musing

An interesting exchange of comments at the Portland Beer Blog regarding the Widmer-Redhook merger. Summarizing the two views:

One side: “The ruin of the American Beer revolution may be paved by over sizing, takeovers and greed.”

The other: (From Vasilios Gletsos of BJ’s Brewery) “I feel this is a short cut to thinking, and promotes a mythical narrative to the history and growth of the beer industry . . .” You really need to read it all.

The debate about if size matters (no, not like the e-mails you have sitting in your spam folder) ain’t going away. See Small, the New Big – and beer, a post from 20 months ago that quotes from a debate from 10 years before, one that had already been going on for 10 years.

Phil Markowski addressed the issue last week while talking about the decision by Southampton Bottling to strike an alliance with Pabst Brewing. As a result he will direct brewing of some of his brands at the Lion Brewery. “It’s less romantic, but the perception that you can’t make good beer on a large scale is wrong,” he said.

In my head I’m a journalist and I know he is right. Those New Belgium Brewing conditioning tanks pictured above hold 2,100 hectoliters (more than 55,000 gallons each), and New Belgium has grown to be bigger than the Lion. The primary fermentation tanks at Duvel Moortgat in Belgium hold 1,000 hectoliters each. I have Duvel in my beer fridge.

In my heart I’m enough of a beer romantic to make Journalist Stan nervous.

My interest in the role of place in a beer; the how and the why; the ingredients and process . . . is, on the one hand, basic curiosity &#151 and desire to find a story you won’t fall asleep to before I finish. On the other hand, these things represent emotional attachment to an idea of artisanship that many, maybe even me, relate to production size.

If you’re still with me give this, The artisanal movement, and 10 things that define it, a read. Lost Abbey brewmaster Tomme Arthur, whose batches are basically small and smaller, passed it along a while ago and I think it helps to frame this conversation.

Each item on the list might be worth a blog post, but for now I’m claiming the first: A preference for things that are human scale.

Scroll back to the picture above. It’s from 2000, the year New Belgium installed the 2,100 hecto tanks and had its first four 60 hecto wood vats (“foedres”) delivered. Shortly thereafter the brewery acquired six 130 hecto foedres. Now six more are on the way. The tanks mostly yield La Foile, but also a variety of other even-harder-to-find wild beers. As impressive as the brewery’s tank farm will be with the new additions, its wood capacity still won’t equal one of those big tanks on top.

I’d call La Foile production human scale.

The outdoor area where those four foedres sat a few days while they were “swelled” (filled with water) long ago was encompassed by one of many brewery expansions.

New Belgium Brewing has grown into a big place, and a busy place. It wouldn’t be accurate to have described it as a ghost brewery last June on the weekend Widespread Panic was playing at nearby Red Rocks, but it sure was less crowded. It happens every year; Panic comes to Red Rocks and everybody wants off.

Eric Salazar does his best to accommodate them. Salazar and his wife, Lauren, manage the NBB barrel program, but that’s only part of their jobs. She oversees quality control and he works in the brewhouse, including production and scheduling logistics. He didn’t even pretend to complain a few days after the concert when he talked about the juggling involved.

“Maybe there’s going to come a time we can’t do this,” he said, “but I hope not.”

Makes you think that big and human scale don’t have to be exclusive.

Think homebrewing is difficult? Here’s a recipe for Cottage Beer:

“Good wheat bran 1 peck, water 10 gallons, hops 3 handfuls, molasses 2 quarts, yeast 2 tablespoonfuls; boil the bran and the hops in the water until both bran and hops sink to the bottom; then strain through a sieve, and when lukewarm put in the molasses and stir until assimilated; put in a cask and add the yeast; when fermentation ceases bung, and it is ready in 4 days. This is an excellent beer.”

Doesn’t look too hard, although I’m not vouching for the end result. The recipe comes from a book called Lee’s Priceless Recipes, which included “300 secrets from the home, farm, laboratory, workshop and every department of human endeavor.”

The book was published in 1912, and I expect that all the pages in Beverages section were stamped “NOT LEGAL TO MAKE” when Prohibition came into full force in 1919.

Not sure why Corn Coffee would have been illegal, other than it sounds disgusting. Cherry Cordial, Egg Wine and Peruvian Bitters I can understand.

As you can tell by the Cottage Beer recipe, most of these were kitchen-size batches. But the one for Home-Brewed Ale? That takes 8 bushels of malt, 12 pounds of hops and 5 quarts of yeast. It calls for straining the cooled wort through a flannel bag into a fermenting tub.

My point? That ingredients grown and processed specifically to use in beer make better beer. And better ingredients make it better still.

You can read more that you’d ever want about this commercial and the return of “Beer Wars” just about anywhere.

So I won’t comment.

But in case you missed it, AdvertisingAge reported this little gem:

According to attendees of a wholesalers’ meeting in Dallas today, A-B execs showed their sales force Miller’s ad – with a new ending.

In Lite’s version, the Dalmatian cruises off happily into the sunset in his new brand wheels; Bud’s version shows the Dalmatian defecating on a case of Miller Lite. Sadly, as it was intended for internal use only, none of us will ever see the spoof spot.

If you find out it’s made its way into public — and how can it not end up on YouTube? — be sure to let the rest of us know.

Might one of the side effects of higher beer prices turn out to be counterfeit bottles?

It’s hard to imagine problems similar to those plaguing wine, as outlined at Slate, in the a very long story in The New Yorker, and at Wine Spectator. Even Sammy Hagar is worried about it.

