I Don’t Care About Pliny the Younger
Before I begin, I do not specifically mean to write an entire blog about Russian River’s Pliny the Younger. The title, should sensibility and social standards about title lengths be thrown out the window, would more appropriately be named “I Don’t Care about Pliny the Younger, Surly Darkness, Three Floyd’s Dark Lord, or Any Other Beer That is Hyped Up, On the Top 50 List, Requires a Release Party, and is Mostly Available on eBay”. That’s just too long a title; but with the impending annual single-batch release of Pliny the Younger just ‘round the corner, this shorter, more concise title more appropriately encompassed what I mean to say.
As somebody whose entire beer geekdom is inspired by trying anything un-tried before, or something new, or something outrageous, it takes a lot for me to resign my desire for a majority of the RateBeer Top 50. I love getting my hands on a bottle of beer I have never had before, especially famous ones. In fact, since becoming a Denver resident 7 months back, beer I haven’t had yet is the only beer I’ve been buying and, for the foreseeable future, is all I’m going to buy for at least another year. Because there is much. But am I going to go out of my way to get a few beers that aren’t available in my area just because the RateBeer folk say that it’s amazing? Afraid not.
Admittedly, I was not terribly pleased with my experiences with my previous Russian River brews, or the Rochefort Trappistes 10. So I know, cognitively, that just because it has a good RateBeer score does not mean I will enjoy it. It works the other way too, and I think anybody who has rated 10 beers will know this to be true. I knew this, cognitively, before I laid down $12 for that Rochefort 10, before I sank $12 into an Avery Brabant, and before I dropped $15 on a Stone Old Guardian Barleywine. It obviously didn’t stop me, because well, I hadn’t had them before. There was a 50% chance I would love those beers, and I took that chance because (1) I am blessed enough to have a small chunk of disposable income and (2) I had not had them before. It’s a negative side of my beer geekdom, the desire to try the new, sometimes at cost. Occasionally it’s a win. Sometimes those expensive, rare beers are ‘okay’ at best and drain pours at worst.
But through adolescence comes wisdom. My college microeconomics professor once taught me an economic truth, that a wise consumer will only spend $1 on 1 utility (happiness). For example, if you get 5 utility (happiness) from a dozen doughnuts, you will spend $5 on that dozen, and not a penny more. If it costs less than $5, well that’s even better (this is the same principle that makes Dollar Menus genius). Transfer this logic to beer. A single bottle of common craft beer is about $1.60, but brings me approximately 1.5 to 2 happiness, depending on the beer. Occasionally I take a gamble and break that rule on something I never had. A typical Ommegang 750mL bottle here costs between $13-$17, but even though I have never had it, I seriously doubt it will yield 17 happiness. And for some reason I buy it anyway. I could go on, but you get the picture.
So back to the title, the first paragraph, and my long awaited explanation. Pliny the Younger, and the super special, potentially overhyped beers available only at limited quantities on special days and that go for more than $50 on eBay, have a very high chance of not yielding the utility their price tag promises. There are some who are, have been, and will be willing to stand in an hour-long line outside the Russian River taproom just to get a 10oz glass of their famed elixir. They will probably pay more than what is necessary, and will probably rate it higher than they objectively should, based on excitement, brewer reputation, and preconceived ideas based on the beer’s appearance on the RateBeer Top 50. It happens to most beers as it is, and I believe “special release party” beers are more susceptible to this.
Now, it’s more than somewhat obvious this rant is driven by the fact that I have not had any of these beers. I can admit to my bias, and/or being a bitter cheapskate. There’s a lot to like about beer, but I am doubtful that Pliny the Younger is worth the price of admission plus road trip expenses. It just might be one of the best beers I will ever try in my life, and if someone shared one with me or gave me one I’d definitely take it, grateful for the chance. But I will never know. I do not mean to belittle the hard work, sweat, and guts it takes the brewers to make this stuff, and I am already sure (and afraid) this opinion will offend one in every ten people. I just think the hype and local-only distribution strategy is a buzzkill. Rarity, fan loyalty, high cost, and high ABV are not prerequisites to being a good beer.
