Heady distro to Boston -- not looking good

interesting rumor going around here with details no one would make up, but i'm not going to leak it. i was a bit concerned at first, but ultimately it would be good

 

When a 50,000bbl/year brewery comes on the market for $1M in Boston, so will I.

 

Not sure what you mean, but I meant building a 2nd brewery/cannery in Boston like Harpoon did coming from Vermont initially.

 

Boston was first, then Harpoon bought the Catamount brewery.

 

Then call it a reverse Harpoon .

 

One tip I learned from my years as a military intelligence officer: Never tell anyone you know a secret unless you are prepared to share it.

In this case, my only hope is that the Alchemist doesn't go back on their repeated public statements that the most recent expansion is the last expansion.

 

Funny how many people don't seem to know this.

 

Does it really matter?

 

I like love Jacks Abby, but the comparison of their business model and beers to that of Alchemist is a bit of a stretch. Alchemist started as a brewpub and expanded to become a small cannery, with no intentions of getting much bigger, they just so happened to brew the favorite beer of the craft beer fanhood of the east coast.

Jacks Abby started as a brewery in a warehouse with a lot of room for expansion and growth, a varied product line of regulars and seasonals.

The lifestyle of Vermont is totally different than the lifestyle in Boston, and those who call Vermont home, may not have the desire to live in Boston. Besides building a second brewery in Boston, would be insanely expensive.

 

Idk seems like they are giving out tax incentives like crazy to build in and around the seaport area.

 

Tax incentives only reduce the tax bill, and even then the reduction is relatively modest (~20% in State Street's case). It doesn't reduce the cost of real estate, equipment, or labor.

 

Of course not, but it's good to set the record straight. Makes sense that a brewery named Harpoon wouldn't have originated in the only landlocked New England state.

Good point about the different origins--I have no idea, but I wonder if the Alchemist knew when they were building the "cannery" that they would lose the brewpub, if they would have made the production brewery bigger? Personally, I'd love to see them reduce the number of cans people can buy in a single trip, in order to ensure availability at the cannery and to increase distribution at least across Vermont. I don't blame them for doing it they were they are--I'm sure it's easier and more cost-effective for them--but I bet they'd still sell out of the beer plenty fast if it was distributed throughout the state and guaranteed to be available at the brewery, and it would ensure that they don't have to deal with disappointed would-be customers leaving empty-handed.

And I just wanted to note that, beautiful and beer-laden as it is, not all of us in Boston have a desire to live in Vermont. There's a tendency to glorify rural areas, and they're often beautiful and have their own charm, but whether its beer or anything else, being in a city has real advantages and charm as well. Sure, it would be great to live in a place where I could get to Hill Farmstead or the Alchemist regularly, and I wouldn't mind being able to get to a rural area more easily, but personally I'll take proximity to the CBC and dozens of great bars, as well as everything else Boston has to offer, over living in the country, just as some folks in Vermont feel the exact opposite.

 

This. Plus it is filled with Massholes

If anything he might start contract brewing again with something other than Heady or Celia, but I doubt that. I say again, because I'm pretty sure the contracting stuff ended... but I could be wrong. Celia doesn't seem to be around as much as it use to be.

 

wait, we don't have to live here?

 

Not really, but does anything discussed on this site really matter? They've been in Boston since 1986 and are the oldest brewery in MA. I guess it matters if anyone cares.

They could build in Boston, but I hear warehouse space in Framingham is pretty cheap

 

Not really. Just trying to up my Beer Karma by posting as much as possible.

 

OK, and as I said I don't know anything about the production side of the beer business, but is there something in the numbers I quoted above (reported 5000 bbl capacity for JA vs now ~7500 for Alchemist) which I'm missing? How can JA spread a smaller gallon count of 4 year-rounds plus specials across a state with 10 times the population of VT and keep it in stock when Alchemist runs out from its dozen retail locations in not even the sticks but the twigs in two days? And the easy answer of "well, JA's beer isn't HT" doesn't cut it. Not saying there's any reason for Alc to change anything about their model, just curious.

 

Why would Alchemist want to be like JA? They have a larger production, serve a smaller area and sell out in days. I was at Gasbarros in North Attleboro today and they had JA bottles from November, many of them.

After reading your first post, it seems that your issue is that one cannot get heady effortlessly.

 

I wouldn't go using that single store as a representation how how product moves. I could make a lot of false assumptions doing that.

 

Not sure you quite grasp the scope of how much Heady gets sold out of the retail shop every day. John says they're selling 150 barrels a WEEK (this can't be EXACTLY right, because that's over capacity if you extrapolate out, and doesn't account for retail accounts, but it's probably damn close). That's 37k cans per WEEK out of the retail room. Let's be conservative and assume they're selling every day of the week except Sunday - that's more than 6 thousand beers or 250 cases PER DAY.

I don't think it's any stretch to reconcile this with Jack's Abby's production and availability. Their beer is great, but it's just not in sustained demand like Heady. Virtually nothing is. The same people don't come to the Jack's Abby week after week to pick up fresh cases of Hoponius. They come in and buy one growler, and come back next week and do the same (I'm not speaking for all of us, of course). And it's not on tap at every bar, or in every liquor store. And places do sell out.

Plus, it's not exactly fair to compare their distribution areas in that way. Like someone mentioned upthread, Heady is distributed to Mass. It's just done by us.