Black Market Beer

The emergence of craft beer in America has led to all kinds of new trends. Many of these trends are exciting, but like anything, sometimes bad things also happen. And one of those “bad things” (at least as far as we’re concerned) is Black Market Beer.

If you’re a regular reader of ours, you’re aware of last month’s incident involving Westvleteren XII. Westvleteren XII is a Belgium Quadruple brewed by the monks of the Saint Sixtus Abbey. It’s considered by many to be one of the greatest beers in the world. It’s also an extremely limited release, so when it hit the states last December (which it hadn’t until just last year), it sold out right away. Almost immediately, the infamous Quadruple started showing up on eBay at highly escalated prices. And even though eBay had been actively involved in cracking down on alcohol sales at its site, they couldn’t keep up with the sheer volume of new listings that were going up.

Our friend Christian Debenedetti recently posted an excellent article at Slate where he chronicled the growth of beer on the “black market” and why it’s happening:

All of the factors that motivate black markets–scarce supply, high demand, and people willing to skirt the rules to make a buck–are present in the case of craft beer. The frenzy is fed by brewers who have elevated their practices to new heights of technical sophistication and an audience willing to fork out incredible amounts of money for small-run beers. The obsessive rankings of crowdsourced beer websites like RateBeer.com and BeerAdvocate.com may look like democracy at work, but the new national beer scene offers proof that the wisdom of crowds can sometimes spill over into collective insanity.

Debenedetti goes on to detail how beer sellers circumvent eBay’s best attempts to manage this situation:

It’s illegal to sell beer for consumption without a license, but thousands of beer auctions on eBay have successfully closed. Their vendors have managed this by listing their wares as “collectible containers” lacking any valuable contents, an obvious dodge that infuriates many brewers. The deals have seemed to flout both U.S. law and the site’s own guidelines, and have often resulted in eye-popping prices–like this $1,300 sale of a single 12-ounce bottle. In one of the most galling recent examples, a seller in Vermont resold a magnum of sour beer blended by Belgian Lambic master Armand Debelder for Debelder’s wedding (starting bid, $90; winning 20th bid, $1,322).

Where the Black Market Beer phenomenon goes in the future is anyone’s guess. But one thing’s for sure, it’s not going away. History has proven that whenever and wherever scarcity and demand coexist, underground economies will thrive. So unfortunately, there will be more stories like what happened with Westvleteren XII – many, many more.