It seems Surly is adopting an old tried and true marketing approach. I noticed it first last year with "the official beer of Minnesota United". Now, the official beer of 1st Avenue. This is a comment about marketing, not the beer itself. FWIW, Rising North is really good, IMO. I am unlikely to clamor after the 1st Ave beer, since it is apparently a session blonde ale. Despite calling these "collaborations", they seem to me to be little different from thousands of product sponsorship marketing deals for other "official" products. The NFL, for example, had nearly 3 dozen of these a few years ago (the latest list I could readily find) including everything from Anheuser-Busch to Zebra Technologies. Does this signal a shift in craft beer marketing toward traditional brand advertising?
