beers of conviction

As part of the run up to the Great American Beer Festival Denver’s Westword features the relatively new Cheeky Monk Belgian Beer Cafe. Co-owner James Pachorek comes across a little, well, cheeky.

One particular paragraph got me thinking.

In fact, Pachorek was amazed at how quickly craft brewers had been able to make beers that were as good as or better than what the Belgians have been doing for generations.

Given that each year at GABF I end up with less time for blogging than I expect a “question of the day” might be a bit much, but I’ll aim for that . . . and maybe settle for a “question of the festival.”

Wish me luck, since question No. 1 for brewers will be: Do you brew beers that are as good at or better than what the Belgians have been doing for generations? Make that: Do you brew beers that are as good at or better than the Europeans have for generations?

If you followed Ray Daniels’ tweets earlier today you know that a presentation by Symphony IRI to members of the Brewers Association confirmed that “craft beer” sales are kicking butt, that mainstream beer sales are in the dumps and that IPAs seem destined to rule the world.

You also know that Blue Moon Belgian White Ale from MillerCoors and AB InBev’s Shock Top Belgian White grew 27 percent and 34 percent respectively (Shock Top off a much smaller base). But because the numbers fly by rather fast during a 55-slide, one-hour presentation some things take a while to sink in. Like that Stella Artois outsells Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, but not Blue Moon Belgian White.

Since I seem to be in numbers mode these days I assembled a chart that mashes up the top 15 selling craft (IRI does not include Blue Moon in that group, but does include beers from the Craft Brewers Alliance although those aren’t craft beers according to the BA definition), super premium and imported beers. These are all beers consumers pay more for.

The IRI figures are based on scans at grocery stores, drug stores, convenience stores, some liquor stores and a few other locations. Signature IRI does not capture every sale, or include draft sales, but more than enough to paint an accurate picture. They are for the first six months of 2010, and — just for fun — compared to the first six months of 2006. Sales are in millions of dollars.

*** Bud Light Lime did not exist in 2006. Stella Artois was not among the top 15 selling imports (No. 15 on the list sold $12 million).

A couple of other notes: New Belgium Fat Tire sales are up more than 14 percent to $18.2 million (compared to $11.4 million for the first six months of 2006. Michelob Amber Bock outsold Blue Moon White in 2006 ($15 million to $14.1), and now it outsells Shock Top ($9.9 million to $8.5 million).

I was tempted to type the headline, add (eom) and see what happened . . .

I understand the concept of nano brewery (or nanobrewery). But if we are going to have a rule about when a brewery is too big to be called micro shouldn’t there be one for nano?

I ask because the Green Dragon in Portland, Ore., is sponsoring its second Nano Beer Festival next week — “25+ nano breweries and food from Portland’s food cart scene.” Referred to as Nano Food Carts (a nice touch) on this poster.

If you give the poster a good look you’ll notice Upright among the breweries. We visited Upright last year and there’s a 10-barrel brewhouse at the heart of that system. The guys at Berkshire Brewing in Massachusetts cranked out 6,000 barrels one year on their seven-barrel system. Granted, they had to be crazy, and microbrewery has been defined on the basis of production rather than size of each batch, but nano generally refers to something very, or even extremely, small.

A nanosecond is a billionth of a second. Feel free to check my math (because it is probably wrong), but the amounts get too small if we try this with billionths. Start with a 700-barrel brewhouse — mega breweries make even bigger batches but consider of the Anheuser-Busch plant outside of Fort Collins, Colo., which is gigantic. Divide 700 by 1,000,000, then multiply by 31 (that’s how many gallons are in a barrel). Multiply that by 128 (ounces in gallon) and we’re at a batch size of less than 3 ounces. That’s a millionth of 700 barrels. Divide that by 1,000 for a billionth.

Screw it. Let’s just call them breweries. Much more concise.

So MillerCoors has launched a separate company to manage its portfolio of (existential warning) craft beers and imports, calling it “Tenth and Blake Beer Company.”

Is this different than what America’s megabreweries breweries tried in the mid 1990s? On the surface, but maybe not that different. Will Tenth & Blake prove more successful? We’d be guessing, wouldn’t we? Before you do, consider a bit of history.

