Beer in the new era

yeah dude whale's tale is a winner.

as i recall the stats in that nyer article were not that impressive - i mean maybe from their own pov the microbrews are doing well which is certainly fine - i mean i dont at all think businesses are best when theyre as big as they can be - but i do think its inevitable that someday someone is going to look at making high quality beer in america in a diffent light and expand the audience a bunch

The flip side to that is that product can suffer. I hate to keep talking about Bell's but when they started expanding a few years ago (built a whole new brewing complex, started making some of their popular seasonal offerings year-round) a lot of the qualities that drew people to them in the first place suffered.

One that sticks out in my mind is Oberon -- it was a summer yeasty wheat ale, very easy to drink but with a flavor all its own that was unlike German hefes or Belgians or whatever. People used to count down to the day it would go on sale in stores and bars. Then they made it available year round and it lost those flavorful qualities. It got a lot lighter in body and blander in flavor.

This is only one example, of course. In my mind it's always kind of been like indie labels: you have your Merge, Sub Pop, and Touch & Go like Sierra Nevada, Red Hook, and Sam Adams... and then there are the smaller regional labels putting out noise bands and the smaller regional brewers experimenting with crazy ingredients or techniques.

tl;dr - shut up and drink

I bet u label guys would hate 3 Floyd's

disclaimer - i don't know shit about business

but for a relatively young industry (dogfish head and sam adams aren't old at all, compared with the big beer giants a la budweiser), i think they're doing fairly well, esp. considering the near-total market domination the beer giants have had since prohibition

also - dogfish head for example has gained their success precisely by being over-the-top, crazy-ingredient beer nerds. not sure if that's a winning long-term business solution but i doubt they would be such a prominent beer label if they were traditional and/or classy

wrong choice of words re: "classy" but you get my point

semi-interesting stats: http://www.beertown.org/craftbrewing/statistics.html

I like Rogue's Bolshevik aesthetic.

Ska Brewing's labels seem a little too tacky/garish:
http://www.viewpoints.com/images/review/2008/338/12/1228329158-37509_full.jpg

totally agree with dan re: oberon--it was good the first year i tried it and then the next yeah it was kinda bland

I bet u label guys would hate 3 Floyd's

so otm! gumball head has the nastiest label (reminds me of those skin graft records back in the day) but man is it good.

also, is it even reasonable to think that the mass market bud-miller-coors "regular beer consumer" is going to open up to microbrews? IMO they might have a better shot going for the upmarket wine/fancy spirits consumer, cutting into that market, then trying to compete w/ budweiser

i wish more microbreweries were as experimental as dogfish head. most of them are content pumping out IPAs.

any recs for a really interesting micro brand?

For all its success, craft beer has yet to reach the mainstream. Ninety-six per cent of the market—about sixty-seven billion bottles a year—still belongs to non-craft beers and imports. Oliver remembers talking to a brewer at Anheuser-Busch a few years ago, when sales of Michelob had fallen to about a third of a billion bottles a year. “He told me, ‘I wish that brand would just die.’ And that one beer was the size of the entire American craft-brewing industry.” The disparity is partly a function of poor marketing, Ogle argues—craft brewers are still preaching to the converted—and partly of cultural conditioning. Until more Americans wean themselves from ketchup, soda, and other sweet foods, they may never enjoy the taste of hops. “When I talk to people like Sam, I’m constantly amazed at how persuaded they are that everyone drinks craft beer,” she says. “If that’s true, why are they still sitting at four per cent?”

In a decade’s time, Oliver believes, breweries like his could claim a quarter of the market. (Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association, predicts something closer to ten per cent in twenty years.) But only if they don’t scare people off first. “The whole idea of extreme beer is bad for craft brewing,” Oliver says. “It doesn’t expand the tent—it shrinks it. If I want someone to taste a beer, and I make it sound outlandish and crazy, there is a certain kind of person who will say, ‘Oh, let me try it.’ But that is a small audience. It’s one that you can build a beer on, but not a movement.”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/24/081124fa_fact_bilger?currentPage=all

otm imo fwiw

Huh, I didn't know that Magic Hat had acquired Pyramid.

xp true, but why is dogfish maxed out? mostly because of 60-minute IPA, a solid mainstream IPA that lots of people like (and gives them license to brew all their weirdo shit). i would really be curious about actual instances of craft brewers "scaring people off."

when people talk about a craft brewer going mainstream, the result is sam adams. which is fine, but i'm not sure if it's "better" than the model they have now except from a moneymaking standpoint.

xxp that is of course assuming that craft brewers want to grow that big

I mean, Larry Bell stopped selling beer in IL, his home state, because his distributor wasn't going to sell any but his top 4 popular brands.

right and i would assume this industry attracts a lot of guys who want a small-ish environment where they have a lot of control, make some money, pay good salaries/benefits to maybe 10-15 people, and live very contentedly. not sure there's much killer instinct in microbrew world.

