Other Half Brewing September 2017

Goddamnit. You hate America.

 

Looking at Untappd beer menu for Torst, $13 for 14 ounces of Cream of Broccoli, that is absurd! Great beer though.

 

I have no facts about your IG posting and whether or not they actually deleted your negative comment about their beer, but let's assume for the sake of argument they did. And I have not tried the simcoe beer you're discussing.

You're using as justification for releasing what you consider a subpar product the amount of revenue they could have lost as a result of bad publicity about their product? If member of the community is that accepting of that behavior for your stateed reason then we have a bigger problem than I thought.

 

Below is a FB post from Scofflaw Brewing in Ga and I think it may be pertinent to OH. THey are still a small batch brewery and if you want absolute consistency drink Macro beer.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/08/breweries-vs-fans-craft-beer-on-social-media.html

This is a small batch brewery. The amount of time a beer spends in a tank, sometimes due to limited human resources, variances in ingredients, and other shit like this affects the beer. We do not have hops contracts this year. We are small so we get the shittiest pick of hops. Grain does not all come from the same field. We tinker with all inputs to work to improve the beer. This is part of what makes small batch brewing and craft brewing what it is. I know there are a lot of experts out there, so to you, if you want to get schooled on this, drop by and speak to Travis or one of our other biologist. On the other hand, if you want more consistency, you can find plenty brands that never try to improve. Brands that have the money and access to gigantic tanks that they can blend into to make more consistent beer. We will gladly give you some recommendations.
BTW, other craft breweries have these issues. Exploding cans, srm/color variances, haze variances…give them a break. Don’t think this is professional, well that’s good cause I am not a professional, I am a fucking scofflaw. #webrewbeerforgeorgia

 

Scofflaw-gate was already mentioned. That incident was like how not to communicate with your customers 101. Don’t think there’s any takeaways from this for anyone beyond that.

 

Yeah the Scofflaw post(s) are absurd, lol. Defending that is just pure nonsense. Small business or not it is a business and making a substandard product and then telling people who bought it to GFY and buy macro stuff is ridiculous.

 

I was using this as an example that with small brewers and OH is small that there will be batch variations. However, the Scofflaw response fits with their branding and has not hurt sales one bit. As a matter of fact sales are up since the on premise sales law changed in Ga.

I do not agree with OH deleting comments on social media. But if you guys love OH as much as you say. You would accept variations in batches and hope for the best next time. I may live in Florida but I have had maybe 12 cases of OH, all different varieties since last December. Not one disappointed, even a month old they are still damn good. I am not a Fan boi but damn give them a break. And if you think OH should respond to every social media criticism you are sadly mistaken. Now would a simple paragraph acknowledging batch variations by OH go along way for the masses?. Of course. However, until there are no longer stupid long lines forming at 6am on Saturday and they stop selling out on Saturday they don't have to.

If the lines ever do stop and they have cans left over for days. I would assume as smart business people they would simply can less and send more kegs into Distro or even send cans into distro. It is a win/win for OH. I think I did the math once-- on average $80k worth of can sales on a Saturday can get a business out of debt pretty damn fast.

 

The on premise sales law changing would've helped business regardless. With the small batches and enough following/hype, you're correct in that they can still sell lots of beer. However, there's no way that insulting customers or telling them to go after is "good" for business. They may be still doing well but that is because of quality (at least, when it's consistent) and not customer service.

OH doesn't have to do anything for customers. Most extremely popular businesses don't. They could probably come out 15 minutes before can open and start spraying the line down with a firehose calling everyone on line losers and still sell out that day. It's not about the variations in batches but about the customer response to those batches. This would be analogous to the Scofflaw response - If I go to a family-owned burger joint and get 8 good burgers in a row and then one day I get a bad one, and the manager apologizes and offers to get me something else, a refund/credit, I will absolutely go back. Hell I'll probably give them one more chance even if they did nothing if I like the place. But if the manager flips out about how they have to buy shitty beef and stale buns because they aren't Big Hamburger and tells me to go pound sand and eat at Five Guys if I don't like it, I absolutely will not return.

