Oxbow's Contract-brewed Beers

My previous purchase of Luppolo (before this recent purchase) was over a year ago. There are non-regular drops of Luppolo in my area (Philly area) and more often then not when I did see those beers they were non-fresh so I would only buy it when I lucked out for a fresh(er) batch. Oxbow lists "enjoy within a year" on the front of their cans and that duration is nonsense IMO.

For my recent purchase an employee of the store (a friend - his name is Phil) came over and asked me: "What are you looking at?". I had the four-pack of Luppolo flipped over and I responded "These cans are missing canning dates". He replied "They should be fresh since we just got them in." I then said "Yeah, but they could have been sitting a long time at some warehouse between the brewery and you". I made the decision to buy it hoping I would luck out with the beer being in fresh condition. There is absolutely nothing about this beer that 'says' stale to me but it did indeed taste different from the Luppolo beers I purchased a year+ ago. I would not use the word "bad" to describe this ZG brewed version, just different and not in a positive way. In the past I was willing to 'bend over' and pay the high price for this beer but I will not be doing this going forward with these ZG brewed version.

Cheers!

 

Since we have been talking Luppolo, I discussed this beer in a NBW thread four years ago:



https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/new-beer-weekend-13.648692/#post-7059309

Cheers!

 

aware of the cost and aware of zero gravity’s capability. I personally don’t respect contract brewing, I assumed I was among the like minded, but I guess I assumed completely wrong. Genuinely surprised that people are defending contracting. Especially for oxbow. I get that craft beer is a game now. Some integrity would be appreciated though

 

FWIW I find contract brewed beers to be hit or miss. In the context of Luppolo brewed by Zero Gravity this is a miss situation for me.

Cheers!

 

I initially was making fun of the high turnover and hinting that maybe they just can’t hire anyone lol

 

i don't understand blind hatred for the idea of contract brewing. there are scenarios where this can be both terrible and great. i worked for a brewery that did it BOTH ways.

there is always an option to have a member of your staff involved in the process of contract brewing, obv.. the brewery i worked for started out sending a capable decision-maker to assist with initial batches at various stages. this was because we had a flavor that took off and became a surprise flagship. all of a sudden, our small facility was able to get back to producing variety in small batches, which was arrested once we had to fulfill demands on 'surprise flagship.' so all-in-all, a good example of contract brewing

THEN the capable decision-maker guy got too busy or just got bored of the 30-minute drive to check on the product (or maybe he was confident in the results due to consistent past batches.) wouldn't ya know it, the product changed (for the worse) but people kept buying it so nobody worried... but eventually the quality slippage stopped being forgiven or overlooked and the exciting new product was lost without a home or maker that cared.

if that one pitfall can be avoided, i think contract brewing can be a really useful tool that is seamlessly integrated in to a house brewery's model.

 

I wouldn't call it blind hatred. For me, it's partly skepticism that the product will be the same (based on experience), along with a little sense of unease about the whole arrangement due to the roles that concepts like "place" and "local" play in craft beer.

Regarding the product, there are just a lot of beers out there that don't seem the same when they are contract brewed. Could this be confirmation bias? Maybe. Could it be real? Maybe. For instance, there's one brewery in Massachusetts that started distributing products to my area maybe two years ago. I was excited because previously, I had only had their beers in their small taproom, or after picking up cans to go from that taproom, which I've only been able to do rarely because it's an out of the way place. The first four pack I bought noted in tiny print that it's brewed quite a ways away from where this brewery claims to be based. Coincidentally, the contract-brewed cans from this brewery that I started seeing around my area don't seem quite the same as the product I remember buying on site. Is it because the beer is different? Or is it because I'm comparing it to memories of past experiences in that taproom, which aren't reliable indicators of what really happened?

This is where concepts like "place" and "local" come in. I associate the beers I just mentioned with a particular out-of-the-way spot which for me is tied to memories of vacations and evenings around campfires with friends drinking amazing beer brewed in that place. There are warm-fuzzy feelings I get from thinking about that taproom and what's brewed there. Knowing that the cans I can buy now are brewed in an industrial park in a different part of the state dampens those feelings. Fair? Maybe not. Real? Absolutely.

And what of the many bars/restaurants in Maine or Vermont that sell only beers brewed in those states? Where does ZG-brewed Oxbow beer belong? Clearly it's not Maine-brewed beer and technically speaking, it doesn't belong on a Maine only taplist. A customer buying a beer from such a list often specifically wants to enjoy something that wasn't shipped from two states away. But it's not really a Vermont product either. So the ideas of place and local, which animate the entire idea of a "Maine only" or "Vermont only" taplist, are impeded with this arrangement.

All in all, contract brewing to me seems to disrupt the connection between brewery, place, and drinking experience that this whole industry thrives on. I realize the advantages it offers to a small brewery and why many choose this model. But breweries should understand that there are some costs to using this model as well, to the degree that customers like me associate their products with a particular locale and attach maybe-irrational but still very real emotions to that - emotions which drive our purchasing decisions, whether rooted in the beer itself or not.

