Sixpoint (April 2018)

I swear I will actually be at this one and not just hanging out at Other Half beforehand!

 

Hope everyone had a good holiday. Catching up on a lot of stuff now, but plan to provide a thorough update soon...as well as continuing the conversation and answering @rozzom 's pointed questions from last month's retired thread. I have a long, long flight coming up tomorrow, so I plan on addressing then....

For those of you who asked about the proprietary, experimental NZ hops...the hop harvest was just a couple of weeks ago, so those hops are being processed right now in NZ and need to clear a bunch of various forms before they can get sent to our Brooklyn facility.

 

Shane traveling the globe to get all of the good stuff, well done!!

Watch out @rozzom, I hope you are eyes are wide awake and your fingers nimble,with a lot of time on his hands in the air,many pearls of Shane wisdom coming you way !!

Look forward to seeing new recruits @rozzom, @Feaor and the usual cast of characters at next release. Hopefully we have some real spring weather then.

 

@balto22 @FlamingMoe @Daveshek28 @HeyLady @canchon

- tech update here -

A few of you have reported a minor (but annoying) issue where the countdown timer on the app actually goes to 00:00:00 and then negative before the sale goes "live." Some said they must close out the app then re-open it on their phone. We're testing out beta solutions on this today internally....

We're in the process of fine-tuning this now, and troubleshooting why this occurs for some users. This might mean we will push 4.3.1 out before the April release...but if not, we'll have it in the May update for sure...working on a adding a critical new feature that will open up a whole new experience for the most loyal customers. May is when this will go live....

cheers

 

Noticing a trend with the last two NE DIPAs, they are getting better with time.

 

@alexsergio @yossle @guinness77 @balto22 @jrnyc

Circling back here to personally provide you a thorough response, and also to set the record (and tone) straight so we can resume our collective upward trajectory. There's a lot to go over so in the interest of making this first response cover the most important points, I may break it up into several different posts.

Your most pointed question centers around the issue of how we can determine whether or not Sixpoint is already considered amongst the best-of-breed in a particular category, and what data mechanisms are being employed to determine this. Keep in mind we said "amongst the best of breed" and did not say "the absolute best in class" as that distinction is epically important. The way our comment was quoted was inaccurate and it is important to acknowledge that.

One of the key features of our innovation/technology right now is the active research into cognitive biases - a topic we have frequently discussed on here. Everyone who has studied the beer industry realizes that brand is very important for customer perception - especially in the craft segment. Many other consumer goods companies have very little brand affinity or emotional response - for example, most people are not that concerned with the brand of paper towels or toothpaste or laundry detergent they buy...many of these items are seen as interchangeable commodities. Beer, on the other hand, carries with it incredible brand affinity and emotional and associative response, and this wildly influences a person's perception and relative strength of a beer, especially when juxtaposed to its competitors.

The Mad Scientist in us should want us to seek the truth; i.e. set up quantitative experiments that allow us to actually measure the amount of cognitive bias that brand or other environmental factors have in the perception of beer. And we have done this. With internal rating systems on the app, along with customer data insights, repeat purchasing analytics, spend habits, internal feedback surveys, and a comparison with what third party sites actually say and the overall trend, you can create a very strong algorithm that starts to quantify the cognitive bias of the brand.

You can also take this a step further (which we have already done) by testing further cognitive biases such as point-of-sale. Consider this simple experiment: 1) brew a batch of beer, and put the entire batch of beer into a single bright tank. 2) Then sell all of the first portion of that beer via draft, and compile the internal ratings and analytics and compare to what the third party sites have to say about it. 3) Then, follow that up with taking the exact same liquid out of the exact same bright tank, but this time actually sell that liquid as a branded, canned offering with unique label art. 4) Once again, compile the internal ratings and analytics and compare to what the third party sites have to say about it vs. the draft-only offering.

