Lord Hobo Brewing Company: Feedback & Updates

The big challenge here is will he find the brewers who can make a killer IPA that is on par with Heady Topper, Fiddlehead, etc.? Given his past success and knowledge of the industry, I think he probably will, but only time will tell.

 

Definitely some cart before the horse situation here. I'm pumped to have another good IPA available, maybe something along the lines of Be Hoppy that is more consistently on shelves. But let's make sure it's actually good first.

 

Honest question: is it something that takes special skill? Or is it just a matter of deciding on that particular style of IPA and following the recipe? While I'm sure it's hard to perfectly clone a beer, what do you have to do besides buy a bunch of good hops and follow a hopping schedule to make a beer like this?

Edit to add: when I say special skill, I mean something more than being a competent commercial brewer. I don't expect Joe Homebrewer to be able to turn a key and make 10k bbl of HT.

 

making great beer is not that hard. I say this is a very basic homebrewer but also someone who has spoken with pro brewers. more challenging is everything else in the business! you have a million competitors and distro challenges and sales challenges and every other challenge businesses have.

raising $18m and setting up a sweet space I know is a huge challenge and leapfrogs this place above a bunch of other local places. the flip side, as mentioned, is you now need to please investors and often just listen to them. so this is very different from a lot of the bootstrapped new breweries we see that people start to be their own boss, etc.

 

The Globe article (and Daniel's own post above) notes that he did NOT raise $18M, even though that was originally the plan.

You might remember that last year, Lanigan announced plans to build a large contract brewery on the North Shore. The plan was to offer a world-class space to other brewers to showcase their stuff. After talking with banks about financing the $18 million needed to launch the contract brewery, Lanigan felt uncomfortable letting someone else finance the majority of the project and potentially dictate what would be brewed.

“The contract brewery was too expensive,” says Lanigan. “I’m way more passionate about making my own beer than making beer for someone else.”

 

Notice how @moaner said they will possibly brew for friends. Glad we are friends….

 

ah I totally misinterpreted what he said above

 

Two different statements there.

 

Good newspaper spin, but I think this is what he means:

 

No, that's the exact same statement. The first business plan didn't go well, so he changed course. Nothing wrong with that. But the statement about being more passionate about brewing his own beer rather than someone else's only came about after the contract brewery idea fell apart.

I was pumped for the contract brewery, I think it's something the market needs. I'll also drink the Lord Hobo beers when they come out. I hope they're good, priced well, and easy to access.

 

Good point. However I will probably be making at least one trip.

 

I meant it as a real question. Everyone got excited about it, I thought maybe it had been sampled somewhere.

 

Well, buying good hops for one - so many off flavors in hoppy beers today seem to be from the hops themselves, not from fermentation. Getting a drinkable balance of mouthfeel, booziness, sweetness/bitterness and giving hop laden character without being too vegetal/grassy is not the work of monkeys as many may think. To do this on a consistent basis to generate repeat business is no easy task either. And there's the all important freshness factor. Lots of moving parts to the hop bomb equation.

 

No I haven't.

 

Great considerations, Longstaff--and I would guess there are a dozen more critical aspects that even some competent commercial brewers don't know about. No one sets out to make a mediocre West Coast/New England-style IPA, yet the majority of them are just that. Best wishes to LH in finding a great brewer.

 

I'm not sure which pro brewers you spoke with, but I beg to differ that "making great beer is not that hard". If everyone could brew a double IPA as good as Heady Topper, why aren't they? Because they haven't chosen to? Lunacy. There are tens of thousands of IPA/Double IPA nationally, standards are continually rising and the challenge of standing out increases.

Furthermore, Massachusetts gets great distribution. MBC Lunch + Another one, Jacks Abby Hoponious + Mass Rising, Sculpin, Racer 5, Dirtwolf et. al are already established. Wormtown, Trillium, Treehouse etc. are expanding before Lord Hobo even enters the game. I'm super excited for Lord Hobo brewing, but lets not kid ourselves that most breweries plan to brew killer beers that everyone will want......but a lot goes into the execution.

 

http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyl...U556mPI2dzK/story.html?event=event12#comments

Dan Lanigan w some bold statements regarding his new brewery Lord Hobo Brewing co. He has some great ideas -- there aren't many brewers in NE that have figured out the HF/Alchemist/LFL recipe for amazing IPAs. Trill and Tree House close. Can Dan pull it off w his Boom Sauce???? The place is 6 miles from my office so I'm hoping he can... Thoughts??

 

Dan sounds like a realist. There are lots of local breweries all over that just aren't that good, but somehow survive. While I would love to support more Indiana breweries, only 2-3 are putting out consistently stellar beers. Sometimes I truely wonder if these small to midsize breweries realize they made some bad beer, but can't take the loss of dumping a batch so they still distro it.

 

Lord Hobo is my favorite bar ever. It sounds like he has a really ambitious approach to entering the market. If his own beer matches the quality of his bar selections it will be unreal.

 

Did anyone else read the name "Lord Hobo" and immediately think it was an Onion article on "Jester King"?

Earlier messages have said things like "given his past success and knowledge of the industry." As an outsider, can someone enlighten me - what is this past success and knowledge of the industry? What are the roots of this brewery? Sorry for the remedial question.