It's All In The Delivery.

I recently scored some @finbackbrewery Oscillation 003.  Being a good little beer geek, I poured the 8.5% into my Dogfish Head Signature glass (my go-to for "imperial IPAs" and the like).  The beer was redolent with grapefruit and bright pine notes. A thoroughly enjoyable drinking experience.

But then I had the ugly task of calling my auntie.  She's the type of lady who doesn't take "no" for an answer and is convinced she is doing me a favor as she is well connected at a major City hospital. (We'll leave it at that).  Suffice it to say, I needed volumes of my favorite IPA delivered to my gullet... STAT!

I ditched the signature glass and and loaded a good, ol' fashioned shaker pint with @FirestoneWalker #UnionJack.  At 7.5% one might think that the signature glass might be the proper glassware.  Or perhaps a Spiegelau IPA glass.  But there comes a time where you have to say, "Fuck it." and realize that you want your IPA delivered to you in as speedy (and familiar way) as possible.

I have felled many (and The Rock means "MANY") Union Jack (ranked #1 on @Untappd for consumption) so there's no need for the delicate deconstruction of the beer nor the careful scrutiny of the flavor profile.  I am initmately familiar with it, I likes that shit and it likes me.  So, in this case, the proper glassware is the humble shaker pint!

Do you guys remember being in college when you pounded Busch Light poured haphazardly into shitty, plastic cups?  Those things didn't break when you dropped them or threw them at the shitty band booked by your fraternity's social chair. Remember how special you felt when you used actual glassware?  And that "glass" was the ubiquitous shaker pint.

In this day and age, where #craftbeer has jumped the shark and "afficionados" and "advocates" alike scrutinize glassware, serving temps and food pairings, remember this:

Beer is your friend.

It doesn't care what it's served in.  It only wants to make you happy.

So dump all the pretense and get that tasty goodness into your maw.  Drink it from a mason jar, a pint glass or your enemy's hollowed-out skull.  It doesn't matter.

Pressure.

So, this is a bit pre-mature since I can't read the whole article without ponying up to the Wall Street Journal but, apparently, A-B (our favorite Goliath) means to somehow manipulate the distribution system in order to move more product.

When they started buying up craft breweries (Goose Island, Blue Point, Elysian, etc.) I had a gut feeling this might happen.  But those in the industry posited that aybe, just maybe, they were simply bolstering their portfolios. 

Macro sales are decliing.  Craft sales are surging.  Instead of trying to learn how to do it like craft brewers, they just bought up some crafties and turned them loose under their banner. There.  Now they've got a stake in the game.  Now they can have a pice of the tasty, tasty #craftbeer pie.  That's fair, isn't it?

Yes.  Until they pull shit like this.

I can see the rep leaning on a distro's counter, staring at him menacingly in a Good Fellas kinda way.

"If yous want more Elysian, I 'tink yous need to put more Bud and Lime-a-Rita in yer front winduss..."

But the good thing about that scenario is this:  There are tons of other great IPAs, stouts, craft brew out there.

If it came to that, I would hope the distro would sport a backbone and sacrifice the Elysian (say) for the ability to place his inventory how and where they want.  I would hope too that the craftbeer community would be understanding and willing to switch up brands for the sake to supporting their distro and the craft breweries who have remained independent.

It's be very interesting to see how this all shakes out.

Craft Beer Has a Sexism Problem. AGAIN!

Why, hello, Twitterfeed!  Lo and behold, another article (this time from The Slate) blasting the unfortunate use of misogynistic labels for #craftbeer. 

Craftbeer is sexist!  Craftbeer is misogynistic!  CRAFT HATES WOMEN! 

I think, more accurately, craft has developed a case of severe rectal stenosis.  That is, everybody is being too tight-assed about, well, everything.

In the beginning it was fun to discover that beer had the versatility to be paired with food, just like wine and, just like wine, different glasses served to accent the beer-drinking experience.  But then, craft beer jumped the shark (it is Shark Week, after all!) and people started bitching (yeah, I said it) when their stout wasn't poured into the proper vessel at a T.J. McFunsters or if the temperature wasn't ideal for serving, or cellaring or shotgunning.  At some point, craft beer morphed and adopted the elitist assholery of wine snobs, a group we sought to challenge, emulate and yet somehow eschew.

Then the Can Revolution began and hipsters were wagging their beards at you for pouring into something even as humble as a nonic pint. Shit got uptight. And pretty fast.  But I digress. So back to the agenda-

Chicks and beer (yeah, I said it).

