Controversial Beer Opinions (Round Two)

Yeah I’ve actually been hearing a lot about to that too.. seems I steered away from them before all the drama. For me nothing will beat their OG blueberry cobbler Jream.. haven’t had much of anything from them since then so I ended on a good note! Maybe I’ll direct most of my last point to the Answer, as they certainly do any style they attempt with style and grace!

 

No argument there, and I suspect we may just be stuck at a semantic block. People have to buy brewer's beers if.they are going to stay open and I'm sure that most brewers get a lot of joy out of brewing beers that people want to buy.

My point is simply that many (most?) commercial brewers don't make their brewing decisions based solely on what beers they think they can sell the most of or profit the most off of. We've all seen, and probably commented, on that shift happening to some beloved regional brewery that goes national and suddenly drops the unique beers that we identified with for another couple brands of IPA or whatever.

I also don't think its unfair to throw some shade at breweries that don't appear to.care to brew solid beer and instead just churn out fairly low effort hyped styles. I don't think its useful either but most people seem to get some joy out of the occasional deriding of some entity we've deemed as "lesser" so I think I'd just file it under the "comes with the territory" file.

 

If you ever find your way in that general area, Dewey Brewing seems to be gaining in popularity rapidly these days with those massive fruit bomb styles. They're only about 45 minutes north of Burley Oak. I visited them at the same time as my last trip to Burley Oak, and their sours were on par with the JREAMS. They also have a great restaurant attached which is nice. I've yet to try anything from The Answer yet unfortunately, but I hear nothing but good things.

 

Size, experience, debt load, and owner/brewer preferences come into play.

If a brewery has a strong flagship, and a few others that sell consistently, has a taproom, is owned by a small group of investors, and is willing to take the occasional hit, they can play around a bit.

Let's say a 10-15bbl brewery, that does some packaging, with a strong core of local/regional accounts, and their own restaurant/taproom, has a solid enough cashflow. They can put out a brewer/owner pet that's not a fast mover, as long as the core beers sales stay solid. And, some accounts will ask for brews that nobody else in their neighborhood will get, so, a few kegs go there.

You can scale those thoughts up/down as desired, but for the very tiny brewery (1-5 person operation, especially if the owner/brewer has a spouse with an outside job with bennies), Pet Projects aren't really putting the business at risk, and possibly help grow their reputation as risk-takers, which might help their over-all image.

Look how many times we've seen posts here on BA blasting a brewery (especially a new one, that might be struggling for cashflow) for not just (dumping a bad [perceived or not] batch, because reputation is king bro. I only give a brewery 1 chance)? If a brewery could afford to dump that batch to appease those tools, they can brew a personal favorite.

DAMN THE TORPEDOES! FULL SPEED AHEAD! or something.

 

And the consideration, "Will people buy it?" is made for every beer they brew, since that is the reason they brew as a business, not as a hobby.

I am certain there is some different point to be made about the comparative amounts of passion and skill that brewers, and all of us, have for the professions we choose to earn our livings. Until then. Cheers!

 

Would you say - using a couple of NY breweries I know you’re familiar with as an example - that Other Half and Suarez are cut from exactly the same cloth? I wouldn’t say so personally. Sure there is a baseline profitability requirement, but after that there is some latitude on the brewer’s part when it comes to completely giving yourself over to the customers’ whims or not. Dan Suarez openly eschews some of the best-selling styles. He is certainly leaving $ on the table. He could do barrel-aged pastry stouts and hazy DIPAs (and even put his own tasteful spin on them), and have people lining up before open, if he wanted. But he doesn’t and they don’t. Other Half on the other hand is completely focused on what sells, and capitalizing on any/all related opportunities. So I think there’s a scale vs it being totally black and white.

 

I don't know that anyone is arguing that this isn't A consideration, the disagreement seems to be in how important this consideration is, which is going to be all over the map. I know one brewery that gives its head brewer a fair amount of latitude because they went heavy on their core sellers for a while and had some churn when their brewers didn't feel like they were growing or had a chance to be creative. Allowing for some experimental small-batch beers was "cheaper" than dealing with the constant turnover in that position. There are definitely limits on how far "out there" they'll get, so it's not an anything-goes situation, but they've budgeted for the occasional loss. In this case, I know their brewer feels a responsibility to propose beers that are likely to be popular. He wants to have a hit as much as the owner does, but he's also willing to take bigger risks.

This is so true. I don't think anyone starts a brewery thinking "I'm gonna make what I want when I want, and I don't care if anyone buys it." Maybe as a vanity project, but as you said, even that can only last so long. More often it's a misjudgment along the lines of "everyone I know likes this beer, so of course, this will be popular" or "I hear people talking about ___ all the time, so I'm sure it'll be the next big style," or it's a lack of skill in scaling or inability to perceive flaws/inconsistency.

Even in the case of breweries that aren't jumping on the latest trend, they exist because they perceived a hole in the market that they could fill. Whether that's by doing certain styles better than others or focusing on a particular region or highlighting the taproom experience or pairing great marketing with "good enough" beers, they expect that what they're offering is going to resonate with enough customers to meet their goals.

