Four Interesting Items

Any one of these could be a full, hearty entree, but I think they'll do even better as small plates. See what you think.

My Sponsor Comes to America

For the past year, I've been delighted to welcome Guinness as a sponsor on this blog--this week we learned we could welcome them back to the US as well:

Diageo today announced its intention to build a US version of Dublin’s popular Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Baltimore County, Maryland. As currently planned, the company would build a mid-sized Guinness brewery and a Guinness visitor experience with an innovation microbrewery at the company’s existing Relay, Maryland site. This new brewing capability and consumer experience, combined with a packaging and warehousing operation, would bring the company’s investment in Relay to approximately $50 million. The new brewery would be a home for new Guinness beers created for the US market, while the iconic Guinness Stouts will continue to be brewed at St. James’s Gate in Dublin, Ireland. 

This is not the first time Guinness has come to America, but the previous experiment ended after just six years. The current effort looks like a more ambitious and risky project. Diageo has been trying to figure out for years how to use the Guinness brand as an entry point into the craft market, with notably mixed success. The challenge for any giant brewery with such a strong brand presence is figuring out 1) how to expand without weakening the core product's position, while 2) convincingly appealing to customers in an entirely new segment. Most of the big breweries have concluded it can't be done, so they've followed AB InBev's strategy of just buying breweries in the craft segment. Can Diageo convince people that Guinness means both Irish stout and fullsome, tasty craft beer? Big gamble.

October Debuts
Speaking of arrivals, we have a new entry into the pretty-darn-crowded world of beer chatter.

Today, Pitchfork is proud to announce the launch of October, a digital publication focused on beer with an editorial perspective that speaks to a new generation of beer drinkers. A destination for devotees and novices alike to read about, learn about, and share their appreciation for beer and celebrate the culture around it. The site is being launched in partnership with ZX Ventures, AB InBev’s incubator and venture capital fund that focuses on increasing awareness and excitement around beer and brewing culture.

The tie to ABI caused some sniping on social media, but the project is incredibly transparent. Read a little further and you learn that October is "overseen by Pitchfork’s creative studio and in collaboration with Michael Kiser of Good Beer Hunting, Eno Sarris of BeerGraphs." So far I don't see much that distinguishes the content from any other beer magazine. Kiser even has a think-piece up about where the Budweiser brand sits in the modern beer landscape, a perfect example of the way he brings insight and value to the conversation--while at the same time leaving that question of relationships with funders wide open. Still, the one knock I have on October so far is that it doesn't really seem to have a clear raison d’être that distinguishes it from, say Draft or All About Beer. Indeed, Good Beer Hunting seems to have carved out a clearer viewpoint.

New Branding
Two Oregon breweries sent me emails announcing new branding today, and they are both market improvements. I pass them along as an example of the way breweries are responding to a tightening market. In a world of jillions of brands, you can't have stale or bad packaging around. Rogue, which updates its flagship, had the former and Cascade the latter. Here's Dead Guy:

And the new Cascade.

Yeast and the New England IPA
Finally, because I'm a completist, I want to direct you to the latest Beervana Podcast, and not just out of pure self-interest. Over the past year, we have discussed on these pages and elsewhere the nature of the New England IPA. Yesterday, Patrick and I paid a visit to the Imperial Yeast labs and did a pod with the three principals there. During the course of our interview, Owen Lingley discussed this beer style (they're getting a lot of questions about it from customers) and issued a rather bold, declarative position on the style as involves yeast. You will want to listen to hear his views--and learn all about yeast, which is a subject many of us wish we knew more about.




Happy weekend, you all--

It's Hard Out There For a Publisher

This is a slightly random aside, but I wanted to draw your attention to a great post about the state of the internet over at Talking Points Memo. For those of you who don't read political blogs for fun, TPM may have escaped your notice. It's a left-of-center site that grew out of a personal blog by Josh Marshall. (As an aside to the aside, the site was my introduction to blogging. I'd never heard the word "blog" until Paul Krugman called attention to some of the work Marshall had been doing on the coded racist words of then Majority Leader Trent Lott. Within a month, I had started my first blog.) Like all news/opinion sites, it has struggled in the age of social media.