The whole issue of becoming vehemently offended is, to me, offensive.

Women are part of this world.  I have witnessed the growth from 'fest to 'fest.  Their tastes are diverse, disparate and every much as credible as their male counterparts.  Female brewers excel in their craft.  But to say craft beer is ALIENATING an entire sex because of a bunch of labels is alarmist at best.  Do you think Carol Stoudt would have shuttered Stoudt's brewing just because she saw the PantyDropper label?  More likely than not, a shot would have been fired back with the Limp Dick Doppelbock!

Tasteless?  Sure.  But most women I've talked to understand the coyness and tolerate the sophomoric humor.  Most women get the joke.  "Pantypeeler, eh?  I doubt that.  Let's see..." because, you see, the beer ISN'T REALLY MEANT TO PEEL OFF ANY PANTIES!!  It's a joke (remember those?) about how delicious and seductive the beer is alleged to be!  Beer, like sex, is supposed to MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD! Not question the socioeconomic ramifications of a patriarchal society vis-à-vis alcoholic beverage labels.  (Whew!  My head hurts just from writing that!)

It's about fucking around and being dumb and being relaxed.  Were people morally outraged at all the "That's what she said!" jokes from The Office? The Naked Gun's "Nice beaver..." line?  No.


If you find the labels that offensive, don't drink the beer.  I mean, you know we're talking about a handful of labels, right?  Come to think of it...

How about The Abyss?  Samael?  Dark Lord? Devil Dancer?  My. God.  Craft beer is advocating Satanism!

Sixpoint Resin, Smuttynose Finest Kind, Knee Deep's Breaking Bud?  Holy petunias, mother!  Craft beer is pro-Mary Jane!

This is straight up ridiculousness.  And tedious.  Can't anyone just have a beer anymore without over-analyzing shit?  People should stop getting their panties in a bunch.

Yeah.  I said it.

For Whom the Bell's Tolls...

It tolls for thee, Innovation Brewing!  It tolls for thee!

So here's another case that has the #craftbeer community's panties in a bunch.  "Big Bad Bell's" is picking on it's embryonic little brother!  A brief Googling of the interwebs will reveal much info but some of it can be found here in the Detroit Free Press and here at this ABC affiliate site.

Basically, people are up in arms because a larger entity is picking on a newer one and it seems ridiculous that an established brewery like Bell's would even feel the slightest tickling of a threat from such a small (and new) brewery. Let Chip and Nicole live their dream!  How dare you flex your legal muscle!  Thems just little baby brewers!

But do you guys know how the rich stay rich? They penny pinch more than the average Joe and guard their wealth.  Well, successful craft breweries aren't going to stay successful if they don't bother to protect their own assets either.

If Bell's, or Lagunitas or anyone feels like someone else is taking liberties with something they feel is their own intellectual property, they have every right to protect it.  That being said, most of the time, it's ridiculous and most of the time it's a knee-jerk reaction to thinking you're being taken.

 Take the Lagunitas vs. Sierra Nevada beef.  

                                                                                                   (Brewbound.com)
 (Rockonbeer.com)

Lagunitas claimed that Sierra Nevada's label design for Hop Hunter IPA was too similar to that of their own IPA and that folks may confuse the two.  Granted, to a novice beer drinker, there might be some confusion.  But to someone familiar with craft beer, such a error is unlikely.  Personally, I find this silly.  The labels are, to me, different enough.  Green background vs. pale, the recognizable "Sierra Nevada banner" vs. "Lagunitas" in big red letters and the cartoon dog.  And though I think Lagunitas maybe over-reacted with this, I can totally get why they got defensive.

The Bell's vs. Innovation is even more ridiculous because Bell's seems to be protecting it's slogan: "Bottling innovation since 1985".  Did you even know they had a slogan? Of course, for craft beer geeks, we know of a few off the top of our heads.  Stone's "You're Not Worthy" and Dogfish Head's "Off-Centered Ales for Off-Centered People" come to mind readily.  Did you know Bell's had one?  But now that you know they do and you know what it is, would you ever confuse the two?  Would you see someone drinking Innovation Ale and say, "Hey!  Are you contract brewing with Bell's? Don't they bottle you?"  Probably not.  But... Bell's has the right to defend itself.

