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07-02-2017, 09:53
Visit the Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog site (http://boakandbailey.com/2017/02/are-thornbridges-330ml-bottles-a-con/)
https://i0.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/thornbridge_caps.jpg?resize=650%2C419The recent decision*by Thornbridge to move their packaged beers from 500ml to 330ml has rubbed some people up the wrong way — are they pulling a fast one?A particularly vocal complainant is Mark Dexter who used to blog at*The Bottled Beer Year (http://thebottledbeeryear.blogspot.co.uk/)*but who is nowadays busy being a successful actor, notably playing Prime Minister David Cameron in*Coalition on Channel 4 a couple of years back. Yesterday, he repeated his objection to the switch to 330ml bottles:
As one of the early champions of the craft beer movement, I now never buy it in supermarkets. 500ml of beer vs 330ml at the same price?
No.
— Mark Dexter (@RealMarkDexter) February 6, 2017 (https://twitter.com/RealMarkDexter/status/828606254629150720)
For our part, we do find the indiscriminate switch to 330ml across the whole range a bit baffling — some Thornbridge beers at low ABV clearly suit drinking by the (near) pint — but actually rather welcomed it for the stronger stuff. Half a litre of Halcyon imperial IPA at 7.4% ABV? Too much. (Although we do at least have the option of splitting it between us.) The same goes for Jaipur too, probably, although we realise that makes us seem a bit pathetic what with it being a mere 5.9%.
Our gut feeling is that, for a lot of British drinkers, the point at which a pint becomes too much is somewhere around 5%. These days, that probably just translates to choosing a different beer, but we used to have a tradition in the UK of nip bottles (less than half a pint) for stronger, special beers such as Eldridge Pope Thomas Hardy Ale. Thornbridge and others who package at 330ml clearly believe, or hope, that drinkers can be convinced to buy stronger or otherwise ‘bigger’ beers if they don’t have to drink quite so much in one sitting.
So, in itself, the packaging change makes some sense.
But here’s the real nub of Mark’s objection: are they using the opaqueness introduced by the switchover to screw over consumers, as retailers were accused of doing back at the time of decimalisation?
First, we wondered whether the price rise people noticed with the switch to 330ml bottles might have happened anyway. This is far from scientific — we just grabbed info from Twitter and newspaper articles — but it does seem that the price-per-litre of Thornbridge Jaipur at Waitrose has been on the climb fairly steadily since 2012, going up by about 6 per cent each time. With the switch to 330ml, though, the increase was sharper at about 15 per cent, even though the absolute price of a bottle dipped back under £2. So, some sort of price rise was probably due, but the numbers certainly do seem fishy.
Then a good follow-up question seemed to be this: What kind of price increase have we seen on beers whose packaging*hasn’t changed in the same period? Perhaps Thornbridge/Waitrose are merely following wider trends and the packaging size-change is a red herring.
Well, no. Oakham Citra, BrewDog Punk and St Austell Proper Job — similarly hop-focused beers from independent UK breweries — have all got*cheaper at Waitrose since 2012.
So it seems Mark is right: Thornbridge is making a concerted effort to drag itself into the premium bracket and avoid the bulk-discount tendency, and the packaging change was a good opportunity to conceal the gear shift.
Even so, this is all just part of an ever-more crowded, complex UK market neatly segmenting itself. Jaipur is a great beer, sure, but these days it’s far from the only beer like that on the market, and plenty of those IPAs are still in 500ml bottles, for now at least. And we do after all live in an age of incredible transparency where packaging size conceals nothing with price-per-litre displayed right there on the supermarket shelf, and in the online shopping basket:
https://i0.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/meantime_ipa.jpg?resize=559%2C268
What could Thornbridge have done differently here? They could have stated outright that the price rise was to pay for investment in the brewery (have they said that somewhere?) and/or introduced the increase at a different time from the packaging change. But, seriously, are there many companies that self-flagellatingly honest?
Meanwhile, Mark and others — check Twitter, there are lots of others! — may stop buying Thornbridge in protest, but we suspect the brewery won’t much care. After all, it doesn’t seem as if they have trouble shifting every drop of what they brew, whatever they charge for it.
