Limited Release Beers!

>Why the fuck do they do this?
because you probably wouldn't have even heard of them if they didn't have an ultra-rare limited release

>>8410890
Part of it is to create artificial rarity and drive up interest/prices.

But most brewers really do have limited capacity. I used to live next to a brewery manager, and he would talk about how he had to decide months in advance which of the fermentation vats (of which there were only a half-dozen) would be brewing which beers and for which periods of time.

There usually isn't a "spare tank" unless one has been taken offline for servicing/cleaning. They are usually always in production mode, and production is usually based on what they expect to sell.

If you take a big bet on a limited-run flavor and it tanks, you've just wasted a lot of your production capacity. That's why a lot of bigger runs begin as limited runs, and if interest is high, they get "promoted."

>>8410890

Google "scarcity value"

You take a good beer, brew it and release it once a year, and you will guarantee it all will sell at the highest price point year after year after year.

You take a good beer, brew it every month and release it year-round, and you spoil your fans. They will seek variety and venture into other craft beer markets to satiate that desire.

Limited releases keep your customers under your thumb, and ensure they will throw money at you as long as you keep brewing that Double Chocolate Coffee Imperial Oatmeal Milk Stout Aged In Bourbon Barrels For 5 Years With Brettanomyces And Gold Shavings Added.

I work in sales for a craft brewery, and limited-release beers basically serve 2 purposes:

1: To keep people talking about the brewery and maintain interest.

2: To leverage sales of the core portfolio with retailers. It's an unspoken rule that if a retailer wants the limited releases, they have to carry the core lineup and show some level of support to the brand.

In turn, the retailers give the limited releases to their regular customers. In each level of the industry, these releases are a tool to maintain regular business.

For example, everybody goes nuts over Founders KBS, but All Day IPA is about 65% of their year-round sales.

Also, a lot of limited beers use ingredients or processes that make them extremely expensive and cost-ineffective to make. Producing them year round would do more harm than good.

>>8411420

>To leverage sales of the core portfolio with retailers

Couldn't be more true. There's a bar in the downtown part of my city that has had Bell's Two Hearted Ale on tap for the last 10 years. Sure enough, they're usually the only ones in town who have Hopslam on draught when it comes out.