Vanity Fair interview with Shaun Hill, Hill Farmstead

Discussion in 'Beer Talk' started by BT_Bobandy, Apr 25, 2013.

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  1. mrhartounian

    mrhartounian Initiate (0) Nov 23, 2009 Massachusetts

    Lot's of judgmental comments here which surprises me. Kinda thought the beer community was more about acceptance but I guess there will always be the critical crowd. No doubt Shaun is a quirky guy, but seems to me he is doing what he loves and just never saw this success coming. I for one am very thankful I get the opportunity to visit once or twice a year because it is a great experience.
     
  2. otispdriftwood

    otispdriftwood Initiate (0) Dec 9, 2011 Colorado

    Looks like a haircut too, perhaps.
     
  3. otispdriftwood

    otispdriftwood Initiate (0) Dec 9, 2011 Colorado

    If he didn't want to deal with people showing up, he could keg ALL of his beer and sell the same amount. Or he could limit the hours or the amount you can buy. What I got from the article is that Shaun is a little taken aback by the success - it wasn't planned or anticipated in any way. He just wants to brew beer, period. What he really needs is someone he can trust to deal with the business side.
     
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  4. BT_Bobandy

    BT_Bobandy Initiate (0) Feb 20, 2011 Ohio

    I wish I could go back in time and tell Vincent van Gogh how to paint and how much to paint
     
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  5. omniscientcause

    omniscientcause Initiate (0) Jun 4, 2010 District of Columbia

    He wouldnt be able to hear you though
     
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  6. stmgl01

    stmgl01 Initiate (0) Dec 11, 2007 Pennsylvania

    I'm not sure if this has been posted yet but Shaun Hill did a reddit Ask Me Anything a few weeks ago...perhaps compare and contrast this more candid "interview" with what was found in Vanity Fair.

    http://www.reddit.com/r/beer/comments/1cea2d/i_am_shaun_hill_brewerowner_at_hill_farmstead/

    Someone writing an article is always going to have an angle they want to take with an interview to tell a story. Who knows what we missed or what was actually said?
     
  7. cartoonshop

    cartoonshop Initiate (0) Jun 6, 2011 Rhode Island

    wants to be out of the spotlight............gets interviewed by vanity fair?

    if its that much of a burden, require a VT state ID for anyone that buys beer.no out of staters. problem solved
     
  8. Beerandraiderfan

    Beerandraiderfan Initiate (0) Apr 14, 2009 Nevada

    That's pretty laughable if you had any semblance of insight into what I do. Everything you said is true and applicable to my situation (except for the New England part, just substitute the Western US), but much, much worse comparitively.

    Would I rather work in peace? Yeah, sure. . .

    But everytime I catch myself griping and bitching about the downside of my career, like Mr. Hill in that interview, I take the time to remind myself how lucky I am to be in this position, and how I could be much worse off, like some of the more talented, yet unemployed people I know.
     
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  9. otispdriftwood

    otispdriftwood Initiate (0) Dec 9, 2011 Colorado


    Your post should be called "hitting the nail directly on the head".
     
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  10. BB1313

    BB1313 Grand Pooh-Bah (4,278) Jul 16, 2009 Ohio
    Pooh-Bah Society Trader

    Seems like a cool guy.. I've only had 2 of their beers, and they were killer..

    As for RB, I really never went on there. They seem to give lower scores and not give everything a high score which is cool, but their descriptions of the beers are so bad.. example: "Hops, spice, malts, smooth beer".. lol that helps. Not to mention their site has never been easy on the eyes.
     
  11. Beerandraiderfan

    Beerandraiderfan Initiate (0) Apr 14, 2009 Nevada

    (Dick skier bro voice)
    I'm gonna have to try that skiing on foothills kind of thing one of these days. 4000ft peaks at MOST? That's cute! My beer cellar in my house is at a higher elevation! Nice try DARSH!