So as you can see, if you do this many times over, you can build a pretty solid algorithm that will take into account the cognitive bias at the point of sale. And the data is remarkably consistent and enlightening - point-of-sale has a dramatic and predictable effect on the perception of the beer, even when its the exact same liquid. But it goes even deeper than that...consider a second experiment where you test the power of branded cognitive bias:

1) brew a batch of beer, and put the entire batch of beer into a single bright tank. 2) Then create a unique can label and brand for that beer, and compile the internal ratings and analytics and compare to what the third party sites have to say about it. 3) Then, during a follow-up tasting/analysis, swap the samples out with a competing but similar beer 4) compare the reviews of the swapped out samples to the original, and look at the deviation in ratings to measure the cognitive bias 5) to take it a step further, have the same people rate the competing brand of beer and show them the label art and packaging, but swap out the liquid with our own liquid, and 6) compare the reviews of the swapped out samples to the original, and look at the deviation in ratings to measure the cognitive bias

The more experiments you run - the more users you have on the app - the more analytics you compile - all will lead to the more enlightening results you will find. And that is exactly where we are going with this, because the user base on the app and the the repeat purchases continues to grow and grow with every release.

The bottom line is there are all different types of cognitive biases in beer, brand perception, ratings, and other environmental factors. We have built and will continue to build all different types of tools that help us better understand them, and also help us determine as to what our customers' true perception of some of our beers are, and how they rank within a category - which in certain cases is already amongst the best-of-breed. We'd love to share with you more insights on this, and we already have provided these insights and upcoming innovations to the folks who have been regularly coming down to the releases. Since I understand you will be at the April release, it would be a fine time for me to provide you an overview of some of these developments.

That should cover your main point/question for now; I will address the other lingering questions soon.

cheers

 

1. Your first point is garbage. Best of breed suggest amongst the best which these beers are not. That's a garbage point and you backed it up with garbage dodgy language. Do you not know what amongst means? Here, "being a member or members of (a larger set)." When you say your beer is amongst the best of breed, you're saying it is a member of the set of best of a category of beers. That claim continues to be unsubstantiated. It's even more egregious to blame the way it was quoted for the way your own statement was clearly not what you intended to say.

2. Cool, you're brewing better beer by learning psychology. You want to talk about cognitive bias as you're asking people to review beer that they pick up, because you've made it more convenient to acquire, at an event where they're able to drink for free? Yeah, I can't imagine any of that skews the ratings. The cognitive bias already exists even before the customer is at the point of sale. You can't separate the name of the beer from the name of the brewer, particularly among this can chasing clientele. You think anybody at Monkish cares if they haven't had the beer before when it drops for the first time? I'd go so far as to say it's even less about the brand and more about the brewer because once we believe that brewer puts out good beer, we believe they can turn shitty offerings around.

People will always respect you for being a second wave pioneer in craft beer and for getting decent interpretations of a variety of styles into the hands of people all across the country. Stop trying to sell us on garbage "science" hidden in "tl dr" posts. It's intellectually dishonest and insulting.

 

If we’re talking about inaccuracy of quotations it’s probably worth noting that I didn’t misquote you as saying “absolute best in class” - which could be inferred from your post above.

“Best of breed” or “amongst the best of breed” - no intentional misquotation on my end, and frankly I’d say you’re splitting hairs and (no doubt intentionally) using a little misdirection to muddy the waters from the get go.

Your first experiment sounds very interesting. How that qualifies you as “amongst the best of breed” though, I don’t quite understand, since this all appears to be taking place within the sphere of Sixpoint beers.

The second (presumably hypothetical) experiment is something I’ve fantasized about doing - I would love to put some Boston Lager in a Treehouse can and call it a NEIPL and watch the high ratings flow in. But I imagine it’s illegal for a brewery to attempt this, without the other brewery(ies) providing permission. And since they have a lot more to lose (assuming we’re talking about doing the experiment with breweries that have a higher perceived quality than SP in the eyes of us poor cognitively misguided consumers), then I imagine it will always remain a hypothetical.

