Beer prices through the roof....

[DanielinAk]

So my friend is on Adak Island in Alaska (look on a map where it is and see how many miles it is from you)
Anyhow this is a photo of the beer prices there.

[Longhorn Mike]

Wow. Looked at the photos of the island on Google. It is beautiful.

- Mike

[kruegerbock]

Interesting. Funny thing is craft beer prices in many areas would put those prices to shame. I'm old enough to remember $4.00 cases of beer (as low as $3.00 with returnable bottles - the deposit was more than $1.00, so you had to know that one of your a-hole buddies wasn't gonna smash a bottle)...

[golf_lover44]

When I was in college a local liquor store sold 3 quarts of Alpine (from Huber Brewing Company) in returnable bottles for $1.09.

[Longhorn Mike]

During my college years (87 - 91), our beer bargain of choice was Pearl stubby bottle 12 packs for $2.99. we would buy 3 or 4 packs at a time.

[Scott]

Supply and demand. My wife lived on Adak when she was growing up while her Dad was stationed there with the coast guard. She was too young to care about beer price though. Back in the early 1990's I worked several summers out of a remote camp in southeast Alaska doing survey layout for future logging roads. If you wanted beer there were three options. You could have it brought in on the weekly float plane from Ketchikan which was exceeding expensive. Weight is a key component to that. Some of the guys did fly in higher end whiskey. Option two was take a skiff about four miles through semi-open water to a hole in the wall bar that was only accessible by boat or plane. By the time they paid their transportation costs and added a hefty markup, it was not much less than flying it in. The third option was to get it at the only town on the island which was about 2.5 hours away. About once a week somebody would make the drive and come back with everyone's order.

If I remember correctly, cheap beer like Hamm's or Rainier ran about $25/case in town. Mainstream swill like Bud or Miller was in the $35 range. Anything better was not on the menu. It cost a lot but living conditions were rough and would have been worse without beer. I remember we used to leave a couple cans in the creek near where we parked in the morning. When we walked out to the rig after working in the woods all day, having a cold beer waiting for us was a godsend - even if it was Hamm's.

[renokenn]

I was stationed at Elmendorf in Anchorage in the 60s and we drank on base 10c a can, couldn't afford to do so off base