RIP Summerfest

Was that the brewery's doing, or the local distro?

There's one distro in my area who won't replace seasonals until the last one is gone -- they say it's all due to shelf space. One year Summerfest didn't show up until early June, and only at a few retailers at first.

Same thing happened with Sam Adams Octoberfest one year -- real late shelving because the summer seasonal hadn't sold out.

 

And I am sure that your area was not the only one experiencing this issue.

The challenge of producing four seasonal products is that the lack of sales of one season (spring in this instance) will impact the sales of the next seasonal beer (summer in this instance).

Regardless of this aspect (which is genuine) I would be willing to bet that Jeff White wanted to make a change anyway. The marketing & sales folks likely lobbied him that "hazy" sells so let's nix the non-hazy seasonal of Summerfest. At least that is what I am 'seeing' here.

Cheers!

 

Was 40th Anniversary Ale the 2020 spring seasonal? I did my part to clear shelf space.

 

Catering to the whims of the "true craft beer drinker" seems like a terrible business plan. SN's recent history of declining sales has been rehashed in several threads. Jeff White's responsibility is to SN's employees more than to the rest of us. How many layoffs have we seen from brewers in that segment? Off the top of my head Stone, Lagunitas, Deschutes, Founders have all laid off significant numbers of workers. SN hit a grand slam with Hazy Little Thing, so trying to expand that brand and capitalize on its success is a bad thing? Look, I get the Summerfest love around here, but asking any company to ignore "five straight years of mostly double-digit losses in sales" seems unreasonable.

I dunno, according to this Vinepair article, Hazy Little Thing was the #1 selling IPA. That's better than Lagunitas IPA, Goose IPA, All-Day, etc. Is "chasing trends" even a valid criticism when a beer goes from release to the category leader in less than 3 years? How many mid-size or larger breweries have tried to copy SN by creating their own version of HLT? Clearly, there was a gap in the market, and HLT filled it perfectly.

Honest question, because you've raised this point in multiple posts, do you really believe that Bros purchasing OH's hop-overload $20+ 4-packs are the primary market for SN's tropical/session-y $11 six-packs? Why would a fickle, non-brand-loyal fraction of a fraction of the beer-drinking population be anything other than a small sliver of SN's target audience? I mean, this seems like a strawman argument, especially since @SierraTerence has already said "I also think that our Hazy, is not super NE style... It's more approachable for the non-Hazy Bros, widely distributed and very tasty."

Seems like a stretch to say they're "one step behind" when HLT has rocketed to the top of the IPA category, pushing aside longtime stalwarts like Lagunitas and Goose.

 

@CB_Michigan because one of the biggest breweries in the country, a brewery almost any beer drinker knows (good beer or not) with a footprint unrivaled by the majority of breweries in this country brewed a style of beer extremely popular over the past 5 years (face the facts, they were pretty late to the game with “hazy” beer) and, shocker, it hit number one in that category...that means they should ditch a plan spanning 3 decades exploring the world of beer and turn every beer into a hazy one or a sour one?

Because if maximizing profit is the only thing it’s about, then just come out and be honest about it. I’d respect their honesty. And, that’s ignoring the fact brewing IPAs has a much quicker turnaround in the fermenters/tanks opposed to a lager. Also, increasing volume and (you’d think) profits.

 

We (you, me and others) will perhaps learn in a year or so whether the SN hazy strategy will yield the revenue/sales they are seeking. I posted questions here since I do not know the answer. And I do not believe you (or Jeff White) really know the answer either.

Cheers!

 

Ya this captures my feelings and suspicions as well. I have zero doubt that low abv hazy ipas move faster and in larger volumes than pilsners or other more obscure lager styles. And of course an ale I is going to tie up tanks less than lagers. But I really enjoyed the image of SN as a brewer who was focused enough on being part of broad US beer culture that they would sacrifice max profits in pursuit of providing some diversity to US drinkers.

