My feeling would be that while high ABV craft beers may contain more alcohol than some beers and other alcoholic beverages, I believe that there are some “controls” in place to make these craft beers the less attractive alternative, if I decided that I wanted or needed to simply drink to get drunk.  So, I decided that I would do a bit of research to see if there was any evidence to support my conviction and would bring into question claims such as the one above. I believe that one of the most significant controls in place is one of price… the cost to purchase the alcoholic beverage of choice.  Purchase price has been used somewhat effectively with other vices to discourage overuse… hard liquor and cigarettes carry high tax levies, which are used partially to help fund our government on the backs of people that “need” or use them and partially as a disincentive to purchase too much of them.   I believe that these high ABV craft beers are being singled out in error.  There are, as we will see, much cheaper ways to simply get drunk…

I happened to visit one of my favorite beer stores yesterday and picked up 7 bottles of craft beer for my future pleasure, so I have accurate price information for some craft beers.  I then pulled some advertising flyers out of the Sunday paper to use for gathering additional information about other alcoholic beverages that are currently for sale.  For comparison purposes, I chose a 30-pack (12 oz. cans) of a nationally-available brand of beer and a nationally-available brand of “boxed” wine (5 liters).  I am no mathematician, but I do use spreadsheets quite a bit for my work at a financial institution.  The table below is an interesting study of the costs associated with the craft beers versus the other readily available sources of alcohol to drink.  For the craft beer ABV I used an average of the 7 bottles I bought yesterday and for the ABV of the wine, I used an average for 4 varieties of wine they sell in boxes that were listed on the producer’s Web site.

As you can easily see, of the three, the craft beers are the most expensive way to purchase alcohol for consumption… more than 3X as expensive as the 30-pack and more than 5X as expensive as the wine for approximately the same total amount of alcohol. Could there be an incentive to drink the higher ABV beer and have to drink less liquid to accomplish the same goal… perhaps, but I would only need to drink 2 cans of the 30-pack to roughly equal the same amount of alcohol as 12 oz of the craft beer or the wine.  Do you have to be careful about drinking these high ABV beverages if you intend to drive… absolutely!

I like the idea that these higher ABV brews are available to me right here in Vermont.  I have been drinking them for years, but had to either buy them in another state or drink them when traveling.  Keep in mind that of the 7 bottles of craft beer I purchased, only one of them would have been available to me prior to last year… ask the store’s owner how he felt about my $50 purchase yesterday.  It is a very good thing, who’s time has arrived.  If people are really concerned about what people will buy to get drunk with… stop selling products that target that… I can still buy the “wino” wines MD 20/20 and Thunderbird, not that I would though… force AB-InBev to sell their 30-packs or Vella to sell their wine boxes for the equivalent of what it costs to purchase the craft beers… it’ll never happen.  If you are truly concerned about alcoholism and if you are not going to try and affect the huge market of the national megabrews or boxed wines, which impact a much broader population of people, then why pick on craft beers (err… AB-InBev has *lawyers*).  Price and quality are powerful influences on the market and are the primary reasons that I think that these “detractors” of high ABV craft beers are just plain wrong.

On September 14, just six days before his birthday, Matt Nadeau, owner of Rock Art Brewery in Morrisville, received an unusual email. Attached to it was a PDF full of legalese in which an attorney for the Hansen Beverage Company — maker of Monster brand energy drinks — demanded that the Vermont brewery “cease and desist” its use of the name “Vermonster” for a high-test barley wine. “Your client’s use and registration of the Vermonster in connection with beer will undoubtedly create a likelihood of confusion and/or dilute the distinctive quality of Hansen’s Monster marks,” the document reads. Nadeau was given two weeks to respond.

Nadeau, who holds the “Vermonster” trade name in Vermont, thinks the letter was probably triggered by his application to trademark it nationally. “I don’t get those people out there in California,” he says. Given that Nadeau sells about 95 percent of his beer “within 50 miles of Morrisville,” the feisty brewer says he fails to see how giving a single product a name that’s a play on its home state could damage a massive corporation making a completely different type of beverage.

So Nadeau called to offer a concession: He would promise to stay out of the energy-drink biz if Hansen stayed out of brewing. No luck. “Their third-party lawyer … believes they’ll likely pursue lawsuits and [proceedings against] trademark infringement,” Hansen says.

Simply continuing to pursue his trademark application against Monster’s opposition could cost Nadeau up to $15,000. And he’s willing to take the matter to court — an even pricier proposition — if necessary, he says. For one thing, five trademark lawyers located all over the country have told him he’ll probably win in the end. More importantly, adds the brewer, it’s a matter of principle: “They have no morals,” he says of the beverage giant. “They think, We’re just gonna steamroll it … We’ll take this little Vermont company and squash them. Well, sorry.”

You decide… confusion… not likely!!

Rock Art Vermontster