The Session #50: What makes you buy someone's beer?

FINALLY!

I've been dying to get in on "The Session" for months now, but always drew a blank when it came time to write something up.

This time around, I'm ready for it.

This month's question is pretty basic: what makes you buy someone's beer?

Price is definitely a factor for me.  I'm a college kid who is currently looking at post-grad jobs paying in the range of $12-20,000 a year.  As much as I'd love to buy a 10 dollar bottle of beer, it's just not an option right now.  With that said, I don't find myself buying totally cheap stuff all that often, I just make sure that I'm not dropping 2 bucks a bottle for a six pack (or 4 pack, if that's how the company does it).

After price, I take into account style.  While I'm open to being a little adventurous, I know a few things about my palate.  I'm generally not a huge fan of darker beers.  Don't get me wrong--they're good--just typically a bit thicker and harder to drink.  But if they're done right, I get over that fact pretty quickly.  Additionally, American Style Pale Ales are not for me.  Once again, I can appreciate them, but they put an end to my night of drinking pretty quickly.

Next would probably be how difficult it is to find.  I just posted about a beer from Utah; odd stuff like that really draws me in. A part of the mission of The Wall is to find every bottle we can, so buying a beer I've never seen before takes precedence over buying one that we have on the wish list but can find in a number of places. 


Those beers that make up my wishlist?  They're usually from companies that I'm familiar with.  I tend to get a lot of beers from Wisconsin: Lakefront, Sprecher, New Glarus, Ale Asylum, and Capital (though I've pretty much maxed out on my hometown brew.)  Next comes other companies that I tend to like a lot: Bell's, Three Floyds, and New Belgium.  After that I'll head over to the higher end singles, where I'll often use Beer Advocate ratings and my personal tastes to find something for a special occasion.  That's how I wound up with a bottle of Piraat a couple weeks ago. 

So there you have it, that's my selection process.  So far, I haven't come away disappointed too often.

Let us know about your beer buying decision process in the comments.