Breweries you wish would stop expanding? (not a brewery bashing thread)

Stone. Already too big. They seem to be trying too hard because they feel like people will drink (and enjoy) anything they make.

 

Sounds like for TG, you want them to stop becoming so popular. If popularity increases and production stays the same, it's going to be even worse for you than any expansion on their part.

 

Ever since Three Floyds got more distribution, my neck of the woods no longer gets specialty bottles we used to get every year. Like Behemoth for example. None this year! Very uncool. And there us just less around period now. Besides Alpha, Robert, Jinx, and now a little Zombie here and there.

 

I've been wanting Dogfish to stop expanding for years now but they just keep right on going. Oh well. Other than that, I guess maybe Allagash? I'd like to get their beer more easily but I fear, if they were to expand, their lovely fine crafted Belgian ales might go down in quality. That's all I got. Every other awesome brewery I can think of needs to expand IMO.

 

In Bev?! Boston Brewing?! Oh wait, just noted the header for this topic's posts.
Nevermind.
Bitch.

 

Cigar City. Stop sending your beer to other states, I need trade bait.

 

Actually, Deschutes could slow down and not cause me to deal with "one per customer' issues. What sat for at least a few days is snatched up in mere hours around here.

 

Honestly, if a brewery expands to the point that quality suffers, no worries, there will be five more new ones to take over their place in your heart.

 

Came here to say this. I'm guess you're in Suburban Cook. We really got the Windy City shaft. I've also seen more price increases on the stores that do get FFF products. One place tried charging my $3.99 for a Zombie Dust single. Popularity breeds profiteering.

 

I wish we got Three Floyds around here.

 

I fundamentally disagree with the OP here. To me if your beer is great, expand as much as the market will allow. I tend to always include either a New Glarus or 3 Floyds beer in every trade I do (sometimes both as extras) just to spread the gospel of good beer to people who can't always get it.

I've had Ale Asylum in Wisconsin and I'm glad they're making their way to my new home (Evanston). The idea that you shouldn't grow or expand to me is elitist and an artificial way to inflate demand for your product (*cough Hill Farmstead).

In a free beer market economy I figure the best beers should be readily available, unfortunately most of the readily available beers are the most generic.

Pipeworks isn't even available outside of Cook County (as far as I know) but I look forward to the day when people in Minnesota, California, or Florida can run to their local bottle shop and pick up a Ninja vs. Unicorn or Imperial Hyper Dog.

 

If a brewery is comfortable with their distribution footprint that incrementally increases, that is proper growth. Trying to reach key US markets while not providing enough for your home base is SILLY. Too big too fast and trying to please everyone pleases no one. There are enough examples of poor marketing out there without having to make too big of a deal about it. Good beer is not hard to find.

 

Oskar Blues seems less special now that they are in NC as well. I could get their beers here when they werent in NC. They were known as the brewery that uses weird looking cans and they still are but I get their beers from NC plant now and it doesnt feel the same.

 

Deschutes. I moved to Oregon less than 3 years ago, and the furthest east they distributed was Colorado. They are now about to move into Ohio. I'm happy for them, but they are getting huge very fast.

 

If a business doesn't want to grow to meet demand that is their business. To label someone "elitist" because they want to do what they do and not grow to meet some "level" of demand, to me, implies that- in your words- "in a free beer market economy I (you) figure the best beers should be readily available". Why is that, if it's not what they want to do?

 

Yuengling. I don't want my hometown to become more of a zoo than it already is, and parking is already an issue on those hillside streets (most of Pottsville is on a hill or inbetween two, with Yuengling being on the biggest one).

 

To me having a product everyone likes and only distributing it to a 30 mile radius seems like a middle finger to the rest of the beer loving world. I'm not saying every brewery needs to flood the market with their product or Goose Island should only make Bourbon County variants from here on out, etc. But if your business is growing, you're selling every beer you produce, and you can't keep up with the demand for your product why not expand? To me Dogfish is a perfect example of a brewery that grew following this example.

 

This is exactly how I feel about Oskar Blues. When I first moved to Colorado, I remember feeling like we had the best local brewery in the world (speaking of the Lyons location). Completely low-key, brewed in a metal shed behind the building, the beers were still as amazing as they are now. I still love them, but I don't have the same "loyalism" I suppose.