What's changed in the last 4 to 5 years is the inroads social media sites have made into the paid advertising space. Much as Craigslist virtually destroyed the classified ads business that local newspapers owned, a site like Facebook can deliver ads more efficiently and cheaply than most traditional advertisers. 

The great liberation brought about by the internet made it possible for someone like me to put my voice in front of (potentially) the whole world--a phenomenon new in the world. But if you envision the structure of media as a funnel, where the voices of the public are the wide end, and the media gatekeepers act as the narrow end, what happened with the internet--and especially, with social media--was the elimination of that narrowing. Now all people can connect with all people, which means the writer in this equation isn't very important anymore. Josh' perspective is that of he publisher, but since we can all now be publishers as well as writers, it may be a distinction without a difference. Writers and publishers are still casting around now to figure out how to make a living. Many of us develop nervous tics because it seems like our societal value is approaching zero. Though from a purely academic perspective, the changes are fascinating.

Which I suppose is about as good a place to segue to links as any. Today at All About Beer I discuss a significant epiphany I had in Miami, Florida on the subject of beer. True story.

So join me back in the Abbey Brewing pub. Most beer culture in the world right now has its roots in European brewing. Abbey reflected that—with a healthy dose of American sprinkled in. As I mentioned, Miami is loaded with culturally-specific businesses, so there’s nothing out of the ordinary about a European-American pub making up part of the tapestry. And yet, in that moment, I realized how much American beer culture—especially craft beer culture—carries with it this European valence.

We also have the latest Beervana Podcast up and ready to caress your ears in our dulcet tones. In this latest episode, we discuss wintry beers, touching on topics like wassail, Lamb's wool, glühkriek, bière de Noël, and of course, price elasticities. We have also slightly tweaked the format to include news and beer recommendations (an extension of the "Beer Sherpa" feature birthed here on this blog) as well as a a "mailbag" feature, in which we are attempting to draw you into the discussion. We welcome questions, comments, criticisms, witticisms--anything that inspires you. Email us at the_beerax @ yahoo.com.

A Difficult Post

Credit: Angelo De Ieso

As many of you have seen, a few days ago the Oregonian severed its relationship with longtime beer writer John Foyston. There are two issues here, and I'd like to focus on the second, less-examined one. But first, the background. (Full disclosure: John started covering beer for the Oregonian a couple decades ago, just a bit before I started a column at Willamette Week. I've known him all that time and consider him a friend.) Here's what the O wrote on Wednesday.

In several instances over the past month, Foyston lifted passages from press releases, industry Facebook pages or brewery websites and submitted them under his byline. We also found one example where he copied verbatim an old beer review posted by a contributor to a craft beer site. 

I'll let you click through for the full details. The real issue boils down to his decision to lift descriptions about beer from BeerAdvocate. That's a very serious journalistic breach, and the Oregonian couldn't overlook it. (Whether John deserved walking papers is another matter.) John posted on Facebook about the issue, taking full responsibility and offering apologies.

I cut-and-pasted and modified some beer descriptions in an unpublished story on 25 favorite beers. Fair enough, that's a violation of journalistic ethics and I freely admit it.... No excuse. Guilty as charged. I shouldn't have done it. 

On the surface, this has the appearance of a cut-and-dried case of plagiarism, and we know the penalty for such crimes is a death sentence. So John got the ax. I'd like to leave his culpability aside, though, and discuss the Oregonian's culpability in all this. John offered no defense for his actions, but he did offer an explanation (this is the part I ellipsed out of the above quote): "Perhaps the crime is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the deadline was moved up three weeks from the end of September to right before I was leaving on a 10-day motorbike trip after Labor Day, thus eliminating the chance to reacquaint myself with beers that I hadn't had in the last year." 

