Great Notion

Well, per the GN Facebook page their JB crowlers sold out in about 20 minutes today. They seemed extremely proud of this 'accomplishment':

"Fastest Crowler Sell out yet! Wow thank you everyone for scooping up those JB crowlers in 40 mins!"

It is what it is ... their post about it just kind of strikes me the wrong way though. Let's hold a competition to see which brewery can sell out of all their beer the quickest ... because that's what matters.

I won't be attending any more GN releases; they've just gotten too 'hyped' to the point that it is no longer worth the effort. I'll gladly stop by and have a few on draft when I'm in the area though.

 

I love GN but honestly I'd say that Something Wicked from Breakside was better than anything I've had at Great Notion.

 

Totally agree- May go there once for lunch maybe, but awaiting better production before I head there for anything else. It
Is a drive to get there. Not worth the angst.

 

I figure they changed Juice, Jr to Junior because that's how it's ordered 99% of the time sitting at the bar. As for Juicebox, the rights to the name are owned by The Dude's in Torrance. They've been making their shitty Juicebox series for some time now.

 

Back to their pricing, you think when they start canning, we'll see oregon's first $20 4-packs?

 

I would bet on it. Seems like they're modeling themselves after popular east coast breweries like Trillium or Tree House. Self distributed, limited quantity, high prices. Actually, it wouldn't be the first. I bought a 4-pack of Effective Dreams at Belmont Station for around $20. That was the GN\Modern Times collab. It was good but I can't afford to make a habit of it at that price.

 

Probably but i will just buy a single

 

I was talking with the head brewer of my favorite local spot this weekend and he said that the TTB wouldn't approve his label of his NE style IPA with "Juice" in the name if it didn't have fruit it in as it is misleading to the consumer. He added some mangos to keep the name, hopefully it doesn't mess with the base too much. Could be other breweries were notifitied by the TTB?

 

If they're thinking ahead to canning and distribution when the expansion is complete, it makes sense to change to a TTB-acceptable name now and get consumers used to it.

 

And they've got a distribution license for WA. Might be another reason why.

 

I'm mostly with you. I think a quarter of the IPA's I've tried from GN are pretty exceptional, but the rest of the time I'd be better off with (an entire pint of) Something Wicked.

 

Did GN decide to start doing silent releases? No events on their FB page, but it looks like they have Over Ripe crowlers available today. I'm all for it, but it is a little strange for them to make a long post about their methods/reasoning for crowler releases and then immediately after change up how they do things. I can't keep up.

EDIT: If you haven't had Over Ripe and have the opportunity I would highly suggest you head over there. One of my favorite IPAs that they do (prefer it to both the regular Ripe and Super Ripe).

 

Down in Bend this weekend and a buddy brought three of those crowlers with him. He said it was pretty quiet.

 

Apparently someone at GN agrees with us because it looks like they later edited the post.

"Thank you everyone who came out for the Juice Box Crowler release! They sold out fast, but we still have some great beers on tap including ..."

There definitely appears to be some (most?) folks involved with GN that are bright people and their brewers obviously know how to brew great beer. I just don't understand why they can't bring someone in who knows what they're doing (at least a little bit) on the business/marketing side of things.

 

Because the lack of an experienced voice on their Facebook page has not stopped them from growing so fast they're opening a new location with a 30-barrel production facility this year.

 

Well yeah, they've obviously been successful .... nobody is disputing that. Doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. Lots of room.

 

Oh I agree. I'm just not sure how much incentive they have to dedicate resources to improving their social media voice when they're selling their beer as fast as they can brew it.

 

Yeah it seems like they have zero incentive. However, I'm not just talking about their FB ... I'm talking about their entire business and marketing strategy. Seems like thier strategy follows along with the style of beer they brew ... very much reminiscent of the northeast culture. I just know that if I was a business owner, regardless of how successful the business is at any given time, I would always be looking to improve the weakest areas of the business.

 

@ LockeNess and @vurt, as the official business/marketing person at GNB, please shed some light on what your backgrounds are and what you guys think is lacking with our "entire business and marketing strategy." I'm all ears, guys! Many people who commented previously in this post are right though in the fact that we typically put the breaks on our marketing and social efforts because our current brewhouse can't support the current, let alone increasing demand right now.