Just read the thread about unrefined bread costing so much more than refined bread----------(which always puzzled me too)
And wondered about this one.—
----O’Doul’s beer has no alcohol and so no tax on alcohol. So why does it cost just about the same as a premium beer?
And it tastes flat out lousy.
What is the price justification? Shouldn’t it be like 99 cents a 6 pack?
I can only think that ultimately beer companies want you to drink until you’re drunk and if you can’t drink (like I can’t because with my medication I would be taking a very long nap afterwards or perhaps a permanent one), you get stuck paying a lot.
Well, non-alcoholic beers are a bit of a niche market, so there’s not really much of a demand for them. [Jay Leno] It’s for people who don’t like to get drunk, but do like to urinate. [/JL] Not to mention, alcohol is always formed when you make beer, so you have to take the alcohol out of the beer (and O’Doul’s does have trace amounts of alcohol in it), which is expensive. And AFAIK, most states treat NA beer like regular beer so far as taxation goes (minors can’t even buy it, even though it’d take gallons of the stuff to give you a buzz).
NA beers are priced very similarly to regular beers. I think Coors NA is the cheapest, and it’s usually skunked. You get what you pay for.
I’m a teetotaler. When I go out drinking with the guys, I get O’Douls or Sharps instead of soda because (a) I like having something that’s not treacly sweet and (b) I don’t want to convey the sense that I’m being cheap. Seems like an odd concern, but I perform in a lot of nightclubs and patrons who stick to crackers and water reflect badly on my act to club managers. I don’t like to look like one of them.
Sharps and O’Douls aren’t the best NA beers. Clausthaler and St. Pauli NA are mighty tasty and approximate the taste of premium beers. Kalber tastes okay, but I’d never confuse it with real beer (It actually reminds me more of Malta Goya than Harp’s or any other Guinness product). The upper-end NA brews cost about the same as micro-brews.
I wish there were NA versions of my favorites, Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Yeah, it’s very much a niche market, but dammit, I’m in the niche!
Considering that NA beer still has to be brewed similar to a regular beer before the alcohol is removed, it’s going to cost at least the same to produce as a beer with alcohol in it. (Brewing a beer with a starting gravity of 1.009 to get a 0.5% ABV isn’t going to produce a particularly pleasant product, even with alliteration :D…would basically be like drinking a tea and not a “beer”).
The question is why doesn’t NA beer cost more than regular beer?
How do they get the alcohol out?
Well, as the OP mentions, at least part of the retail price (and a considerable part in many places) is a tax component levied upon alcoholic beverages within a certain range of strengths.
In any case, the old capitalist mantra probably applies here; the price rises to what the market is prepared to pay; it may be that this, combined with the freedom from tax(if that is indeed the case) allows a wider profit margin, or it may be that the extra processing and smaller production volume has the opposite effect and the profit margin may be tighter.
It may even be that the stuff is produced at break-even or at a loss; either as a PR exercise (“See, we’re not all about turning people into alcoholics!”), or because of more complex market considerations, for example: Making it possible for designated drivers to drink something resembling beer may mean that more people (the passengers) will stay for longer at the bar, consuming more of the profitable alcoholic products.
The real question is why a coke cost the same in a bar or supermarket here in the UK as a beer.
Going back aways but I remember here in the US of A when beer was actually cheaper than Coke. Could buy a six pack of halfway decent beer for 99 cents. Colas cost more.
1970 or so a buck for my beer habit for the week was part of my “food” budget. (Of course back then my budget for food for a family of 4 was all of 20 dollars)
Not true anymore and not sure why the change----probably added on alcohol tax.
And of course you can no longer feed a family of 4 for a week for $20. (actually $19— allowing for my beer addiction being sort of “extra”)
I find the NA beers are downright tolerable if you chase them with a shot of whiskey!
Strange but, back then, when my kids asked me if we were “poor” because we never had cokes or chips or cookies or ice cream in the house------I would tell them that cokes and chips and cookies and ice cream are not really food.
And they believed me. And never questioned my dollar a week expense for beer. ----Then again beer is somewhat of a food.
Oddly enough, though I don’t abstain from alcohol, NA beer is the only kind of beer I’ll drink now. I like it on a hot afternoon when I don’t want to get a buzz on. If I want to drink alcohol later on, I’m far more apt to choose wine, a martini, or whatever. I can’t remember the last time I ordered a beer in a bar or restaurant.
It’s the prestige factor. People seeing you buying either one think you can aford to eat/drink overpiced crap.
Frat boys?
It always comes down to sales volume.
It has the limited popularity of a speciality brew, and thus the same price category.
One interesting note: Each label of beer from a single brewery must cover it’s own costs.
The feds do not allow the big brewers to have one label as a price leader and cover the losses with a different cash cow label.
This sort of law goes back to the domination of the soup market by Campbell’s, who would use their popular but cheap tomato soup to cover the losses every time they introduced a new expensive soup. Heinz won a lawsuit that this was an unfair practice, but eventually got out of the soup business anyway.