Point is, you don’t need a road trip and/or $50 to get great beer. I am very blessed enough to live in a city where great beer is plentiful and affordable. I don’t care about Pliny, Dark Lord, Surly Darkness, or any other beer that I cannot easily get my hands on because there is so, so, so much that I can get my hands on. I’ll break good economic sense on occasion. But I’m not a big enough geek to spend a car payment rounding out my “Must Have” beer list.
14 Comments to “I Don’t Care About Pliny the Younger”
Leave a Reply
I can’t speak for people willing to pay $50 for a bottle of beer on eBay. But it’s difficult to put a utility cost on the happiness one derives from communing with fellow craft beer drinkers, which for me is the point of attending these special release days.
Wise words to live by. At the same time, I can offer you a (partial) solution that addresses your desire to try any new beer, including the ones you conclude are too expensive to be worth it — tasting parties. If you have 9 others in your group, and each of you buys one rare bomber/750 for sharing, you get to try 10 beers for the price of one — and you get greater happiness for having experienced more than one new beer.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by ratebeer, Emily Garland. Emily Garland said: Well said RT @ratebeer From The Hop Press: I Don’t Care About Pliny the Younger… http://bit.ly/giReQb [...]
Well said, sir! As much as I love craft beer, and as much as I love to try new and rare offerings, I am not inclined to pay more than the retail cost for them (I take issue with the eBay thing, but that is for another day), not am I going to go and spend hours and hours to have a few drops sprinkled over my apparently undeserving lips.
Yes there are alternatives and it is hype. I prefer Rochefort over Westy for instance. I can get Rochefort easily but the best bit is getting Crouch Vale Amarillo for not much money and enjoying that. I can go to London and get other stuff and import beers in but sometimes there’s nothing better than that over looked session pint in your local which has you coming back for more.
I certainly agree with and support the notion of ‘to each his own’. Not everyone will enjoy the same thing.
You seem to agree with ‘try everything at least once’, though. To this end, I’d encourage that you still keep an eye on the possibility of one day sampling the beers such as PtY. On the thought of it being ‘overhyped’, well I suppose that gets back to ‘to each his own’.
There are reasons that the beers make it to the top in the first place – most because they are indeed quality. Personal opinions on taste/character/etc may differ, but the *quality* will probably be guaranteed as high. I’ve always been satisfied with the quality of the beers on this list that I can find, even though some of them I have not personally cared for. But I don’t doubt that raters simply give beers a high rating because of bias. Perhaps you are in actuality criticizing the weight of the rating system?
As far as RR is concerned, I will say this – going brewery if you can make it is certainly worth it. Have been twice myself, though I live in NW Oregon. Both times were on road trips not for the strict purpose of visiting the brewery. The 1st we went through Santa Rosa, the 2nd we ventured off course to get there because of the experience from the 1st. The brewery is quite an experience. Although the service at times has been a little lacking, the beer and food is quite good. When I can, I will go back again. If I hear someone is headed down that way, I’ll see if they’re willing to stop and have a growler filled for me.
RR has received fairly high ratings because of their beer’s quality. Not everyone may care for their beers, but they do produce some high quality brews. I think too that their lack of general availability contributes to a sense of novelty to their beer as well. (A good marketing decision?) As a result you will get (a few) people going in with a bit of bias and perhaps submit unobjective reviews.
But I still wouldn’t let these kinds of reviews stop anyone from not looking for any of the top beers.
I can empathize.
I don’t really care about most of the top 50 beers either.
I’ve only had a handful of them, and of course I would be excited to try them.
IPA’s are my favorite style and obviously trying the most highly regarded example available would be a real treat.Though if I don’t…I don’t see it as a huge problem. I may never get to try a Pliny in my lifetime and I’m ok with that.
The mark of a mature beer aficionado.
