Growler Price Survey - Will there be another one?

[colinthehippie]

Yes there will! In searching for growler pricing comments, I found two growler price surveys from '07 and '08. How about an update? Please select a choice above for your vote to count. Thanks in advance.

[colinthehippie]

A few days left

This poll is open until Thursday, so please respond.

If you selected "$12 or more" I'm curious how many charge more than $12 for a beer of average alcohol content.

[a10t2]

Should we normalize our responses to adjust for cost of living? I can buy a $7 refill or a $13 refill just by driving a couple hours.

[colinthehippie]

Should we normalize our responses to adjust for cost of living? I can buy a $7 refill or a $13 refill just by driving a couple hours.

I was mostly asking breweries what they charge, not necessarily what a given individual can buy it for. I think the cost of living variance across the country is too great to account for.

[a10t2]

I know, and I answered as such. I just don't think you're going to get useful results without accounting for it.

[colinthehippie]

Results

To some extend these result surprised me, although it's a pretty small contingent of respondents. I figured a strong majority would respond "$12 or more." Seems like most growler refills are over $10 though. That's $2.50 a pint for a $10 growler, and I'll be that's close to half of what most brewpub or taprooms are charging. Is it just to get the volume? Or is that just what people expect to pay in your area?

Here in Amarillo, TX we have one brewpub, and it's the Big Texan steakhouse (you've probably seen it on Man VS Food, etc.). It's a tourist trap and locals don't go there, but the beer is okay and you can get a Liter growler filled for $7, about $3.50 a pint. And the cost of living here is cheap! When we open our brewpub I plan to charge $12 for most growler refills.

Thanks for participating.

[Bainbridge]

As mentioned above, this doesn't take into account tiered pricing for rare/high-octane beers.

Some places price by the ounce for example, with the pint price reflecting a total volume price. I once paid $50 to bring home a growler of Russian River Compunction this way, and I remember seeing a guy fill up a growler with Dogfish 120 at a bar in Seattle (for like $75 or something ridiculous). Sometimes when we're running low on something and I put up "No Growlers" on it people are like "Well, what if I just buy four schooners and pour them in. How about that smart guy?" Once the urge to kill has fallen, I actually think that's not a bad idea. Sure, if you want that growler $25 bad, let's dance...

Edit: I should add that a per ounce price works well in states where you can fill weird containers. Here in WA, we can fill pretty much anything with a lid. So I've filled all sorts of mason jars, jugs, nalgenes, and my personal favorite: a gallon and a half saddlebag canteen. We just use water or the container markings to figure out that volume and charge per ounce. It's also instructive to compare your per-ounce price across everything, tasters, schooners, pints, growlers, kegs and see if you've got the price distribution you want.