No matter what you think of Foyston's actions in this episode, it's worth pointing out what has become of the Oregonian. Like so many dailies, it was owned by a media conglomerate (Newhouse) that had no idea how to handle the internet age. At first, the paper invested heavily in expensive stories that won awards (including Pulitzers), but not readers. As subscriptions, ad, and classified revenues declined, they decided to scrap in-depth stories and dump expensive senior reporters and editors. They eliminated beats that (presumably) weren't driving ads or readership, and basically quit doing local public-policy reporting. If it's happening in City Hall, for example, the O is mute about it.

In those regular purges, longtime salaried reporters were given a choice to continue along as freelancers, making a fraction of the money they made as staff reporters, or piss off completely. John decided to stay with the paper and continued covering beer. (Look under the byline; if it says "special to the Oregonian," that means the writer is freelancing.) Then, a couple years ago, the O made changes that have turned a once-worthwhile news organ into a clickbaity mess.

Anderson told his staff The Oregonian would deliver papers to subscribers on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. On the remaining days, the paper would publish only a street edition, saving millions of dollars in printing costs. Anderson also announced layoffs; almost 100 of the paper’s 650 employees lost their jobs. The cuts fell disproportionately on the newsroom: As many as 49 reporters, editors, designers and photographers—nearly a quarter of the remaining news staff—will be gone by Sept. 27.

The paper adopted a new strategy based on all the worst trends of internet news.

But the kind of news Oregonians get will change. The Oregonian’s newsroom is already under enormous pressure to write stories that draw hits on the website—often at the expense of in-depth reporting that reveals what’s actually happening in the community....  Staffers say the newsroom has become obsessed with a program called Parse.ly, which measures real-time Web traffic, shows which stories are getting the most hits, and identifies where readers click after finishing those stories. 

In short, in order to address its own gross mismanagement, the Oregonian adopted this strategy: 1) fire expensive, experienced reporters and hire inexperienced, cheap ones; 2) demand reporters post as much content as possible, including in-progress story fragments (something something "developing the narrative" something); 3) base job evaluation on web clicks and, most importantly, 4) abandon serious (read: slow and expensive) shoe-leather reporting. They also fired editors who had oversight of story direction and who edited finished pieces.

Reporters are 100% fungible and survive one week to the next based on how well their stories seem to be moving traffic. You can imagine what kind of product this approach produces. The current version of the Oregonian is a disgrace. The online edition is an unreadable hodgepodge of unedited story fragments and repostings of clickbait from other sites. Reporters "generate content" on random stuff that happens to be going on--or something they found online. There are a few reporters doing actual journalism, but it's no surprise that when a big story breaks, it ain't the O doin' the breakin'.

This is a terrible way for John to end a much-lauded run as the central voice covering Oregon beer. He's done great work, and I have complete confidence that this episode is the outlier--which makes it all so unusual and shocking. But the guilt-pointing finger shouldn't stop at John's face: the Oregonian bears a lot of responsibility in this for creating an environment that doesn't value real news and demands writers publish early and often--no matter how crappy that "content" is. It's easy enough to can John and move along, but something's rotten at the heart of the Oregonian, and that's not going away anytime soon.

Willamette Week's Big Fail

Many newspapers and magazines have an institutional voice, and although I worked for Willamette Week for three years I never got theirs. Media criticism is tiresome, but WW's epic "President of Beers" project serves as such a rich metaphor that I have to wade in. 

First, the set-up:

Willamette Week acquired a craft beer from all 50 states to figure out which state has the best flagship beer. We then assembled a team of 12 beer tasters who blind tasted each beer in random order, then independently rated them on a scale of 1-100. We averaged the scores to elect the President of Beers. 

How did we determine the flagship? Mostly, we picked the largest brewery in the state’s signature brew. Sometimes we went with the best-known beer from the state or a beer that represents the spirit of the state. These aren’t the “best” craft beers from each state—they’re just a little taste of the state in liquid form.

