Russian River Rant

Brewery visits are just "the thing to do" now for weekend entertainment. Unfortunately for locals, it means your little local watering hole is now overrun by tourists. Not sure what the answer is. Maybe there can be "local hours" where if you live within 20 miles (proof of zip code on drivers license), you are VIP and get in? Doesn't help OP though because 2 hr drive...yeah, that makes you nothing more than a out of town tourist yourself.

 

DJ is a great beer, no argument there. I like it better than Pliny, just saying that they aren't that similar, IMO. Pliny has a harsher hop character and a bit more alcohol hotness. DJ is more balanced, letting the malt participate a little and settles on the tongue much better after a sip or two.

edit: sorry for the hasty answer; I assumed that you were saying Pliny and DJ were very similar; IMO they are quite different, but as I said, DJ is better IMO.

 

Then there's the business part of the thing, of which I know very little about. However...I have a good friend who has taken over and expanded a very successful family business in a tiny town on a beautiful lake. It's a highly technical, precise, and expensive bunch of products his small team of employees manufactures for companies from here to Japan. He's worked at it for 20 years and has expanded as far as he can and now cranks out product 24-7. He works his ass off and oversees most of production himself. His family lives well. Not private jets and celebrity hobnob well, but Corvette collection, two ski lodge mountain vacation homes, and buying up properties left and right kind of well. He tells me that if he wants to go bigger, then he has to go waaaay bigger to stay profitable. This includes taking a dangerous amount of risk and moving the operation to a state that won't be prohibitive tax wise. Basically vacating his little piece of paradise and uprooting the whole fam damnly.

Or...he can sell the business, retiring at the ripe old age of 42, keeping his lovely places on the lake and mountains and buying a nice place overlooking the Pacific from a Hawaiian hilltop. Of course he'll buy one for his parents...and his brother who never wanted anything to do with the business. With the rest wisely invested, his great grandchildren should not have to work.

I told him what I'd do. Then he asked me if the old facility they moved out of a few years ago is big enough for a brewery. I said, I though it was. He said, "That sounds kinda fun. Get away from all this international customer short deadline shit. Ya know...slowdown...just keep it local."

 

While I agree with all who say they can run their business however they choose, I might debate how "risky" or a bad business decision taking a loan for expansion is, if the owners chose to do so. You don't have to increase capacity 1000s or even a hundred percent, necessarily. Let's say they increase 50%, is there demand for the increased production? To some degree, they have an answer in that they have lines. Is there a risk that between obtaining cash for the expansion and actual production that everyone will no longer like or want to purchase their beer? Sure, but realistically, how much risk?

The choice to stay small works for the owners, but there is a risk in that. More and more people could stop going because of capacity issues. Most seem to agree that's not really a risk, that demand is too high, exactly the same reason expansion of some sort wouldn't necessarily really be a risk.

So, with a limited set of information, from a business/financial point if view, I have difficulties seeing that there's a reason against expanding that is any better justified than for expansion. Which leads us back to the owners' preferences, which are all that matter.

 

I thought they were both pretty well balanced. I would never describe Pliny as "hop harshness."

 

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by this? I admittedly don't know much about RR being in Illinois

 

they didnt get rid of seating for merchandise area, that was the stage. Please get facts straight and dont spread misinformation because you were upset. The time you visit really matters, dont expect to show up at any popular place during peak hours and not wait

 

Exactly what I was thinking while reading that.

Apparently this is super serious business! Especially aboard the hype train! Maybe they should just make an all black label for their beer without the name on it. That way the only people who buy it are the ones in the know! And they can flash their super limited, collectible RR certified drinker IDs to each other!

 

Well played, sir.

 

Is RR the future of craft brewing? I would say it's very much part of the establishment now. As much as some of us might like to thing places like RR are hip or edgy they have actually been doing this for a long time and are consistently excellent at what they do. If you want something uncrowded and new then go looking for the new microbrewery that recently opened and may not have perfected the craft part yet but have potential. Then, when they hit it big you can say "I've been going there since they started".

 

if you are going to make a special trip of it, go on a weekday after lunch hours and before rush hour. i assure the world will not be there and you will be treated like a king/queen, or whatever.

 

It's unfortunate that when they make decisions they don't think first and foremost about you and your well being.

 

A more genius post I have not seen on this website sir.

 

I don't understand this comment. If New Glarus makes "...way more beer than Wisconsinites can even drink..." but they haven't expanded their distribution beyond their home state, what happens to the rest of the beer?

 

The word "hype" gets severely abused on here.

 

Good parallel, and just as RR does when ignored, the folks on here can walk away from the business that doesn't listen to them. Seems only fair.

 

As it does when some folks tell RR how to run their own business.

 

Where did you get this idea?

 

I just wish i could get my hands on more of their "less popular beers" like their wild ales and sours. I was at the Beer camp festival in philly last summer and the line for russian river was criminally ridiculous. Everyone was in line to try pliny, meanwhile, nobody was touching the supplication.