Too many beers?

I'm sure in some other markets Stone and DFH struggle againt the smaller boutique type breweries. If you're good at what you do, you'll have a solid shot at success.

 

There are tons of threads in relation to this topic. The simple fact is that if beer is really good, it will sell. The problem is so many of these smaller, local breweries only make 'OK' beer and its not as good as the same style of beer from stone, dog fish, lagunitas etc. And usually these smaller breweries need to charge more due to the fact they are making 1, 000 bbl rather than 100, 000 bbl.

I am a huge advocate of supporting your locals and small breweries, but that doesn't automatically mean I will buy it, especially if the bigger name brand are as good or better and priced similarly.

 

What are you doing to let your customers know that you have something new they should try?

 

In my local shop is an array of new and regional beer. Finger Lakes Beer Company is the name. Would love to try them, no date. I am only buying beer with freshness dating . That is a big factor in why new beer does not sell. They also have flying monkeys who I have been dying to try and again no date, no try.

 

I'm willing to try any brand of beer as long as it's in a family of style that I like (IPA, porter, etc) but it's hard to be willing to try Acme Brewing IPA when it's April and the only two 6-packs on the shelf advise you to consume it by January. It's a catch-22 because there is all this new beer from small breweries that i want to try but I don't expect the store to eat the cost of unsold beer to replace it with fresh batches of the same stuff that has already not sold.

 

I'm drawn to something I haven't seen before. While the big brands brew a lot of really nice stuff, you can also find treasures with the little unknown or lesser known breweries. There is a service station a block from my house that was on TV a few months ago for having the cheapest gas in town. Ever since they have had lines of cars out on the street waiting to get in an buy cheap gas. There is another gas station 3 blocks away - different brand but same price for the gas (and their gas is made at the same refinery) and there is always an open pump. I think beer can get a little like that too.

 

It's funny you mentioned Stone and Dogfish specifically. Up here in Albany, they sit on the shelves forever. The new Stone releases move faster but I almost never see someone buying a Dogfish. The new, smaller brewery items are up front and move pretty quickly. All NY beers are on the first shelf section when you enter the store, so there is a lot of traffic looking through them.

As mentioned, the only qualm with smaller breweries is the lack of born on/enjoy by date. I get around that by actually visiting the locals a lot in a reasonable radius. The other thing to note is that smaller breweries don't tend to can/bottle until they are somewhat established and have seen the demand for it. If it's good, people will buy it. If it's not, well, make something better.

 

Sometimes it's hard to remember that we on Beer Advocate (and even RateBeer, and other sites) are a subset of a subset of people "in the know" about some of these beers. Even among craft beer fans, there are plenty of people who find their beer, be it Stone, Sierra Nevada or whatever, and don't want to explore outside that comfort zone. My dad enjoys almost everything I bring him to try, but when he goes to buy beer, it's almost always SN Torpedo (not saying that's bad or anything; at least I got him off Red Dog...)
For the OP, have you tried setting up tastings in the store, showcasing the new arrivals, or other beers that may not sell well, though they may be great beers? I have a store nearby that did that for a long time, and I got into many beers and styles I may not have tried if it wasn't for those tastings.

 

I buy everything that looks good, small or big brewery. Sometimes I feel like I´m helping small brewers, but then I´m surprised of what small breweries can achieve that big brewers are forgetting.

 

I do, just as I would expect my grocery store to remove any outdated food from the shelf. Some of this may fall on the distributor so I'm not sure if the store would have to eat any costs but it may affect the stores orders getting filled.

 

When a date stamper costs somewhere in the range of a new fermentation vessel, or a 2 - 4 head bottlling or canning unit you figure out what your priorities are as a new business trying to get your beer to your customer. Plus social media seems to indicate and proven that more often than not, a brewery will be very excited about telling you when they package their beer and when to expect it at the shoppe, or on tap at where-ever. It's in many newer cats best interest to do this, because the aforementioned little factlet on the cost of investing in such a seemingly simple benign little piece of equipment.