WW is now busy reporting the results, from the worst beers to the best.  (Full disclosure: I was invited to be on the panel of tasters but wasn't free the day they did it.  Further disclosure--I used to write a beer column for WW, but back in forgotten mists of time.)  The idea is actually intriguing--and certainly worthy enough topic for driving sales (or clicks).  I was drawn in enough to start reading.  Of course, I mistakenly began by failing to get the point, though, foolishly engaging the selection criteria. For example, I noticed that:

• Yuengling, PA's choice, isn't a craft brewery;
• Boston Beer, the MA selection, is not brewed in MA;
• It's just harsh and wrong to saddle WA with Mack and Jack's.

I could have gone on and on (in addition to the states I mentioned, TX, ME, and MO were all bizarre picks--and we're only through 28 states) , but I threw those as examples to WW's Martin Cizmar, who responded to my complaints this way: "I honestly think any 'serious' discussion about what beer was picked is pretty stupid, unless someone is arguing that there is some other beer that really defines the people and place better. It's pretty simple: We picked beers that tell a state's story in beer form. It's supposed to be fun."

So this is exactly where I don't get WW.  On the one hand, it's just supposed to be for fun (read: no criticism), but on the other, they seem to be taking it pretty seriously.  (Spoiler alert: they're even flying the winners to Oregon, which my keen powers of induction tell me means Oregon is not the winning state.)  They went to a hell of a lot of trouble to track down beers from every state, but apparently no trouble at all to figure out which beers they should be trying to track down.  But the thing I really don't get is the extreme hostile/defensive prose stylings that I guess are supposed to track as comedy.  Such as this comment on the state of Georgia:

The very contradictory state of Georgia, home to OutKast, the Indigo Girls, Chick-fil-A, Michael Stipe, Tyler Perry, the Duke boys, and a bunch of redneck motherfuckers. [bold mine]

WW has always struck me as that high school striver a notch below the sanguinely popular who works far too hard to look like he's not trying.  Unlike Portland's other alt weekly, the Mercury, which joyfully embraces D&D and old people, WW is too scared of looking uncool to embrace anything someone else might think is uncool.  Instead, it picks on the weak and overcompensates with extreme statements (potty language!) like the one above.  It's painful to watch. 

I will throw a bone to John Locanthi, who wrote some of the entries.  (So did the ever good Yaeger, but he needs none of my praise.)  He hits Fat Tire right on the nose:

This crystal clear, pale amber ale comes with a sweet, malty aroma. The deceptively light appearance masks a full-bodied beer that coats your throat and mouth. Fat Tire doesn’t have a strong flavor—it isn’t particularly hoppy, and only vaguely sweet—but it lingers, long overstaying its welcome.

I've seen no buzz about the series, which is another element of the fail, but if you've had a gander, your thoughts? 

Beer (and me) On "Think Out Loud"

Update: OPB informs me that they are switching it to Friday--which will apparently give us more time to chat about beer.

Tomorrow (or possibly Friday), Oregon Public Radio is doing a segment on winter drinks on their show Think Out Loud. They tapped me to talk about beer. You can listen to it live beginning at 9am Pacific time (noon Eastern time) here or find the archived show here.

Communicating Beer and Social Media

Over the weekend, Portland hosted what I assumed was going to be a fairly dull conference (or is that redundant?) on beer blogging. The issue here is that we're talking about beer blogging--not exactly a topic that requires a lot of training or expertise. As the panels rolled by, what emerged was something entirely different. Turns out it wasn't a bloggers conference after all: it was an exploration of how to communicate craft beer.

That is, after all, one of the central issues that's confronted the industry since 1980. How do you simultaneously educate potential consumers about what beer really is, reconstitute beer culture, and, oh yeah, sell beer? A huge part of this quandary involves communications of various kinds. We've made some progress in three decades, but it's a nice wake-up call to interact with people from around the country in all phases of the industry (the conference is attended by brewers, importers, marketing people, and distributors). I'm reminded that Portland is not the United States and that if you were to run a national poll asking people to guess what an IPA is, only a fraction would have any idea. (Never mind who George Hodgson was).

