BrewDog Acquires Stone Berlin

Stone also entered the market far too late, their flagship beers simply weren’t good and sometimes fresh enough to compete in many European countries with their competitors. Not to mention that many of the Stone Berlin specials simply weren’t that good.

Back when they initially talked about starting this brewery we were starving for quality fresh hoppy beers but they came in too late and they delivered too little. Their brand isn’t known here amongst most consumers and even not that sought after by beer geeks. FrauGruber in Germany easily destroys them in quality.

In Belgium they largely ignored our market and only recently released some things which were okay and got lost in the competition. I saw them at some beer festivals in Europe and their beers were also simply weaker than a lot of the competition.

Some of the cheap German beers are mind-blowingly good and better than anything Stone Berlin has ever put out.

Some things couldn’t have been foreseen, in some aspect they had the wrong view and clearly still have of the European beer scene.

 

Damn! That's insane for stuff that's being brewed right there. What's the hurdle? Slow sales, distance?

I mean, like you said a lot of the stuff over there is great already! And wouldn't a lot of stuff they make be considered "craft" over here in the first place? Doesn't a lot of "smaller" imported German beer get labeled as "craft" in the States as well? I actually think one of the reasons Stone's venture over there failed is because the beer culture is not so much "behind" but just different. It's been mentioned in this thread several times, but the bar is set quite high over there to start. Just because they're not flooded with 20 new glitter beers and 30 new stouts with donuts and rum cake in them it doesn't mean they're "behind". I mean, I understand what you're saying, but I think that's the mentality that got Koch into this hole. "We know more about better beer, let's go over there and save them". I guess they didn't need any "saving" after all.

 

Maybe BrewDog will be doing the "saving" now?

Cheers!

 

They "saved" Stone, I suppose

 

So, will the tagline ‘transfer’ from “The Beer Jesus from America” to the BrewDog Saviors?

Cheers!

 

Not to mention that certain (most) beer-drinking cultures do not see the value in an endless variety of choices. The craft beer culture/industry in the U.S. must seem downright Martian to many around the world. That’s not a criticism...vive la difference!

 

Dang.

 

Germany is indeed well behind the United States in terms of style diversity, outside, naturally, of traditional German styles, many of which are not common outside of their region of origin within Germany. A lot of people here seem to be lionizing German beer consumers as some sort of culturally enlightened mass that fended off an arrogant outsider due to their preference for amazing options in the local tradition. In reality, in contrast, most of them represent just slight spins and mild improvements on the bland-swill-chugging Americans that few around here hold in particularly high regard. They buy cheap, bland (though not as bland as the blandest American fare) alcohol-delivery-vehicles over both Stone and superior, flavorful German fare because, in contrast to American stereotypes about Germans and perhaps some Germans' self-image, most of them don't actually have well-developed palates for beer.

 

I told you that you were over-thinking it.

 

...And those giant, 1.5L pre-order collab bottles will be the only Stone Berlin bottles ever to cross the threshold of my home, I guess. Sort of a bummer.

 

Does it need to be equal to the U.S? It was brewing beer long before the U.S.* was discovered.

*Yeah, I know that's rather Ameri-centric, but I hope it's all clean in the wash.

 

BrewDog has far more brand recognition, selling market and feel for the local market in Europe. I am not their biggest fan but they are doing really well over here. BrewDog clearly aped the Stone rhetoric from the beginning, in that aspect I expect the imitator to fare better than the instigator.

 

It doesn't need to be. It would benefit German fans of flavorful beer if it were. The vast majority of the craft beer in America strays widely from, say, pre-1980 American brewing tradition,* and American craft beer fans are much better off for it.

* Which, frankly, mid-19th century onward largely mimicked certain aspects of German brewing tradition, albeit interrupted by and dumbed down during and after Prohibition.

 

You can believe whatever you want, but Koch misunderstood and misjudged a TON of things about German beer, beer culture, and business in this move. He specifically lumped in Augustiner Helles with the not "wonderful" beers being made because, I assume, it's "yellow and fizzy." (Thats not a broad brush?) Yes, Germans drink cheap beer, but stylistically an Oettinger is closer to a traditional German pils than a Wussy. You can try and convince a German (or an American who has drunk German pils across Germany) otherwise -- or that Wussy is somehow objectively better -- until you're blue in the face (or insolvent); doesn't make it true

 

Sounds like a Minnesota opinion for a population very far away. Your definition of "flavorful beer" is probably far different from my friends Frank and Stefan in Swabia.

 

Hah -- I see what you did there.