Phoenix's first farmhouse brewery

You know what... I give up. Yes I'll continue going for my "infintesemal amount of savings if any".

 

Grand Canyon beers are used as OHSO's house beers. As far as I know, Tap Haus uses Old World for their house beers.

 

First, we don't operate by trashing the competition, no need to when you can score on the merit of your own product. Second, there are sometimes other factors in play when decisions like this are made...and not every distributor or brewer is willing to play the same games and finally, house beers tend to not sell particularly well, unless pushed heavily (see Twin Peaks), since most modern craft drinkers are intrested in the brewery making the beer and not contract beers.

 

Might be a non-issue anyway. Parking lot is usually empty. One across the street is often close to full. That location isn't exactly blessed with good luck.

 

I can understand not wanting to spend money at the big stores that aren't locally owned, but a deal is a deal. I use the $1 off coupons sometimes too. But I also shop at all the best stores in town, local or not, and I'll spend wherever I am at if I find good/fresh beer. The cold beer thing doesn't mean as much to me, because I always make sure to buy fresh anyway. Beer has been around for centuries, refrigeration has not. What did they do before beer was kept cold? Drink it fresh and there's no problem.

 

Thats what overhopping was originally intended for actually. So when they drank the beer, after shipping it across the sea, it would taste like they wanted it to, if i remember correctly.

 

Wow, what a thread... So much going on. I'll only comment on one part of the thread. The whole refrigeration/warm beer thing is somewhat mute from a temperature-oxidation standpoint if it is bought fresh as stated. The oxidation effects of speeding up the aging process by storing warm vs cold take longer to develop which is what most people who talk about warm vs cold beer are worried about.

It does start to make a difference if the beer is on the shelf for more than a few weeks though for a different reason entirely. I have participated in a tasting panel where we sampled bottled and canned beer that was sold warm vs cold vs fresh at different lengths of time on the shelf and there is a taste difference after a few weeks in warm bottled beer. Cold bottled beer and cans took longer to begin to notice a difference in taste. The one thing that gets overlooked by people is the effect of UV light on bottled beer that is sold on a store shelf vs being sold behind a protected cooler door. The canned beer obviously without any UV light exposure even stored warm took longer to start to change its taste profile (about 2 months). The warm bottled beer (exposed to UV light) began having a noticeable taste difference after 2 weeks. The cold bottled beer took 4-8 weeks before a taste difference became noticeable. You may not be able to see it but most good beer stores that have coolers have special UV protection built into them that lessen the effects of any UV exposure (think SPF 45), you don't have any UV protection on a exposed store shelf. It is the UV light that is changing the taste profile of the beer more sitting on a store shelf, not the temperature it is stored at in the short term.

Long term warm vs cold storage without UV exposure -yea, warm beer will change faster than cold beer because the microbiological parts of the beer mutate more at warmer temperatures. But it may take a couple of months to notice the difference.

 

For once in a long time I agree!

In my case, the distributors hit the Whole Foods Mayo & Total Wines in north Scottsdale late in the week, usually Friday for most stuff I buy. It's often the case that the Bell's Two-Hearted and Odell IPA are one batch newer at TW than Whole Foods. The Two-Hearted is sometimes like 3 weeks from production date. Simply put, TW has a higher turnover (and sometimes out of stock). I always buy the one month fresher beer, even though Whole Foods has most of their product refrigerated. Slam dunk.

 

come on now.

what's your take on how any brewery with endless horrible reviews and horrible marketing can continue to grow and grow vs. going under. let's put it another way, if a brewery were to go out of business... it would be because of what?

my take is the market is just very forgiving right now. like yemen was saying, the 'buy local' gets a free pass by a huge segment of consumers and the we're still aways off from the bubble bursting. the market will have an oversaturation point with consolidation eventually, just not any time soon.

 

I believe there are enough craft drinkers these days to sustain the crappy breweries (for now). As yemen mentioned, the craft newbies are more willing to try anything new, and local brew has it's appeal. Not everyone shares the same discerning palates as we do. To the rest a poorly made craft beer is at least new and different than the macro swill they used to drink, and thus will do just fine. The good thing is that with time people will realize they can get much better quality, and at the same price.

With all these new breweries opening up and in the works, I do feel the supply is going to to catch up to demand, and some places will eventually get squeezed out. How long has Old World been in distribution outside of the Phoenix area? It could still be rather early. If they expanded too rapidly, without building a solid customer base, it may only be a matter of time before they are oversaturated in too many markets with low sales. That kind of thing could be a recipe for a brewery going under. That or they're forced to clean up their act. But my guess is if you ruin your name with health violations and bad beer, who's going to give you another chance? Not sure if anyone noted this already, but their mission statement is quite telling. http://oldworldbrewery.com/mission.htm Apparently the craft-beer community is not even part of the general public.

BTW, I know earlier in the thread I said I've not tried Old World, so as much as it pains me to spend my hard earned money on it, I am going to do so in the near future, to at least give it a fair shake. One bottle, one review, and we'll see how it goes. So yemen do you know if they date their bottles?

 

Try Old World?

Take the guidance from some above:

1. Deliberately seek out a place that charges you more for the same product.
2. Refrigerated bottle is more important than one that is weeks to months newer/fresher but room temp.

P.S. not sure if they use freshness dating, but I highly doubt it given what other AZ breweries do.

 

Thank fucking god the beers i like usually are better with age.

 

As bad as it could be I feel like I must have a firsthand experience in order to bash them properly. Maybe I'll get a nicely infected bottle, hopefully sour. I like sours. So anyone know the best place to find an overpriced bottle that's been refrigerated for a good 9 months? I'm gonna guess AJ's fits the criteria.

 

Sorry guys but craft beer has to taste good for me to buy it. I will not buy local if the product tastes like crap. We have several local brewers here in VA and some of them are half decent. I buy their product and support them. But most of it is swill I would not pour down the drain let alone drink. Hell I might as well buy Budweiser. Big chain or small store I buy my beer where I can get the most bang for my buck and here Total Wine meets the need and feeds my addiction just fine. Besides I have an extra fridge at home if I want my beer cold and a cellar if I don't!

 

curious post on Old World's facebook page, not sure what to make of it?

- they either fired or were dumped by their distributor
- "fake craft beers" like shocktop are creating "huge pressure" for the local guys
- bars are caving to "big distributor pressure" on "case counts" (whatever that means)
- us beer drinkers need to push away these "category killers" (don't know what that is)

however, these problems seem to be only arizona related because they also mention how their beers will be available from 'san diego to santa barbara' which sounds like good news in terms of shelf space, distribution, etc?

I'm confused

 

It works for Jester King.. though Jester King is using the coffee beans ingested and crapped out by the rats in Vietnam I think.....