Article here. Looks like some guys are contract brewing an AAL. I wish them luck but I think they may have missed the point as why some older brews made a comeback - namely nostalgia. Nostalgia is really the distinguishing factor in a style which seeks uniformity of flavor and any new beer isn't going to have that cachet no matter how many old-timey images you throw on the label. They mention the "genius" of PBR but IIRC when the uptick in popularity first occurred Pabst themselves (or whatever holding company owned it at the time) were taken by surprise, after all they owned and contract brewed several "old man" labels and PBR was winding down until it became the one picked by the intangible hipster elite - most likely lightning that will not be captured (especially if it is engineered as such) a second time. Through the years several startups have tried to break into this market, in the later 90's in Fort Worth a contract brewer had a beer called "Texas Light" and even Rhonda Kallman from early Boston Beer days failed with her mass market attempt - throw in various and sundry celebrity endorsed attempted light lagers and it seems an uphill battle for a new AAL. Thoughts?
PBR was only "cool" because it was dirt cheap and a finger at the well established craft beer community in Portland. If you make a more expensive similarly shitty beer then you will fail.
I don't get this at all. Without pricing themselves low enough to compete with the "old man cans" I don't see who is going to buy this more than once. They aren't claiming it will be particularly full-flavored or even better than anything else. Their pricing is still 2x what you'd pay for Old Milwaukee, PBR, Olympia, etc. It's more than Michelob or Tecate, too. Their approach of wanting to be the beer for people that don't care for the craft movement isn't a horrible idea. Yet finding those people who care about local businesses enough to pay double price for Bud is gonna be tough. That assumes that their product is even as good as Bud, they can get bars to carry it, and that people even know that it's brewed in town. Seems challenging for a beer they don't want people to have to think about. It feels a lot like an idea concocted in a vacuum by bros that only passively understand the brewing industry.
I think La Cumbre has this market covered with Beer...though they focused on making something quality, not making a beer around some hipster schtick. I happily spend the extra $$$ for Beer because its good. Dive Bar Brewing seems more about marketing.
A bit of a conundrum: they don't want the stigma of craft, but want to benefit from craft's allure. To me it screams: "we don't know nuffin about brewing, but have an idea and some money"
I'm all over La Cumbre's Beer. It's walking that line between a straight up macro and a lighter pils, and it does it really well. As always, of all the places that have entered our market, they're my favorite.