Both of these cases are great examples of spurious litigation (or potential litigation since Bell's states that no lawsuit was ever filed).  There are many other examples as well and it always leaves a particularly nasty taste in the mouths of beer geeks everywhere whenever in-fighting pops up. 

Everyone like to talk about the fraternity of craft brewing and how much we love each other and how, unlike other industries, the resources are shared and recipes are open code (NorthernBrewer.com sells pretty kick-ass clone recipes provided by the breweries themselves!) 

For example:  Here, on Long Island, Barrier Brewing Company got positively ass-reamed by Hurricane Sandy. Eight local craft breweries got together and made a collaborative brew to help raise funds to get Barrier back on its feet.  In another field, co-competitors would have joined hands and danced on it's watery grave.  On the Left Coast, Firestone Walker helped to keep bottles of Pliny The Elder rolling while upgrades were made to Russian River's operations.  Unheard of fellowship! But make no mistake, craft beer is still a business.

Sure, they'll help each other out and will speak fondly of each other's beers and share tent space at beer fests and loan each other equipment and ingredients but if it came down to you closing or them closing, you can bet your last hop addition that they would rather have you go.  Yeah, it sounds mean but, if you stayed open and they closed, would you take care of their families' needs?

What I'm trying to say is, get over it.

Fraternity is great, but, in reality, they're still just businesses.  It's not a big deal if a company wants to fire a shot across another company's bow.  It does get uncool if an established brewery is trying to stop a new one from even getting it's feet under them.

Now, you might say that this is exactly what Bell's is doing to Innovation.  But, per Bell's twitter statement, they offered to pay for legal fees, they did not request a name change nor did they request Innovation to cease brewing.  What they did request was that Innovation not trademark "innovation" which, to me seems reasonable.  After all, could not Innovation then go after Bell's and demand that they change their slogan?  How would the interwebs feel about David suing Goliath?  Would that make it OK?

Truthfully, the only thing more ridiculous than this whole issue is the fact that it bother people at all.

The whole thing is giving me a headache and the only thing that takes care of that for me is a #craftbeer.  (Hmm... I think I'll have a Bell's Expedition.)

Stand fast!

So Budweiser is at it again.

According to The Tampa Tribune, Anheuser-Busch has approached Cigar City’s Joey Redner with a potential offer.  Not surprising since Bud has been buying a lot of craft breweries as of late.  They just added Seattle’s Elysian Brewery to their growing trophy case, plopping them right next to Goose Island, Blue Point Brewing Company and Bend’s 10 Barrel. 

Why are they doing this?

One might think that Budweiser (AB) has seen the writing on the wall.  The Brewers Association cites that, in 2013, though overall beer sales dipped, craft beer sales rose by about 17%.  And though Craft is only about 8% of the total market, the positive trend is significant and, of course, would be of interest to a juggernaut like AB.  They realize that they must adapt and be able to go with the flow or possibly be left in the cold.  As it is, venerable Sam Adams, a pioneer in the craft beer movement, has felt the sting of being outpaced by the industry it helped to create, define and promote.

So maybe AB is buying up these crafties so they can better learn how to create good-tasting, well-made beer!  Maybe they want to work side-by-side with Goose Island and Elysian to see how they treat their drinkers (no longer customers per se but more like friends and family) and to figure out what it is, exactly, that makes them so popular and how they generate such a loyal and fervent following.  If they mean to wade into the craft beer world, they should do so with the proper training and tutelage so as to do it well.  

Oh, the naïveté!

Jonesey, a friend of mine from college who is an unabashed PDX zealot, felt that AB was snapping up these craft breweries to use as weapons.  If a store wanted Elysian Space Dust or more Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, they’d better give Bud and Bud Light Lime-a- Rita some more premium shelf space, goddammit!  He feels that there is no real interest by AB to learn how to make a good product but rather, that their move is to create leverage.

The lack of love for craft is incredibly evident in Bud’s Super Bowl  commercial.

I know I shouldn’t have linked to it because that gets it more views but as Sun Tzu wrote, “Know your enemy”.  The ad dispels whatever faint glimmer of hope I had that AB may be trying to better themselves as it blatantly takes a swipe at the Craft Beer Culture.  They stereotype craft beer geeks as mustachioed hipsters and ridicule how we tend to enjoy the appearance and even scent of our beers.  Hey, folks.  If you’re buying a $60 steak, don’t you bother to appreciate its beauty and savor all the nuances it has to offer? Doesn’t it’s marbling, juiciness, seared bark make it all the more enticing?  Don’t you anticipate so much more?