Social media plays a pretty important role in all of this. The mainstream media never did really cover beer adequately, and now they cover it almost not at all. Information now travels via tweets, through Facebook, indirect vectors like Groupon, and sites like Yelp and BeerAdvocate. Bloggers play their role, too. If you're looking for more in-depth information on breweries or beer, you're likely to find it on a blog. If you search a brand of beer, you'll almost certainly to find blog posts on Google's first page of results.

Much of this is critical stuff. One of the best panels of the fest featured Mississippi blogger Craig Hendry's effort to drag the Magnolia State into the modern era. The issue there is almost entirely one of communication: Mississippi's laws reflect early-20th-century thinking on beer, and Craig's been doing yeoman's work to change views and the laws. Fascinating stuff. (I think we ought to hold next year's conference in Jackson, MS and blow the roof of the joint.)

Karl Ockert, long-time brewer at BridgePort and now technical director of the Master Brewers Association of America, had an absolutely amazing presentation about a new initiative called the Beer Steward Certificate Program. In putting together the materials, the MBAA took the opportunity to entirely re-think the question of beer appreciation, and they came up with a pretty radical conceptual framework. I'll post about that later this week, but the upshot is that MBAA are trying to figure out a better way to communicate beer appreciation.

I talked a bit with Allan Wright, organizer of the conference. He was already thinking about next year's event and wondering how a panel might try to reveal the importance of distribution in the beer industry (surely one of the least-understood aspects of craft brewing). He's also pondering the question of brewery size and beer quality--one that becomes ever more pointed as consolidation picks up speed.

My sense is that communication is a constant. If you read the British blogs, you know that getting the word out about new trends, new research, and providing just basic, accurate information is sometimes an uphill battle. A "bloggers conference" may not address that in a significant way. A beer and media conference like the one we just attended--it could be a great shot in the arm for people trying to get on the same page about the very big task of communicating the manifold issues confronting craft brewing.

_____________
Photo of Ben Love speaking at the 2011 Beer Bloggers Conference by Matt Wiater. See more photos from the conference at Matt's Flickr photostream.

Scott Simon Loves the Beer

The first story that caught my attention this morning on the radio involved "gyspy brewers."

On the road we discussed how new things are afoot, literally, in beer land. "Gypsy brewing," although by no means a trend, has been added to the lexicon. In oversimplified terms, it's brewing on the go, a supersubculture of the craft beer industry. Strumke is one of about three people in the world who do it, Denmark's Mikkeller brewers being another example.

Like an old-world itinerant preacher, Strumke travels from brewery to brewery — from Belgium to Baltimore — spreading the craft beer gospel. He finds breweries that jibe with his thinking; rents out their excess capacity; and uses his own recipes to create limited edition batches and a brand.

Far out. You should listen to the report--or read it. As a bonus, the story sort of merges into a piece about pairing food and beer. A fascinating report, and proof that NPR is way ahead of the rest of the MSM.

The second story wasn't really about beer, but it sat me up more easily than my morning coffee. A ten-minute story (very long by NPR standards) on Oakridge, Oregon. It was one of those biographic sketches that details the life and times of a small town, showing how it has evolved. For Oregonians, a familiar tale of the decline of logging and devastating aftermath--and possibly hopeful denouement.

For Oregon beer fans, it was a moment to hope that our favorite cask brewery would get a shout-out. And it did! Not a big one--Ted Sobel doesn't even get interviewed, though you can hear him in the background--but it gets a positive mention as part of the hopeful denouement. You actually have to listen to the story--the text is shortened and they clipped Ted's bit. They also got the name wrong ("Brewer's Union Local 18"--so close!), but still. I have no doubt that it was the growing light of Ted's fame that drew NPR, lighthouse style, into Oakridge's orbit. Kudos!