This is irksome because you are only doing yourself a disservice with two options for figuring it out and they are both right in front of you. Talk to the shop keep and ask them when they got it in, and window that out to a day to a week if they self distribute, or a week to three weeks if they have a distributor handling it. The other option is reaching out to the brewery and asking their sales person. If it's a brewery just starting out. Good chance is that beer will not be getting brewed again until its previous stock has been spoken for and sold.
I don't know what your states distribution laws are, but if they self distribute it. You can get beer sometimes, the same day that it is packaged. I know here in Illinois, that's quite possible. But, too, this unnerving need to have the freshest beer possible is troubling as well because you simply are not having the beer in peak flavor, which is more often than not, about a month after its packaging date.

 

Spread the word-offer tastings-signage-display of 'new beers'-offer intro pricing

 

I think the new breweries need to build the reputation by growler fills and bottle/can sales out of their brewery years before entering the public market so they have a following. I know i've grown less likely to try something new that i've never heard anything especially without some kind of dating system. The only caveat to that is if i'm in a different state, then trying beers i've never heard of is something i prefer, but still i look for dates.

 

As has been pointed out in more than one prior thread on dating, it doesn't cost much at all to use a hack saw to notch a batch of labels before they are seated in the labeling machine.

As for distribution, your assumption is that of a short time between when the distributor gets it and when it gets to the store. That is not a safe assumption. There are lots of reports from multiple states of seasonal beers not being distributed to retailers until after the prior seasonal has been sold by the retailer. Also its not unheard of for a case of beer to sit in the distributor's warehouse for a year and then show up at the time of the following year's release as if it were the new bottling. In fact I've had it happen to me.

So the real disservice is buying beer blindly and uncritically assuming that it is fresh.

 

Comes down to survival of the fittest. It's Darwin all over again

 

Having experience labeling, I'll file that hack saw idea in the "oh god this is hell" column. When you are hand packaging, and starting out. You'd be presuming that the brewery has designed their labeling to have dating notches on it, and then assuming that a skeleton crew and it's attack squadron of volunteers or part time staff are going to take the full day it would take to do that. Oh, and there's also the annoying fact that those stickers (which is all they really are) come on 1750 - 3500 ct. rolls. Not exactly conducive in any way shape or form to that hack saw idea. So, it stays in the "oh god, this is hell" column.
I just had a year old Matts Burning Rosids the other week thanks to this little mystery beer hole that distributors have. Hey. For that beer. They cellared it for me. Awesome, cos there's no way I would have been able to keep it for that long myself. I also know of a brewery or two that have had entire pallets of their regular drinkers suddenly turn up because they have gotten lost in the shuffle due to their product generating nothing more than a one and done customer. That would be a problem with their product, but also that this brewery is trying to be in too many places at once, and also stretching their more than likely part time (under 10 hours a week) sales team out too thin.
Here's how I view that. If the brewery hasn't yet earned their keep and gotten recognition on their home field, and are already trying to be in some other field. I'm not really interested, and they are not using their (investors) money wisely.

 

This has been the subject of a few recent threads.

I'll say that my gut feeling is that the saturation point on the number of craft breweries in the US is bound to be reached very soon.

I'll stress that this is just anecdotal but the number of breweries simply cannot increase in perpetuity unless craft consumption grows exponentially (and there is no indication that will happen).

 

Nationally, yes. There are way too many beers. Locally? Nope.
I really only drink beers that are made within my region (Washington, Oregon, PNW). Some may call that naive and boring, but I personally am overwhelmed by all the options out there (even Stone, Dogfish Head, and the all the big boys) and this helps me simplify things. I feel like things could come around to how they were in the old days, where most breweries exist for their communities and then there is a category of really big ones that ship at a large level.

 

Re the hack saw idea (or an equivalent method that in effect produces the same result), tell that to the Pro brewers who've been there, done that and publicly stated "its not that hard to do." (And if someone designs their label without anticipating the need for some sort of dating method that's their problem not mine.)

Re failure to get recognition at home so passing them by is a different form of disservice. You pays your money and you makes your choices.

My choice is the same as that made by @utopiajane . No date, no buy (unless I can be sure it’s a recent seasonal release).

Do I miss out on some good beers? Sure. But I also miss out on lots of the same beers you want to avoid as well.

But I take the whole thing one step further than most do. If I'm interested in a beer that turns out to have no date I pick something else fresh that does and then I go home and send mail to the brewery telling them which of their competitors beers I just bought and why. (And since most of the beer I buy, living in PA, is bought by the case that's a wee bit harder to ignore...)