Are Thornbridge’s 330ml Bottles a Con? (http://boakandbailey.com/2017/02/are-thornbridges-330ml-bottles-a-con/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (http://boakandbailey.com)
More... (http://boakandbailey.com/2017/02/are-thornbridges-330ml-bottles-a-con/)
https://i0.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/thornbridge_caps.jpg?resize=650%2C419The recent decision*by Thornbridge to move their packaged beers from 500ml to 330ml has rubbed some people up the wrong way — are they pulling a fast one?A particularly vocal complainant is Mark Dexter who used to blog at*The Bottled Beer Year (http://thebottledbeeryear.blogspot.co.uk/)*but who is nowadays busy being a successful actor, notably playing Prime Minister David Cameron in*Coalition on Channel 4 a couple of years back. Yesterday, he repeated his objection to the switch to 330ml bottles:
As one of the early champions of the craft beer movement, I now never buy it in supermarkets. 500ml of beer vs 330ml at the same price?
No.
— Mark Dexter (@RealMarkDexter) February 6, 2017 (https://twitter.com/RealMarkDexter/status/828606254629150720)
For our part, we do find the indiscriminate switch to 330ml across the whole range a bit baffling — some Thornbridge beers at low ABV clearly suit drinking by the (near) pint — but actually rather welcomed it for the stronger stuff. Half a litre of Halcyon imperial IPA at 7.4% ABV? Too much. (Although we do at least have the option of splitting it between us.) The same goes for Jaipur too, probably, although we realise that makes us seem a bit pathetic what with it being a mere 5.9%.
Our gut feeling is that, for a lot of British drinkers, the point at which a pint becomes too much is somewhere around 5%. These days, that probably just translates to choosing a different beer, but we used to have a tradition in the UK of nip bottles (less than half a pint) for stronger, special beers such as Eldridge Pope Thomas Hardy Ale. Thornbridge and others who package at 330ml clearly believe, or hope, that drinkers can be convinced to buy stronger or otherwise ‘bigger’ beers if they don’t have to drink quite so much in one sitting.
So, in itself, the packaging change makes some sense.
But here’s the real nub of Mark’s objection: are they using the opaqueness introduced by the switchover to screw over consumers, as retailers were accused of doing back at the time of decimalisation?
First, we wondered whether the price rise people noticed with the switch to 330ml bottles might have happened anyway. This is far from scientific — we just grabbed info from Twitter and newspaper articles — but it does seem that the price-per-litre of Thornbridge Jaipur at Waitrose has been on the climb fairly steadily since 2012, going up by about 6 per cent each time. With the switch to 330ml, though, the increase was sharper at about 15 per cent, even though the absolute price of a bottle dipped back under £2. So, some sort of price rise was probably due, but the numbers certainly do seem fishy.
Then a good follow-up question seemed to be this: What kind of price increase have we seen on beers whose packaging*hasn’t changed in the same period? Perhaps Thornbridge/Waitrose are merely following wider trends and the packaging size-change is a red herring.
Well, no. Oakham Citra, BrewDog Punk and St Austell Proper Job — similarly hop-focused beers from independent UK breweries — have all got*cheaper at Waitrose since 2012.
So it seems Mark is right: Thornbridge is making a concerted effort to drag itself into the premium bracket and avoid the bulk-discount tendency, and the packaging change was a good opportunity to conceal the gear shift.
Even so, this is all just part of an ever-more crowded, complex UK market neatly segmenting itself. Jaipur is a great beer, sure, but these days it’s far from the only beer like that on the market, and plenty of those IPAs are still in 500ml bottles, for now at least. And we do after all live in an age of incredible transparency where packaging size conceals nothing with price-per-litre displayed right there on the supermarket shelf, and in the online shopping basket:
https://i0.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/meantime_ipa.jpg?resize=559%2C268
What could Thornbridge have done differently here? They could have stated outright that the price rise was to pay for investment in the brewery (have they said that somewhere?) and/or introduced the increase at a different time from the packaging change. But, seriously, are there many companies that self-flagellatingly honest?
Meanwhile, Mark and others — check Twitter, there are lots of others! — may stop buying Thornbridge in protest, but we suspect the brewery won’t much care. After all, it doesn’t seem as if they have trouble shifting every drop of what they brew, whatever they charge for it.
Are Thornbridge’s 330ml Bottles a Con? (http://boakandbailey.com/2017/02/are-thornbridges-330ml-bottles-a-con/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (http://boakandbailey.com)
More... (http://boakandbailey.com/2017/02/are-thornbridges-330ml-bottles-a-con/)