California Beers and Freshness

Good for you!

Here's a little "trick" you might be able to employ or figure out a variant on.

Here in PA much of my beer I buy by the case (strange laws). When I find an undated case of beer that I was interested in buying, I won't buy it, but I will do two other things. First I'll buy a case from a different brewery that does date their beer and meets my freshness standards. Second I'll contact the first brewery, often with an email, and tell them exactly why I didn't buy that case of that particular beer, but I then go on to tell them the name of the beer and which brewery made the beer I did buy. (No ranting, etc. just a simple statment of fact. :-))

Now I don't know for sure my mails have made any critical difference, but in at least one situation, within 3 months the brewery I'd sent an email to was dating their cases (with a hand stamp). Within 6 months they were using machines to date the case and their bottles.

I like to believe it was a small victory for consumers.

 

With all the competition I just don't understand why any brewery wouldn't date their cans and bottles. If retailers were more vigilant with dating and challenging things it would back right up to the brewery. Things then would surely change if distributors who don't give two shits except pumping out beer told the breweries they can't sell their stuff without dates on the cans. Make them eat their beer then things will change .

 

Ack, I've been quoted. So I'll respond but not in a contrary way, I'm just smart enough to realize how little I know.

Accepting that brewers have a contract with their distributor (business is done by contract) do the terms of that contract extend all the way down the chain? The distributor aligned with the brewer sells to a smaller distributor who sells to a regional distributor who sells to locally owned distributors who then sell to local grocery stores and other businesses, many of them small and family owned. I don't think everybody in that long chain is signatory to, or bound by the terms of, the original agreement.

I wish they were, I really wish they were.

 

Each distributor signs a contract with an individual brewer. How deeply they spell out Quality Assurance differs from brewer to brewer.

Distribs do not 'sub-lease' for lack of a better term. I've never seen a brewer sign with a wholesaler without touring the facility...so they should have a good idea of what they are getting into.

The chain noted below may change slightly in oddball places like Pennsylvania and New York City, but for the most part it seldom varies from this model:

Brewer → Wholesaler → Retailer → Consumer

On a separate note, most brewers have territory managers who are responsible for managing wholesaler inventories, training sales people, and presiding over quality control in the trade. While I can virtually guarantee that there is a Sierra Nevada employee responsible for your area, I cannot vouch for how big his/her territory may be. In some cases, brewery reps can cover multiple states and they can be stretched pretty thin.

 

This is rather interesting. I may do some checking next week to determine the role our State ABC factors in there as well.

 

Not picking on you, but, it is the "3 Tier System", not the "4, maybe 5, possibly 6 Tier system". In my state, brewers are allowed to self-distribute, but, it's 300 miles from I-5 to Spokane, so a lot of breweries will self-distribute locally, and work with a distributor for other parts of the state. It gets convoluted.

And, despite @IceAce 's assertions, I can promise you that not all beer being picked up, gets shipped in reefer trucks. I, back in my OTR days, picked many a load from various AB plants. They all went into dry boxes. Even the containers of Bud, that were put onto ships bound for Great Britain weren't refrigerated. They just went into dry containers for the sail.

 

Don't ask me man, I'm an end use consumer who's only familiar with the last leg of this relay race.

I believe there are more than three tiers involved before it gets to me, but have never made anything like an inquiry into the full extent of the system or the players involved.

 

In PA, for beer, its basically much the same.

 

Probably not, if only because it's not needed and special licensing is required to be able to sell alcohol. The typical difference from state to state is the nature of the involvemnt of the state but that can lead to fewer links in the chain rather than more.

One of the conditions of repeal of prohibition was that each state put in place something like the three tier system to prevent direct sales by breweries to retailers. That has been relaxed a bit in those states that allow self-distribution but there are usually size limits on how much a brewery can self distribute (elminating one link) and self-distribution does not extend to crossing state lines as each state handles has jurisdiction over its own version of the three tier system.

 

Responded to the thread jack--I feel that there are a good many unrealistic expectations.