Beer and Politics

A word to the wise: politicians seeking a little quick publicity should mention beer. Yeah yeah, unemployment sucks, and there's something going on in the Gulf of Mexico. But, whoa, did you see this--Senator Wyden went to Ninkasi to discuss beer taxes! In the last legislative cycle, Jules Bailey's little Honest Pint Act got a lot of press, and the biennial scrap over state beer excise taxes got huge amounts of press.

Now it's the crazy DOJ interpretation about homebrewing that is getting news:

• Statesman Journal
• Portland Mercury
• Willamette Week
• Portland Monthly
• Medford Mail Tribune

State legislators are, of course, lining up to correct the problem. In political terms, this is a can't-lose issue: 1) no one's against it, 2) you get to beat up on stupid bureaucrats, 3) everyone's pro-beer, 4) you get lots of press.

It's worth noting, though, this is an effect, not a cause. Even twenty years ago, no one would have cared about beer laws. It's a testament to the popularity of the Beaver State's favorite beverage that any regulation immediately becomes front-page news.

End of Civilization (2)

My eye gleamed when I saw that CBS had named the "Five Best Beers in America"--and all were from Portland. Until, that is, I read the slugline:

All Are From Nation's "Brewery Capital," Portland, Ore., a.k.a. "Brewvana"!

Brewvana? Hey, great reporting, CBS. I see the standards of Murrow and Cronkite are alive and well. To be fair, they get it right in the actual story text. On the other hand, they also give Oregon credit for starting the "whole brewpub movement," a fact to which Bert Grant would have strenuously objected. In his stead, I object for the good people of the Evergreen State. And to be further unfair, not by the most generous definition can Newport be said to be a part of Portland. Thus the top five are are really from Oregon: Widmer Hefeweizen, Full Sail Session, Deschutes Green Lakes Organic, BridgePort IPA, and Rogue Dead Guy.

Breweries in the Social Media Age

I started writing about beer back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and ink was actually applied to papers and distributed throughout a city. In those olden days, breweries had very few options for promoting themselves. They could either take out ad space or try to attract the attention of slack-jawed (and fairly easily bribed) freelancers to write stories about their beer. The latter choice was considered FAR superior, because readers tend to trust (even slack-jawed) freelancers more than ads.

This system held sway until really just a few years ago. Bloggers were the first to arrive, but I will confess that we had little influence overall. Then came MySpace, which turned out not to be so hot, but it was followed quickly by Twitter and Facebook as well as apps like Taplister. These latter innovations, particularly when combined with each other, have been game changers. I don't want to be too breathless about this, because social media advocates always over-estimate their own influence, but I believe social media may ultimately become the most valuable tool breweries have in their communications arsenal. The reasons vary depending on the nature of the brewery, but whether a company is turning out 500 or 500,000 barrels, social networking plays a key role.

Small Breweries - Getting Information Out
Last week Coalition Brewing threw open their doors, knowing they'd have a pretty decent crowd. True, it was only the second sunny day we'd had this year, but mainly, they knew it because they've been counting down the days on their Facebook page. They have a regular web page--but it's effectively a digital yellow-pages listing. The Facebook page is where they actually communicate with their 600 fans. They've been posting pictures, answering questions, and adding links. It has made the launch far less scary and may save them a slow ramp-up.

Social media also helps small breweries find their customers and promote their beer. Take the example of Gilgamesh, a small brewery in the even smaller town of Turner. In an earlier era, the physical barriers for a brewery like Gilgamesh might have put it on the thinnest of ice. But Gilgamesh has become nearly ubiquitous online--I get updates for all their releases and events and know more about what they're up to than I do the Lucky Lab, which is about a mile from my house. The small-bore promotion breweries manage through their own social media is magnified when they coordinate with other establishments--beer stores, pubs--to stage events and releases. I've watched Double Mountain release beers at Belmont Station, Eastburn, Apex, Fire on the Mountain, Saraveza--and those are just off the top of my head. (They do similar releases in other cities.) Most also promote their events through social networking, doubling the volume of the announcement. Social networking is huge for small breweries.