 

Exactly, which is why you must respect Tree House for scaling organically the way they have.

 

Probably for the amount they produce in MA, it's just them and Jack's Abby at that volume right?

In the case of Tree House, it's been a very productive and smart business model. Keep it all in-house and on-site. They make more money and don't have to contract brew.

 

It sounds like you don’t have any trouble understanding it. I get what you’re saying though. It’s of course situational, but the “pitfall” you are describing is a pretty big one and totally avoiding it might be a bit idealistic where the rubber meets the road.

To be clear, I’m not saying that contract brewing is good or bad.

It’s easy to see the benefits from the brewing company side, and on the consumer side of things, most won’t know or care… but some might start to care once they feel like a particular $20 beer purchase wasn’t worth it… and at that point, that one unsatisfying purchase might outweigh years of satisfying ones. Those are the moments that get discussed in forums.

Essentially nobody on BA makes a post about a time when they suspected that contract brewing increased the quality of a product (and it stands to reason that such things would also happen). Beer consumers that sermonize about local, small batch, authenticity and “the little guy” don’t tend to think in those terms. Long histories of beer brands getting worse with volume increases and/or ownership changes reinforce that narrative. It goes without saying that brewing inconsistencies happen when a beer stays in-house too.

On my own end, there are contract brewed beers that I happily buy… and even seek out. I don’t assume that such brands are exactly what I’d get from a little system on the in-house side though. With regards to Zero Gravity specifically, I bought a brand they contract for not too long ago, and in the end I have no interest in buying that beer again due to my lack of happiness with it. Does that speak poorly of the brewing company using them or Zero Gravity? Well, in my case, it hurts both brands… but to be fair, I’m also only talking about a beer that disappointed me a bit, not one that would fail either brewer’s QC. Just to provide some background - I am not the sort of beer drinker who automatically views local beer as belonging to a higher class than supermarket beer.

FWIW (this isn’t meant to condemn them) - There was a case on BA a half year ago where somebody complained about a Zero Gravity brand having clear QC issues (packs of brown and murky McLighty’s).

Who would have thought back in the day that Zero Gravity would occupy a Magic Hat space and become a contract brewer for the region? It’s hard to say if things change so fast or if things are the same as ever (but only the names are different).

On the topic of contracted beers in taprooms, the circumstances can be a bit funny. I know of a place where you can see the tanks from your barstool, but they have to bring in their kegged contract brewed brands through normal distribution like any other outside beer. Would probably shock some “locavores” if they were unsympathetic to business realities.

 

And Harpoon I believe.

But I don't think Jack's Abby contract brews their beers, those are all in-house. They obviously contract brew for other breweries.

 

I feel like contract brewing has in general become more acceptable in the last 10-15 years, especially among newer craft drinkers (though more acceptable in this case . I look back at some of the backlash aimed at Two Roads when they were first opening and contract brewing was mentioned as a component of their business model and compare that to a place like the Twelve Percent Beer Project that essentially only does contract brewing (outside of the labels owned by the brewers there) and enjoys a good deal of hype and goodwill.

Regarding Oxbow, I would echo @nesarebad 's question about how long it's actually been brewed at Zero Gravity. I saw it (and other Oxbow cans) as far west as Ohio over 2 years ago and I'm not sure Oxbow would be distributing that far away just out of their own facility. But beyond the issue of volume, I'm somewhat skeptical that differences in how a beer is tasting make for particularly convincing evidence about a shift towards contract brewing. People swore for years that Sip of Sunshine tasted better when it was brewed in Vermont and that Two Roads ruined it despite the fact that it was never not brewed at Two Roads.

 

It was never brewed at Lawson's? Even in the early days of Sip prior to distribution?

 

It was definitely only available in bombers/draft in the beginning, and only in VT. But I think it was brewed at Two Roads since day 1...

https://www.lawsonsfinest.com/sip-of-sunshine/

 

That was addressed in post #20:

"I reached out to Oxbow and learned that they began brewing in VT in November 2022, so just over a year ago."

Cheers!

@brettanomyces420

 

Yes here's the BA thread from the initial announcement of it: https://www.beeradvocate.com/commun...awsons-and-two-roads-working-together.166723/

 

Besides beers that are only brewed elsewhere (e.g. SOS, 12% brands, early days of Grimm), contact brewing might be good for the breweries, but not so good for the customers because they always get the common denominator of the quality. If the brewery providing the recipe makes better beers than the contractor, then we get a beer of lower quality than the original one. If the brewery providing the recipe is worse, then what would be the reason to consume that beer rather than what the contactor brewery can produce itself? In both scenarios, the contractor's own beers are usually cheaper than the ones it brews for someone else (e.g. Threes Vliet brewed at Jack's Abby is ~$15 vs JA's Post Shift is ~$10).