Didn’t enter the lottery last time, for some reason this time I think I’m going to give it a shot. Driving all the way up there for some beer seems ludicrous (6 hour round trip?!?) but ehh why not.
I don’t know what kind of vehicle you have, but let’s assume you get 40 mpg, just for hypothetical’s sake. From Long Beach, it’s 188 miles to Kern River Brewing. That’s 376 miles, roundtrip. Long Beach was used as a hypothetical starting point, btw.
376 miles / 40 mpg = 9.4 gallons.
Let’s assume you’re a Costco member and filled-up your tank yesterday at $3.45 per gallon (cheapest SoCal gas price I’ve seen in a loooong time).
$3.45 * 9.4 = $32.43.
If you win the lottery, you’re probably going to max purchase your allocation (6 bottles @ ~ $9 each), which does drive down the per bottle price:
$32.43/6 = $5.40.
$5.40 + $9 = $14.40 per 22 oz bottle.
If you have a big SUV or truck that only gets 20mpg, then you’re looking at an approx. per bottle cost of $20.(!)
…
and that doesn’t even include the value of your time.
Obviously, as Bud points-out, there may be other factors that make the trip more worthwhile to you. By the same token, there may be other factors that make the trip more costly to you.
For 6 hours in the car, possible opportunity costs, and $14.40 per bottle, that IPA would have to do a lot more than be the best IPA ever for me to make the trek. But that’s just me …
True Charlie, I have never entered the lottery for this, a friend did last year and was selected, he made a nice day trip with his wife and came back with arguably the best IPA on the planet. Chances are slim to none I get selected but if I do I will make a nice Saturday road trip, have lunch, drink Citra on tap and bring back a nice stash. I do miss the days when we could get this at our local WF and other bottle shops though.
That would be way to easy Anton, but just a few short years ago Citra was available here in So Cal whenever they bottled it, granted it was Pliny like but if you had a few good relationships with better bottle shops it wasn’t uncommon to grab 4-6 bottles a couple times a year. Whats more intriguing/frustrating to me is the obvious, take a KRBC or an Alpine Beer Co., if they could ever get the proper expansion plans and capital in place could you imagine the success they could achieve by having Nelson and Citra and their other products on shelfs on a somewhat consistent basis ? Of course there are legit hurdles and logistics but it CAN be done. Someone will figure it out sooner than later.