So how - in plain English and in less than 150 words - does your current data point towards Sixpoint’s beers being “amongst the best in breed” in relation to other breweries?

For the record I’ve been a Sensodyne man for over 20 years

 

Regarding your first point, I'm really not understanding the aggressive tone or angry response, but I'd like to keep it civil here and have a genuine discussion. We certainly think we know what "amongst" means but to make sure we both agree what it means in this context, we are specifically referring to a cadre of a couple dozen local brewers (not the entire brewing universe here) making particular styles of beer, and we are "surrounded by; in the company of" some of the top producers of particular styles. You are saying this is not true (meaning we are not in this group) and we are claiming otherwise, but at this point in time I don't think anyone else is interested in the negative back-and-forth as in the end this discussion all comes down to someone's individual opinion. Its a stalemate and no one is going to be able to sufficiently prove or disprove one another, so we can just leave it at that.

Regarding your second point, you actually bring up a vital and key element that also needs to be considered. People may exhibit a large cognitive bias for beers that they must wait in long lines for - or trade for - or go through great lengths to acquire. If you are talking about the effect the seamless acquisition via an app has on a perception, we must also talk about the other non-seamless methods as well. Because clearly there is an added level of anticipation in the procurement for those who must wait in line - and this has been going on for over a decade with Pliny, Dark Lord, and now dozens or hundreds of people who queue up to purchase beer regularly. So both should and need to be tested for us to have a better understanding.

I don't think there was any intentional misquoting at all, just wanted to clarify what was meant, which I hope is clear now.

There are significant cognitive biases for the brand, due to its traditional distribution model to date, method of point-of-sale, and other factors. When you weigh those factors vs. the current perception of the beers and the trend and adjust for biases and extrapolate, you get a sampling of beers that are amongst the best of breed in the narrowly defined universe. Whether that can be sustained or can improve further or even will amount to anything long-term....only time will tell.

btw your Sensodyne comment is well-noted....there is wide varying degree of brand importance in many things we buy...toothpaste probably having more weight than something truly innocuous like paper towels

 

I guess you wouldn't perceive it as aggressive if you spent time in nyc recently and could deal with some frankness when it comes to dismissing verbose dissertations composed of gibberish. Before you tell me about Sixpoint's history of inventing craft beer in Red Hook back in the day, you aren't a local anymore, are you? Don't you live in Portland Oregon now?

In regard to "cadre of a couple dozen local brewers," no. There aren't a couple dozen "local" brewers that are alternatives to those that would buy beer via the app. You have OH, Finback, Threes, LIC, SingleCut, Magnify, Sand City, Kane, and Carton. Maybe Equilibrium and some of the Hudson Valley spots, but that seems like a bit of a stretch. I'm probably already stretching it with Jersey. Please someone else correct me if I'm mistaken, but that's kind of it for this "pick up small batch beer at the brewer" market. I don't count Troon yet though he brews incredible beer that's better than several of the aforementioned brewers. Also Root and Branch hasn't quite arrived with consistent drops yet.

So, you aren't really in the company of "a couple dozen local brewers" because to date (though this will change with pickups), you're competing with those 9ish brewers that release limited quantity of beer that's picked up at the brewery. This is just one more example of the way you're being disingenuous with language. Please, if I'm mistaken, tell me which dozens of local brewers you're competing with.

Among those listed brewers, Carton does their own thing and shouldn't really be compared. Other Half (your MOST nearby local brewer) brews better beer, Kane brews better beer across a wider variety of styles, and Threes, Magnify, Finback, and SingleCut all brew comparable beer to the Sixpoint small batch beers I've had. So you're not quite among the best of breed, but are among most of breed.

