any info, aside from what is listed below, such as price? Saturday, December 1, 2012 Doors open @10am. This event will be first come-first served, no tickets or pre-sales. Brunch and Full Food Menu will be served throughout event. 21+ only and no dogs allowed. Total Wild/Sour Takeover: Cantillon Zwanze 2012 (Rhubarb) Cantillon Mystery Keg Russian River Supplication Block 15 Mystery Keg The Commons Plum Bretta Petrus Oak-Aged Pale Upright Barrel-Aged Brett Seven Cascade Blackberry Graham Cracker Rodenbach Grand Cru New Belgium La Folie *We will also be pouring one or more different bottles of Cantillon by the glass.
They announced on twitter or fb or something that the Cantillon Mystery Keg is Fou Foune. I hadn't been planning to go to this (as awesome as it sounds for sour lovers, the stuff at the Holiday Ale Fest is better suited to my tastes), but I might go just for Fou.
This is gonna be a rough week on my poor liver. I'm not sure if I should get it into fighting shape or let it rest beforehand.
Posted to the Facebook page: ZWANZE update: We'll be erecting an event tent in the backyard patio area to ensure that everyone who wants into the bar can do so! 2 more days!
Hard to say, shipping a keg to Copenhagen than to the States costs significantly less. If sales practices hold up, then the percentage markup on the cost of getting the keg will make sample glasses more expensive. I also don't want to go and blow all of my money on this.
Of course, but I was also thinking of the cost of living in Denmark in general, which is significantly higher than here, so it might balance out. I have no idea what they had to pay for the keg, and of course they need to make a profit, I would hope they could charge around $7 and still make money... but who am I kidding, it's Cantillon, they could charge $15+/ 6oz pour and still sell out.
The whole serving and paying and sitting scene was a little confusing and ill-planned. BUT THE BEER WAS AMAZING
since i'm drunk now, i'll say it- the prices were crazy. I've been drinking cantillon on tap for 4 years before moving to portland, and i paid more per oz today than i've ever had to. In fact, i felt like i was back in DC! But then again, i'd take $2 per oz than not getting any...
Yes, it was crazy expensive. While Cantillon is awesome, I'm not sure if my wallet can handle another night like that again.
It was expensive (which I expected) and sort of insane (also expected) but I would imagine that they charged what they had to. I've had a lot of fantastic beer at H&V and I've never felt gouged even when they had the opportunity. All in all I had a good time and might swing back through for another taste of that block 15 anniversary beer.
It was a good time talking to people and having some Zwanze, but I was mostly disappointed. A) Poor service. It's very busy, I know, but our server disappeared for 45 minutes at a time and didn't know anything about what's going on. B) Expensive is an understatement. I avoided most bottles because they were a rip-off. 7 dollars for a 4 oz pour of St. Gilloise? It's a 20 dollar bottle, not Lou Pepe or Mamouche. Same for Iris. C) Beer was waaaay too damn cold. I would have gotten frost bit if I hadn't waited 20 minutes for everything to warm. We were getting sours meant to be served around 45-50 degrees, right? D) Block 15 beer never should have been on tap. Huge diacetyl bomb. I mentioned it to the owner and she told me it was only a little taste. BS. Awful, awful beer.
Not to pile on, but it did seem that The Hop & Vine was shockingly unprepared for the number of attendees...they had some decent structural pieces in place for the event, but the pieces didn't connect so there was no flow (i.e. long waits for food, drinks, the check). This was their first time hosting this event, and here's hoping the management takes our feedback under advisement. Other specific suggestions I would make: - let people know (A) when the raffle is, and (B) what's being raffled. If this information was available in advance, I didn't see it. Our server didn't know either. - have more than one person ringing folks up in the bottle shop...when they raffled off the opportunity to purchase 26 individual bottles of Cantillon, the congestion just shifted from the bar half to the bottle shop half. - this is a very minor beef, but advertising ahead of the event that you have Pliny for sale with no bottle limits, but not mentioning they're $10/each with half going to charity...well, that ain't right. All that being said, my wife and I had a fantastic time overall, so a big thanks to The Hop & Vine crew!!! The Zwanze was killer, and Cascade Elderberry Crisp was phenomenal! I'm bummed I never got around to the Plum Bretta, and I do agree that the Block 15 offering was sub-par, especially up against the rest of that lineup.
The aforementioned complaints are many of the reasons I did not go. I think the semi-impromptu Alternative Zwanze Day Day should be an annual event! It was definitely more affordable, next year perhaps we should cook some food too. I'll cook a bourbon maple pumpkin pie cheers
The costs of the bottle pours were all averaged together and multiplied by the typical bar markup, not excessively (which, in my experience, is lower here than anywhere I've worked before). 4oz of Mamouche or Lou Pepe would have been 12 otherwise. It brought up the price of the "cheaper" pours, but in the end it was equalized. I thought that was more than fair.
