Lord Hobo Brewing is expanding

I've never understood people calling it a hobby. The only hobby part might be cellaring...kinda. Otherwise your just consuming something that in the end isn't really great for you! There isn't much hobby to it. Trading I don't see as a hobby either.

 

Whatever you want to call it is fine by me. Once you realize there is more to life than Bud light

I homebrew so maybe that is the hobby part of it for me

 

A hobby is an activity done regularly during leisure time for pleasure. If craft beer doesn't fall under that definition we might as well just do away with the entire word. I don't consider it MY hobby because I have others. The usage is correct, and I can see why people would call it that.

 

I've more or less purposely avoided looking too much into non-New England stuff for this reason. The options are overwhelming enough with stuff around here, no need for me to start going crazy with time and money to get a hold of stuff from across the country.

 

Boom Sauce is so much better than when I first had it last August. Totally different beer. Good job! It's still not a "Juice Blanket" but a dammed good DIPA none the less.
That is all.

 

New interview reflecting on the first year of production:

http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2016/06/21/lord-hobo-brewing-reports-barrel-production-for-first-year/

Pretty crazy to see how close they got to 10k. It also explains why Consolation prize is so infrequently made and Glorious should be coming back at some point.

 

I had their Hobo Life on tap the other day and thought it was very good for a session. I'm not a huge fan of the style but it had a great nose and wasn't nearly as thin tasting as many of them.

Interesting article, though I'm not sure the amount of beer they made is much of a signifier of anything beyond their success in getting financing up front. Night Shift started with 220 barrels because they were 3 guys with no money brewing on what was essentially a glorified home brew system. I'm curious how many barrels a place like Bent Water, which also came out of the gate with a big facility but a lot less hype, will manage to make. They've said they have the capacity to do up to 15K a year.

 

Not a fan, way better local options exist.

At the expense of sounding like a real asshole, I will say these guys aren't at all on my radar. Lowest common denominator beer.

 

Are we sure this is the same Lanigan?

 

IMO - the article does show some success on LH's part but then again, lets dive into some numbers and think about this some more:

Lord Hobo in Year 1:
8750 BBL brewed in the first year.
7 States for Distribution.
2k Accounts

Night Shift in Year 1:
220BBL Brewed
Distro to handful of accounts in Boston only

To Lord Hobo in the words of the Lord Darth Vader "Most Impressive".

Ok, but lets look at NSB at year 4:
Approaching 10k BBL Brewed
Barely 1/2 of 1 state for Distribution; Almost entirely inside the 495 loop (and occasional distro to Portland Maine)
# of accounts probably not = to 25% of 2k (rough guess since they are self distributed)
50% of sales directly from the tap room (source = NSB's brewery tour)

Now, how impressive does that seem for LH.... from a purely business point of view first order look at the numbers? Lets dig a little deeper into the background of NSB:

Having been a consumer of NSB since the beginning I know that they've had a very organic and rather explosive growth in 4 years. They'd had their problems sure, but a ton of success. They've grown from the little glorified Home Brew setup housed in a complex my wife described as "Whitey Bulger's Burial Ground" to a new facility that is the poster child for Taproom design/success. On any given day NSB has 12-20 beers on tap and on weekends you can barely get into the taproom between 2pm-closing without waiting in a line. Flagship beers barely make it from one canning run to the next and one off offerings routinely sell out cans/bottles within a week of going on sale. Expansion is ongoing there for a taproom annex and additional 60BBL FV for production of flagship offerings. (Flag ship offerings that grew out of consumer popularity from the hundreds of beers NSB has made in 4 years)

Ok, lets look at LHB
LHB has jumped right to year 4 of 5 (or 8-10) of most small brewery's business plan; massive 5 vessel brew house and dozens of 80BBL FV from day one and now 1 year out, a bunch of 160BBL FV on order. BUT... this is without the history of organic growth and development of a local/regional following. They just brewed beer on a massive scale and tossed it out there with the expectation that everyone will love it and buy it up like Heady Topper because "BOOMSAUCE!" But this is the problem... that's not how ANY of the other breweries mentioned in the article got to where they are today. They all started small and worked hard to grow.
By brewing 8750BBL and then distributing to 7 states all in year 1, they've gotten their beer out into the market for sure... but is it really all sold like Lanigan says? I'd say no based on the 3 local liquor stores near me here inside the 495 loop that have cans on the shelf with dates before March 2016.
From the way it looks to me, the reason behind having 2k accounts in 7 states is because they haven't been able to move the product in their own home state. They have to push distro bigger and bigger just to sell the beer.
On top of that, DL claims the issues with the first batches (10, 12 batches over 6-8 months? up to debate) of Boom Sauce was primarily scaling problems. Trillium had scale problems too when they opened Canton, but they were resolved within 2 or 3 batches in a month or 2, not 10-12 over 6-8 months. Scaling can be used as an excuse for part of that beer's problems, but for the rest I think he needs to blame his own misunderstanding of what the New England market craves in terms of a IPA or DIPA. His market research prior to opening this massive facility was "I know Beer, this is what they will drink. Hail Caesar!" (ok, probably not exactly like that but from the tone of the pre-opening boasting of amazing-ness, it's not that far off)

