"Craft or crafty? Consumers deserve to know the truth"

Yep, this is why I don't really care what the Brewer's Association thinks. Yes, Schell's makes Grain Belt and it makes up the majority of their sales, but Schell's is one of the most traditional breweries out there, making superlative examples of styles such as Hefeweizen, Bock, Vienna, Schwarzbier and other German styles. Plus their one-offs have included virtually non-existent styles (at least among US brewers) such as Rauchbier, Czech Dark Lager, Weihnachtsbier, Burton Ale and Biere de Noel.

One of my favorite breweries, and if the Brewer's Association won't include them, then fuck em.

 

Well, I can think of a couple of dozen revived brands in the last few decades of the craft era and most of them have been priced similar to craft beer (as opposed to their previous incarnations - since typically many beers sink to the discount level before disappearing) and many have stressed recipes that look further back in the past than to the current styles of US adjunct lagers and light beer.

The most obvious and successful brand that went all "craft" would probably be the ACME line from North Coast.

 

Shame on a brewery for making a technically good beer but styles deemed "boring" by the modern beer geek.

But a brewery puts out barrel - aged crap full of faults or some awful "extreme beer" & that's worthy of their promotion? The BA is a joke.

 

Here's what I don't get: craft brewers can't make enough beer. Almost everyone is growing. Who's losing market share? Not craft brewers. These brewers saying "don't drink faux craft" couldn't make enough beer to support that transfer of volume. Craft brewers are just scooping up money, why do they seem to be crying about it?

 

let's extrapolate the 'shouldn't hide the true owner thing' to other industries
fine example is the utility industry in VT, which recently had the largest power co purchased by the 2nd largest.

the largest power co is the combined Green Mountain Power
the only nat gas co is Vermont Gas Systems

Both are owned by a Canadian Company Gaz Metro LP
Gaz Metro LP is then owned by Valener and Gaz Metro Inc
Valener is the publiclly traded portion of Gaz Metro LP
Gaz Metro Inc is owned by Enbridge and Trencap
Trencap is privately owned (pension funds)
Enbridge is a publiclly traded oil/gas pipeline company with a market cap of 35B.

the majority of VTers now effectively ship all their power bills to Canada, to a oil/gas company and the regulators let it happen (or more aptly shoved it down our throats).
Meanwhile on the otherhand, we have banned fracking and push like crazy for solar and wind to reduce oil usage.

The world is a crazy place. Ownership structure will never be completely transparent, just how the world works.

 

My goodness

 

It's not about right now. It's about what has happened in the past. It's about what could happen in the future. Don't rest on your laurels when times are good.

 

I think this issue has been turned into a lot of things it is not. The BA is attempting to educate those consumers that care who makes their beer. I would say more people than you realize care and don't realize they are being deceived. If you care, educate yourself. If you know someone else that cares, educate them. If you don't care, keep doing what you're doing.

To me, Mr. Calagione points out the bigger picture with this statement, "If you want to keep the diversity excitement of the American beer landscape healthy, support indie American craft breweries."

The craft beer industry will not to grow at this rate indefinitely, and BMC will try to get their chunk of flesh. Eventually, there will be casualties. Let's just hope it's not a beer or brewery that is one of your favorites.

 

First of all, consumers need to educate themselves, period. Businesses will always try to make money, by whatever means possible. You can't ask a business to voluntarily do something that might turn people away from their product (in this case, asking BMC to label their "craft(y)" offshoots). And you can't legislate under the assumption that consumers are always the victims. If you bought a speed reading set a decade ago, you're stupid. If you called miss Cleo for your "free readin," you're stupid. If a homeopathic doctor is your primary physician, you're stupid. There is plenty of information available to the consumer in most every market, and it is the consumer's responsibility to do his or her homework.

Secondly, it's funny looking at these comments and juxtaposing them with Greg Koch's recent hypocritical kick about craft getting too big (which, while I respect Greg Koch, everything he's been saying lately is really adding up to a heap of garbage).

 

I get the feeling that a number of smaller brewers are starting to freak out. I mean in years past they could distance themselves from they big guys by just saying they make better beer. But that isn`t realy true if the AB produced Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout has a 100 BA score. So they make it about who is craft and who is just crafty and the whole thing sounds like hipsters debating if a band you like is an authentic indie band or sellouts or something.