This highly fickle and disloyal crowd represents some of the problem. Folks want beer from 3000 miles away to be brewed, shipped, warehoused then distributed to the retailer and be 4 weeks old. OK, a handful of folks do that if it lines up perfect and then, oh yea, they want everything from everywhere to be available immediately at the multiple stores they go to in the event they want that one beer that one week. They might not buy that one again for several mos. Three months is too old.

I cannot speak for your local problems--that does seem a bit poor on several levels. Last I heard there were 15+ different distributors servicing my town--some do clearly better than others.

Stone is one that markets their freshness obsession. I think it is intended well but falls under that category of rebates to me--attractive on paper but very frequently not taken up on. Seems most places just leave it on the shelves.

In NC we have so many good options now that freshness is one word away --local-- and now routinely getting Wicked Weed and world class things from across NC and some SC reliably < 1 mo old. A local bottle shop that will not carry old or buy more than moves is a bonus.

 

This is out of place with the way this discussion is going, but probably closer to what the OP had in mind. Forget how the beer is treated and whether it is micro or almost macro. Given equal treatment....it is my intuition from experiencing New England typical IPA flavor profile vs. West Coast typical flavor profile.... New England flavors are more volatile. They both have their place depending on what you want at the time, but in my opinion New England flavor profiles would suffer more from mistreatment and time.

 

By more than three tier I'm including the local retailer who sells to me but that's a literal count. My local distributor buys from a regional distributor who buys from a national distributor, or so I'm told, which don't exactly make it gospel.

My real concerns are purely selfish though . . . I want quality, fresh and reasonably priced, in that order.

 

Back to the post:

Hard to pigeon hole breweries but agree with sentiment of poor shelf life for those "murky" "turbid" fruit bombs. Some folks kindly bring me back stuff from NE or that style from other places that has occasionally sat for some time and just not that good. On tap or super fresh they can be magic. They rarely sit on shelves but don't stand up. SN an example of something that has always held up. Seems like a lot of California things in that style hold up too.

 

A national distributor should only come into the equation when the beers are brewed outside the US. They buy the beer abroad and resell it to a within state distributor. Otherwise the general pattern is the brewery sells its beer a distributor who works within you state and may only be allowed to sell the wholesale beer within certain counties. The retailer buys the beer from the distributor and then sells it to you. @IceAce works for a distribuor and will know more about this than either of us. As for freshness I have no trouble getting cases of at least some beers within days of bottling.

BTW if you don't use the "Reply" function people may not notice that you've done so.

 

There are also arrangements where an importer acts as a so-called "master distributor" of domestic brewers' brands (so, essentially a "Four Tier" system). A current example is the importer Total Beverage Solutions, which acts as a national master distributor for Shipyard/Seadog and for Southampton (typically the arrangement is only for areas outside the brewers' local region but have no idea if that's the case for the brands above). As noted, TBS also owns two well-known craft brands, Celis and Humbolt, which are brewed under contract.

The importer Twelve Percent Imports also acts as the master distributor for some domestic brands (as well as being a legal wholesale distributor in NY and NJ).

A significant brewing industry legal decision is Falstaff vs. Best Brands - BB acted as Falstaff's master distributor for much of the northeast, after Falstaff, once a nationally distributed brewer, closed their lone brewery in the region, Narragnasett in RI.

 

Thanks for that information. Clearly did not know about the possibility of a "master distributor" handling domestic brands. Do you have a sense of how common that might be, beyond the examples you mention?

 

Reply, ah, sorry about that, my brain is not working in a linear fashion this afternoon. Probably the coffee stout I had with breakfast, yes, I'm sure that's it.

 

It's hard to find fresh Lagunitas in Northern California.

 

Highly agree here. If Bells can reliably get Two Hearted Ale here between 15 days old and 30 , others should be able to as well. Two Hearted sells well, so it's a perfect balance with availability vs demand. More local options are taking over though, plenty of options. And always fresh. Now fix Hop Drop.

 

A lot of East Coast breweries buy their hops from the west coast or California, so they are a tad older by the time the get there. Cali breweries are brewing with fresh stuff.