But if you’re eating a McDonald’s hamburger (and I’ve had my share), you just plow into it.  There’s no artistry.  You know what it is and you know what you’re getting and, though it technically meets the qualifications of what makes a burger, you know, in your soul, that it’s a far cry from what a burger can be.   

Get my analogy, Bud?  

The commercial isn’t a shot across the bow but rather a purposeful swing aiming at our jawline; one that misses and only served to raise the ire of an already feisty contingent.  And it makes Budweiser’s purpose clear:  they are in it for the money.

Rather than try to create a better product, they are trying, yet again, to bolster their bottom line. Rather than try to understand what makes a good beer and why more and more people are drinking it, they would rather resort to high school “Mean Girl” tactics and paint craft beer with a mocking brush.

Look at those geeks! They’re not like us, right Bro?  They’re uncool but we’re cool, right Bro?  Right?

These days, people are demanding more from the products they consume. They want things that are organic, or local. They want things that are fresh and things that taste good. Eating (and drinking) is an experience and cultural movements as evidenced by the popularity of food trucks, locavorism, farm-to-table menus and, yes, craft beer.  And AB can’t get hip to that.

They see their numbers sag and fret that the masses that pad their coffers may be tempted to try something new, something tasty.  They don’t want them to take Morpheus’ red pill.  They want to keep them in the dark.  And so they come up with that commercial.  And they buy craft breweries.  And they take measures to keep drinkers from evolving.  But it’s impossible.

We’re only 8% of a huge market but there is simply too much craft out there to be avoided.  And, for that matter, there are too many beer geeks to be avoided as well. Everyone knows a beer geek, or has a friend who knows a beer geek and, eventually, the Gospel of Craft will be preached unto them. 

And lo, a curtain was pulled from before their eyes

And taste they could for the first time the freshness of hops and sweetness of malt

And there was much rejoicing and singing and heralding of joy

For the manacles had been lifted and discarded

And lo, the Rapture…

OK. Maybe not as drastic an epiphany will occur but exposures, and change, are inevitable.  

So AB will continue to run commercials that are meant to hold onto their waning demographic of drinkers while simultaneously insulting the craft beer segment they hope to infiltrate.  And they buy up craft breweries to leverage their position in beer stores everywhere.  But what they don’t realize is that, delicious as Elysian’s and Goose Island’s brews may be, there are other craft beers that can easily step in to take their place.

 Their strategy will eventually fail (what are you gonna do, Bud?  Buy ‘em all?).  But I think craft brewers shouldn’t roll over so easily.  Sure, sure.  It’s easy for me to say as I quarterback from behind my computer screen.  And I’ve never had to deal with the temptation of a giant bag of money.  But I would hope that sometime (sometime soon?) someone will look the silver-tongued devil in the eye and just say, “No thanks.”

I’m not trying to lay this whole thing at your feet, Joey Redner, but you are at bat.  What’ll you do when that pitch comes?

Fight the good fight, people.

This Bud's NOT for me...

Dear Budwesier,

What the fuck are you doing? Is it too hard to make a good beer?  Do you find making something with flavor  in direct conflict with your Bottom Line?  Are you overwhelmed by the Craft Beer Movement?  I think you've given up.  I think you've thrown in the towel and you're trying to keep your masses of Yo-Bros from taking the red pill and seeing how beer really could taste.

Otherwise, why put out this commercial?

Like the Mean Girls' club in high school, you find it necessary to demean and ridicule that which you can't understand.  You can't believe that what you've been doing is wrong (or, at least, is passé) and so you've got to rag on the others who are doing it right.  Beer, real beer, has a myriad of styles and flavors that appeal to all sorts of folks.  But instead of trying to make a bunch of beers that taste good, you would rather make one type of beer that offends the least.

Your commercial states that it's made for people who like to drink beer, not dissect it.  Actually, what you make is for people who don't know better or who don't care.  You can keep the latter.  And yes, I will sadly admit that some element of extreme oenophilic snobbery has manifested itself.  A lot of people fuss over the grain bill, what type of hops, if they were whirlpooled and if Egyptian honey was used.  But a far greater number of folks will take a slug and decide, on the basest level, if they like it or not.

But here's what confuses me:

If you're distancing yourselves from the craft beer movement, then why did you go and purchase Elysian Brewing Company?  Or Goose Island? Or 10 Barrel?Or my very own, very local Bluepoint Brewing?