 

Or we can discuss Kane - another brewery on the small side who gave auto refunds to everyone who purchased their Mexican Brunch because there were a few reports of fizzing/gushing beers - mostly ones not kept at cold temps. Kane did their investigation and deemed it to be nucleation points from all of the seasonings used in the beer.

If something is off - own up to it and make it right. If OH said that Forever Simcoe was different from previous batches - still good, just a different beer than they should have said that and maybe sold it for $1-2 under the original price and everyone would be happy.

Edit: most lost 1-4oz of the bottle due to fizzing. The beer itself was reported to taste perfectly fine, just had to open it over the sink and pour fast.

 

I was just going to bring up Kane, literally every single person got a refund and got to keep their bottles even if they weren't fizzing up. The beer had no infection, over carbonation or off flavors.

 

And on a lighter note, I found out last night that I have a gnat infestation in my apartment and gnats love Cream of Broccoli. Left my glass on table, in 30 minutes about 15 gnats flew in to glass and drank themselves to death.

Put some Mo Shuggie out this morning, caught nothing, either gnats prefer OH or I killed them all of last night.

 

Hop Showers has changed over time (and I’m not meaning the DDH / hop variants). Most people would probably agree it’s for the better, but I imagine to some guys who don’t want every IPA to be cloudy/soft, they may wish things hadn’t changed. Should OH have posted about that prior to the first HS 2.0 release? Offered a discount maybe for fucking up and making the beer more popular?

 

Has anyone actually gone back to the brewery and brought these issues up to them?

 

We are a cowardly bunch.

 

Touche

 

I remember the old Hop Showers - it was really astringent, unappealingly so. And I say that as someone who doesn't like soft juicy IPAs at all. It must have changed dramatically then.

I do think breweries should somehow notify customers that a product has changed in some way if it was deliberate. (and also if it wasn't up to standards, but I think keeping it off market is better)

 

Yes, I believe they should tell people. Hop Showers is a staple OH beer and people purchase it based on their previous experience. Something as simple as "we tweaked this recipe a bit and it is slightly different" would go a long way. Whether it's beer, food or clothing if you produce a staple product a certain way and then change it, people should know.

Not saying you personally because you are one of the most level headed people in these forums, but for some reason people give craft breweries a pass on everything and are such apologist.

 

its obvious OH doesn't care about their customers... I mean look at the hats they force the fan boys to purchase. must be an inside joke.

 

Look don't get me wrong, I am totally comfortable (online obviously; in person I just look at the floor, say thank you, and over-tip them) being critical of OH. And I think in general they could definitely do a much better job of engaging their customer-base. Sure they post their releases every week. And the odd other thing or two - generally around events or collaborations. But that's about it, and it's fairly one way. The communication around the new taproom was weak/vague - we were all left wondering what was going on for months. And they've never explained the rationale behind their seemingly supportive stance towards #linelife, even though it's an inconvenience to their neighbours. And I would have especially liked for them to have spoken up when there were actually instances of pissing / littering etc, to let people know what they were doing to address things. But we got zilch. I would also on a totally BA/selfish level, love for one of the owners to engage us here in the manner of @Sixpoint (edit - and obviously Grimm and others)

Specifically around beers - after I posted that semi-sarcastic item you responded to, I actually thought - hahaha you know what, they probably should have said something about HS actually, as it appears to be a clear change. So yeah I agree with you and @ecpho - intentional changes - yeah. Actual fuck ups that result in objectively off/bad/flawed beer (plus refunds a la Kane) yeah of course. But my problem with the Simcoe situation is it's not a flawed/off beer. And it doesn't seem to be a recipe change. It's just not as good (a totally subjective thing) as the previous batch for a lot of people - but it's still a perfectly drinkable beer. And had this been the first release, nobody would have said a word. I think if a brewery starts communicating around stuff like this, then they open up a can of worms because someone somewhere is always going to think "it wasn't as good as last time" - and OH will be held to that standard of having to communicate around something that's very subjective. "Hey guys this batch of DDH XYZ might taste a little different than last time - hard for us to tell as we don’t have TPR (total palate recall). Some of you may like it more, some less - YMMV".