How important is being "Craft" really?

Berg

I do believe that as craft capacity grows, and demand growth finally slows down, that the craft world will become less "kumbayah" and some craft brewers will drive others out if business. But

1. That has is not happening yet, on any scale AFAICT.
2. I certainly hope it will not happen to anything like the extent it happened among traditional breweries. I think the drink local, drink small ideology will help to counter any such tendency
3. If it does happen - if two or three large craft breweries grow the way AB, miller, pabst, schlitz and coors did, I hope they will not go around calling themselves American icons.

 

Tongo

Stonegreg has already been on this thread. If loss of a few f9lks from this site and similar bothers him, he doesn't mention it. AFAICT Stone and Sierra Nevada are seeing growth unimpaired by beer nerds preference for smaller craft brewers. Maybe BBC is suffering in the beer market ( though they are doing fine in cider) but I think that is more the craft consumer preference for ales, especially IPA'S over lagers, than due to a concern over their relative size.
Certainly Jim Koch is vocal in his concerns. If he would like to eliminate the BA usage of the word craft, with its size limit, I have not heard if him saying so.

 

Using a relatively common explanation of Icon: An icon is a person, thing or image regarded as a representative symbol of something else.

Since most people in the world until fairly recently thought of American beer as being Budweiser in one form or another (and many still do) it was/is an American icon.

For example Budweiser produces two out of the 4 top selling beers in the world:

http://www.businessinsider.com/top-10-beers-in-the-world-2015-5


Sometimes you don't choose icons yourself and they are chosen for you. For example, your computer screen has multiple icons on it. The wastebasket/trashbasket is not a literal dumpling place but dropping a file "into" it has the apparent effects of discarding something into a trash or waste basket.

 

The only thing I can compare this to is this: pizza. By Italian standards pizza is pizza and is made well. By American standards, pizza made Italian is gourmet. So the word craft is used for be so that new consumers and ones that have been enjoying it since the beginning can usually identify the product. After that it, it is a matter if he is truly crafted well for you to enjoy!

 

I agree that they sort of messed up with the word craft, but it would have taken an incredible amount of foresight on their part (or a crystal ball) to see what was going to happen to the beer landscape in the coming years. Independent Brewers Association (or maybe Independent Brewers Union, so the acronym could be IBU) would have been a better choice, but membership would still have to be based on size to keep ABI and MC out and BBC in.

 

Founders has been ramping up for years.

 

People need to get used to the fact that the same word can mean different things to different people. "Momentum" means something very different to a political analyst than it does to a physicist, but both know what they mean when they say it, and so do their respective audiences. I know craft means something different to the BA than it does to me, but I don't get worked up when they call Yuengling craft, even though I wouldn't call it that.

 

We are seeing crafts expand with additional breweries and acquisitions. I think that this success is a good thing. Even working in the beer industry, I can't think of a single reason why the bbl/year would ever have a direct impact on the quality of the liquid in the glass. (Those could be tangentially related, for example if Sweetwater does go public and enough of their shares can be for a hostile takeover who wants to cheap out on ingredients or something)

But, look at the good things outside capital has brought to the table, the three examples off of the top of my head are the expansion of the founders all day ipa 15 packs and canning (San Miguel money), geographic expansion of the boulevard smokestack series (duval money), and more bcbs every year (abi money). Looking forward, there are bound to be some situations where a brewery will be bought and we will all wake up one morning and their beer has gone to shit. But I can't think of any examples off the top of my head of this happening yet.

 

It absolutely is. Evidence can be found in the rash of lawsuits and such related to trademarks in the last year. Another great example is country boy being the mouthpiece for a bill that essentially kicked rhinegeist out of Kentucky using their own distributor.

It won't. Go watch two small local brewery owners who realize every dollar in one guy's pocket is a dollar out of his. I've seen and head of plenty of times where they'll almost start throwing fists in distributor meetings. There's a lot of craft brewers who passionately hate other local competitors, because every time local brewery Y gets shelf space or a tap that local brewery X used to have, it can be kind of hurtful to the brewer who just lost real money with that facing or tap line. My experience with this isn't comprehensive by any means, but it is not hard to see why the small local craft game is getting more and more cut throat. When there was two breweries in every city, both sold every drop they made, life was good and everybody was best buds. Now that there's ten local breweries, the beer isn't flying out the door as fast that the locavore beer dollar is being spread across more breweries. What's making the sweat more,is that, in many cases, the brewer has dropped serious cash on expansion and now has more beer that's moving slower. It's a one two punch.

