BrewDog Acquires Stone Berlin

I believe I warned him even about those. One of my best friends over there got his PhD in historic preservation, and renovating a structure like the gas works Stone chose was bound to be a bureaucratic nightmare -- and I even said so. Some people always know better.... (Usually they're Germans, but they may have met their match with this!)

 

Personally I'm split on this news. On the one hand, I commend an entrepreneur to take chances, be the "market disrupter" and go for the brass ring. On the other hand, after having worked in the German beverage industry for nearly 20 years, many of the market conditions were simply ignored, and the "arrogant American bastard" way of saying "well, this is how we do it in America, so you need to change to how we do it" is nothing short of naiv.

He is probably right in saying that he might have had more success starting smaller and possibly even contract brewing before making such a giant plunge, hindsight is 20/20. It is of course easy to be Monday Morning Quarterback, but this move comes as no real surprise to me.

 

Right, and if sufficient exports had materialized I think we wouldn't be seeing the situation such as it is now. So I'm sure the exports were disappointing as well. But it does seem like he wanted to change the German beer market, I don't recall him talking about another European country's beer market in the same way, even though he may have had a much better argument to make about those countries, so there seemed to be a focus there (understandable enough given where he chose to locate the brewery) which I thought was misguided.

 

Hindsight is indeed 20/20.

It seems to me that Greg had a need to 'evangelize' the German beer consumers and he felt that 'going BIG' was the proper way to do this. I seriously doubt that he thought this 'evangelization' process would happen 'over night' but he did not have a proper business plan/execution to financially wait this out given the scope of his project. Hopefully BrewDog has the financial wherewithal and proper amount of patience to make BrewDog Berlin a business success.

Cheers!

 

Another head-down, bull in a china shop approach that backfired. It just always seemed that Koch thought he could change Germany over night -- maybe some subtlety and attempt to understand the people and culture would have helped.

 

I don't think the five cans I bought made much of a difference. Sometimes as a Swede it's easy to overlook just how small the domestic beer market here really is in a global perspective, the domestic production is about 4 million US barrels. A really successful import brand might sell something like 2500 barrels in a year. I'm sure the statistics for the other Nordic countries aren't much more impressive. Of course it can add up if you generate sales in many different EU markets, but the goals have to be realistically set, and the investment in level with those goals.

 

Germany, like the United States, is a diverse country where tastes vary significantly. There certainly are Germans who love American-style hoppy beers, stouts, etc. and are frustrated that they have so few local options to satisfy that preference, just as there are many German-style-loving American craft beer drinkers who wish that they had more Dortmunders, dunkels, and schwarzbiers from which to choose.

That said, I think @Crusader made a great point that Germany ironically suffers from its baseline beer being better than what we have in America, meaning there's less room for improvement above that baseline; the baseline is adequate for a larger number of people. Consequently, many consumers never bother to venture toward better beer, and so there's less demand for the really flavorful stuff, at least in styles not traditional in Germany, because few consumers gradually build up to it. But I know that's a big point of frustration for the relatively few Germans that do want such product, much as the CAMRA activists often are at odds with UK craft beer enthusiasts who want to move forward and broaden their horizons.

 

I don't know, as I stated many brands are good that are on the cheaper end of the spectrum and are widely available. I saw lots of Benediktiner in different places, that's far from terrible. And I already mentioned Bitburger. Heck the Bitburger I had on tap might have been hoppier than any Pilsner I've ever had in the US.

Let's not forget Jever was also on the pallet that was crushed.

I work for a German company, as a result I've had many discussions with Germans. And since I'm into beer, we end up talking about beer.

Germans are VERY proud of their beer. A woman in a class I take was sitting near me the other week, when someone mentioned how good Belgian beer can be. She scoffed at the idea of Belgian beer being good.

Combine this with the fact Germans are VERY slow to change, it's a recipe for disaster. For example, I was shocked when I was over there that they didn't have Uber yet (I mean, Uber is a German word!). When I asked why not, they said it was because the Germans have to thoroughly analyze anything before they implement it. Unlike us, we just adopted ride sharing seemingly overnight, and figured out the kinks as we went along.

And then beginning this journey by crushing a pallet of German beer, implying your US beer will be that much better...and charging 3x the price for it...well, there you go...

