Rebel IPA vs Lagunitas?

This is standard practice for most big businesses. It's sad when it happens, especially to companies we love, but this is life in a free market economy. Businesses are interested in increasing profits, not necessarily building goodwill among competitors. Goodwill is nice, but it isn't what shareholders care about. Despite the well-documented collegiality among craft brewers, is anyone really surprised by this?

 

BBC is the only craft brewery with shareholders.

 

By Brewers' Association standards, Goose Island is not a craft brewery, nor are the breweries belonging to the Craft Brew Alliance: http://www.usabeertrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/BA_List_Domestic_Non-Craft_Brewers.png
To my knowledge (& feel free to prove me wrong), Boston Beer Company is the only publicly traded craft brewery.

 

MOST breweries, even most of the smallest, have shareholders. I have 28 of them. It takes a lot of money to get a brewery off the runway and into the air.

The only difference is that our shares are not publicly traded. I have a board too, and an advisory board, but I am Chairman. I suspect that at BB the head guy there is Chairman too.

None of the ideas of 'have to because of shareholders or boards' compel any of us to do anything. Public markets expect performance, so do MY shareholders. Performance is available to every craft brewer given that we all are a meager 12-share of the industry. We are performing and innovating on our own platform; Little Sumpin' and DayTime, not by making an Euro-hopped Amber Lager.

However, performance requires imagination in a crowded marketplace of any sort. I think that is the problem here. I quoted Papa Hemmingway speaking to George Plimpton in my tweets as saying 'Parody is the last refuge of a desperate artist"...

 

Opinion: The BA definition of craft is about bigotry. 'The Big Guys'? I'd imagine that BB's public stock float is partly owned by Fidelity and by Vanguard, and maybe even Franklin Funds, et al. ABI is about $36 billion in assets, Fidelity alone is $4 trillion. What's the real difference here? Bigotry. That, and a Cool Kids vs the Not Cool Kids playground mentality.

(BTW, the head guy at BB controls a majority of the voting shares)

 

Lagunitas IPA is not that great, anyways. It's not bad by any means, but even from the state of California you can get a better IPA from SN and Stone. Not sure why Lagunitas would be up in arms over anything BBC does.

 

Anyone who knows me can only imagine how shocked I now am at this behavior among craft brewers who are in this for the love and the art, not the business and the profit.

 

With all do respect, I couldn't disagree more with your opinion. Fresh Lag IPA is delicious and in my market area I sell more Lag IPA then Stone and Sierra Torpedo. I would know, it seems like i'm adjusting my orders up every month to meet market demand.

 

Greetings BA'rs... In my post on the first page of this thread I incorrectly quoted a great industry publication, BeerMarketersInsight. The publication did report on saying specifically that Rebel "is reportedly very similar to Lagunitas. Boston reps even conduct blind taste tests vs Lagunitas." but they did not report on the other things that I attributed to their actual quote. Those things I learned elsewhere and synthesized them all together inaccurately. The head writer there is a pretty serious newsman and he asked me to set that straight- who could blame him? (Sorry B.) It's an old truth that if you're going to live outside the law you have to be honest. Cheers....

 

Wait.... so Boston Lager wasn't originally made in Jim's kitchen?!

And I also love this Koch quote, "They (BMC) have shown that they can do a lot of damage to craft brewers," [Koch] says, pointing to the flat-lining of craft beer growth in the late 1990s. "But I learned... that we as craft brewers need to, because we are all so small, stay together. If they can divide us, get us to attack each other, we will damage our industry."

 

Lol I love the direct 180 this thread took as soon as Tony came in. Frankly I can't stand the Lagunitas twitter account. It's a terrible respresentation of the company as a whole and really unprofessional to represent the entire company as that. Start a personal twitter account, dude.

I wish there was a normal stone-esque twitter to follow that doesn't have the owner's ramblings all over it. Something to convey new releases to the consumer without him freaking out of something or another that he doesn't agree with.

Big whoop, BBC made a west coast IPA...may as well close up shop Tony, there's no chance you're surviving. Jeremy Danner was absolutely right in that twitter exchange. Love Tony subtweeting at him like a little girl as well. Grow up, dude.

And we wait for his ensuing reponse.

 

I just came in here to say I would buy sucks all year round if it were available

 

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't slamming the beer. My point was is that I don't understand why Lagunitas would get it's panties in a bunch over anything Sam Adams makes while there is much more formidable competition right in it's own state.

 

For the record, his opinions are his and he is entitled to those 100%. I have no qualms about him taking them to twitter either. I personally (and I do love his beer) would appreciate a separate account for said opinions. If I owned my own business I would do so.

Somtimes you just wanna find out what beer they're brewing and not get preached to by a dude using short handed text speak.

 

Doesn't really seem like a 180 to me. Alot of people here still don't get what he's so damn mad about. The asskissers are just crawling out of the woodwork is all.