Should I be excited about Sweetwater?

I liked their Happy Ending Imperial Stout and their IPA.

 

Hate to be negative, but their beers won’t deserve the shelf space they get. We just have too many options for a good, but not outstanding, out of state legacy brewery to be successful here.

This is not meant to be a knock on Sweetwater as much as it is to point out how hard it is to be successful in this market.

 

We are spoiled. No two ways about it.

 

It's a cookie cutter set of 4 IPA's that dozens and dozens of other breweries already have on our shelves. Many of which are local and/or known for being among the best in the country.
SweetWater's beers are good, but they they're really known more for being one of the lone good beers in a (now former) beer desert. Up until maybe 2009'ish beers in the Southeast were basically Abita and SweetWater. SweetWater was a Godsend whenever I'd visit family in Alabama. That's no longer the case there or anywhere.
If SweetWater really wants to have an impact here, I'd push their Blue rather than any of those IPA's. We don't really have anything like Blue and they won't have 500 fresher/better competitors to worry about.

 

We have plenty of better stuff already on the crowded shelves. It would be a great brewery in 2005.

 

Same thing for me. Only IPA I ever found in Talladega AL where my mom is from. Haven’t been back in 10 yr—pretty much all my relatives there are now gone—and with the growth of craft in nearby Birmingham, things are surely better now, but I can remember being extremely grateful for Sweetwater, in Talladega back in the ‘00s.

 

I still have a lot of family in/around Montgomery. It's interesting because it's 2 steps forward and 1 step back. Most grocery and convenience stores actually have a selection that's worse compared to a few years ago. Nothing but AB and MC owned brands. Even SweetWater and Abita might only have a single option. Yet, there are actual breweries and taprooms around if you're willing to drive. If you can ever find one of their beer specialty stores...look out. I've never seen Cantillon on the shelf, but I've seen just about everything else. Anyway, SweetWater is oddly no longer what it was down there. They have better (or at least more) options at specialty shops and gas stations and grocery stores barely carry anything that isn't corporate.

 

Let me be the first to say they’re irrelevant and we have literally hundreds of better options

 

I wouldn't be all that thrilled if they came to Wyoming.