Except, as I stated above, German culture and US culture are VERY different.

 

Also, the typical German doesn't possess a functioning irony-detector.

 

Patrik, thanks for providing additional insight into the Swedish beer market. I have a poor understanding of the overall European craft beer market but my guess would be there is a larger opportunity for Stone beer in the UK and Italy as I made mention above. I have not read much about the French craft beer market so I have no ability to speculate there. The Belgian beer market seems to be 'interesting' since the top selling beers there are Pale Lagers (Jupiler, Stella Artois) but there are a tremendous amount of brands of Abbey/Trappist styles, Saison beers, which I suspect are large in terms of number of brands but no so larger in terms of volume (i.e., barrels per year). But there seems to be some 'adventurous' beer drinkers in Belgium so maybe a beer such as those from Stone could be popular here?

Oh well, it is time to 'transfer' from talking about Stone in this regard and discuss BrewDog. It will be interesting to see how BrewDog manages this whole operation. Perhaps they will concentrate mostly on the German market with this Berlin brewery since they already have a European brewery in Ellon, Scotland or are their financial benefits to produce beer on the continent for other non-German markets? Maybe this question will be impacted by Brexit (if that ever occurs)?

Cheers!

 

Whenever I see someone disparage German beer I can't help but picture a nice tall glass of glitter beer.

 

While in Berlin last August, I passed on going to Stone as it was too far, too pricey. There was the Stone tap room on the edge of Prenzlauer Berg and we passed on that too. Brewdog had a place closer in Mitte, pass. Too many other German beers to try.

 

I think the scale they operate at is entirely different from Stone which produced something like 400 000 barrels last year, or about 46,8 million liters. If a craft brewery in Freiburg produces 100 000 liters in a year, or about 854 US barrels, with a growth rate of 10% each year I'm sure they'd be very happy, and quite successful (most Swedish craft breweries produce well under 100 000 liters in a year, and the most succesful one produces something like 1 million liters, or about 8500 barrels). That difference in scale is worth keeping in mind. American craft beer is big business in a literal and figurative sense.

 

To a certain point -- I learned the subtle steps of comments, language, and body-language to get small smiles and that short chin-rise. In a phrase: baby steps.

(Will never forget the waiter at HB Munich who showed me the proper way to eat Weißwurst served in the chafing dish. After I started to eat from the dish, and he transferred it to the plate, his comment was something like, "Ah, Weißwurst suppe." Can't tell me the Germans don't have senses of humor... or sarcasm.)

 

I know a German guy (Munich-native) who moved to the U.S. for work and fell in love with American-style stouts and porters. He talked about that German-beer-supremacist attitude among some of his countrymen, and he attributed it to Germans who don't actually know much about beer. He ended up moving back to Munich and said one of the worst things about it compared to America was the beer scene (and he was last living in the U.S. about a decade ago). Again, I'll mention the CAMRA folks in the UK, who often seem to be more interested in cultural trappings than enjoying beer as a beverage, and a lot of the actual beer connoisseurs in the UK view them as an impediment to growth and progress.

I'm a big fan of many German styles, for the record, and I have no doubt that fresh, local examples of those styles in Germany often are delicious. I don't think there's anything special about the typical beer consumer in Germany, however, and I don't have any more respect for those who turn up their noses at Belgian, British, or American beers than I do American beer consumers who look down on flavorful imports; they're equally narrow-palated.

 

Well, to that point I've met quite a few Bavarians (not all Münchners) who come to the U.S. on vacation and drink nothing but Bud Light because it's "American" (the 'when in Rome' syndrome). So as much as we can point to Germany for its beer culture, not all Germans have embraced it fully -- sort of like the craft culture over here.

 

His unabashed arrogance is why I continue to root against Stone. Get over yourself dude.

 

I'd say Bud Light tastes more like Beck's than Beck's tastes like Ayinger Jahrhundert Bier, let alone Celebrator. Most German beer-drinkers are like most beer drinkers everywhere else* in that they don't drink particularly good beer. Heck, even in mighty Belgium, the best-selling beer is freakin' Jupiler. That's the point that Koch made that seems to have irked a bunch of people here despite its accuracy.

* Except perhaps the Czech Republic.