Obviously that's a naive view to take of a for profit business, but damnit I enjoyed holding on to it. It is increasingly hard to cling to.

 

I think we both have the same problem. This is the way I’ve looked at SN forever. Maybe it’s our fault for holding them to a certain standard we shouldn’t. I’ve grown up with breweries like Brooklyn, drank all the German imports throughout my 20s, went through whatever I could find before the “craft” boom of the last decade or so...and there was always something about Sierra Nevada.

The pale ale was a game changer for me. I liked Brooklyn East India Pale Ale but SNPA was a game changer. The first time I drank Torpedo, I could barely finish it. Tasted like a pine tree to me. Little did I know that taste would become one of my favorites. Glissnade, Kellerweis, Tumbler, Ruthless, the Porter, Bigfoot (I had my first in ‘98 or ‘99), etc etc...so many beers that were good and different. And, made in this country. I had been trained that anything not Imported was shit.

Maybe I/we hold onto this romantized idea of exactly what you wrote. It makes sense. I still stick to my guns (and alluding to what @JackHorzempa has said) that there is a bottom line involved, damn marginal or decent profit and full steam ahead. Bringing in the type of CEO they have with his background might lend to that idea (an assumption on my part).

Maybe, though, it’s time to call it what it is. They have a vision for the now and the future and it’s probably not what the posters of this thread like. Like Jack said, we really won’t know for another year or so moving forward. But like @CB_Michigan has already pointed out, it’s worked out for SN in the short term. And if Summerfest was losing double digit percentage margins for 5 years in a row as acknowledged by the one guy who posts here who would definitely know, maybe they shouldn’t brew it anymore. Speaking for myself, it was the last true Summer beer I sought out. I used to go for Victory Summer Love but they changed that too.

Way too long/don’t read...maybe time to stop romanticizing and maybe time not to buy the Oktoberfest or the Celebration. Im only one person, but if there’s a direction they want to go in, then there’s a direction I’ll go in too. It’s sad but that’s life for ya.

 

@guinness77 , the thing I've been consoling myself with is that we (those of us who like a diversity of beer styles/flavors) are a minority by a large margin. Brewers like SN arose to serve us but have now outgrown us. And luckily, there are more new small brewers arising to serve our little slice of the beer market. I can access more quality local pilsners than I ever could before. Maybe catering to us doenst make sense for someone like Sierra Nevada anymore, but we can at least be grateful that they proved we were out here so someone with a little less ambition for growth than current SN leadership can brew the beers that we want for us.

If I can get SN stout and porter back in my sphere though I'll happily go back to smugly posting about how you whiners must not have bought enough and you don't deserve the good SN beers anyway

 

WHOA, you shut your dirty mouth! Not buying Celebration is how it finds itself on the chopping block too.

 

Haha, was just trying to make a point. When it comes down to it, not sure I’ve got the gumption to stick to those guns.

It’s not hazy, but it’s an IPA. I’m sure that’ll still sell to the kids on the streets.

 

Both of what I said and you said are true.
My recommendations are coming from the craft beer drinker
Your recommendations are coming from the accountant.
Sad that successful breweries and craft beer have transitioned toward a business rather than an art.

 

That must have been a true golden age of beer when breweries weren't businesses. When was that exactly? I've only been drinking "craft beer" since the 1970s, so I'm too young to remember the era when expenses, income and sales weren't concerns for "successful" brewers.

 

Not concerned for income and sales? Never said that. ...But in many breweries, the golden age probably ends when the business got bigger than the beer, which depends on the brewery. You start making craft beer for the beer. No investors are diving into craft beer for the money. However, in the chance you do big enough, the shareholders decide the trajectory of the business model.

