Anybody catch this? I'm curious what the Germans on the forum think. Putting it in Berlin , although they kept showing Munich, is probably pretty good marketing. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bringing-craft-beer-to-germany/
Lol. this article screams of not understanding the german scene and market at all. Something I already saw when Stone did the kickstarter campaign and announced collabs with the big,european craft names- but NOT with shooting stars of the berlin scene like Schoppe or Heidenpeters. "Is there anything like this in Berlin at the moment?" "Nothing, absolutely nothing at all," he replied. Yes and there is a reason for that- though gaining movement rapidly, craft is still a niche market, even in berlin. Throwing a lot of money at it will not change that. In my opinion, the reason why Heidenpeters for instance is succesfull is because his operation works on a small scale. And the market will not explode tenfold, only because the Americans arrive.
Idk, doesn't seem any different than other marketing-trara in the scene to me. There's lot of stuff in that area that I would describe as "redundant" or "inaccurate" but that's the name of the game. Just like it's easier to make headlines with a bunch of exaggerations.
How dare the industrial beer drinkers be dismissive of craft beer! It is only allowed to be the other way around!
Well remember Stone's purpose was to gain a foothold in Europe, not strictly to serve the local Berlin market. That there will be a pub there is incidental to the rest of it. And while I'm a big fan of the growing Berlin craft scene, it's accurate to say there's nothing like Stone there. And there are things the German craft market has to learn, not just from Stone and American brewers but from others - there's a lot of glorified home brewing going on (I'm not referring to size here, I'm referring to quality - as actually some of the smaller brewers I know of seem to suffer less from this), capitalizing on the trend without much thought to quality control. I'm hoping as more international offerings enter the market the competition will push German brewers to be better.
That's basically what I said, it IS accurate that nothing like what Stone is planning there is currently there- for reasons i tried to explain. I'm also aware of the other points you mentioned, esp. that they want to get a foothold in the european market- which still does not change that the huge visitor center with millions of seats and stuff will also need local support to be profitable, i suppose. I just see two radically different cultures at clash here. Not so much big ,established brewer vs small,young,inexperienced ones on the market. More the highly fragmented, based on local patriotism (yes also for the craft movement) european and even more so german market with the radical attitude towards bigger is better and internationalism of bigger us craft brewers. I'm very excited to see how it all will work out......
