Nationally, one of the most successful companies was Pete's Wicked, which from shortly after its founding until the "great shakeout" of the late 90s was the country's second largest craft brewery.
It's sort of wild to imagine, but the flagship brand was Wicked Ale, a brown. I was put in mind of this as I perused this question of "foundational" beers. Back in about 1995, you could have been forgiven for thinking that the future of craft brewing was going to be brown ales and Vienna lagers. Instead, earlier this year, Jay Brooks broke the news that the brand would end production in May. Gambrinus (of the Shiner, BridgePort, Trumer Gambrinuses) bought Pete's out in 1998, just at the moment its star began to dim.The story of Pete's is an interesting case study in brewing failures of the 90s, but it's too often told as a business story. What fascinates me is the failure of the style to take hold. In that great land grab, founder Pete Slosberg went all-in on browns, and for a decade it looked like Shangri-la. But then something happened; tastes changed, the market evolved, and now you can't give browns away. So what happened?
In my "foundational beer" post, I posited that one beer's success can help define tastes that create a market for beers of that type. Whether that's true or not, it's obvious some styles do gather momentum, while others lose it--sometimes completely. I posit no theories here, but I'd be interested in hearing if you have some. Such as:
- In the 1990s, lots and lots of people drank and enjoyed brown ales. What happened?
- What causes styles to wax and wane in popularity?
- Are there current styles that sell very well that we may regard, from 2025, as bizarre anomalies, like the browns of 1995?
It was all over the place while growing up on the East coast. Back then with such few choices most people probably got it just to have something different, even if it wasn't their favorite beer. Now that there are more choice they just faded away.
ReplyDeleteI think DA makes the point. What if they weren’t necessarily the shiznit to begin with? They were better than many other choices in the early 90's so they filled in the gap. But they couldn't hold up when other styles emerged and improved.
ReplyDeleteBrown ales to me were always 'average'. Better than macro but not the best. Is anyone willing to say that Downtown brown and Pete’s wicked are ‘Great’top level beers?
Browns and ambers were 'gateway beers' in the early days of microbrewing. These were the days of "bitter beer face" ads where bittering was not accepted by the general public and IPA's were still a rare style. I'm glad we got over that hump.
Interesting questions. I just visited Oregon and went to about 10 breweries (for those interested, my roundup is here: http://t.co/PKdEQU3). It seems clear that brewers are increasingly reaching for ever more-obscure styles: Gruit, Gose, Berliner Weisse.
ReplyDeleteSka Brewing in Durango made its name in the mid-90s with a red ale and a blonde ale. I'm not sure that would fly today. Now their best-selling beer is an aggressive American-style IPA.
To go out on a limb, I would say the IPA is the currently popular style that has reached its height. IPA sales may continue to grow overall as more industrial lager drinkers come to craft. But it seems like the IPA market is mature. We've gone from mellower IPAs like BridgePort to huge hop bombs. Now the thing to do is to reach for different hop flavors, like Terminal Gravity, Walking Man and others are doing. I'm not sure what's left for the IPA.
What will Oregon brewers brew when the bottom fall out of the IPA and Hoppy Beer market? :-}>
ReplyDelete@ anon: Good question. To be clear, I don't think the bottom will fall out of the IPA market. I just think the IPA is nearing the plateau of its cachet and popularity as a style.
ReplyDeleteI bet Belgian styles will continue to grow in popularity vis a vis hoppy ales. Great Divide is now bottling Colette, a saison, in six packs, an indication that they think the style's ready to go mainstream.
You also see more breweries like Upright, The Bruery in California and Funkwerks in Denver basing their business on Belgian-inspired beers.
Still, I don't expect the IPA to go anywhere. I do see it becoming merely another style, as opposed to THE style.
I know it is a question about popular styles, but what interests me is that Pete's was a "craft brewery" based entirely on contract brewing and I wonder if this wasn't a more proximate cause of their demise.
ReplyDeleteDuring my brief career as a UPS delivery person, I used to deliver to Pete's head office on High Street in Palo Alto and it was just a slick, second story corporate office, totally disconnected from the beer itself.
I was also friends with the founders of Ithaca Beer Co. in NY, which started through contract brewing but quickly leveraged their early sales into a local brewery. Once they did this the quality of the beer improved rapidly as did their ability to identify and cater to local tastes. Most importantly, it gave them a real presence in the community and a way to interact authentically with their customers.
My point is that contract brewing has the potential of taking the focus off the beer itself and on to sales. It also does not give customers something tangible to reference which is, I think, a hallmark of modern craft breweries: a personality so to speak.
DA and Mr. Murphy, it's certainly a plausible thesis.
ReplyDeleteSoggy, first of all, nice write up on the Oregon trip. As to IPA, the brown du decade, I think this is a function of the beer geek fallacy. It's only just becoming a national style, as Ranger and Torpedo take it up the charts. Geeks drink it like crazy, but as a national phenom, it's been trailing the pale-amber axis. I'd say we have a ways to go there, but:
I bet ...