I quit beer chasing a couple years ago. I realized that I would never/could never try them all. With new/special/seasonal/rare releases coming out pretty much every day, if I miss one there will always be something else special to try. Besides, every trip to the local beer store reveals an overwhelming selection of available-every-day-of-the-year beers that I have never tried. And I will probably only ever try a fraction of them because of all the new/special/seasonal/rare releases.
Give up and just enjoy the beer you have in your glass.
I agree with your points about trying things that are more likely to hold their value after you try them, but I do think it’s a little funny. I also think it’s lame to promote higher ratings of beers by making them harder to get, and hyping the release, but I still like the idea of celebrating something special, whether I like the beer or not. Someone earlier wrote a hoppress article about bock season in germany, where people gather at local breweries to take advantage of the short time the coveted brew is available. And I don’t think that kind of tradition is a bad thing, in the right context. I don’t think marking up beers on ebay is a good thing, especially with stuff like Westvleteren, where they clearly don’t want to mass market it.
About the money part though, I think it’s funny because in terms of artisanal beverages beer has always been the cheaper option, and even now. I won’t include spirits, because the alcohol factor is so different, but if you wanted to try the top fifty wines in the world, I’m sure it would put you out several thousand dollars. Even trying decent mid-range wine can run pretty high. Not that I like to waste money on beer either, but I do relish the fact that my tastes are less expensive than a serious wine drinker’s.
wow, you had to pay $10 for rochefort 10? no wonder you didn’t like it – you got ripped off…
I agree that there’s no reason to worry or stress about these beers, but sometimes people enjoy the act of traveling to get them or getting together with other beer lovers to share them just as much as the beers themselves. These beers make beer fun in a new way for a lot of people. At the same time, there’s a fine line between creating positive enthusiasm for the industry and frustrating a lot of people.
As far as distributional issues go, that’s just the reality of being a small producer. No one is manipulating it for ratings or hype. Most brewers really don’t give much thought to beer geek habits.
In my experience a $30 brew at times will be no better then a $5 beer. Most of the pricey beers I have had were at beer tastings I was apart of but never would have dropped that much cash on 1 bottle. The most $$ I have ever spent was $20 on a bottle but that may happen once a year. I would prefer having several bottles of good beers for that kind of cash. In regards to ratings, I frequently explain to customers the ratings of beer. Just because it is rated very high does not mean you will like it but it is my job to educate the customer about this and find out what they are accustom to drinking and point them in a direction from there. There are brews I have rated very high but may not ever want to drink on a regular bases, once a year is fine.
I know I am late but I have to comment.
A beer lover who actually gets it. A simple point: With all the great beer in the Denver area – why and hell should I care about over-hyped Internet gabble. Or even more to the point: Drink local and be happy.
My friend, I have had Pliny the Younger and Dark Lord. They are good but not worth dreaming about.
I recall a couple of years ago, visiting Russian River Brewing and there were plenty of open seats at the long bar. A bartender recommended the Younger. Fast-forward to last year release. I arrived to purchase a growler for a friend. I was amazed at the line outside that stretched almost all the way down the block. All the fools who flew across country – for a beer?
Will you take a look at what Vinnie C decided for this years release? No Younger growlers. Bravo Vinnie!! He pulls the plug on Internet hype. The notion that Pliny the Younger would become a “cult” classic – not to be.
I have been in the Denver area on 4 occasions. I can honestly say – I have never had a bad pint. You need not worry.
Ratebeer.com is a failure
I’m going to go ahead and disagree the main points being made here. Not because I think Top 50 beers are all unquestionably superior to the rest, but because I think some of you are (to a certain extent) falling victim to another type of biased mentality: the “I will go out of my way to not like this beer as much as people tell me to like it.”
First of all, let me be clear with something: Neither you nor I, nor anyone else in this universe, is in the position to say that a beer is “overhyped” or “overrated.” People tend to consider themselves to be more objective than the rest, but just because you think you’re objective doesn’t make you objective (I’m saying “you” in general, not “you” as in Brian Leppla). People sometimes have this tendency to try a top 50 beer and not like it and then be like “I don’t know why there’s so much hype about this beer, it’s not as good as it’s made out to be.” No, what happened is that you didn’t like it and other people liked it, period. Nothing wrong with that.