Let's point out the way you ENTIRELY ignored the point about weighing the reviews of the purchasers that you're giving free beer away to via samples (I even missed the point about how FREE beer might affect the rating of those initial testers before it's canned thus driving up ratings to create more demand in the future). That tells me you understand cognitive bias and are looking to leverage it to your advantage rather than remove it from your ratings.



You get a ton of credit for looking to sell beer this way. I personally spammed refresh on a browser from 11:59 until noon:03 to be able to secure ANTEAD bottles 2 releases ago, then road trains and busses 3 hours each way to Kane to get said beer. I'd LOVE to get beer that's among the best of breed without waiting in line and with being able to pick it up at my leisure. I'd love to trade 2 hours Monday evening for a couple hours Saturday morning. With that said, it isn't there yet. Please don't make grandiose claims.


If nothing else, something that seems to be apparent these days is that if the beer speaks for itself, everything else will work out. Let your beer speak for itself!

 

I can deal with and appreciate frankness, but I believe a lot of the users on the site/thread/forum are really tired of the petty back-and-forth stuff and I don't want to subject them (or you for that matter) to it any longer, and would rather focus on a positive discussion. You have my commitment on that as well, even if we are limited by what can be conveyed on a message board. Tone is not always easy to decipher, and I'm often the worst offender in that regard. My apologies if you've been offended!

For the couple of dozen local brewers, I was always referring to the roughly couple of dozen brewers in NYC (I'm not sure what the exact number count is lately, probably more than a couple of dozen now). I'm not referring to the tri-state area, NJ, upstate NY, or anything like that. I don't think it should be limited to breweries that have pick-up only beer either, as many breweries appear to have a hybridized approach of distribution through some means along with some DTC element down at the brewery, whether in tasting room (draft) or limited bottles or limited cans or crowlers or growlers or whatever. There's a decent range of options actually even in a relatively tight geographical area (although the five boroughs has 8 million+ people).

You seem to have really strong convictions on who is better than who, and how relative breweries rank. Its a fascinating discussion to engage in but like I said, its an argument we're never going to win with you, as its all rooted in personal opinion. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you came to your conclusions some day, hopefully over a beer.

You bring up an excellent point about free samples, but the data we've seen actually says the complete opposite! We can show you that because now we actually charge for full sized pours. But your point brings up an interesting consideration, because at almost all beer bars, taprooms, and other places they will give you a free sample of beer before committing to a purchase. Many of our customers/friends/colleagues say that tons of customers actually use these "free sampling" opportunities to "tick" beers and accumulate their breadth of experience...much to their chagrin. An interesting point to consider, and whether or not it skews perception vs. having to pay a premium for beer, whether in $ or your time.

 

I see you edited & revised your prior message and I wanted to address your last point before I pass out for the evening. One thing that's really affirming about all these discussions is it proves that beer is worth fighting for. Some people get worked up over beer just as much as others get worked up over sports, politics, and/or religion. You clearly are a very passionate beer advocate and enjoy spending your time discussing it, even with obnoxiously frustrating people like me.

Even if we never convince you that our beers are amongst the best of breed, the one positive takeaway we can glean from your last comment.... its not only way our team can have a lasting and positive legacy on this industry. Perhaps we won't make your favorite beer, but if we can make your favorite beer(s) easier for you to procure, then we still have impacted you positively, and the industry in general. If we can help change the way breweries interact and engage their customers and get them in touch with their products, it could have a wider impact well beyond our brewery. This is a noble aspiration to have and one worth fighting for.

On that note, we're going to let the beer speak for itself here and continue to try to invent ways to make the customer experience better and more thoughtful.

good night

 

We definitely have an exciting, recently thriving brew scene in NYC, but they don't all fill the same niche. It seems dishonest not to compare beer you have to pick up in Red Hook (convenient for almost no one) to anything other than brewery pickup beer that requires similarly as much work to obtain. Nobody is staring at the app thinking, "Hmm, Sixpoint cans, or go to WF after work and grab Bronx Pale Ale?" To me, it's "Hmm, I can grab a couple cans of this Hazy IPA and pick them up at x, y, or z, or go grab this other one at the brewery."