...well, I suppose boston beer might not have gotten to approve the title of the program, but here's an article about an in depth look into Sam Adams called "American icon - Sam Adams". Don't tell me they don't pound their patriotism drum every opportunity they get. Besides, it isn't like patriotic feelings are something that is used by every industry to sell more of anything. Is jeep that much more American than ford? Is coke more American than Pepsi? Meh, another debate for another time but they all flog the hell out of the red white and blue at every opportunity.

http://www.tastingpanelmag.com/News...red-on-FOX-Business-Network.aspx#.VdC-Rue9KSM

 

I am either going to rely on my impressions of Founders now versus previous, and temper this with similar observations with different conclusions about other beers, or else consider that it is impossible to be cognizant of things well enough ever to be able to safely make a statement that quality has improved or declined.

Since I do rely on my impressions, and have instances of same observations with different conclusions about other brands, and I don't consider it impossible to be cognizant of actual changes in quality, than I guess I must say that yes, I do rule out what you ask.

 

OK, good, thanks.

But we need to see, when looking at growth as a possible cause of something, if we can balance out the other side, how about breweries that have had growth without decline in quality? For example, Boulevard has not only grown it has maintained quality and some suggest improved their line up, their partner/parent company has both grown (enough to begin acquisiton with US based breweries) and maintained quality, DFH, while more controversial has grown rapidly and steadily and I don't pick up any decline in quality in their beer. So I would suggest that whatever you have found going on with Founders in recent years is not an inevitable consequnce of growth, but a side effect or symptom of something else going on as well that is not inevitable.

 

It will always depend on product first to me.

 

except Sam Adams. almost everything North of the limit sucks.

 

BTW, and FYI, an afterthought, which should have been my first reply. It was not my intent to say or imply that things always remain constant. Rather I'm interesting in sorting out whether or not I believe that growth in and of itself leads to a decline in quality.

 

I think the more important thing to quality is to remember that the only constant in life is change. Let's say brewery X has grown to 100,000 bbl/year and their flagship IPA has "fallen off". Was it the change in equipment? Having to hire additional people who aren't as good of brewers or who don't have the same passion about the product? Having to source raw materials from a new/different supplier? New distribution which has its head up its ass? Or perhaps me as the drinker thought the beer was awesome 4 years ago and my palette has changed since. I think there is no reason to believe (yet) that growth has done anything negative to the liquid I get to consume.

 

Drtth

When AB calla themselves an American icon in ads aimed at americans, they are not simply saying they are the face if American beer, as say Tsing Tao is the face if Chinese beer. They are saying more, and I think everyone knows that.

I also di not much respect when companies in other industries do similar.

BBC is at least an American company - still I am not aware of them wrapping themselves in the flag the way bud is.

MWA

In fact the TM disputes seem to be fairly exceptional, and several have been resolved collaboratively. The kumbayah, lives for now.

As for local, I did not mean it would avert competition - a competition among locals to improve quality is desired by many consumers. I meant that we would not see cosolidation unto a few national players.

 

Wow, a business segment, by Fox, whose title was certainly not chosen by BBC, compared to a campaign that Bud has been running for months, spending a lot of $ on. That comparison strikes me as disingenuous.

 

No. Make damn good beer and i'll buy it. And don't be an ass while doping it

 

Craft is a popular term for smaller scale brewers who pay attention to quality, it is also a popular term for non-AAL or BMC beer, it is a marketing concept that brewers use to go after a certain demographic, it is a federal tax designation and it is a term adopted by a trade organization to define its membership. So asking if craft matters is a fuzzy question. It matters in different ways to different people. While I buy beer and drink for a variety of reasons, I generally focus on what I like.

 

I like my craft cheese, craft coffee, craft donuts, craft sofas, craft water, craft bed sheets, craft books. Oh and let's not forget the craft movies, which of course are better than just regular old movies.