    (back to reality)
    Anyways, I think Bob Dylan said it best when it comes to your career.

    "You may be an ambassodor to England or to France.
    You may like to gamble, you may like to dance
    You may be the heavyweight brewing champion of the world
    You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls,
    BUT YOU'RE GONNA HAVE TO SERVE SOMEBODY, YES INDEED"

    So as soon as you accept that fact, you can get on with the "woe is me" routine while working your dream job.
     
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  12. BT_Bobandy

    BT_Bobandy Initiate (0) Feb 20, 2011 Ohio

  13. joeebbs

    joeebbs Initiate (0) Apr 29, 2009 Pennsylvania

    Today's society of ordering anything you want on ebay or amazon is what is driving the demand for these local beers. Beer isn't distributed to your state? Find someone to ship it to you. The Alchemist and Hill Farmstead would still be busy without Beer Trading but they might not have the stress or strain on their production that they do now. Or have to worry about being asked when there beer is going to be shipped to a certain state.
     
  14. t0rin0

    t0rin0 Pooh-Bah (2,779) Dec 30, 2006 California
    Pooh-Bah Society

    This is too easy, but in case anyone else is confused, the numbers are percentiles. If you dont understand what a percentile is it simply shows how the beer ranks compared to other beers on the site. So if a beer shows a ranking (not score mind you) of 100 that means it's in the top 1% of beers on the site or within the style. That doesnt mean that it's a perfect beer, or 100/100. In fact, as you pointed out, a beer with 100 ranking only (only) has a weighted score of 4.26.

    There will be the same amount of 99's as 100's on the site and the same amount of 84's and the same amount of 42's. At the time of writing this the most recent beer added was number 210,984. Granted the total is a bit lower than that since some of them have been rolled or deleted but it's safe to say that there are around 200,000 beers listed over there. 200,000 divided into 100 percentiles is... you can do this... 2,000. IF every beer on the site had enough ratings to qualify for a percentile (and they dont since I think the minimum is around 8 or 10) there should be 2,000 beers with a 100 score, 2,000 beers with a 99 score, and so on. These are overall scores, obviously there will be less in each percentile for individual styles.

    Now if you want to have something intelligent to complain about you can look at style bias which becomes easier with the rankings. Popular styles like DIPA are going to be skewed higher, like the following example where its not a very good DIPA but compared to the rest of the beers on the site it does ok:

    http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/21st-amendment-anchorage-vacation/101362/

    Looking at an unpopular style you can see the opposite effect, like pale lagers and in this case it's one of the top 50 for the style and has over 600 ratings but the overall is only a 42 compared to 99 for the style:

    http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/samuel-smiths-organic-lager/7625/

    But I suspect that it's very similar here. Look at something like LH12 which is not even as good as 50N (which isnt all that good either) or Don Quijote which is salty and weird, or the Muscat version of Reed Gueuze which is sulfury as all hell (though it does get a lot better as it breathes but still not amazing) but they say Cantillon and Lambic on the bottles so they get instant 4.whatever (or high 90's rankings).

    That's what any rating site should be used for, regardless if it's for beer or anything else. Some people here seem to think that they're more qualified to "properly" review a beer but in the end this is a consumer website where the users are no more credible than those on Yelp or any other site.

    A year ago I would have argued the exact opposite, but now I dont spend much time here anymore so I cant comment on how people here look at Rare beer. But in the spirit of pointing out how you are hating with really no idea what you're talking about, look at the top lists on both sites:

    http://beeradvocate.com/lists/top
    http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/top-50/

    They're really not that different. Westvleteren, Russian River, Three Floyds, Cantillon, Rochefort, they're all there just in a different order.
     
  15. stupac2

    stupac2 Pooh-Bah (2,031) Feb 22, 2011 California
    Pooh-Bah Society

    This topic of discussion has me wondering, over time will we see more and more skilled brewers like Hill (and Vinnie, Armand, etc), causing people to care less about each individual one? I mean, if there 200 breweries making beer of that quality instead of a couple dozen (at most), no one would even try to hunt down everything they do. You could care about your local awesome breweries more than the others.