One final point... Lets look at the 2016 World Beer Cup results for these two breweries in the 275 entry IPA category:
Lord Hobo, the "lets produce IPAs on par with the best in New England but on a massive scale in year 1" brewery submitted something, not sure what beer they entered with but we must assume it was an IPA. Did Not Place.
Night Shift, that little 4 year old organically grown brewery that barely had any IPA offerings in years 1 and 2 and developed its flagship IPA Santilli from it's massively popular borderline crowd source monthly rotating IPA Series Morph: Bronze Medal.
(Source = http://www.worldbeercup.org/competition/participating-breweries/ & http://www.worldbeercup.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/WBC-winners-2016.pdf)

So... In closing, from a purely business point of view which is more impressive?
A Brewery with 1 year of history and ~10k barrels sold in 7 states
OR
A Brewery with 4 years of history and ~10k of barrels sold inside the 495 loop, of which 50% is directly from the brewery

Full Disclosure: I am a NSB Barrel Society Member because I think those guys make damn good beer and I like supporting breweries that not only do make damn good beer but also care about it's consumers
I was really excited for "BOOMSAUCE" and I still think it's an awesome name for a yet to be released beer. I have bought a four pack from the Lord Hobo directly several times over the last year in some semblance of hope that the BOOMSAUCE that was promised has finally shown up.

 

LH couldn't have touched the numbers they did keeping the beer in state. They used the Spencer Trappist model. Charge too much for a meh product, wear out your welcome locally, expand to create new revenue, rinse, repeat, brew a brand new beer, plan more expansion. The beer had gotten better but the only one I like enough to buy irregularly is Hobo Life.

 

I think you're painting a prettier picture of NSB than it really was in the beginning. Much their beer was not very good, to me, until they got off that old POS brewing system and monitored their quality better.

They've also had a ton of local support and LHB was almost immediately hated here, and somewhat still is. Almost seems harder to sell beer to people who can't stand you.

 

A few cases of "surprise sours" also doesn't have quite the reach of 10,000bbl of middling IPA...

 

Lots of hits or misses yes, but I remember the hits being outstanding. They had a ton of support because of really well done brand management such as Immediate acknowledgement of misses, running an excellent (yet crappy at the time) tap room and generally being nice people to talk to and buy beer from.

Valid Point and it all lies on DL's shoulders. And I'll add... I was at LHB recently to try Hobo Life (pretty decent beer) and the guys that work in that tap room were awful. I stood there in front of them for the better part of 5 minutes while they yapped it up between themselves before they finally noticed my existence then asked rather rudely, what I wanted. There were maybe 8 people in the taproom at 3pm on a Saturday and I had to wait to be served by these two clowns.... just another experience leading to my dislike of the beer and brand in general.

 

We have about 160 accounts. 90 retail/liquor stores and about 70 bars. Full list is on our site: http://www.nightshiftbrewing.com/where-to-buy

Cheers!

 

So 25% of 2k was a tad high...

 

We were there for the 1st Anniversary party on Sunday. The beer was good. One of the guys manning the taps said that they distro'd in Colorado. In conversation, I told him that Bell's only did a temporary distro in Colorado. He replied "well that's because we're a big brewery." He should've just poured the beer, because that was a silly reply.

 

Not calling you out specifically, but has anyone taken into account the contract brewing aspect of their business? Thought that was a part of their original game plan.

 

"Going from brewing 10 gallons of pilot batch beer to 1,200 gallons on a production system has its challenges," he said.

No shit. That's the thing that bothers. Everyone - everyone! - knew that before they opened. Yet, the braggadocio was over the top.

Pro tip for anyone opening any new business (should be obvious): Under promise, over deliver.