators.  

In reality, though, while the selection depleted quite a lot, I really only needed to purchase one carton of twelve, which I did.  It was the enjoyment of choosing from among endless possibilities which disappeared.

Perhaps a smaller retailer not required to sell in bulk would carry smaller quantities of each brew but a more interesting selection of the brands that were stocked.  That turned out to be the case. Prior to big box liquor coming to the area, the store with the best reputation for variety could be found not far from my synagogue.  The place of worship has relocated so I have almost no reason to be in that neighborhood.  However, sometimes I need to visit the medical complexes as a blood donor or a patient.  To get home, I exit the highway north, but if I exited south instead, it would take me to this once premier liquor store, that remains a place for specialty or niche potables.

Not many shoppers early on a Tuesday afternoon.  Some promotional twelve packs at the front door, but most option along the left wall.  Many refrigerated.  Following the length of the wall new options appeared, then turn right and there were some more.  Brands familiar only to the home state where brewed.  But also mid-sized producers, which is what I got.  A basic Fat Tire Ale, which rang up $2 more at the register than on the price label, but I just wanted to get this so no challenge when I offered my credit card.  Toted it to my trunk, drove home.

After recovering a little from the platelet donation, I took each half-case inside, placed two bottles of Black & Tan and two bottles of Fat Tire in the refrigerator.  It will take a while to consume all 24 bottles.

I do not know why the experience of purchasing beer has declined.  It may be limitations of supply chain that affect most other manufactured products. Even small operations depend on ingredients produced far away, just the right hops from a contractor, barley and other grains, the flavorings that may add, perhaps water treatments.  And there are labor concerns.  The really local breweries have a proud owner-brewmaster.  Anything larger needs employees, including some skilled ones.

My own consumption is not that much, maybe five selections over the course of a year at retailers, a few more than that if I go out once or twice a month.  Even with what appears an annoyingly restrictive selection, I will still have an acceptable bottle or pint of suds to go with supper when I want it.