Fall Beer Sightings (2019)

When in rome... but I'm not ready. Its earlier every year with the seasonals.

 

It starts shipping last week of July to distributors for an August release.

 

Sierra Nevada is 'chasing' the money and IPAs are 'it'.

Cheers!

 

Took this pic Friday at my local shop. Pumpkin beer on July 12th is way too early.

 

Ugh, too hot here right now to think ahead 2 / 2 1/2 months into Sept for Fest beers. A cold Bud is about right in this sweltering heat, hell any light beer would be a winner.

 

I am in the same boat. I love Sierra Nevada but so many of the beers I love have been discontinued. I think Sierra Nevada does lagers and dark beers as good if not better than hoppy beers but they insist on making more and more ipas.

Tumbler, Vienna lager, coffee stout, glissade, flipside. All great beers that are no more. Such a shame.

 

The fall and winter packs were the best. The Vienna lager and coffee stout were two of my favorite beers by Sierra Nevada. Good variety packs are few and far between and the SN ones were the best and the price was great too.

 

Tumbler>Glissade

 

That’s funny, I think the exact opposite. Tumbler is a pretty rudimentary American brown ale; I think I’d take a Smuttynose old brown dog over tumbler but that’s just me.

Then you have glissade. A nicely brewed maibock, though a touch on the hoppy side for my tastes, that’s slightly strong yet crisp & dry. You can find a decent brown ale these days before you could find a maibock of any sort. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.

 

"Chasing" the money / "Insisting" on making IPA's - or are they just making prudent business decisions based on the current "craft beer" market? Does anyone really think that Grossman and family and SN execs kill beers for no reason? That they don't look at sales figures or listen to their distributors? A million barrel brewing company just can't make a beer in quantities large enough to send it out nationally (or even just to the distributors willing to accept it) that will continue to cost the company money, take up shelf space and "age" out. Few such beers would continue to be stocked by SN distributors and, even if they are, they won't be re-ordered by the retailers who saw them just take up space (and money).

I don't doubt there are some beers that Ken Grossman & Co. keep around that don't turn a consistent profit, see no growth or continued decline but he can't have a portfolio full of them without affecting the entire company. SN's Porter and Stout are classic examples. Despite many posts over the recent years that claim they've been "discontinued", they are still brewed (in Chico only, even the bottles sold in NC). If they are not offered in a certain store, it is more than likely it simply no longer sold - there was no market for the beers. If it's not available in a particular area, ask the distributor why (they likely don't even stock it) it is because they could no longer sell it to the local retailers.

Of course, if the beers were still routinely stocked, the geekery (inc. me) would be complaining about the freshness of the unsold stock at most stores. Hey, retailers and distributors, like breweries, are only going to lose so much money before they drop a beer for something that will sell better (or just "sell"). Can't blame SN for trying to maintain that retail shelf space with another beer of their own.

The craft segment of the US beer market is very different than the one Sierra Nevada entered in the 1980s ("entered"? They helped create it.) Yeah, it started as offering the US beer drinkers locally-brewed alternatives in a market dominated by adjunct lagers. But not every "craft" brewery founded in the 1970-80s survived (heck, most didn't) on that alone - they still had to build their own market. How can a brewery continue to brew beers that don't sell in significant quantities in a market that is apparently dominated by buyers who seem to continually be looking for the "next" thing? How many threads about a discontinued beer are filled with comments like, "I haven't had it in the last couple of years but I found a bottle on the single shelf the other day and..." Yeah, well, that ain't gonna do it.

Insert "POGO quote" panel here.

 

Do you like Maibocks?

Great post.

To add to this, from what I've heard their tap rooms do still have the variety many on here crave. So at the tap room level they can have a wide variety of styles, and be a bit more cavalier with their beer choices.

Nationally it's an entirely different ball game.

 

Too early

 

Fresh though!

 

I put a snarky smiley face on my post but it didn’t show up for some reason. Apples and oranges obviously. I don’t particularly go out of my way to drink maibocks but can appreciate a well made one. Glissade is no exception for sure but I love brown ales and really enjoy tumbler. Dundee’s used to make a really solid maibock (Pale Bock) but they dropped that whole line except for Honey Brown unfortunately.

 

Yup, "chasing" the money is making business decisions to cater to the popular beers of today's "craft beer" market (i.e., hoppy beers).

Cheers!

 

Well, I guess that's an integral part of doing business in the capitalist system. If you're not "chasing the money" and catching it, other people are chasing you, wanting the money you owe them...

 

JK, as I have discussed several times in past threads Sierra Nevada has been struggling over the past few years:

“Sierra Nevada has experienced some tough business times over the past few years.

“White takes over a company that narrowly returned to growth in 2018 after two consecutive years of mid-single digit declines. According to Whitney, Sierra Nevada’s sales increased 0.2 percent, which amounted to about 25,000 cases.”

A growth of 0.2% (0.002 as a decimal) is not anything to ‘crow about’ but needless to say it is better than the mid-single digit declines of 2016 and 2017.”

From a business perspective I can understand why the Sierra Nevada business leaders may feel they need to produce more hoppy beers to cater to those customers that seek those sorts of beers. Needless to say but hoppy beers like IPAs represent a very crowded market and it won’t be easy for Sierra Nevada to ‘stand out’ in this very competitive segment. I would venture a guess that part of their challenge here is that a significant number of beer consumers that prefer beer styles like IPAs are also those seeking the ‘shiny new thing’. Would those folks who seek ‘shiny new things’ look favorably upon a brewery that is staid and has been around since 1980 (likely before many of them were even born)? I suppose we will learn more when sales figures are released for 2019?

I was a fan of the beers that Sierra Nevada produced in the recent past and I would often purchase variety packs to obtain beer styles like Kolsch, Vienna Lager, Tumbler,… Since those beers are no longer produced I no longer purchase those variety packs. It is a challenging business decision here for Sierra Nevada whether to keep their historical customers (e.g., people like me) happy or to ‘chase’ the beer consumers that are infatuated with the beer style of the day.

Cheers!

@SierraTerence

 

Hahaha understood. I love a good brown ale too and Tumbler is really tasty. I guess I just wish Glissade received half of the love that Tumbler gets (they did bring it back once if not twice due to consumer demand). Oh well, guess I need to wait until they decide to make Old Chico Brand Pale Bock available outside of CA


EDIT: aaand apparently Old Chico Pale Bock is now retired. what is this world coming to.

 

Shiny new thing?

Cheers!

 

I realize there will always be seasonal creep, and then I end up buying the falls beers I really want in late July/early August and keeping them in my fridge to make sure they are preserved as best as possible. Sigh.