You know, I was a little naïve.  I thought that maybe you guys realized that people, overall, wanted more flavor in their beer.  I thought that maybe you realized your pap of a lager was losing steam and you wanted to tap into your vast resources and provide great tasting beer to a lot more people.  I thought you wanted to learn how to bnrew good beer from guys who have been doing it all along.  But it seems I was wrong.

A friend of mine, an unapologetic apostle of West Coast breweries boldy stated that he would never drink Elysian or 10 Barrel ever again.  I chided him and said that, so long as the beer stayed tasty, who really cared?  Again, my naïvité showing through.  He opined that you guys were buying up these little breweries as weapons, as means to leverage shelf space for Chelada and Limerita.  At first, I figured he drank too much double IPA (look it up, it's a really tasty style) but now, I see that he's probably closer to the truth than I'd care to admit.

With the airing of your Superbowl commercial, you made this clear.  You don't give a shit about craft and are only buying these breweries to leverage yourselves better in a market you're losing.

Your commercial was bold (if only your beers were the same).  But taking a direct shot at the Movement you hoped to win over, you've only bolstered our solidarity.  Ya done fucked up, kids.

Instead of wasting all that money on you Superbowl ad, you shoulda maybe used it to learn how to make better beer.

Beer Has Roots.

Recently, an article in Boston Magazine detailed how the craft beer movement has seemingly outgrown Sam Adams.

It was a bit sad to read how such a giant in the craft beer industry (an oxymoron in a field where individualism, uniqueness and small-scale tenacity are highly valued?) could be felled by it's own progeny and how someone as iconic as Jim Koch could be forced to play catch-up.

Yes, there are bigger, badder, more unique beers to try but that wasn't always the case even a decade ago.  Some of the responses to the article and on Twitter seem to indicate that there is a developing schism the craft beer world.  There are those of us who remember severely limited options and those who came into craft when it was already under a considerable head of steam.  That is, all of you rotten kids.

No one wonders "what's a triple IPA?" or "what does barrel-aging mean?"  But rather, "who made that triple and which barrels were used and for how long?"  The magic is gone.  Stuff that opened my eyes in wonderment is simply taken for granted by the new, larger and younger population of craft beer drinkers.

Vanilla stout?  Dude, that was so 2000.  Coffee stout?  Bah.  Have you had any  Kopi Luwak stout offerings? Not just coffee beans but coffee beans passed through the digestive tract of a civet!  Umm... yea, cat-pooped coffee beans.  

But even that is passé!  The trend has been to demand more and more exotically sourced ingredients with which to fuel the Hype Train.   Beer made with habañeros?  Pedestrian!  But check it out! This one is made with a pepper grown from seeds smuggled out of Itzcoatl's tomb!  Uh, yeah. The guy had to smuggle the seeds out in his ass so... there's that Kopi Luwak theme resurfacing again...

That's not to say one can't outgrow a beer. In fact, I think it's impossible for your palate to not develop.  Folks will move from one style to another or find specific beers within a style that they prefer over others.  Currently, for example, I have moved from drinking copious amounts of Stone IPA to drinking so much Union Jack that my neighbors get kidney failure every Friday night.

So, yeah, Boston Beer Company's Rebel IPA doesn't really satisfy a hophead the way a Green Flash Palate Wrecker or even my beloved Union Jack would.  And their flagship Boston Lager has been eclipsed by a bevy of other craft beer offerings.  But does that mean that Sam deserves such derision?

All craft beer enthusiasts started somewhere and I'd be willing to bet, most of us started with something like Sam.  I highly doubt that, after a collegiate career of drinking Bud, someone jumped into the deep-end and got into craft by first sampling a rauchbier or a funky, brett-laced sour.  

For me is was Bass. And Sam.  I remember fondly downing pitchers of it at The Silhouette Bar and Lounge in Allston in the mid-90s playing Cricket and 301 until I developed dart elbow.  Then Abita Turbo Dog.  Those three, crucial brews slammed together like an alcoholic's Voltron and made me into the IPA-loving, quart-guzzling super-boozy robot you see before you today!

And I never looked... actually, I did. I looked back and still look back a lot.  And every now and then I'll have a Sam because it's important to remember.

As Wilford Brimley (another old fart) said in the Quaker Oats commercials, "It's the right thing to do..."