This is a fascinating game and I want to play, too. My prediction is that the US evolve into country that likes hoppy all-grain American ales, akin to their British forefathers, but stronger, less estery, and way, way hoppier. I predict that in a decade or two, something like two-thirds of the craft market will be devoted to hoppy American ales, in a variety of configurations (pales, ambers, reds, IPAs, double IPAs, black IPAs, etc.). All other styles will round out the balance.
HOWEVER, I also predict that the market will be about three times its size (say 30 million of the 210 million sold), which leaves lots of room for major brand successes in other styles. Among these, I think Belgian-derived styles have a good shot at emerging. Which? Wits are already there, and I think hybrid, mid-alcohol beers, maybe spiced, may come into play. I fear saisons will never be a major player.
Patrick, I agree. It's interesting that the two most successful breweries in the 90s were both contract brewed (Pete's and Boston Brewing). Perhaps wisely, perhaps accidentally, Boston Beer chose a place name, concealing the fact that it wasn't brewed in Boston. My Boston in-laws seem typical of locals who were aware it wasn't brewed in Beantown: they hate Boston Brewing (they consider Harpoon the hometown brand). The rest of the country blindly sucked down Boston Lager, all the while thinking it was brewed next to the harbor.
Petes had a few problems, which all stem from the fact that it was a business, not a brewery. Pete just picked a product that happened to be beer, and went haywire on the marketing. The beer actually started out great -- it was a hell of a brown ale. I loved it back in the day. However, it somehow morphed into an insipid almost red ale. By the end, it wasn't even brown anymore. It became a terrible beer as it changed over time. Petes also suffered from the fact that all of their other beers were terrible. Again, that all goes back to the fact that these folks weren't brewers -- they were product marketers.
ReplyDeleteBeer geek fallacy? Ouch. I'll go hang my head in shame now.
ReplyDeleteSoggy, it's a fallacy we all subscribe to. It's the curse of sample bias. I am a serial offender.
ReplyDeleteI suppose Wicked could only be considered wicked for so long. From a marketing standpoint, Pete's put its stake in the ground early on. It set this beer apart from the rest by way of its name; I'd bet that style didn't matter as much as the name itself -- perhaps the same level of success could have been realized with a different style under the same name. The name Wicked was different. So was the brown ale behind the label. These two unique aspects worked together. But I'd also bet that more people either identified with, liked, or appreciated the term "wicked" more than they preferred the brown beer itself. Our beer choices can often be a reflection of our own personalities. Over time, Wicked was eclipsed by new craft beer that was considered "more wicked" from a consumer standpoint--presumably in a more authentic way; these new beers carried the "cool" without having to say it on their labels. As with most anything, the coolest is only the coolest until something new comes along. Wicked is no different.
ReplyDeleteAlright, I'll admit it. I like brown ales just fine, especially during colder months. Not my favorite style, but not sure why they are totally dismissed now a days.
ReplyDeleteDigressing from the thread - Boston Beer Co. have a portfolio of 21 ales and 11 lagers; nationally available. Despite utilizing contract brewer, I opine, SAM have significant contributed to the American craft beer revolution.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who grew up thinking I would never be a beer drinker, my discovery of Pete's back in the early 90's was a banner moment. Of course, this led to discovering many other fine micro-brewed ales, but Pete's still held the top spot for me. As far as why Pete's failed, I think that perhaps it was the acquisition of the brand by the Gambrinus Company, and their subsequent changing of the original formula that caused the demise, since the flavor changed dramatically after the take-over, and not for the better. But the original formula could easily still hold its own today, even if it is considered simply a brown ale. I miss Pete's Wicked Ale terribly, and I wish that someone (perhaps Mr. Slosberg again?) would bring back the classic formula.
ReplyDeleteI remember dropping many a shot glass of Black Death vodka into glasses of Pete's Wicked whilst listening to Alice in Chains.
ReplyDeleteWhatever happened to Black Death vodka?
Once I had my first Pete's Wicked Ale in 1993 I was hooked. It was an instant revelation. I told everyone I knew. It was awesomeness bottled. But after Pete sold the brewery, the awesomeness was gone. The formulas changed, and not for the better. The flavor faded. I loved the Winter Brew too and noticed the following December that it had lost that special something. If beer had a soul, I'd say that's what it lost.
ReplyDeleteAll interesting comments! I've been quietly looking for Pete's for some time only to discover today the reason I can't find it! It was once my favorite beer. Actually the summer ale was! And yes now I'm a IPA guy.
ReplyDeleteI loved Pete's and the Winter and Summer too. And it may be trendy and hip to say now "Well it wasn't this or that" but I never handed a bottle to anyone who didn't say "Hey , that's really good!"
ReplyDeleteWell, except Bud drinkers.
