Value beers (part 1)

As I start this blog, I’ve decided to do a series on “value beers”. How do I define that? Well, I could define it like young Steve, a student at UNC, who defines value as the % of alcohol in the beer per price of a 12 oz serving. In other words, beer has value if you can get blasted on your pocket change.

I prefer to define “value” in beer as the best quality and taste for the buck. We all know that the Belgian tripel can be quite expensive, easily $9 or more for 25oz. But just as the Honda Odyssey is a Consumer Reports best buy, because of its quality and reliability, despite being the most expensive minivan, those fine Belgian beers might be so darn delicious that they still are a value. Just as with wines, you can introduce yourself to a different strata of beer quality and flavor without spending a ton of money.

My picks will obviously be subjective. I will recommend beers I enjoy and that I think are among the best beers that are widely available. That last bit is important. I want to select beers that you can find readily. And unfortunately, there are some great regional beers, in the Pacific Northwest or in the Northeast, for example, that I can’t get here in Colorado. And some great ones here that you can’t get.

I will use retail price at the place of purchase in the value equation. Your price may vary by as much as $2 for a six-pack. And I won’t count sale prices, but you should watch for them: Most beers go on sale a few times during the year. In fact, some of the larger liquor stores can have amazing sales. A year ago, I got single 16.9oz bottles of Fuller’s 1845 at the Boulder Liquor Mart for $1.99 each!

The measure of beer quality will be Ratebeer’s percentile score. I would prefer an absolute number rather than a percentile. (I haven’t thought through the possible ramifications of doing it this way yet.) But the percentile of between 1 and 100 will provide a greater differentiation in the bang-for-buck calculation across different beers.

Finally, I will use ratebeer.com’s rating format for my own tasting notes. An instructional article on rating beer is here. And a Word form for conducting your own ratings is here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 20th, 2007 at 3:04 am and is filed under Tasting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.