Is Stone Brewing becoming the next Ballast Point?

If you find a beer "delicious" who cares if there are flavors added?

Also, considering Stone isn't owned by a big corporation and continues to make beer that isn't massively overpriced, I'd say no.

 

I always thought Stone was bigger than BP. Unless you count their handlers.

 

As someone who got into drinking craft beer because of the wholesome nature of the ingredients and the lack of additives, chemicals, and preservatives I can understand your concern. This whole haze craze and local craft beer movement is forcing breweries like Stone to do things like this as an attempt to stay in the conversation.

 

It's unfortunate, but in this day and age if a brewery falls off my radar it tends to stay that way. It happened with Stone when they started messing with Enjoy By and took Smoked Porter and Ruination from me. They also messed with the Smoked Porter for a while first, so I guess it was a process until they eventually left orbit .

 

When they discontinued IRS, they became not *dead* to me, but they are on life support.

 

Yeah. I make my own cocaine because the mainstream stuff is cut with laxatives that contain harmful chemicals.

 

Did the flavors change in the original Enjoy By and Smoked Porter? Serious question, I only had my first of each beer a few years ago.

 

It's not that, so much as I just stopped looking that way once all that was available was flavored with chipotle or vanilla or tangerine or whatever. At this point the regular Enjoy By could still be the same for all I know. But who knows, maybe the new cans will get me to grab some again- I guess we all have our gimmicks .

 

As Michael already mentioned: "It's unfortunate, but in this day and age if a brewery falls off my radar it tends to stay that way."

These are very competitive times for the larger, distributing craft breweries. In a fairly recent Op Ed, Jim Koch of Boston Beer Company (Sam Adams) pointed his finger at BIG BEER (ABI, MillerCoors,..) for why times are tough but I am of the opinion that the collective competition of the new small, local craft breweries that are opening up now (1-2 new breweries per day) are impacting things as well.

It sure does seem that Stone is thinking that flavorings will 'help' their sales figures. I suppose with time we will see.

Just last month Sixpoint performed a 'refresh' of their core products with new packaging and reformulation of their core beers.

Sierra Nevada added two new hoppy beers to their year round portfolio: Tropical IPA and Sidecar Orange Pale Ale (which uses orange peel). So, it seems that SN thinks that flavored beer may be a good selling beer.

All breweries are businesses and they all have to make business decisions that they think will produce sales.

Cheers!

@Sixpoint @sierranevadabill @StoneBrewingCo @RobH @KOP_Beer_OUtlet

 

Tropical Torpedo is not a fruited/flavored beer... Just a change in hops to push more of the fruity/tropical varieties.

 

That is correct; Sidecar this the new beer that has orange peel (as I specifically mentioned above).

Cheers!

 

Yes... Since you brought up Tropical Torpedo I wasn't sure if you were claiming TT was also fruited in some way, given the topic of discussion. Just wanted to clarify either way!

 

Fair enough.

Cheers!

 

As do others in this thread, I'd say they are simply responding to market demand from their customers, as are many other Breweries. Stone usually pretty well aware of what's selling and what's not. Fruit flavors are the "in" thing and "old-fashioned" hops and beers that appealed to the old guys are losing ground because of different tastes among the newcomers.

 

Maybe Stone Brewing 'discovered' the demand for fruited beers via their analysis of RateBeer data?

Cheers!

 

Which brewery isnt getting gimmicky in order to stand out? I look at my local beer shops FB posts every week of new beers, and a good 65% of them are some "weird" added flavor brews.

I see it like this. When you have your local breweries dominating the regular core lineup products, these other guys have to stand out in some way. Instead of trying to make a better IPA, they go gimmicky.

Just this past month, 4 raspberry beers, 1 apricot beer, a sour cherry, and a peach beer.

I agree its sort of getting out of hand but Stone shouldn't be getting called out on it exclusively. They need to find a way to make their normal IPA lineups more of a presence . I think I remember seeing their IPA on tap once in the past 15 months.

Instead of competing directly, a lot of these guys are trying to be so different that its easier to stand out. I do love Stone IRS. I remember buying their 2013 Espresso version time and time again. I find it sad when breweries reformulate and totally dump some beers off their production schedule. I know Avery did the same recently. All these breweries want to be different but in some strange way, they are all doing the same thing. I think we'll cycle back to core styles soon enough. Give it a year

 

For me it goes back to the loss of Levitation.

 

Wow that's a terrible analogy and an ignorant response.