i have nothing against wanting more alcoholic bang for the buck. depending on the circumstances, a high ABV beer could be the desirable choice. what i have a problem with is when ABV is the only criteria being used, ergo a low ABV beer is never desirable and high ABV beers are always preferable...
well, just I'm just a little more ok with paying for high ABV when there are typically more costs involved with production due to aging and higher grain/hop bill
aging adds significant cost to a beer's production cost, but grains and hops - especially grains - have less of an impact on cost than you might think.
fixed costs make up most of the price of beer. regardless of what beer you're brewing, most costs don't change:
- rent/lease/mortgage
- loans & interest
- staff salary and benefits
- insurance
- most taxes
- marketing
- non-production support staff
- bottling and packaging
- distribution
- etc...
i read recently that the fixed costs are often more than 80% of total cost... so doubling the cost of hops, which might be 5-10% of the total for some beers, isn't going to result in a huge increase in the overall cost. i once asked a brewery owner why they didn't charge more for their hop-heavy big IPAs, vs. their light & almost hop-less blond ale, and he said that the extra 25-30 cents per pint he could charge wasn't worth the effort of having differently-priced beers (logistically easier for all beers to have the same price).
I know I should be OK with the lower abv Gose/Weisse/sours since they do require a lot more deft hands to produce a quality product (and I assume there are costs I'm unaware of due to aging and fruit costs)
gose and berliners are "quick-sour beers" - they are brewed without aging, and only add a day or two to the overall timeline (although they tie up a piece of equipment, typically the kettle, while the beer is being soured). the additional cost of brewing a gose or BW is pretty minimal. in my opinion, they also tend to be less interesting than a long-aged sours.
