Price and Value

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The immortal lines of Oscar Wilde had the famous quote about the cynic:

A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing

Binny’s makes it easy to at least quantify the “value gap” between what you pay and what you get on crappy beer. They show prices in terms of cost per ounce which is at least one common metric from what is good and what is bad.

Coors Light! Dan’s favorite! On sale it is only FIVE CENTS AN OUNCE. By contrast you are paying maybe 10 cents for bottled water and 20 cents (or more) for Starbucks.

And here is a beer rated “100” by the beer adviser (I don’t like stuff that heavy, but I’m sure that if you were a connoisseur of that type of beer it would be fantastic). At 29 cents an ounce, it is almost 6 times more than what you pay for Coors Light.

At least now you have a consistent metric showing 6x in terms of awful-ness.

Cross posted at Chicago Boyz

9 thoughts on “Price and Value”

  3. My motto is “life is too short to drink cheap beer”.

    One of the best developments in American life over the past generation has been the flourishing of craft beers. In 1980, 44 breweries supplied all of the beer made in the USA. Over 1,600 breweries are now functioning. And even in the most out of the way establishments, you are seldom constrained to the mass market bilge. I can buy beers from local breweries at my local ghetto Kroger. This is a great thing.

    I am not a locavore. I think their theory is silly. But, beer is better from nearby than from far away. So another beer motto is “Support your local brewer”.

  4. Newcastle Brown Ale is my preferred everyday beer. $22 a case at Costco.

    Robert – even some of the microbreweries are getting big. Sierra Nevada Brewery got in at the beginning of the microbrewery revolution – today I think they are #6 in sales.

  5. Newcastle’s great, as is every Mexican beer I have ever had that’s not named Corona (Dos XX Amber is fantastic with rich and spicy foods.)

    I have found however that like colleges, the best beers are always the most expensive. Case in point “the champagne of beers” Miller High Life. Nothing tastes better with a burger hot off the grill and it doesn’t weigh you down. The best part, $7.99 for a twelve pack. You can’t beat that price!

    I snicker at these silly LA area, iphone toting hipsters reaching for a 6 pack of Stella Artois (which I think roughly translated is French for “vote for Obama”) for $11.99. This while I’m getting twice as much beer for a fraction of the price.

    The retro quality of High Life is cool too. A virtue promoted in a series of classic style and frankly culturally conservative ads directed by filmmaker Errol Morris. The best and by far longest of ads follows.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et82azCcuP8

    “Nor do we let convention tell us what is and isn’t a site of historic interest. Here’s the birthplace of the man who said ‘extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.’ You know that’s on the list.”

  7. Ha ha Jason if only you knew the epic and long drawn out series of jokes that Dan and I have had over my ability to stomach Miller Lite and his disdain for it.

    But we both agree that Coors Light is absolutely undrinkable and vile, although I’d probably drink it if cornered but Dan would never submit to the silver bullet.

  8. Not to put a too sharp of a point on it, but Miller Lite, Coors Lite and Bud Lite all taste like the brewers have used pig piss instead of water in their brewing process. Can’t drink them, won’t drink them, you can’t make me!

    Now a good stout (Murphy’s, Guinness)or Irish Ale (Smithwick’s on tap, or especially Kilkenny in Ireland only I think) and we can have ourselves a fine time.

    And, I will gladly pay for the better beer.

  9. I quit drinking about a year ago……….SO the cost of beer is no longer that much of a concern, however I could now afford to buy the really good beer, now that I have more money in my wallet due to what I save on not drinking.

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