Pump House Stonefire in at NSLC

[Jayme]

I picked one up on Quinpool (they also had the Muskoka). I was not very impressed with the Stonefire... I will not be buying a second bottle haha.

[RubberToe]

I wasn't impressed either. For that kind of money you'd better be selling an impressive beer. IMO it was too "normal". Sure, we can say we drank a stienbier, but still.

[gm-]

I was tempted to try it until I saw the price tag, $15 is just too much for a pretty normal beer, even though it was brewed with a unique method. Just as a comparison, for that price you can buy Goose Island Matilda or Sofie ($10.95), Dominus Vobiscum Lupulus ($11.99), Muskoka Legendary Oddity or Winter beard ($12.95), or Unibrue 17 grande reserve.

[dean2k]

I was tempted to try it until I saw the price tag, $15 is just too much for a pretty normal beer, even though it was brewed with a unique method. Just as a comparison, for that price you can buy Goose Island Matilda or Sofie ($10.95), Dominus Vobiscum Lupulus ($11.99), Muskoka Legendary Oddity or Winter beard ($12.95), or Unibrue 17 grande reserve.

And the Goose Island beers are at just about every NBLC except Sackville

[Jayme]

I don't think it's necessarily fair to blame the brewer for pricing - there are a LOT of factors at play and the comparisons aren't necessarily apple to apple. In this case, it was presumably quite labour intensive to produce the stein beer and from that perspective, the price may very well be justified.

But what I do blame them for is quality... I thought the fermentation profile was shite and I'm not convinced there isn't the start of something wild taking hold (time will tell, but I'm not going to be the guy finding out!). It just seems these days that more often than not, these sorts of special, one-off, expensive local beers end up being utter crap. I can understand (somewhat) that they try these experiments, may not be 100% happy with the result, but still sell and market it as a great beer. Just seems like some simple pilot batches could mitigate some of this.