Other Half (August 2018)

No wonder OH upgraded the hand dryers. They needed to amass some amount of Goodwill in preparation for the expansion discussion. #otherhalfhateslocalsbutatleastourhandsaredry

 

Of course this forum is a place for discussion (and we have had much worse debates on this thread!), but I think people sometimes forget that the majority of the breweries are making business decisions-- in the face of high costs, a quickly changing market, and some breweries failing (granted OH seems to be doing very well financially, although costs have increased for them). Given many people have shown they will drive 1-2 hours to get OH beer (and wait in lines), it makes less sense for them to have locations that potentially cannibalize their existing market and more sense to expand to 4+ hours away centers like they are doing.
No disrespect to the original poster, but the idea that OH owes something to the scene or has goals in this way does not seem to be relevant (we just got a hand dryer and case counts!). And it seems to me the NY scene is in tremendous shape for a consumer, great beer is now so much easier to get and I find myself refusing great beers all the time.

Regarding kegs, I see this as supply and demand at work-- to the extent a bar and OH each can think it is worth it for them as a business to expand in this way, I am sure it will happen, with local laws and distribution hassles being the sticking point sometimes. My own personal feeling is that many of the top craft bars these days are actually carrying LESS of the very top NY beers than they were 1-2 years ago-- not sure why, and it could be my perception based on the tons of cans we now get.

Following on a side note-- @RobNewton -- The observation that Grimm beer tasted better in the past (where it often was kept warm in transport for a few days) seems to me that the temperature range, within reason (not get hot, not weeks)

 

Grimm's newer beers are much better than the last of their contract brews. They definitely are a little hot fresh but they're starting to dial everything in.

TBH I haven't been going to OH as much recently because of places like Grimm and sometimes its just nice to pick up a 4 pack of Interboro/KCBC on my way home than make the trip to Gowanus.

Good to see the amount of complaints in this thread pick up. Was getting pretty dull for a while.

 

i don't understand the distribution game enough to answer this, but i do concede that if you want to keep making 90% DIPAs it's likely that a lot of normal bars/restaurants will be less interested in carrying your beer. they could have decided though to make stuff like Green City or the kolsch or w/e far more available than they are currently, which would have been nice.

regardless of whether or not they are maximizing their profits, local keg distribution is highly profitable for many local breweries around the country and there is no reason they couldn't keep doing the hyped DIPA can sales along with servicing a more robust list of draft customers

 

But Green City and Forever Ever are on the Keg List every single week, so why aren't more bars buying kegs of that from Other Half? I am not trying to fight you on this, I am just trying to understand exactly what they are supposed to do realistically to get more bars to carry their beers? I mean i guess if there was a way to get their kegs through distro instead of directly from Other Half maybe that would help? But why would other half take that hit to go through a third party?

 

Particularly when they are getting a dollar an ounce for the tasters ON SITE!

 

but they real question is why they didn't build in jersey.. am i rite?

 

A friend of mine with a kegerator was interested in getting an OH keg until he saw the prices. They charge about double what he's used to paying for stuff like Wrench and Sip of Sunshine. He's used to paying ~$150 for a sixtel and OH sixtels usually ranges from $250-300, no? Assuming OH charges the same to everybody who wants a keg, I'd assume price is a deterrent.

 

Green City and Forever Ever are on tap all over Brooklyn, and in a lot of nice restaurants in Manhattan I’ve found.

 

Oh I know, I was just saying that in response to the comment that they should stop doing so many DIPAs so more bars would have Other Half beers.

 

Not sure where y’all do your drinking in NYC but I come across OH all the time

 

Mostly Chilli's and Applebee's.

 

Haha clearly

Not to go on a tangent, and this trend has died down a bit, but for the first few years I was on BA there were regularly threads along the lines of:

“Me and the wife went for a romantic meal at our local Italian spot, Olive Garden - and can you fucking believe it - their only craft option was SABL [ed - not the oft used acronym it once was] and they served it in a fucking frosted glass. Do they not understand that some of us have superior palates that extend beyond just top tier Italian.”

 

FWIW - Bondurants on the UES has Small Nelson Everything, Dream Power, Double Mosaic Daydream and Flughafen Tanzhalle (OH / Cloudwater Kolsch) on tap.

 

Haven't been there in a while, but they seem to always have a solid-to-great taplist.

 

craft beer bars and buzzy or beer-focused restaurants, sure. i think it should be more available than that. in general the availability of local beer in NYC is laughable compared to a lot of other places (especially considering the number of great local breweries we have now). a restaurant having OH on tap is the exception that proves the rule, imo.

anyone who thinks OH *needs* to charge twice as much for their kegs as other local breweries doing similar things is... confusing to me. they are making deliberate decisions to prioritize other things besides local keg distro. 99% of breweries are able to make a profit on kegs, without the insane lines for can sales directly from a warehouse where they're raking in tens of thousands of dollars on a regular basis.

nobody is saying it doesn't make financial sense for OH to act the way they do, but that doesn't mean it benefits customers or that things couldn't be far better for beer in this city. the question is definitely not "why did they do this?", it's "why should I keep giving them my money?"

 

all good points, just want to be clear that I'm sorta playing devil's advocate here and appreciate that folks continue to engage with my arguments

that being said... w/r/t "The more they mark up and make in the short term, the more beer we'll get in the long term" - let's define "we". because it seems to me like us NYC / tri-state region people are the ones paying for all the beer Rochester and DC are about to get!!! (only half-joking)

i think it mostly comes down to why folks are into craft beer. supporting local businesses is a huge part of it for me, but even if i like to drink beer from elsewhere i like knowing where that beer is from and the idea that i'm supporting something tied to a specific place. i think most breweries do this for marketing reasons alone, but i'm realizing that it's more of a thing for me than others. i will never care as much about Mikkeller NYC as I do Finback or Fifth Hammer or something else born and bred in Queens (so to speak)

 

Regarding the ability for the likes of OH and The Bruery to stroll in and set up camp in DC as opposed to local folks, who love craft, and want to build something special in the community they're from, I dug up @LanguedocRocks' comment from a 2014 DC thread. Really insightful. Short of it, seems that small breweries simply can't afford to play:

DC has the 9th highest beer tax per gallon in the nation. Not to say that correlation = causation, but look at the states with the highest taxes per gallon on breweries. They typically are not states with strong breweries. For example, DC is .58 per gallon and NY is .14. That's huge. OR has some of the lowest at .08. Coincidence? Maybe, but I would think that laws and taxes play a bigger role than you think.

If you are smart and live in this area, you wont open a brewery in DC. It's most likely going to be VA for multiple reasons. Here is a tax map of the states as of the start of 2015: http://taxfoundation.org/blog/how-high-are-beer-taxes-your-state.

 

Wow wall of text posts by everyone...

....How's the new Hop Showers?