Another interesting point is that there IS a reason why hype exists in the first place. It IS possible that some beers tend to make people think they “have to” like them, whether because their name sounds fancy or their output is really small or they come from a place whose beers are usually highly regarded. But there’s no objective way of saying WHEN the hype around a specific beer is due to that alone. Most of the time, there is hype around a beer because it is GOOD and because most people like it. This is unlike wine and the Judgment of Paris; beer enthusiasts usually do not attach to the idea that good beer can only come from one country or one brewery, unlike wine enthusiasts. There wasn’t some sort of divine commandment that dictated, when Three Floyds was founded, that if you liked their products you were a cool person. No. They are what they are today because they have brewed products that people have found to be of a very high quality, and that doesn’t change just because a person in particular happens to not like them as much as others do. Same with Rochefort, AleSmith, Mikkeller, and yes, Westvleteren.
Now, I’ll agree with you on something: just because a beer is on the top 50 doesn’t mean you’ll like it. I don’t care much for Rochefort. I don’t really love any of their three products, and to MY taste there are far better Belgian ales out there. But that doesn’t mean that anyone who disagrees with me is wrong. They may be particularly fond of Rochefort beers for the very same reason that I dislike them, and that’s all right. My opinion is the exception, not the rule here. That doesn’t make my personal opinion wrong or general opinion wrong.
What you have to do when you get a Top 50 beer is to approach them with caution: do NOT force yourself to love them so as to fit in (I think that’s been pretty well-covered by you guys), but do NOT predispose yourself against them, just because you want to confirm to yourself that they are “overhyped” and that you’re an independent-minded person who has the ability to dislike something others rave about. It goes both ways. Give a man a bottle of beer, and if upon hearing that it is a top 50 one he pledges to fight the belief that it is a superior brew, he is just as subjective and close-minded as a person who, upon hearing about its top 50 status, predisposes himself to like it more than he would have otherwise.
So no, I don’t think Ratebeer or ratings or even the Top 50 list is a failure. There is absolutely NO reason why a beer coming from that highly unknown local brew that you hold so dear could not climb up to the top 50, if it is good enough to be there. Surly Darkness was born from a small, unknown, fameless microbrew and that didn’t stop it from being up there with the Russian Rivers and Three Floydses of the world. Likewise, there is NO reason why a beer coming from Russian River or Struise could not get an average score below 3.5, if it so deserves. Many Three Floyds beers, indeed, have relatively low average scores, because people are less gullible than you’d imagine, and they won’t automatically love a beer just because it’s from 3F (think their MunsterFest).
For example, I’ve had several top-rated IPAs/DIPAs and, though I didn’t love them all (case in point, I didn’t care much for the 90 Minute DIPA), I did find them to be, on AVERAGE, tastier, more balanced, and more full-bodied than lower-rated products.
Ratebeer lists and ratings are not meant to say, “You’re wrong to like this” or, “You’re right to like this.” They’re meant to say, “Hey, everyone seems to like this; give it a try because, odds are, you’ll like it as well” or, “Hey, other people have not been very enthusiastic about this beer; be cautious because you MAY not like it.”
My suggestion to all beer enthusiasts is this: do not trash Ratebeer/BA just because your favorite microbrew is not treated well by them. Do not persuade yourself that people are being biased and the system does not work and it favors big-named beers. A TRUE beer enthusiast, upon going to RateBeer and seeing discrepancies between average ratings and his own preferences, simply thinks, “I don’t care that my beer isn’t well-rated; I still like it” or “I don’t care that this beer is so well-regarded; I still don’t like it.” That’s very different from “Ohmaigawd, my microbrew isn’t well-rated! Well, screw beer ratings!” or “Ohmaigawd, this thing has a 4.23? But it can’t be! These ratings are flawed because I didn’t love it and therefore it doesn’t deserve a good rating!”
Cheers.