 

Good article but in the end, it doesn't matter to me who makes a beer. If I like it, I'll drink it. I enjoy a Blue Moon once in a while.

 

That has to be one of the dumbest, most ill-informed lines I've ever read here. You REALLY think the owner of a brewery has nothing to do with the product or how it's made??

 

I have substitute for BCBS. Can anyone rec a substitute for Sofie? I'd much rather spend my money with small guys, but I really like Sofie.

 

There is so much about this post that I detest, I don't even know where to begin.

This describes every business on Planet Earth, IMHO. I can't think of one that is delivering products or services because they don't want you to buy them. Every advertisement you see or hear on TV or radio or in print or even on this website is telling you how to spend your money.

WTF are you talking about?

This is a wake-up call that consumers should be more educated. A lot of people who are buying the stealth brews would pick something else if they knew what they were buying. If you're not one of those, great, but at least you're now informed (assuming you've even read the materials we're discussing).

Unfairly using your market dominance to force retailers and distributors to limit consumer choice is an exclusionary tactic. Urging consumers to be more informed is the exact opposite of that. I can not believe you or anyone would have a problem with a group saying "these are our products, these are their products, ours are better, don't take our word for it, try them yourself!" It is the American way.

 

I don't think anyone has a problem with a brewer or group of brewers asserting that their products are better or true mom & pop shops. The problem is when you turn it into a mode of morality, which BA seems to be trying to do and a lot of craft beer fans are following. The morality of small brewer good big brewer bad. Therefore you should drink craft beer because it is moral--not because it is better.

 

It seems pretty easy to tell - I've noticed all those "micro-brews" that are owned by BMC are the only ones that are readily available at almost every sporting event, music venue, etc. From now on I'll stick with Sierra Neveda or Sam Adams at events. Other wise, the beers we all buy are usually not owned by BMC because most of those mentioned - Leinenkugel, etc really aren't that special.

 

While I'm not thrilled about the big 2 trying to "sneak" their products into the craft beer market, that a much smaller issue compared to the other things they are doing, like trying to gain control of the distribution tier. I'm way more concerned with them squeezing out smaller breweries that rely on current distribution practices to get their beers to my state.

 

What's the problem with injecting that morality into beer purchases? If people want to consider said "morality" when making purchases, good for them.

 

"Morality" is a word that you and Longstaff have used. It does not appear in the Post-Dispatch article, and I don't understand where you are getting it from. The BA is saying that the non-craft products, in general, do not live up to our standards, and we think you should have the same high standards that we do. Others surely have called InBev and their kin immoral, but the BA has been extremely careful to craft a thoughtful definition, promote it, and avoid even the hint of any kind of moral judgement, IMHO.

 

But it is like they can't use the line "our products are better go try them" any more since how many small brewers have beers with a 100 rating? So they are going with a different tactic and saying are beers are better because they are more authentic craft. But to me they don't really do a good job of explaining what that means.

I mean yes AB is a huge company, but in reality so is Sierra Nevada (not as big as AB, but bigger than just about everyone else). They have breweries in two states, and according to an article I read they chose North Carolina for their second brewery at least in part because of the tax breaks they were getting from the local and state government. Plus I imagine they had to arrange all kinds of financing, either privately or through a bank to build that new brewery. I would find it hard to believe that the CFO doesn't have a ton of influence when it comes to making management decisions.

What exactly are the qualification that make them ok but not goose island? What about Sam Adams? What about Magic Hat (they are owned by North American Breweries, who used to be owned by a private equity firm, and are now owned by a large Costa Rican beverage conglomerate)?

If we go to Europe it gets even harder to decide who is who. Schneider and Sons is huge and makes a ton of beer and it is available all over the world, which you would think would be a mark against them. But at the same time they have done collaborations with the Brooklyn Brewery which should give them a ton of credibility. How about fullers from the UK? They make very high quality beer but they make a ton of it. They have been doing barrel aging for years and putting beer in casks probably forever. On the other hand they ship there beer all over the world too, plus when I was there in 2009 they had a robotic arm to sort kegs and cost over a million euros. That is probably more than the cost of the entire brewing set up for a large number of micros.

So until someone can give me a cut and dry set of rules for who is craft and who is not and who it is ok to like I will continue to just go with what tastes good.