New England Whales?

lol is right

You heard about this new band? Haven't made an album yet, or played any live shows, or bought instruments yet ... but they're better than The Beatles.

 

I’ve noticed more and more there seems to be a big divide between the craft beer drinkers that primarily buy beer from the store/hyper local, and those that continually seek out the next new thing whether it’s via trading/traveling and the like. Maybe you’re just more attune with the first group but all of my real life beer friends in MA have at least been to vitamin sea once

 

I didn’t delineate between tiers of breweries in my list, I was primarily giving an overview of the NE breweries that have trade value. HF is obviously the better brewery

 

I’ve gone several times and think they make really good beer. I live close by and I think there was some unmet ‘hazy IPA factory’ demand on the South Shore, and I suspect that’s where a lot of their customers come from. Their batches are small enough that 500 people a week can sell out their whole inventory. That’s a very small number — think about how many people go through Trillium Canton on a typical Saturday.

 

What do you think this says for the longstanding viability of these places? I ask seriously. If there are, in your estimation, people like me (37, two kids, happy to buy beer from Allagash/Notch/etc) and other kinds of beer drinkers (willing to travel/trade/try new things every weekend), what does this mean for Vitamin Sea when another hazy IPA factory opens up?

How can they survive if people like me aren't going to go and the folks in the other group are going to move onto the next cool thing?

 

I think the viability will still be there as long as there's no over expansion. Vitamin Sea especially hasn't hit peak popularity yet. I've noticed that lately with J Wakefield in Miami, they've upped their production and their prices and now they're having trouble selling out stuff that would be gone instantly before (bottles of Let My Tape Rock and Grape Brandy BA Big Poppa are still available online as well as all of the other Wakefest bottles). They've just begun the process of a opening a second location, I think maybe that'll end up being too much for them.

Treehouse is still viable even with their expansion because they're able to sell everything out of their taproom and nothing lasts too long. Maybe part of it is because of how embedded they are in the NE craft beer scene as well as their place in innovating the NEIPA, but they're in a place similar to Russian River and Alchemist as far as mystique. I've noticed with some of the trillium cans they can tend to last a month+ depending on what the beer is ("hype" cans like collabs and Headroom still sell quickly but some of the street beers and cans like "For the sake of sea" and "DDH Illustrated" can last pretty long). Part of catering to the second crowd is being able to move your product relatively quickly (or having more demand than your supply - or at least the perception of that).

If Vitamin Sea can continue to keep up their quality while expanding their portfolio of beers I think they'll be in a good place, especially if they aren't too eager to ramp up their production significantly.

 

I've had one of their beers!

My cousin happened to be going to Weymouth and picked some up and gave me a can. It tasted like...a New England IPA, nothing mind blowing.

I have a buddy who lives in Weymouth as well, so he's had it. Outside of that I don't really know of anyone traveling there to get their beer.

Just providing some more anecdotes.

Do your friends typically go IPA hunting? Because otherwise, I don't see a real need anymore to go travel for New England IPAs. You can get really good ones almost anywhere in MA now.

 

I say this in a way that is (mostly) judgement free: I think this is the distinction. We talk about “adventurous beer drinkers willing to travel/try new things/etc” but to me that means people just driving to try literally the same beer over and over again at different spots. It’s not the “let’s hike it up to Newcastle and drink farmhouse ales” crowd. Again, nothing wrong with that, but the distinction is less “boring old folks who buy the reliables” vs “adventure seekers” and more “boring old folks who buy the reliables” vs “haze boiz”

 

Sounds ... uninteresting. But I suppose I get it. I mean I assume that there are people who think all lagers taste the same. They’re wrong, but they’re out there.

 

There are plenty of people that chase after IPAs and I would guess they chase after them for the same reason people chase down other styles of beers. I assume part of the chase is the thrill of having something more limited. I will admit that I have expended extra effort to acquire some beers. Sometimes it was worth it and sometimes it was not.

 

I wrote this in the Long Live thread after their expansion.

"This kind of goes to one of my points.
Say someone is spending $20 a week on beer (mostly at their go to spot), then a new good brewery opens up. That person isn't going to spend $20 a week at both places. Then a couple months later a new awesome brewery opens. Now what?
It just seems like the new place is the place that gets the business and right now, with breweries, there is always a new place. It must be hard to be a five year old brewery.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out five or ten years from now. I wouldn't think that all of these places could possibly survive. I just hope places like Long Live rise to the top and stick around for a long time."

 

they buy pretty much none of their beers at stores. They go to Treehouse/Bissell/Trillium and the like regularly, as well as drive up to HF for bottle releases and buy hops there too. They’ve all been impressed by vitamin sea and will probably go there more in the future

 

If Vitamin Sea was in Portland it would likely be just another IPA brewery and we wouldn’t even be talking about it.

 

Don’t knock it until you try it.

 

The Von Trapp trosten lager I'm enjoying is a NE whale at the moment.

Trading is hard work yo.

 

Maine or Oregon? lol

 

I like that. I suppose you can take your pick!

 

Don't get me wrong, there are some New England IPAs I think are better than others, and I do seek some out. But I don't go too far out of my way.

For example, I saw that Great Notion had some beers at a few stores near me, so I specifically went to those stores to pick them up. I was curious how they tasted. But these stores are stores I regularly go to, so I didn't have to go out of my way.

But I've still never been to Tree House. I just don't see the need to travel 1.5 hours for New England IPAs. I've also had plenty of their beers given to me by friends. Solid beers, but I don't get traveling out there to stock up on IPAs.

I'd be curious if they could pick out some of these beers in a blind tasting. I imagine they couldn't, but who knows. And I'm not knocking your friends, I'd be curious if I could as well.

I was at my buddy's house and we had Lunch and Dinner and did a blind tasting. It was very obvious which one was which, but then again one is a single, and the other a double.

I also recall a story about another buddy who brought some Idle Hands IPAs to a tail gate and they blind tasted them against Tree House, and people couldn't tell the difference.

 

I've been sleeping on the streets of Portsmouth for the last month waiting for it to drop

 

There's for sure a psychological aspect to the (perceived) scarcity. The fact that a person has to go to the source to get it (the direct-to-consumer model) makes the product seem superior to other products.

I've been curious about this in the wine industry recently. There's a heavy DTC model that is pervasive at the top of "best of" lists that is way more prevalent than the rather democratic beer situation.

Good for the people with the time, money, and ambition to spend their Saturdays trekking out to Central Mass to load up on dollies of NEIPA. I just know that, from where I live, by the time it took me to get out there, wait in even a short line, and have a beer, that I could be in Portland on beer #2 at a couple places that I regard more highly.