I had actually forgotten about this beer and was watching some movie from the late 90s with Sam Shepard and Diane Keaton and noticed someone drinking a Pete's Wicked Ale. I used to love their beers back in the late 1990s, especially the wicked winter brew. I guess for me it was sort of a transition into the craft beer movement from the early college days of drinking natty light and budweiser (ah the poor taste of youth....). At the time it was one of the few alternatives to those beers, but as other choices became available it just didn't stand out.
ReplyDeleteI remember Pete's Wicked Ale, it was pretty good. Brown ales are my favorite type of beer and IPA's are my least favorite, even though it is what is en vogue now. It does appear to be on the wane, though. St. Arnold Brown Ale changed my beer-drinking life and is still one of the best. Santa Fe Brewing makes a great brown ale. Now I am seeing more Saison-style ales, (not bad but not great in my opinion), and the Belgian styles using fruits, coriander, orange peel, etc., which I like. Several styles have "blown up" and then completely died, like the "clear beer" styles of the late 80's and the "ice" beers of the 90's. Brown ales rock, they have depth, flavor, and you can drink them in cold or hot weather.
ReplyDeleteI miss the original Pete's Wicked - I actually like Brown Ales. I have wondered what happened to this beer and it always seemed odd how a once-popular craft beer could fail when the whole movement just keeps growing. This blog was really interesting and I feel much smarter now... although I'm still thirsty for some original Pete's Wicked...
ReplyDeleteits amazing that the style changing going on Sam Adams has stayed consistent all along the probably the best imported craft beer out there now is Spatenbrau of Munich they have 4 main brews a classic larger , Oktoberfest(ur marzen) Optomator (doubleboch) and there new Dunkel style they in Germany have other styles of about 16 types and of course Frankensheiner (wheat) this brewery is 600 years old and some of the tastiest stuff out there I love American craft beers but you have to give it to Spatan being around 600 years and most of the styles out there were originally developed by this brewery over the centuries (find some and try them you wont be disappointed (unless your a bud drinker that prefers there beer to tastes like water )
ReplyDeletethe bostonian
I remember when Continental Airlines began offering Pete's in their first class cabin. As someone who flew a lot, it was such a nice change. I also remember an article in the in-flight magazine about Pete. He stated he knew he made it when he found a bottle cap on the ground. That was my introduction to mirco-brews. I miss both companies!!
ReplyDeleteI miss Petes wicked winter brew, just a great beer.
ReplyDeleteI really liked Pete's. It's true that it filled a gap, but I feel like it got "less good" over time, tasting more mass-produced. I feel like Sam Adams got "less good" too but yeah they had more variety and marketing than Pete's. I agree that Belgian-inspired beers will continue to grow in popularity. I would like to see more lagers and Altbeers (a style too neglected in my opinion) and truly good pilsners - I feel like most American pilsners are meh.
ReplyDelete" I miss Pete's Wicked Ale terribly, and I wish that someone (perhaps Mr. Slosberg again?) would bring back the classic formula." _ I'm quoting Eric. I agree... I thought it was a great beer - in fact I found this article in a search as to why it doesn't exist anymore.
ReplyDeletewould make a ton of sense if they would bring back the original formula of Pete's Wicked Ale, I think they would be amazed how it would sell
ReplyDeleteI was also a fan of Petes original Wicked Ale as well as the Winter Brew. I'll say that I prefer browns to IPAs, but if you must have a hoppy beer, try the interesting Indian Brown Ale from Dogfish. I also found this thread while searching for the cause of Pete's demise.
ReplyDeletePetes was one of the first craft beers I ever tasted in the early 90s. It opened my taste buds to all kinds of craft beers. I still am a brown ale fan. Newcastle, smithwicks, even local brewery browns are my favorites. I like bold malty beers. One of the other early micros I liked was red hook esb. A good malt and hop balance. Anyway, I know this thread is old and I also found it looking for the fate of Pete's. RIP wicked ale.
ReplyDeleteI was also a fan of Petes in its early years. If I remember correctly, they had two or three other offerings when it first came out. The "Pete's" moniker was only used for the wonderful Wicked Ale - but I can't recall the names of the other beers that were also available. I thought these beers were brewed in Minnesota, (New Ulm?) though nothing I've read tonight supports this. Maybe the bottle label I happened to read back then was contract brewed there. Anyway, that beer was the best brown ale I've ever had. The draft version was even better. I list it near the top of my favorite "lost" beers of the 1990. That list also includes Catamount Porter, and several beers from the long lost Saxer (Oregon) and Oasis (Boulder CO) breweries: Three Fingered Jack, Jack Frost, Scarab Red, Capstone ESB. Some of you in the east might remember Heavyweight Luncacy - a delicious triple from NJ. Good stuff. Another poster here mentioned Redhook ESB - another fave of mine. Is that gone too?
ReplyDeleteI think Redhook ESB is still out there, I believe I've seen it recently. Other good brown ales if you can find them are Upslope's brown ale as well as St. Arnold's Ale Wagger Brown Ale. Santa Fe Brewing Co. also makes a good brown ale.
ReplyDeleteIt's unanimous... We miss Petes! Someone bring it back from the dead, pretty please
ReplyDelete