Stone Brewing Announces Restructuring & Layoffs

I agree completely with this. One of our local breweries mentioned repeatedly in this thread comes to mind. They're EXTREMELY popular now, but early on I did not care for many of their beers. Over the years it appears they fine tuned both their skills, and recipes. And figured out which sold the best, and fine tuned those further. Their flagship took some tweaking over a period of time, and was not consistent early on. But now it sells incredibly well, and tastes great every time I have it.

Even experienced breweries, and breweries which have improved, will still need to constantly tweak recipes. This same brewery dialed in this flagship, but their first attempt at a Pilsner was not good (to be fair, they admitted this in a post, and I believe it was tap only to start). ~1 year later it was MUCH improved.

Not only will brewer's need time to gain experience overall, but they'll need time to gain experience with specific styles as they introduce them into their portfolio.

I will have to take the time to think about it locally (Boston area), but do you have any examples in your area of breweries that have remained in business for a lengthy period of time, but produce low quality beer? You don't have to name them if you don't want to, and I'm not saying they do or do not exist. I'm simply curious what examples may be local to you.

Moreover, I imagine most breweries who produce subpar beer will eventually go out of business, or improve. I would like to think so anyway.

I need to go back (or do I?), and try to find some local beer that I can't find here in the US. I did the same...found my alottment of Westvleteren, and then drank my weight in Cantillon. I also did not want to try much that I could get here (St. Bernardus, Rochefort...etc.). Although I did order some Rochefort 12, mainly because it was so cheap compared to the US.

To be fair, @Sweatshirt did mention that they were great breweries. He was simply pointing out the litany of flaws and lack of consistency among a variety of local breweries.

As I stated earlier in this thread, I've NEVER had a bad (flawed) beer from Sierra Nevada. Considering shipping, the wide variety of styles they produce, and the amount of beers I've had from them...that's fucking impressive.

And to be fair again, I have had some of their beers that didn't taste exactly the same as before. Celebration can taste maltier or hoppier year to year, Kellerweis has tasted a bit more bland over the years, Summerfest can taste grainier or sweeter/breadier (is that a word?) some years. But between shipping and ingredients varying year to year, I do expect this somewhat. But I can't recall drinking one of their beers and thinking, "Holy crap, this beer is raging with diacetyl."

 

I posted this already, but there are plenty that I can name from my area: Next Door (2012), One Barrel (2013), Hop Garden (2014) and MobCraft (2014) are all absolutely terrible here in the Madison/Milwaukee area. They are doing just fine ostensibly, and the ones that have taprooms are generally packed. Sand Creek (1999) has been around for ages sustaining itself on what I can only imagine is their soda production since the beers are awful. Port Huron (2012) has also lasted far longer than the beers would lead one to believe, and they have even expanded distribution.

In Chicago, Arcade (2014), Forbidden Root (2014), and Empirical (2014) are also seemingly incapable of making a single good beer, yet they remain reasonably popular and populated in their taprooms.

 

Observing the changing shelf-space situation in my local liquor store, over the past several years, the amount of space devoted to local beers has jumped considerably. Unfortunately, much of this space is consumed by local brewers who really should be devoting their resources to improving their product rather than canning and distribution.

As the move to local progresses, the amount of space devoted to macro and macro-craft has stayed pretty much the same. What has gotten the squeeze are the larger national craft brands (SN, Stone, Boston Beer, etc.) and the local large brewers (Summit, Schell's, and even Surly).

Again, this is anecdotal based on one store.

But in this store, the shelf space devoted to Goose Island is as large as the shelf space occupied by Summit and Surly combined, and GI + Blue Moon + Shock Top + Leinenkugel's is noticeably larger than the shelf space devoted to all out-of-state craft brewers combined.

Large national craft brands and large regional craft brands are being squeeze on both the top and the bottom. As the number of local craft production breweries expands, customer preference for local is pushing aside the national brands. As the macro brewers continue to expand the distribution footprint of their captive crafty and purchased craft brands, it is squeezing both the national craft brewers and the larger regional craft brewers from the top.

Devoted craft drinkers have a natural favoritism toward the local brewers (I know I do), while the casual craft drinkers will be more easily captured by the marketing and shelf space game being played by the macro brewers with their crafty / craft brands.

Seems like a challenging time to be a national craft brewer.

 

From your depiction of this one store, it appears that Bud and Miller seem to dominate the overall beer set. Who controls the influx of local breweries taking national craft space? Is it a mix between the BMC wholesalers, are they self-distributed, or are they sold by a smattering of smaller wholesalers? And are the larger national craft breweries being displaced sold by smaller wholesalers, or are they being cut out by the BMC distributors? Is the store that you cite an independent, or part of a chain? There is huge variability nationally as to whom is in charge of sets in the chains and what those sets look like. In my experience the independents are more likely to have a better (and more fair) mix of local, national, import, and macro. Also, are the less than stellar locals generally better, worse, or on par with Blue Moon, Shock Top, amongst others?

 

As it does nationwide. This is a liquor store serving the general market, not a craft-centric store.

I have no idea who distributes who.

It is an independent store.

Yes.

 

Coming from a distribution background, I am always curious about individual markets. Who sells what tells a big story everywhere. Granted that Bud and Miller dominate beer distribution nationally, but in a number of markets smallish wholesalers and independent retailers are thriving. I always liked to sell against the big groups that had massive portfolios. It was not uncommon for the retailers to know a great deal more about the (said company's) products than some of the sales team. This does seem to be changing. Distribution across the US is crazy, but there are pockets of sanity here and there. Finding a good trusty retailer is paramount. With varied laws and products across states and regions, distribution in America is as complex and confusing as 50 different countries. I loved your final "Yes" answer!

 

Certainly some people might be buying bad local beer, because it does exist. That said, nearly every state in this country has local beer that is fresher and better than many of the nationally distributed brands, including Stone. I don't have data to make this a more empirical argument, but then again, you've made this a qualitative argument.

I use to buy a lot of Stone. I very, very seldom buy stone at this point. In the last few months I've been on trips to CA, WA, NH, VT, MA, LA, CO, and I live in Utah. Each and every state has a local or semi local brewery that is making better beer in every category. Even in New Orleans I go to a random grocery store and pick up two week old Parish Envie Pale Ale, which was sitting right next to Stone Citracado. It was hardly even a choice because of how much better Envie was than I remember any of stones hoppy beers being. My parents live in the Bay Area and while my dad use to always have stone IPA, and when he could some Enjoy By in the fridge, in the past couple of years that has been replaced by growlers from breweries like Altamont or Cellarmaker. These two breweries to me, are so vastly better than Stone there aren't really words.

I really don't think Stone is losing market share because of a national "buy local" trend alone. While this could play some part, breweries like Stone are losing market share because people can get better, and much fresher beer made close by where they live. Stone does a good job getting Enjoy By on shelves quickly, but a lot of the time their beer gets old and the bottles dusty. If some local brewery is making better beer (again, not all of them), and you can get it fresher, why would you buy Stone?