Social media and craft beer

Yes. It has been noted.

One example for effects, Westvleteren 12 was virtually unknown before sites like this one came along.

In fact some of the choices and decisions made by the owners of the site (at least this one) seem to be designed to allow new beers/breweries to rise to a higher level of visibility and faster than before to then thrive or sink back down to relative obscurity. Watch the New Beer list and the 250 list for a year or so and you may see it happen.

However one down side is that while the cream may to the top, sometimes the "scum" does as well. So the public hand isn't alway a good thing. Fickleness and misinformation spread just as rapidly and may never be corrected. So educated consumer judgement is still critical. Some breweries know this and don't put a lot of weight on sites like this because there is also, for them, a depressing lack of constructive commentary.

 

Shouldn’t the title be: Social media and beer? Just kidding.

It is not just beer companies that are ‘watching’ sites like Beer Advocate but other folks from the beer industry. I had an e-mail exchange with a ‘high up’ person of the Brewers Association on a ‘hot topic’ being discussed on Beer Advocate and he volunteered that he was following the thread.

Yup, there is definitely interest by beer industry folks on what is occurring on beer social media sites.

Cheers!

 

I know that the Texas craft breweries near me see what I say on untapped. When I have something nice to say, they give me a *cheers.

 

I don't know about who or what got posted where, but I am certain that social media has an impact on craft beer.

Social media has an impact on anything that comes up in social media.

 

I think the success a craft brewery has is directly proportional to how well it uses social media. Same thing for bottle shops, too. If you don't embrace it/depend on word-of-mouth, I don't think the brewery can be successful.