If you make it in town for the release, we'll share a beer in April. Believe me, as much of a contrarian as I seem in these posts, I have enormous respect for what Sixpoint has done across various markets. Back in 2009-11ish? we started getting Sixpoint cans at ABC in Florida and I was very excited to have access to that quality of beer then.

Also, upon reflecting upon cans I've chased recently, I should've included KCBC and Interboro in my list above. I try to get out to everything so I can stop waiting in line on Saturday morning. Last week I tried DHH Softly Spoken Magic Spells as well as Citra + Waimea based on recommendations.

 

Apologies, I slept through most of this.

Of course there is cognitive bias in marketing and in beer/wine in particular for tons of different reasons. But your "experiment" just seems to amplify or bias it towards you guys. Of course, the "crew" that comes to the tap room at releases, has quality time with the brewers, etc. is going to love the beer!! I mean if I came to any brewery and tasted it with any employee around, I would at least be polite, if not subconsciously biased. I mean I try not to tell people they are unattractive!

To the point that taste (like beauty) is subjective and personal, I think people have studied this and a lot has been written on it. But this forum is basically dominated by many who see beer as a passion and try their best to drink the best beer and have discussions about the process (with a buttload of complaints and second guessing thrown in!). So I think one of the points here is exactly to discuss and rate/rank the newest and best beers and breweries, with small caveats for personal preference, which often happens. Blind or double-blind tastings can help standarize this, and personally I find the ratings, particularly when they get to large number of samples, to be pretty accurate in the broad swath (a beer that is 4.5 tends to be liked over a beer 4.2 by my blind-tasting beer partner time after time).

In the context of this and the other breweries around which Sixpoint's latest small-batch project is a direct new comptetitor to it is fair for us and the community (through ratings) to opine on which is better. In the context of this, the beers I have had from Sixpoint are fine, but significantly below the "best of class" I come to this conclusion from the ones I tried, the opinions of someone who tasted them blind with me, and then when I looked at the ratings (AFTER this), it seems like others may feel the same way.
When I think of the beers that I have tried over the past 12 months (lets keep it to the NY area to simplifiy), Sixpoint's wouldn't place in my top 25, likely not top 50. Personally I wouldn't get them again. There is way too much good stuff at brewery. Compared to some of the selections at WF, these beers would be on par with Captain's Daughter, Half Acre, etc. for me. Excited to pick them up a few years back but now likely noy.
I wish they were better-- the more great stuff, particularly with no lines, the better. The more great beer at WF the better! I think OH puts out better beers week after week, I think Grimm in 2016 was brewing Lambo Door and Afterimage on the fly on someone else's equipment and having to sit on the beer for weeks and was still winning the (not perfect) Paste blind tasting. I think 90% (a few bad experiments) of what Equilibrium has put out right out the doors is better than anything from you all. And that is what continues to perplex me--- is it water chemistry, some secret ingredient or trick, or something else--- to be nice, we will say "give it time to be dialed in" but that wasn't the case with Equilibrium and Grimm, and it seems Root and Branch on their first batch at GSB put out something great.

There is also something to be said for brewing very good (but not amazing) DIPAs. This BA community is the 1% as far as taste and preference. Whenever I am out and about, I am amazed by the people who are "really into craft beer" who have never heard of the top breweries and are totally happy. They go to bars and restaurants and really enjoy buying "craft beer"-- the newbies may be doing shock top, but many others are a step higher. Going to a "brew pub" or trying "the local amber ale" is part of their passion. And there are tons of these people, hundreds of thousands for every person like @RobNewton, and they spend money too. Sixpoint has done well so far with this segment, and the scale is impressive.

And I completely understand why a very successful brewer like Sixpoint would strive to get some small batch beers that are seen on the level of this, partly to maintain the above market as things evolve. Even if these were not that scalable, the "halo" and spillover on branding for something distributed as widely in other beers nationally makes this well worth the effort.

