“We’re not new. We’re not small. We’re not young. And that makes the story less interesting to a lot of people. It’s the way of the world. That’s a challenge for the craft beer breweries of our generation. There’s a lot of pressure to constantly be reinventing yourself for new generations.”
– Steve Hindy, co-founder of Brooklyn Brewery
Hindy is a really smart guy. If you are silly enough to think you want to open a brewery the book he and co-founder Tom Potter wrote about their experiences, Beer School: Bottling Success at the Brooklyn Brewery, is essential reading.
Links take me to dozens of stories a day that I don’t finish. I read the Nona Brooklyn interview with Hindy to the end.
Sure it’s a business story, but with lots of sensible thinking about how an enterprise can still be local even after it’s no longer small. And how a brewery can still offer customers experiences that are new after not everything is new; beers for the generation that made it a going concern and for the generation that will keep it in business.
I think this speaks to the sudden appeal of the nano. At a glance it’s easy to see all of the parts. It’s human scale.
If you can’t capture the brewery in a single snapshot, it’s difficult to tell if you’re taking a picture of New Belgium or Stone or AB or Coors.
Our largest brewery in the state is a 40BBL brewhouse and they are moving production to a new facility. They have already been accused of being “too big”. I’m guessing that Brooklyn is 4 times the size.
I really like Brooklyn stuff, but I do have to say I think that the brewery has pulled it punches a bit. Whereas Brooklyn used to be at the forefront of craft brewing, I think breweries like Dogfish Head and Pretty Things have surpassed Brooklyn in avante garde or cutting edge product. Cars, clothes, architecture, even food changes with each generation—that’s how progress is made. Beer, is beer, is beer, so brewers constantly have to be creative, to offer something new. Hindy is exactly right that reinventing yourself for new generations is difficult—in any industry, not just brewing. I’m just not sure Brooklyn has done the best job in doing that.
olllllo – Boulevard managed to get past 100,000 barrels on a 35-barrel system.
Craig, I could not disagree with you more. What the vast majority look for in a beer is quality, not novelty. Yes, there are some people who do look for novelty. However, what I suspect are the two most popular types of beer in the US (IPA and stout) have both been around for over 200 years. So, not exactly new.
The examples you gave (cars, clothes, etc.) are more a matter of fashion. In fact, the idea of a model year was invented by a former president of GM. The concept is called Sloanism and was named after him. IOW, companies change every year not because of important breakthroughs, but because it helps them sell more product.
It is interesting that you criticise Brooklyn for not “reinventing” itself, yet, among small breweries, they must be among the more successful.
And, I would note, they also do not produce the currently fashionable “extreme” beers.
“And, I would note, they also do not produce the currently fashionable “extreme” beers.”
Well… they do have quite a few beers 8% and over — far over. Even their Weizen that’s brewed in partnership with Schneider is 8.5 ABV.
But to say that Brooklyn is bad because it’s not Dogfish Head, as Craig alludes, is off the mark. I can’t subscribe to progress being defined only by being “cutting edge.”
If there was no other beer in the world to drink other than Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, I’d be content. That’s not the case, and I’m still content.
Steve, you may well have a point, but to me (and perhaps I’m in the minority here), “extreme beer” is very unbalanced beer – very hoppy or very sweet – or beer containing wild and crazy flavours.
I would, however, agree with you that beers over, say 16 percent alcohol could also be called extreme.
I believe that same word would also apply to their market share (in a negative sense), which could then be translated into profitability. I guess the brewers that make them do their market research on Ratebeeradvocate.
Mike, the two most popular types of beer in the US are pale adjunct lager and pale adjunct light lager. If that’s actually one type of beer, then maybe wheat beer is the second most popular type.
Wait a minute, I’m not alluding that Brooklyn beer is bad. I like Brooklyn Beer. I just feel that they may be resting on their laurels. The products that they make good—especially the Locals, and their Brown Ale are some one of my favorite beers. Hindy’s point, however, is that it’s very hard to reinvent yourself. I don’t think Brooklyn has reinvented themselves at all. Occasionally brewing an unusual or rare style, isn’t a reinvention.
Bill, you are of course, quite correct. I was referring only to the micro-brewery segment of the industry, not the general field. My mistake that I did not specify what I was referring to.
And Mike, GM was successful—for decades—and then they weren’t. It took the threat of the collapse of the American car industry and a governmental bailout to get them to reinvent themselves. I used to work for a guy who’s mantra for constantly bettering your business was “If it’s not broke, break it.”
According to the latest numbers from Symphony IRI, the best selling “styles” among “craft beers” are (disregarding the blanket “seasonal”) IPA, Pale Ale and Amber Ale. Of course those numbers do not include Blue Moon White, which would move wheat beer well up the ladder (perhaps to the top).
The “Nona Brooklyn” article is the first I’ve heard of Brooklyn still thinking of another brewery, tho’ the quote is a bit vague: “We’re only now getting to the point where we’re probably ready to build our own big brewery north of the city.” Does “probably ready” mean they’re doing it or even considering it?
The last few years Brooklyn Brewery’s been in the news frequently, looking for a site for expansion in the borough, NIMBY problems, then getting a state grant for expansion of the current site, etc. It was curious when the expansion was announced and begun that the stated future capacity was quoted as being 50k (Brooklyn’s own blog entry Oct. ’09) up to 120k bbl. in a PR release about the grant (yet another blog article claimed capacity would triple) – but even that highest 120,000 bbl. figure would still mean they’d max it out almost immediately given their current (2010) sales of 108,000 bbl and probably still need to depend on F. X. Matt. AFAIK, they still don’t have a standard 12 oz. bottle line in Brooklyn (only the 750ml. cork/caged line).
Craig, there are clearly many people who buy cars and clothes for fashion reasons. Sloan, obviously, created that concept for cars. What I don’t get is why you think that people will buy beer for the same reason they will buy a car (i.e., fashion).
Personally, I would never want to be involved in a business built on fashion for the simple reason that what’s fashionable one year becomes unfashionable the next.
Stan—Sorry to hijack the blog on this! Why does it seem like I’m always in some “lone wolf” discussion on you blog?!
Mike—I have to disagree with your idea that breweries don’t follow trends. Those trends may be longer lived than runway fashions or model years for cars, but there are beer styles that are and have been more fashionable than others from one time period to the next—Porter, Burton and more recently Black IPA are examples of those.
That, however, is not my point. Reinvention is a creativity issue, not a trend or fashion issue. Hindy fully admits to this in the Nona article:
“We had wanted to get into more creative brewing from the very beginning, but ended up being somewhat of a struggle getting to the point where we could.
It all went back to the fact that we got into the beer distributing business. We got into distributing out of necessity – not necessarily because we wanted to.”
We got so occupied with running the distributorship that we couldn’t really find a way to develop the more creative, specialty brewing part of the business.
All of this “reinvention” talk seems to come from:
A) The heat they took from the amount of contract brewing they do outside Brooklyn. Hindy answered this by an expansion of the Williamburg facility. Not quite a reinvention, more of an expansion.
B) Six Point popped up seven or eight years ago and, slowly has started to steal the “Brooklyn’s local brewery” limelight.
Brooklyn beer is great, they just don’t happen to be the most innovative and creative brewery on the block. They seem to have little spurts of creativity here and there, just not across the board. They’ve never seemed to have been able to strike that balance between creativity and business savy. It’s the classic left brain/right brain scenario. They can still make good beer, but that imbalance seems to hold them back a bit.