1995. “We are behind the curve, no question about it. We need to learn about specialty beer,” Scott Barnum, then general manager of Miller American Specialty Craft Beer Co., told All About Beer magazine. That’s the year that Miller bought a stake in the Celis Brewery and Shipyard Brewing. Leinenkugel and Miller Reserve were the other key brands in the ASCBC portfolio. “We have people in here helping us train our palates and our noses, working with our sensory development. We listen to guys tell us how they built their microbrewing businesses, about investment, capital. We talk to entrepreneurs. We are immersing ourselves in this world.”

Anheuser-Busch formed what it called the Specialty Group of Anheuser-Busch. “We are trying to think differently,” said Jeff Jones, who was senior product manager for the group. “That’s the whole thought process of the specialty beer business. I do have a passion for beer. We have to think differently from a large brewer, and that was the purpose for separating out our group.”

Coors established its own specialty group, Unibev, much earlier than the others, and in 1995 its star was Killian’s. The year before bock, Oktoberfest and wheat beers all flunked various trials. However, Unibev managing director Tex McCarthy said that a new brand, Blue Moon, wouldn’t carry the Coors name. “We want them to be disassociated from the Coors family. . . . If people see a major brewer’s name on a micro it loses some of the cachet that makes the beer interesting to begin with.”

You know the rest. It didn’t happen over night and it didn’t happen because Coors threw a bunch of advertising money behind the brand but Blue Moon Belgian White became the best selling wheat beer in America ever.

1997. Miller remained focused on working with regional partners rather than brewing specialty beers (the Reserve line had been axed by then). “We’ve said before that this is a regional business,” Barnum said. “More and more, you will see people contracting, narrowing their focus.”

That didn’t exactly work out. Miller ended up buying out Pierre Celis and his family and by 2000 had closed the Celis Brewery. Miller sold its stake in Shipyard back to Alan Pugsley and Fred Forsley and that company has thrived.

Forsley explained what happened a few years after he and Pugsley regained full control of their brewery: “I think initially the plan was well conceived, where Miller was focusing on portfolio selling. The whole Miller network was designed so their sales force could come in and sell their whole portfolio of beer. American Specialty Craft Beer had a relationship on the sales side with Molson, the imports, Asahi, and so on. That way a salesman was responsible not only for Shipyard but Molson. They had a variety of resources to pull from. When it changed from being a portfolio sale to a priority sale, as acknowledged by everybody in the organization, the goal became to make Miller’s main brands their focus. That really caused major problems for us. Up until then the sales efforts were working very well.”

A press release from MillerCoors indicates Tenth & Blake “will own the strategic business drivers — marketing, trade marketing and an independent sales organization dedicated to the craft and imports business.” That’s the something different. But it’s not all it takes.

“We didn’t really fit into the Coors distribution system until about five years ago,” Keith Villa, who wrote the recipe for Blue Moon White, said last year when I visited Coors while doing the research for Brewing with Wheat. A sales force is not what made that beer. Many readers here feel obliged to beat up on Blue Moon White, and yes it has became hip, a badge even. But Villa put a beer in the glass that drinkers who are willing to pay more want to drink.

Fifteen years, and more, after the people working at the nation’s largest breweries said they were ready to think like smaller breweries how many successes similar to Blue Moon can you point to? Maybe it’s not a matter of training. Maybe it’s company DNA.

The bathrooms at Sam’s Tap Room and Kitchen, which is the tap room for Red Lodge Ales Brewing Co. in the Montana town of Red Lodge, has glass holders like this one in both the men’s and women’s bathrooms.

The holders — set beside the toilets, the urinals and the sink — hold both large and small glasses. I don’t usually carry my glass with me into the bathroom, but it appears some people do.

Red Lodge Ales has the largest solar thermal array in the state of Montana up on the roof. That warms water to heat the brewery in winter (radiant floors) provides warm process water in the summer. The beer garden faces the mountains and hops plants decorate the garden walls (in season).

Did I mention the sampler trays are cool? They are. None of these delightful amenities would matter, of course, if the beer weren’t pretty damn good. It is.