Do you mind when breweries refuse to grow or expand?

Selfish? That's a myopic and absurd way of looking at this. They don't owe anybody anything. Have you ever run your own business? Brewery owners can choose to live whatever kind of life they want and run whatever kind of business they want, at whatever scale and pace they want.

I could expand my own business but I don't want to. I've grown it to a particular size and I like it the way it is. It suits the pace of life I want and I'm satisfied and my docket is full. I don't want it to be more complex or deal with the headaches of more infrastructure and employees and leverage and property and arrangements and the rest of it. I could make more money expanding but I do fine the way it is and I like the particular tradeoff I get between what I put into it and what I get out of it. This really isn't a question about beer. It's about people building the life they want doing what they want to do, which has nothing to do with you or any of the rest of us if they're happy with it and prospering.

Expansion or the lack of it both come with tradeoffs. There's no shortage of beer or great breweries. If someone wants to stay smaller, I can respect and understand that.

 

...or whether "fair" is even relevant in this discussion.

Personally, I think breweries should stay small & local. That's just my two cents, but I think words like "fair" & "selfish" should be removed from the discourse.

 

This is the most insane post ever.
Do I wish that I could go to my local store and buy Pliny, Zombie Dust and Heady. Sure.
But I also wish that the Donut Plant would open a location close to my home, Fornos Pizzeria in Rome would open a location near my home, Leo Burdoc's in Dublin would open a Fish and Chips location near me ..........

To call these business owners selfish is simply insane and ridiculously self entitled. Who are you to tell them how to spend their money?

More importantly, I would rather have Russian River River, Three Floyds, Alchemist (the list goes on) exist in their current state than expand and have quality drop off and/or the debt of expansion but them out of business.

 

OP - I feel your position here is selfish. I actually respect the hell out of this scenario of which you speak.

Brewers are happy with their lifestyle and praises that they have earned through quality product and hard work. I'd imagine quality of life is important to them. They don't want to complicate their lives any further by expanding. Preserving quality of product is most important to boot.

They don't let more money dictate their actions, and I respect that.

 

Yeah, fair is another word we're going to get hung up on here. It still suggests entitlement, like they have an obligation to everybody, which they don't.

 

OP - you think Russian River should expand their footprint without expanded production? Do you know that Vinnie has stated that he has to do rolling blackouts on distribution to some areas on occasion. How would expanded distribution help this.

It is not fair. Neither is business or life.

 

Distribution simply doesn't work that way. The only way to ship beer and keep costs down is by shipping full pallets or (ideally) full shipping containers, otherwise you get screwed on the shipping. In other words, in order to efficiently expand your distribution footprint you need to expand your production output.

 

You're the rude one in this situation. If anyone disagrees, you "think they have too much love for the breweries to be objective and that's fine." Basically, anyone disagrees and you peg them as biased or rude. You are self centered and bordering on the insane. Brewers are selfish for not taking on massive debt to please you? What a joke.

 

Correct answer

 

I have heard brewers have priced IPAs (and beer that needs to be very fresh) differently as to ensure freshness of product. Freshness of product ensures Pliny stays among the best DIPAs in the world. I'm not sure if there is any truth to this. As far as their sours go, they are certainly more appropriately priced with the amount of demand they see than Pliny is.

 

What I want to know is, why won't any of the breweries that I've called let me come and swim in their tanks? That's really selfish of them dont you think? I want to, so they should let me. I really don't care if it's sanitary, or even feasible for me to do so.

 

It's your company, run it the way I want. While you're at it, when I am at your house please follow my rules. That nice paycheck of yours, I will tell you how to spend it. And to all you brewers out there, when I say expand I expect to hear "by how much".

 

Well not in their tanks per se, but might want to look into this: http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi-beer-spa-0810_r_pm_lmvaug10,0,1559271.story

 

From the Asheville Citizen-Times:

Already the nation’s third-largest craft brewer, the Fort Collins, Colo., company, will invest $175 million over the next seven years, bringing 154 jobs to a brewery to be built on the site of the former WNC Livestock Market on Craven Street.​

 

yes I posted earlier about seeing that. see above for my comments. its semi off topic so I will not repeat it.

 

The fact that Russian River could sell more beer than it can brew now doesn't mean they could handle some expansion. How do you know that RR in not over extended with debt now? They may be land locked now and unable to expand without building a whole new brewery.

 

I personally like it when other people put their balls, livelihoods, futures, and physical/financial/emotional capital on the line to provide me a luxury beverage when I would take zero of the risk to find said beverage that I could procure via other means with some effort...all this without knowing the unique reasons why these other people don't currently take that gamble for my sake.

Love the self-entitlement.

 

Am I disappointed that I sometimes don't get great beer distributed to my area?...sure. Do I hold the breweries personally responsible and consider them selfish?...hell no. It's their business and they have to make decisions that make sense for their future as owners. If I respect the brewery and want them to stick around they have to make sound business decisions. No one is accountable to me, except my public representatives. And I'll be damned if they are listening either.