 

Way too much stuff here to comment on, but I am going to figuratively dive in quickly and literally dive into an awesome freshwater lagoon here in Punta Cana soon. Some good points all around here. My 3 favorite breweries are Sixpoint, Other Half and Sand City, each one of these has beers I love, like and don't like at all. For me, Anti-Resin, Hootie-Hoo, Rye 4 Beans and V-Righteous are in the same class as the best beers around. Also, look at the ratings and positive feedback Alpenflo is getting on here from people who know beer very well for a style that is hard to master. Everyone has their own tastes and that is fine, but anyone who says Sixpoint is not making some great stuff is not being honest.

And their service is world class, they didn't know me from a hole in the wall when I first started going there and treated me and others very well, that counts a lot for me.

Like I have said before, have had it on-line here, that is totally cool. But to make your opinions even more valid, show up at a release, have a beer with Shane and the whole crew and have these discussions one on one too. Shane loves beer, Sixpoint and is going balls out to make the customer experience as exceptional as possible.Taste of the beer is important but the whole experience counts too.

 

You bring up some excellent points here, but that's not surprising because you've offered a lot of insights and contributions for some time now. Thanks for the thoughtful response.

"Of course, the "crew" that comes to the tap room at releases, has quality time with the brewers, etc. is going to love the beer!!"

Yes, of course there is going to be cognitive bias for someone who comes down to the brewery and tastes beers with some of the staff, just as there is a cognitive bias for someone who stands and waits in line for hours to procure their everyday beers vs. someone who just walks into a bodega and buys beer off the shelf.

But ultimately you touched upon a main philosophical point that matters most for a business: businesses are driven by ratings from their customers (and especially repeat customers), not by ratings from non-customers. If a business has a 100% satisfaction rate from their customers AND their customer base is a viable mass (and preferably growing), that is all that really matters (of course we are solely talking from a business viability point here).

And if the conversation is limited to business viability, we're not interested in chasing customers that ultimately are chasing the flavor of the month themselves. Certain brewers may be trending now, but after being a professional brewer for nearly 20 years and seeing several cycles of this industry, I can say with near certainty that today's flavor of the month will soon be yesterday's news. And this, my friend, is backed up by a ton of data (even the data on this site) and is virtually indisputable.

"This BA community is the 1% as far as taste and preference."

In our breadth of experience, that is an incorrect assumption. What you see on BA is sometimes the loudest and most opinionated people dominate the conversation, but they are not always the most knowledgeable or even aligned with what the market is really saying. Ironically, we see just as much (if not more) herd mentality amongst the 1% because so many are looking to validate their own opinions and must reference what others are saying in order to do so.

We've actually found there are many, many super-tasters and lovers of beer who either do not spend any time on BA, and if they do, its just to quickly read some content or do some fact-checking, but they never post. They're not on Untappd or all over social media squawking about beer, but they will show up at beer releases and tasting rooms and are incredibly fluent in the realm of beer. And they are just as passionate about beer and important as a customer even if they don't have a loud or outsized personality online. These people exist in great numbers and their palate is just as valid as anyone else's.

But even if you just limit it to the folks on BA, the brewery's (or any business's) customers are a vital component and reflection of their culture. People like @frozyn @jrnyc @EnthusedAboutBeer @balto22 @Daveshek28 are true beer advocates, homebrewers, and/or tech-savvy folks that in many ways epitomize our most hardcore fans, even if they don't epitomize the hazebro culture.

Well Rob already said he's down to have a beer in April, so maybe we can all do a hang with him and rozzom at/around the next release. Perhaps we do it the night before - Friday the 13th? Oh, and let's do it somewhere off-site to remove any cognitive biases.

 

Will Apollo ever be brewed again?

 

you, my friend, get the award for the greatest non-sequitur ever on one of our threads