 

This was my point that inspired a bunch of replies. Consumer demand is what dictates the styles that breweries choose to make and sell. It is the thing that dictates the styles of everything that every business sells. Breweries may put out beers that they aren't sure will be successful at first, but they don't put out beers they are sure won't be successful ever, or ones whose success isn't considered at all. Not exactly breaking major ground with deep thought, but as I said in the post that started this chain of responses, it's a truism that bears repeating occasionally.

 

I think success can be quantified, but I don't think there is an identifiable point of making a profit where any profit in excess of that point is success, any profit that doesn't meet or exceed that point is not success. I think success in real terms would be how the brewer and/or owner of the brewery define it for themselves, just as that metric is true for all of us and all of our professions.

I think it bears repeating that the only difference between a brewery that is said to be chasing trends, or one that we think is artistic and sincere, is how well we like the beers that brewery makes. So some of us might think Burley Oak is chasing a trend because we don't care for slushies. But other folks might think Suarez is chasing a trend by jumping on the blended and barreled mixed-ferm trend, or Von Trapp is jumping on the German Lager trend.

 

Not really answering my question. And I think it’s a little insincere/lawyery to characterise slushie-makers and pilsner-makers as both trend chasers. If Suarez wanted more hype and $, he would make different styles. I think that’s fairly clear. I will grant you that he is in a unique situation where his reputation/prior experience, puts him in a position where he can go the brew-what-I-want route and still be somewhat successful.

 

A good example being the controversial figure in Jason Yester, who eventually succumbed to consumer demand

However, Yester recently sold Trinity for this very reason, and now no longer works in the industry

 

I'm in no way saying profit doesn't matter, as I feel I've stated before. But much like what @RauchbierFan33 some breweries choose to brew beer they want, of course they still make a profit, otherwise they wouldn't exist. My favorite small local place I'm sure makes most of their money off IPAs but...in the past few weeks they have also canned an english mild (they brew often) and their dunkel (they release every fall a couple of times) to name a few not so trendy beers. They could've probably just DDH'd one of their IPAs sold more of it and quicker but...they didn't. They take a chance and expose maybe exclusively IPA drinkers to more traditional styles and educate. That differentiates a brewery in my opinion from a trend chasing brewery.

 

I'm not gonna define success for Dan Suarez. As I said in my post success is up to each of us to define for ourselves. Folks criticized Vinnie Cilurzo for not expanding greatly and getting real success. The level he is/was at is success for him. He said so.

I'm not gonna get into a folk art versus fine art debate, I think we both know where that goes, so calling me insincere is, well, a little insincere

 

The proliferation of breweries and the tsunami of new beers (regardless of style) is a problem for the business. Unlike say, software development, sizeable initial and continuing investments must be made. A craft beer market without the stability of "flagship" brands means that brewery managers have to come up with new products. A few less successful attempts will doom a brewery to failure. The pressure is only ratcheted up by the proliferation of breweries and resulting excess capacity, as well as the market disruption of Covid19. I, for one, like to have the security of a few "desert island" beers that I know I'll be able to enjoy time after time.

 

The difference would be that Von Trapp has been brewing German lagers since before they got (are they really?) trendy. I don't know anything about burley oak but people often call out 450 N as a "trend chaser" because they were a pretty meh local brewery who discovered that slushy beer was popular and switched largely to brewing that. They clearly don't really care that much about the style (evidence being that they didn't even consider the impact adding a large volume of fruit puree would have on the abv).
Whether or not a person thinks chasing trends for profit (to whatever varying degree any given business is doing it) is a good or bad thing is up to each individual to decide. But that variability doesn't mean that there's no reality to some breweries much more actively chasing trends than others.

Russian River may be "chasing" the hazy IPA trend to a degree with their mind circus but its not the same as the change for Sudwerk who is now dominated by hazy ipls and ipas and fruited kettle sours. I like the hazy beers from sudwerk plenty but I can still see that they are clearly chasing a trend they had no hand in starting

 

I hate to tell you this but light lager beers have been the #1 world wide trending style for over 150 years. By far, not even close. Add up all the craft beer ales, every style, from every country, and double it, and it still won't be close to the amount of light lagers trending world wide. In this country almost every American lager originally was done to get onto the light lager style trend. .Von Trapp is over 150 years late to try and start that hype train lol.

 

Beer Advocate 'operates' like a craft beer echo chamber and all too often the non-craft beers are ignored. And sometimes BA folks get quite annoyed when they are reminded that Adjunct Lagers are the preferred beer of choice worldwide (America, Canada, Brazil, China, UK,...).

Cheers!

 

Fellas - let’s end this patronizing obtuse shit. Cool?

 

"Trending" usually implies trending upward. Pale lagers in the US are not trending upward. In Oregon, in 2014, 36% of the beer sold was from craft brewers (https://oregoncraftbeer.org/facts/). This is up from essentially zero in 1980. Craft beers (as well as major brewery ales and specialties) have been trending up over the last 30 to 40 years, not pale lagers.