The Fight for Independents

I believe the co-opting has been by the folks that have turned the word craft into a marketing term rather than a descriptive one. Opening a small brewery doesn't make you a craftsman anymore than buying a Blodget oven and renting some space makes you a master baker. Breweries are established to make money, not to benefit mankind, and size or independence doesn't bestow a higher moral ground.

I'm not chagrined in the least.

 

I don't mind the use of the word craft as a marketing term by the macro breweries because I know better, but if an alternative is favored my most people, then why not look at the wine and liquor industries? The only descriptive categories that I can think of that are used by the wine industry are 'big' and 'small'. Distillers now have 'micro'-distilleries, 'micro' being a word that is still also acceptable for use by our craft beer industry. So how about if we use 'small' or give more emphasis to 'micro' to describe breweries that produce the beers that we like?

 

Beer

 

Not sure why we ever gave up on "micro". Let's go back to it.

 

I understand the desire to cheer for the little guy, feel that urge myself, yet sometimes I have to ask what am I cheering for? We have a local brewery (local as I define it, meaning within driving range) who make a pub sort of ale that is indistinguishable from Yuengling as per a recent blind tasting at my place. I've met these chaps and yes, they are bearded, tattooed and wear flannel shirts. They are also '''committed and passionate" about their work. That doesn't make their beer taste any better though. Snazzy labeled, cutesy named stuff, $9.99 for a six of 12 ounce bottles, what they are committed to is separating me from my money.

Dick Yuengling and his family provide me with an equally good tasting, reliable, consistent brew for $4.99 a six of 16 ounce cans. So I have to ask, who is looking out for me as a consumer?

 

Dumb. It doesn't matter. It only matters to people who buy based on buzz words. "Local", "Craft" "Artisinal","Independent"...go fuck yourselves.

Craft beer is one of the only businesses that try to market themselves based on what they are NOT.

It is sad as hell.

 

The sooner we stop distinguishing "craft vs non-craft" the better. It's just beer.

I prefer porters and stouts to mass produced adjunct lagers, but that doesn't make me better than someone who prefers the opposite.

A lot of people automatically look at BMC as the "bad guys" but its all pretty silly and childish to me.

 

No need to trademark the words "fine beer". Just need to start using them. I have.

 

I can't get exercised over labels; beer is beer...one of the many wonderful things to enjoy, while we can...so go enjoy!

 

Please forgive this rambling post.

The ownership landscape is definitely changing, and the attempt to draw a different bounding box to differentiate with the term "indie beer" (as brought up in the article) is an interesting spin. People are trying to grapple with the fact that some things that they once valued are eroding. Some care about tags like this, some don't. For those that use them, all labels fall into the same traps. Ultimately, if the landscape changes in such a way that "indie" becomes more relevant or accurate than "craft," then it will still end up mattering even less because that landscape will have less meaningful differentiation anyway.

Personally, I'm basically a "it's all just beer" thinker. The other day I did a blind tasting that included a Goose Island beer, a German lager, an AAL, and something that I guess I can call an American "indie beer." The differentiation works in that context because everyone here can gather some meaning from this, but it's ultimately irrelevant since none of the above factored into my thinking. It was just an inclusive beer tasting. It took me a very long time to even type the word "craft" on these forums, but I found it starting to creep into my posts over the years because despite my initial distaste for it, it does actually communicate something even if imperfectly.

I was in the supermarket the other day, and I couldn't help but overhear a family in the beer isle. Their conversation went like this: "Let's get beer" "What are all these weird beers?" "I just want a beer" "Dogf... Dogfis... DogFISH what?" "Dogfish HEAD?" "What?!"... at which point the father joined them and the daughter asked, "What are all these beers?" and the father replied, "Oh, these are all those crazy IPA beers."

So to them, the category was "IPA beer." I'll leave it up to you guys to decide how accurate that label is.

If any label sticks, it needs to happen organically and across a range of people.

@otispdriftwood , it seems like you were more interested in reactions to your trademark idea. I'll throw in my two cents even though I'm not a fan of the differentiation mentality. I can't see that working. The tag would be across brands and revoked upon a change of ownership status. I could actually see the Brewer's Association granting a seal to brands that meet their criteria... like Trappist... but I don't think many people would actually want to see politics and conditions like this getting even bigger.

Regarding "independence," check out the end of this podcast with Victory's Bill Covaleski (at 49 minutes in) when the interviewers ask him about independence and Bill talks about "alliances." According to the page, the Southern Tier announcement happened the next day.
http://heritageradionetwork.org/podcast/victory-brewing-companys-20th-anniversary/

Honestly, I have more issue with the term in the thread title: "our" beer. There's no us and them. Who is this "our?" "My beer" is the stuff in my basement.

 

I believe I'll take that advice.

 

I'm betting you already have.

 

On any day that ends with a y.

 

Trademark what? AFAIK you can't trademark a region or process or descriptor.

@Sweatshirt has a point

I think Maker's Mark new slogan is "It is what it is not". Identifying oneself by what s/he is not is nothing new. Quite often we find the one thing that makes someone else different (one bad thing) and focus on that and say, "see, I'm not like that guy. Good for me!"

IMHO the Brewers Association focused too much on that when applying a definition to craft beer. They focused on the bad stuff of macro instead of the good stuff of micro. To me, one of the bad things of macro is the loss of personal interaction. In craft/micro, you have a reasonable chance of meeting the brewer, or at least seeing her/him working in the back. Maybe to me it indicates that the process is real, that it takes human power to make. But you can't trademark that.

 

We are pretty much in agreement here. It's perfectly normal for someone to point at the competition and say, "See, I'm not like that guy, I have X." So the definition of flavorful beer by what it is not may have helped differentiate in the beginning but now that the "war" is being fought on a more equal footing it's time to "accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative" and stop worrying about "Mr. In-between" so much. Building a program of support and learning opportunities for new brewers is much more strengthening to the whole than simply pointing fingers at those who brew poor beer or beers we may not like.

 

They also seem to have avoided clearly pointing the finger at distributors for the pay to play, claiming taphandles and shelves, anti-competitive legislation, sort of thing in order to further paint the big brewers as the one-and-only boogieman. I suppose they figured that those distributors were necessary to their business as a whole, so best not to piss them off too much. In the beginning, at least. Lately there is more of a move to reform franchise laws; hopefully there is enough clout in the industry to get it done.

 

Sorry for cherry picking your post. The big guys already use "differentiation mentality" to market their stuff. Look at the current Bud ads with the big burgers, and their point is that Bud is the beer you want, because it's sizeable enough to last through that burger. Unlike some teensy little 10oz pour of a fruity sour or a coffee stout. They are working to remind their core base that they are different than us. So, I see no reason not to differentiate ourselves from them either. BTW, I like your idea for a "seal", like the Trappist logo. Certified Micro or whatever.

 

Once upon a time I would have been in favor of saying 'Independent Brewers' instead of 'craft', but the relatively recent upheaval of the ownership issue as these brewers grow seems to have ended the opportunity to use that word.

At least 'independent' would have included our older legacy brewers like Yuengling, Straub, Schell, etc. from the beginning.

Unfortunately the conspicuous mythmaking of the BA in terms of 'craft' has resulted in a newer generation of really myopic beer drinkers who don't really look beyond a few certain styles and sizes of brewers; they are missing out on the big picture.

 

And yet, funnily enough, right now the major car manufacturers are fighting to hold on to, and even strengthen, their franchise laws, to keep Tesla from having Independent Dealeships. Life is often humorous.