BrewDog Acquires Stone Berlin

I've never been to Germany so I can't comment on their pricing or quality-to-price ratio, but regardless, this is a pretty understandable (and common) hurdle, is it not? Even craft drinkers in the US will still turn to cheaper beers; sometimes you want a 12-pack of beer, and you don't want to pay $20-30+ for the quantity.

I can absolutely see Stone (which is admittedly not expensive for our standards here, but we've got pretty expensive standards in US craft) having some hurdles in a place like Germany.

 

The grocery/discounter store stuff...a lot of times, sure. But a case of Mahr's or Augustiner or a Seidla of Kellerbier in Franconia is 3x cheaper than Stone's stuff -- sometimes at the Stone bar itself...where a 0.5 l Mahrs U cost 7,90 Euro as opposed to 2,80 Euro at the brewery in Bamberg. Are those beers trash? How about Koenig Pils? Jever? In every Getraenkemarkt in the country...alongside fresh locals. Just seems to me that Stone still doesn't really "get" it and want to blame someone else.

 

American beer in Europe is just a novelty.

And if Stone needed "bigger volumes"
to make this work, then they should have priced it somewhere below the double- to triple-price of the (quite excellent and multi-generationally ingrained) local beers.

All around bad idea.

 

I never understood this entire move to begin with, but I guess in the end neither did Stone.

 

I am sure that is what endeared Stone to them the first time around and got them off to a good start.

 

Yeah, not by driving to the Getraenkemarkt. But when I moved to Lueneburg from Bamberg I used to order deliveries. Was easy and still pretty cheap.

 

Sour grapes, so to speak.

 

Didn't Stone export some of their beers to Germany? Did they sell so well that Stone found it fit to build a brewery there??

They should have seen the writing on the wall if they had done any research of the German market.

 

Last year I traveled to Niedernberg and Darmstadt (hardly beer meccas in Germany) and had no probably finding quality German beer.

Bitburger Pils fresh on tap was far from crap too. Better than the majority of Pilsners I have had here in the US (they're getting better as the years go on though).

Licher Pils was also quite good.

If we're talking Warsteiner...sure, that tastes like cheap crap. But I think Koch painted with quite the large brush here in that statement.

 

Yes. It's like George Bush's famous "Mission Accomplished".

 

Presumably, Koch's talking about generic European lagers from the likes Beck's, Bitburger, Krombacher, Oettinger, and Warsteiner, and, yeah, those beers are pretty bad. They're not quite as intentionally bland as American AALs, but they're only a small step above and certainly way lower in flavor than most of the German imports brewed in discernable, traditional styles that American craft beer enthusiasts tend to favor and that Koch himself is calling "wonderful beers."

 

Back when they started their Berlin brewery I could see it working out if they were able to sell their beer to other EU countries in sufficient volumes, but as a Germany centric venture I failed to see any logic behind such a venture. Craft beer in the US benefitted from negative sentiments that existed towards the domestically produced beers among a subset of consumers, and these sentiments were even echoed outside of the US to the point where US beer was considered a joke. With Germany the situation is the reverse, it has long been held as a producer of excellent beers, and I'm reminded here of the results from a survey done by SABMiller back when they were still on their own which I thought were interesting (the original pdf file has long since disappeared):

That the Czechs, Germans and Belgians are proud of their own beers is hardly surprising, but it also means that the kind of marketing narrative that the US craft breweries have benefitted from cannot be used when selling beer in those countries, at least not as effectively. There will always be those who disparage their own country's beers and favor those of other countries, but do they make up a large enough base of consumers to sell to for a project of the scale of Stone's Berlin brewery? I thought not, and I can't help but think that this in part contributed to their demise.

 

Greg and I exchanged messages about this before he took the leap. The Germans are very happy with the beer they drink, they have a many centuries old tradition, and they are not interested in over-hopped (in their opinion) just because an American decided they should. It's a shame it didn't work, but it's not a surprise.

 

fair enough. however, there was also a thread on here where many of us were warning Greg of the pitfalls of his attitude and approach, and he added Augustiner Munich and Muelln to the list of German beers he found uninteresting and (literally) unfinishable.

 

The top selling beers in Germany are from breweries like Oettinger, Krombacher, Becks, Warsteiner,… I am fairly certain that these are the sorts of beers that Greg Koch was referring to via his statement of:

“Unfortunately, according to the stats, most Germans are still ignoring these wonderful beers and buying the cheap stuff.”

For the Germans who live outside of Bavaria (Franconia), which is the vast majority of Germans, they could indeed travel to Bavaria (Franconia) to purchase ‘better’ beer. Alternatively they have the option to order those sorts of beer and pay for shipping.

I have no stats to back me up but I am pretty sure that the majority of German beer consumers buy their packaged beers (largely inexpensive beer) from their local beer retailers (e.g., supermarkets).

Cheers!

 

I thought that was initially the plan, a German-based brewery that would supply all of Europe.

Of course, in the 1970s August A. Busch III, Robert Uihlein, Frank DeGuire and William K. Coors all could have said:

And they'd have been right - for another decade or so...

Being a beer-oriented website (and one with a number of posters who have always been critical of Greg Koch's marketing methods and messaging) I understand most of the above posts, but it seems many are ignoring his complaints about the construction business in Germany. Seems that Stone's problems were made worse with non-brewing industry-related expenses.

 

Well, it sure hasn't 'worked' for Stone Brewing in the timeframe of an opening sometime in 2016 until today but the overall 'experiment' continues with BrewDog. Will BrewDog be announcing a "transfer" three years from now? Let's wait and see.

The craft beer movement in Germany is very much in its nascent stage. Will there be a sufficient German craft beer market to declare the BrewDog Berlin location a business success x years from now?

Cheers!

 

Patrik, I had similar thoughts as well when Stone announced their intention for a German (Berlin) based facility. In order to sell craft (e.g., very hoppy with American aroma hops) beers to Germans in volume was a 'long game' from my perspective. If they could sell sufficient Stone beer to other European countries (e.g., UK, Italy, Scandinavia,...) they could make some money here and as the German craft beer market slowly grew they could then make money both ways (i.e., from non-German and German beer consumers). I have no idea how well Stone performed in the non-German market over the past few years. Apparently not well enough?

Also, I have no idea what debt load Stone occurred in setting up such a grandiose facility like they did and how much did their delays in construction cost them? These are important financial considerations as well.

There is no doubt in my mind that the tagline of "Too Big, Too Bold, and Too Soon" is applicable here.

Cheers!