Some craft breweries are putting their product only in so-called large-format bottles. The Delaware-based Dogfish Head Brewery plans to dedicate one of its two bottle-filling lines just to the 750-ml. format.
The trend toward large bottles is part of what some call the “wine-ification” of beer, the push by many craft brewers to make their product as respectable as a fine wine–and at a price to match. Bottles sell for as much as $30 in stores and much more on restaurant menus.
Brewers appreciate the prestige factor of the large-format beer bottles. But merchants and restaurateurs often find it hard to persuade customers to commit to these bigger beers. Price is a big factor, plus big-bottle beers can be hard to finish in one sitting, thanks to their typically higher alcohol content; you can’t really recork beer.
What’s more, many beer drinkers are uncomfortable with the notion of drinking beer like wine–to be split among several people and pondered. Traditionalists dislike that the big bottles send the signal that beer is trying to be something that it’s not: that it needs to be more like wine or scotch to win over elite consumers.
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