That would make total sense without adding up the math. So, you're telling me that your markup on a bottle should be about 200%? This is assuming the cost of a Cantillon bottle of Lou Pepe or Mamouche runs you about $28 - $30 (and I'm guessing it's less than that because the last bottle of Mamouche I bought, which was only a few months ago, was 31). Even if you're charging 7 per 4 oz pour, and assuming 6 pours per 25.4mL bottle, that's $42 per expensive bottle, about a 50% markup. This is not even getting to the cost for the less expensive Cantillons. (Or the cost of the draft list for that matter.) You have every right to charge what you want, but I absolutely disagree that this was meant to be a situation for you to make a hefty sum in the morning, but hell, you saw the opportunity and took it. It's good business. (And if you didn't make a hefty sum, I'd be shocked. 150 people buying 7 dollar pours?) Honestly, I would have been much more impressed with straight up honesty, here. I don't blame places that jack up the prices for beer that everyone HAS to have - I don't have to purchase what I think is overpriced, but there are a lot of people who will (and did. No one 'liked' my post about Zwanze, so they clearly don't care). But don't rationalize this as doing us all a favor. The PIB does that and it is absolutely irritating and disingenuous.
Huh, I didn't pick up the diacetyl but I didn't get a whole glass, just had a sip off my friend's. It was well received at my table FWIW.
I can't follow what you're trying to say here. You might need to spell it out a little more and I can't figure out exactly what math you are "adding up". However, let me point out that charging 2-3 times retail for wine by the glass is completely normal, so on the surface you seem to be making the same tired argument that beer ought to be priced differently from wine. (And then we wonder why restaurants with extensive wine lists offer 3 mediocre beers.)
What an "insightful" comment. I thought they handled the event reasonably well. We showed up early enough to get a table inside and our server made sure that we always had drinks and food. On the other hand, the line at the bar to get drinks was ridiculous and they wasted about 20 minutes after letting everyone in while they opened bottles behind the bar - something that should have been done before they opened.
I'm pointing out that charging 42 dollars a bottle on Mamouche/Lou Pepe is still having your cake and eating it too, so it's no defense to jack up the prices of the $20 dollar bottles and say you're saving us from a 72 dollar bottle of Mamouche/Lou Pepe. I should have spelled that out in more detail, but I was pretty frustrated. Edit: So yes, I believe the pricing structure should be different than wine, but as you mentioned, it's a tired argument, and it wasn't really the thrust of my point which was more the below: I find this kind of upcharging to be pretty much the opposite of the spirit of Zwanze Day, considering the reason for the day in the first place was Ebay auctioning, but that's a different argument.
The standard markup at any beer place I've worked previously is 300% of cost. That's pretty much the same across the board w/ wine, food, etc, because that's the profit margin that allows businesses to exist. It's not fair to compare retail, to-go prices with in-the-bar prices because it's stilted and ignorant to how bars actually work. At the H&V, and a few other places I've seen in Portland (though certainly not all, I'm sure we've all spied the $100 Cantillon bottles around), the markup is around 250% (there's always rounding, slightly up or down). Typically, when you're talking about markup, you're talking draft, where the price is set for the largest portion and the profit margin increases with smaller and smaller pour options. That was not the case here as we priced strictly from the 4oz pour. The average price of all 8 cases of Cantillon was $98. We figured 6 pours per bottle, that's 36 servings a case. $98/36x2.5=$6.8 per pour. I think rounding to from $6.80 to $7 is completely reasonable, as is the beer markup in general. We chose to go with one flat price to make it easier on everyone without 8 additional prices bouncing around the obvious chaos of having 100 people enter any establishment at the same time. The ironic thing in this discussion is that this system stood to benefit people like you the absolute most, as you know which bottles cost more and, therefore, could exploit the system's cheaper prices on pours that should have been far more costly. And you ignored the ones that were "overpriced". So you won, right? You probably saved $20 of what could have been charged you (if you had still chosen the pepe, mamouche, etc at the hypothetical higher prices), if not more. Some other fun things that Murphy decided to impart on us: We had to close suddenly at 8:30pm the night before because our dishwasher and hot water heater simultaneously blew up. Cue a new water heater at 6:45 am and nearly 3 hours of doing dishes from the night before and you get a pretty hectic 10am door time. Sorry that didn't go more smoothly! All in all, I'm proud of how we did and will use the insights gained from the event to do better in the future. So many new friends, great times, and above all, great beer. To whom it may concern: thank you for coming!
For the people that didn't come bc of the aforementioned chaos of the opening, at about 2pm the bar was nearly empty and everything but the zwanze remained. Tried to get the word out on FB, but it just meant more Fou Foune for me when I got off work. That beer was incredible.
Fresh Fou Fonne is where it is at! But I wouldn't pay $7/4oz pour for it... but I am a jaded pseudo-European...
I'm too jaded for those prices... but again that has to do with not having lived in the states for 10yrs. I know it is not a fair comparison and clearly the beer travels quite a distance and there are markups along the way, but when you are used to bottles for $10, I just cannot justify it for myself. I am guessing a lot would have been much happier with $7/6oz of Fou Fonne. I am happy drinking local beers, glasses of Engelberg pils for $3, or beers from my stash. cheers