 

@guinness77 @unlikelyspiderperson I just wanted to say that I didn't mean to trivialize the connection you both clearly feel toward SN or the disappointment in the direction they're taking. I understand where that comes from. Everyone has their own criteria for determining whether to support a business, and lord knows I've written off several breweries for various reasons (racist/sexist behavior, asinine comments from the owner, declining quality, mistreatment of employees, crummy treatment at their brewpus, etc.). SN strikes me as a company that does try to do the right thing and serve as a force of good in their community. The time and effort they put into the Resilience project, the philanthropy behind Dankful, sustainability efforts, attention to running a high-quality brewing and packaging operation, additional time, money, and effort that Ken and others at SN have given.
I can only speak for myself but SN checks a lot of boxes in the “being a good corporate citizen” column. SNPA and Torpedo are good as ever, the 40th Anny beer was really good, Celebration is a consistent winner, and the Oktos are (last year aside) interesting and sometimes great. Do I wish I had access to the stout and porter? Gawd yes! Would a consistent, year-round lager (Southern Gothic, perhaps?) be a staple in my fridge? Probably. For whatever reason, they haven’t been able to make it work. It just feels unfair to hold the changing tides of the market against them. Or to write off the positive aspects of the company and portray them as soulless profit chasers. They (and the vast majority of breweries) are neither saints nor devils but we are so quick to assign those labels to them.
I hope you keep buying the SN beers you enjoy, and when they release another great lager, I hope you buy the hell out of it. It stings, but to me, they’ve banked too much goodwill to write them off.

 

I'm no where near writing thenm off. SNPA, dankful, bigfoot, narwhal, and celebration are all regulars in my fridge. And I'm going this weekend to ask the place that I used to be able to get porter and stout to see if they can get a case for me.

I just don't like to see a standard bearer fall toward the all IPA everything trap.

 

They are still making them @unlikelyspiderperson SN Porter is always available at my local Safeway. SN Stout can be tracked down without too much effort or driving distance.

 

Ya they were both available to me last year. The stout ran out around September/October and hasn't restocked and the porter ran out a month or so later. I'm assuming its a distributer issue but I'm hoping the store can still order them for me

 

Sierra Nevada is today wholly-owned by Ken Grossman and family. IIRC, the company did have a few small investors (friends and family) in the beginning and, of course, Grossman had a partner, Paul Camusi, who he eventually bought out in the late 90s.

I was going to use these two beers as examples but @deanzaZZR and @unlikelyspiderperson did it for me...

So, why not just make Summerfest (maybe with a less seasonal brand name) an "occasional/rare" brand? SN does still brew Porter and Stout, obviously on a very small scale (I think I recall someone at Mill River brewery, where they are available in bottles, telling me they're are only brewed in Chico?) but few stores stock them. Why? The SN distributors apparently no long carry them in much of the US, likely because they could no longer sell them to retailers, who saw that their customers stopped buying them.

Even in distributors' regions where the beers are available, many retailers and most buyers pass them by (and then one of the geekery cruises by, checks the date code and puts it back on the shelf and maybe writes an angry email to SN).

So, who's to blame? Kinda chicken/egg thing - people don't buy them, so retailers and distributors don't, either OR distributors don't stock them so retailers and buyers can get them. "Investors" "ex-Big Beer CEO" and "shareholders" not involved. Is Grossman (who, as I recall, has a soft spot for Summerfest) supposed to just spend money on malt, hops and packaging, etc. for a beer that he can't sell in the quantity necessary?

Sure, the heirs of "artists" can sell those paintings (done with borrowed paints on someone else's canvas?) or get unpublished works into print, that "business (oops, that word again) model" does not work as well in the brewing industry.

 

And that can be a 'tricky' business case. What is the "quantity necessary" here? Even AB-InBev produces Ziegenbock which sells in small quantities (albeit a Texas only distribution).

I think you might have something here. Using the example of Ziegenbock above maybe one way that Sierra Nevada can 'manage' the Summerfest brand is via selected distribution. I suspect that Summerfest sold better in certain markets vs. others and Sierra Nevada should have that data from past year releases. Maybe sell Summerfest into those markets where sales were robust. Needless to say this would require a bit more work from the SN Marketing & Sales team but it should be feasible.

Maybe you have other ideas here.

Cheers!