^^^this

addendum--which is in total contrast to their evangelizing tendencies but if you want to brew beer for a living you might be a little weird anyway

Do Sierra Nevada, Sam Adams, and Red Hook count as microbrews? It's pretty hard to find a bar around here that doesn't sell those beers.

i agree w/ NYer quote in many ways

but take sam adams for instance. straightforward, "grown-up", all-american, nothing quite extreme about them. IMO there's really nothing that's altogether that convincing about sam adams to make an everyday-average-beer-drinker change over from their budweiser or miller.

some of these bros must have grand ambitions

sam adams is boring imo, also their cherry wheat is the worst beer i have ever had

also they all have big beards

xps I would say yes, or at least "independent" in that they're not owned by Parmalat or whatever company just bought A-B.

red hook was owned by anheuser-busch, not sure if that is still true. sierra and sam are both too big for the micro category. but both started small and are probably not going to grow much more (having been around for 30+ years)

a couple of my faves from Europe at the moment - if you see them I can't recommend them highly enough:

http://www.freebase.com/api/trans/image_thumb//guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000008ddef69?maxheight=560&mode=fit&maxwidth=280

from North East France - a really underrated beer region, crazy considering it's basically Flemish like lots of the great Belgians

such as:

http://www.brasseriedelasenne.be/images/zinnebir.jpg

and how's that for a cool label? The de la senne beers are all great and all fantastically labelled.

Do Sierra Nevada, Sam Adams, and Red Hook count as microbrews? It's pretty hard to find a bar around here that doesn't sell those beers.

yea, more or less. i think there is a technical distinction w/ regard to the term "microbrew" but they really have a lot more in common w/ ur average microbrewery than they do w/ anheuser-busch, i.e. they are really pretty small compared w/ the market kings

most sam is boring but sam summer is fuckin tight imo

btw for mark cl: fun midwest micros

Bell's (stan)
3 Floyd's
Great Lakes
Founder's
Atwater Block (newbs outta Detroit)

k according to biz journal A-B owns 35% of red hook.

(point taken re: red hook & AB) xp

wow, news to me

yea great lakes is my all-time top brewery maybe next to bell's, & founders is fuckin great- xp

time to go exercise so i can watch the celtics and drink mad beerz tonite.

destroyer u in MA?

(celtics?)

already exercised so I can watch the Nats and drink mad beerz tonite.

Dan, have you had Half Acre Over Ale yet? I wasn't that thrilled with their debut lager, but lagers don't thrill me in general. But the brewery is like four blocks from my apartment, so I want to support them. The Over Ale was on the menu at Tiny Lounge last weekend, but they were out.

I can't remember which one I tried, but I think it was the lager. I'm with you on both points, wanting to support them and not being totally thrilled. There's a rumor they might start sponsoring my soccer group, which would be pretty fucking awesome imo.

The Over Ale is much much better than the Lager, though I also don't really dig lagers so much anyway. But, yeah, I bought a six pack of the ale a couple of weeks ago and it wasn't the best beer ever but would buy again.

I really didn't enjoy the beer I had from the other new brewery in the hood, Metropolitan.

Oh, I didn't realize Metropolitan was up and running already.

yeah, they have it at Hopleaf, at least.

Nice. After glancing at their website, it seems like I'd probably enjoy their line of beers more when it gets warmer out.

hey mark yeah i'm in boston.

picked up some pilsner urquell on the way home in honor of icey. this:

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/05/miller_products/image/pilsner.jpg

is a goddamn label.

I went to a liquor store outside of my 'hood tonight and they had a whole cooler full of 3 Floyds' 22oz bottles, including one of these for the label police:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2400/2659011120_fa01a066f4.jpg

omg that label is terrifying

wau

speaking of designs, i love the silk-screened bottles a la rogue:

http://web.mit.edu/~tcarlile/www/images/blog/354roguechipotle.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/179/371479782_c4ad50733d.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3282/2637472443_ebc585741c_o.jpg

Yup, I mentioned those upthread.