But consider this lengthy conversation about fake barrel-aged bottles of AleSmith beers last week at Rate Beer. In this case we are talking about beer that changed hands in a trade and within a passionate community that has ways to police itself.

But what about when bottles of Stone Epic Vertical come up on eBay? This current auction is offering one bottle each from the first seven releases with a starting bid of $999.99.

Or when somebody buys a bottle of Firestone 10 (Firestone’s anniversary beer released last year for $9.99) for $300?

It might not even be vintage beer. How about bottles from the Trappist monastery Saint Sixtus (Westvleteren)?

As Stephen Beaumont observes in the link above some of the people paying silly-ass prices for these beers don’t even know what they are supposed to taste like.

Although attention in wine has focused on really expensive and collectible bottles, a newly minted website called WineAuthentication.com points out the problem includes more reasonably (this is a relative term) priced wines.

Even though by wine standards all beer is reasonably priced that doesn’t make it immune to the problem.

Can beer be a luxury and a blue collar product?

The rather lengthy discussion — and you thought I wasn’t capable of understatement — Alan provoked by arguing craft beer prices are not too low goes to one of the reasons this blog exists. That’s explained in the mission statement, one of the regularly appearing categories here is “What should you pay?” and there’s a link on the right to a story asking the same question.

The article was written in 2005 for All About Beer magazine, a consumer publication. It drew from a story written a year earlier for New Brewer, the trade publication for Brewers Association members. Although Alan began the discussion from the viewpoint of a consumer plenty of business related chatter quickly followed — including contributions from brewers Eric Wallace and Tomme Arthur — so indulge me as I offer something written basically for the trade. I hope it is relevant to the ongoing discussion.

These are excerpts, and may abruptly jump from one point to another, but it beats slogging through the whole article.

The concept of “trading up” received much attention this year, from Fast Company to BusinessWeek after publication of Trading Up: The New American Luxury by Michael Silverstein and Neil Fiske.

Trading Up is based on the contributions of many members of The Boston Consulting Group, where Silverstein is vice president. The book includes the findings of both quantitative and qualitative research, and offers analysis of 23 categories, including autos, home goods, food, wine and spirits, sports equipment, pet food, and lingerie; interviews with New Luxury leaders; a consumer survey and dozens of one-on-one interviews; and a literature review of more than 800 books, articles, and other materials.

Among the companies profiled is Boston Beer.

Reviews of the book are often paired it with Living It Up: Our Love Affair with Luxury by James B. Twichell. Twichell writes, “. . . one can make the argument that until all necessities are had by all members of a community, no one should have luxury. More complex still is that, since the 1980s, the bulk consumers of luxury have not been the wealthy but the middle class, your next-door neighbors and their kids.”

. . . one of the premises of Trading Up is that consumer spending is polarizing. In order to trade up in a category she really cares about, an avid cyclists might save money by trading down in some that don’t matter to her – like her brand of toothpaste or beer.

Trading up isn’t about simply moving from beer that costs $2.99 a six-pack to $7.99 craft beer.

“The competition . . . includes all mood elevators,” Silverstein said. “Quality vodka substitutes for better beer more than it does for Bud. The beer companies need to deliver innovation on taste, nutrition, health, energy, and celebration.”

In 1985, Philadelelphia Inquirer food editor Gerry Etter wrote, “Today, beer is invited everywhere. It hobnobs with vintage wines and attends formal parties, it slides effervescently into crystal glasses held by long-gowned hostesses.”

This caused another writer for the Inquirer to counter, “I’ve never hobnobbed in my life (and if I did, it was only once and with a consulting adult), and I don’t intend to start now. One doesn’t hobnob while drinking beer, one shoots the bull.”

. . . according to the authors of Trading Up, there “are no typical New Luxury spenders.”

The book introduces the concept of “rocketing.” BCG research found that almost everyone (96 percent) will pay more for at least one type of product that is of importance to them and almost 70 percent identified as many as 10 categories in which they will “rocket” – that is spend a disproportionate amount of their income.

Charging more doesn’t make a product a New Luxury. They write that to be New Luxury, a product must connect with consumers on three levels:

– There must be technical differences in design, technology or both.

– Those technical differences must contribute to superior functional performance. It really has to be better.

– Technical and functional benefits must engage the consumer emotionally.

Interuption for comment.

You may not be comfortable with seeing “technical” and “technology” used so often, so just focus on this: It really has to be better.

Resume excerpts.

“It was a reminder that the product has to be truly superior and good on its own,” (Boston Beer founder Jim) Koch said, later adding, “We’re not trying to make a pet rock of beer, but new styles that are cherished 100 years from now.”

Silverstein returns often to the topic of quality. “The beer category is crowded with a lot of wannabe’s. Both big and small. It is an industry filled with bravado and claims,” he said. “Most are not very well developed and researched. The best example is low carb beer.”

Koch cites the book when he says, “It can’t just be a marketing gimmick. It has to be rooted in product difference. Typically, it’s not just better, but uniquely so.”

. . . “At the end of the day, we all have to add something, variety or quality, to give people a reason to buy our beer,” he said. “For instance, Sam (Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head Brewery). He wasn’t among the first (microbrewers) but he’s added stuff, a whole new set of products.”

And one last excerpt that goes to the passion reflected in A Good Beer Blog.

New Luxury products are not aimed at an “average” consumer or “general” anything. They are meant for a well-defined group of core consumers with strong needs and interests.

In targeting customers, brewers must remember that. “Rocketers care about the product. They are knowledgeable,” Silverstein said. “They have been in the category for some time. They have an interest in learning. They drink on premises and want to tell their friends. They are sharers by nature.”