Making craft beers pricey
AREADER asks why craft beers are so expensive compared with mainstream beers made by the big breweries.
‘‘Big’’ helps: the likes of Lion and DB can negotiate lower prices for malted barley and hops and for freight and, with their big turnover, operate on lower unit profit margins.
Craft beer usually uses more specialised and, therefore, more expensive, malt and hops and more of them than in mainstream beers.
Freight is a big item for the small southern breweries: Before the beer goes in, a 500ml bottle with its label and top can cost $2.50 . . . that does not include the cost of transporting the bottles from Auckland.
So, before the beer goes in, it has cost the small brewer the best part of $3.
Depending on the alcohol content, excise tax on 500ml (and GST on that excise) can account for the good part of $1 (85c for a 5% brew; $1 for 6%) or as much as $1.36 for an 8% beer.
Finally, a 500ml bottle of beer sold to a retailer for $6 can be, say, $7.30 for us.
And somewhere in that $6 the brewer has to find a profit . . .
Of mice and men
Researchers say that if the equivalent of a couple of glasses of wine or 800ml of beer a day benefits the brain of mice, then we drinkers might have less risk of developing dementia. The American university researchers found the alcohol lowered inflation of the rodent’s brain and cleared toxins linked to Alzheimer’s.
Other studies have found that moderate drinking (two drinks a day for men, one for women) can lower the risk of death from strokes and heart attacks.
Heavier consumption can increase cholesterol levels.
Awards
Breweries have until this Friday to get their entries in for the annual New World Beer and Cider Awards. The results are announced midyear when the supermarket has all the gold winners on sale.
To brew its own
Queenstown brewery Cargo is about to start making its own beer. Recipes have been developed in an Arrowtown garage over the past couple of years and sent to be made in Nelson. But the plan is to install equipment next month at Waitiri Creek winery in Gibbston.
Alexandra fest
About 800 went to the Central Otago Craft Beer Festival in Alexandra at Waitangi Day weekend, where 11 breweries were represented. The organisers planned a homebrew competition, but received only three entries; so they scrapped the idea.
US breweries explode
The growth of craft breweries has meant the number of breweries in the United States has doubled in the past four years to more than 6000.