Obviously, all costs are higher for craft beer- they buy, say 1000 cases of empty bottles at a time where Bud may buy 100,000 cases or whatever.

I belong to a homebrew club here in MA and we would often go up to the Ipswich Ale brewery to help them bottle beer on Saturdays- it was a ramshackle operation then as we had to catch bottles coming down the line and put them in the cases by hand. The owner appreciated our volunteer work as it kept his labor costs down. It was always fun b/c he'd let us drink as much as we want and bring home all the bottles with misaligned labels.

One time they contract brewed over 200 cases of a scotch ale for another operation and messed it up, getting an extra bag of a dark malt into the mash. It altered the color too much and the buyer did not want it. Ipswich had no idea what to do with it so they called us to just come take it. Everyone raced up there and grabbed 8-10 cases each. Haven't had a scotch ale since.

About 10 years ago, they bought an old clam processing plant in downtown Ipswich and put a shirtload of money into it, including a state of the art bottling line and that was the end of us. Any time any of us go there, though, the owner will spot us a beer on him if he's there.

What was the topic again?

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