    I mean, I know that people already drink local, to some extent. But despite living in one of the biggest MSAs in the country there's only one brewery making beer that quality. I can get top-notch food of any kind I want, but the local beer options are virtually nonexistent for some styles.

    And I wonder if that's just part of the fact that brewing is playing catch-up in terms of where it should be as a local service. There are, what, a half-dozen brewing schools in the country? Sure, people can learn from homebrewing, but scaling is a major issue in brewing. I wonder if, as it becomes clear that this isn't a fad, that people want good local beer, that we'll see Hill-Farmstead-quality breweries cropping up all over the place. I don't know this for sure, but I suspect that Hill wouldn't see 2-hour-long lines if there was a brewery in Boston making beer just as good as his.
     
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  16. Beerandraiderfan

    Beerandraiderfan Initiate (0) Apr 14, 2009 Nevada

    How is that different from mail order catalogs that have been around for almost a century (that isn't "today's society"). And how did you even arrive at such a conclusion, aside from ignoring the historical relevance of off site consumerism that has been existence for a long time?

    I certainly cannot buy the beers I want off ebay or amazon.
     
  17. Ranbot

    Ranbot Pooh-Bah (2,389) Nov 27, 2006 Pennsylvania
    Pooh-Bah Society

    He can run his business however he wants. He doesn't owe the community anything other than a product they want to buy. If you don't like his attitude, don't buy his beer. There's really nothing else substantive to say on that subject, IMO.

    I see some echo's of Jim Koch's recent interview in Shaun...

    "A lot of brewers now go straight from home brewing into making a chili-chocolate-chipotle porter or whatever, and it’s like . . . well, just fucking make a good porter first, and understand what a porter is instead of trying to re-invent it...But we’re not trying to slap people across the face with flavor and intensity. Just make succinct, enjoyable beer."

    I thought this statement was interesting too: "I’m still enthralled and amazed by yeast, though, man. That’s where the mystery remains."
    It's not very often brewers, besides Alan Pugsley, say much about different yeasts. Too bad he didn't talk about that a little more.
     
  18. joeebbs

    joeebbs Initiate (0) Apr 29, 2009 Pennsylvania

    A century ago you would not know about Hill Farmstead unless you either lived in Vermont, visited Vermont or knew someone who went there. How do you know about them today? Probably from this website. You can't buy beers off of ebay/amazon but you can use a website like this to trade for them.
     
  19. t8000shx

    t8000shx Zealot (588) Mar 2, 2004 New York
    Trader


    How long have you been doing your job? What's the growth rate been for the last few years? What was your lifestyle like before you started this job? Do you have physical separation from your place of work?

    From the interview, and with some knowledge of the brewery, it sounds like these three factors play heavily into the Shaun Hill's complaints. I suspect if you do not have much overlap with him on these grounds, then the comparison to your situation isn't terribly informative. (I'm not at all trying to attack you or belittle what you do, but I think it's important to note these differences).

    I'll reiterate again before signing off this thread - he is coping with unforeseen (and unforeseeable) explosive growth both in sales and exposure, along with the natural tension between the desire for growth/maintaining the business and maintaining a lifestyle, and is managing it as best as possible. I struggle to level criticism at a small business owner who is trying to learn all of this on the fly. It doesn't sound unreasonable to me that this circumstance fosters serious stress. Giving voice these stresses != being ungrateful of success.
     
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  20. Beerandraiderfan

    Beerandraiderfan Initiate (0) Apr 14, 2009 Nevada

    Cool sidestep, but your original point was about "today's society - ebay - amazon = consumerism" which ignored history. Its pretty common for people to think their generation is totally unique though, so its all good.

    Anyways, now you're changing it up, good call.
     
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