Large Breweries - Getting Information Back
Promoting small breweries is sort of a no-brainer. Getting the word out for free makes a lot of sense. But what about the big breweries? Some have been way out in front on social networking--Widmer and Deschutes, for example. Both have active Facebook pages and tweet regularly, and Deschutes has their own blog. That's cool for someone like me, but these breweries have business models that depend on selling to more huge numbers of people--far more than they can reach via social networking. It seems like a tweet blast about cheap pints at the Gasthaus (which I've seen), can't possibly affect their bottom line. But that's not how big breweries use social media. For them, it's a way to get feedback about what they're doing. Here's Rob Widmer:

"Facebook and Twitter have given us opportunities to have conversations with and give instant answers to consumers and fans. Our growing fan base on Facebook has provided us with good insight to consumer thoughts, it's given us a great outlet to announce new products (as have the blogs), and helped us put a personality to the brewery name for some people who may have never had the chance to meet Kurt or me or anyone from the brewery, for that matter"

I think this is exactly right. Selling beer is always going to have an element of personal connection. In the past, breweries concocted ad campaigns to give themselves personalities, but now they can actually behave like people. They don't need to talk to every single customer to know how they're doing--staying connected with ten thousand Facebook fans is adequate. My guess is that the breweries that succeed in the decades to come will be those that are most responsive to the actual interests of their customers.


Blogs and Amateur Media
The last big change is the rise of blogs and the simultaneous collapse of coverage by newspapers. The Oregonian is quite rare in continuing to pay someone to work the beer beat; mostly, news is now carried forward by buzz created at the blog/ratings-site level. This cadre of amateur and semi-pro fans puts by far the most print into cyberspace and, on the internet, no one knows the review was written by someone in his jammies. Do a search on "Russian River Pliny the Elder," and not a single review pops up on the front page from a dead-tree source. All the reviews that appear are from blogs and amateurs doing video. If a brewery's not reaching out to bloggers, it's really limiting the coverage it gets.

For special releases, the proportion tilts even more toward bloggers. This is why Gary Fish describes us as "directional beacons."

"The other thing is that practitioners of social media (bloggers, etc.) tend to be among our core customers. You are not “small fry” in the sense you are pathfinders and trendsetters. As a group you tend to put yourselves out ahead of the crowd and, as a result, become valuable directional beacons in a very crowded, noisy marketplace."

If you think of the world of chatter as a great big hive mind, having directional beacons is an important way to try to shape the conversation. You want to make sure that someone's talking about your beer, creating the opportunity for the entire hive to look your way.

And I think it even goes a little further than that. A few years ago, movie studios used to have art house divisions that they would use to burnish the company's brand during rewards season. It's similar with breweries. Deschutes is going to continue to make its bones with Mirror Pond and Black Butte, but their specialty lines serve a purpose beyond just a profit margin: they provide an aura of quality to the entire line. People chat, they ask what's good. They tend to put credence in the word of fanatics, so the reputation of Deschutes is magnified when a blogger recommends the brewery to a casual fan.

Breweries will only get more dependent on social media in the future (the smart ones, anyway). We are rapidly moving away from the bottleneck of the past. I've been thinking about it for awhile, and there only seems to be upside here. It allows niche breweries to get their message directly to their fans, allows big breweries to stay in touch, and gives customers far more information than they've ever had. In all ways, the brave new world looks pretty good.


Update. In comments, someone noted that it was surprising I didn't mention Ninkasi, one of the earliest adopters of social media and the most active. The official website started out on MySpace, and now most of the action seems to be on Twitter and Facebook (though they do now have an actual webpage, too). Others I'd single out for mention are Oakshire, Boundary Bay, Rogue, and Allagash. That last one gets special mention for the use of travel pictures posted via Twitter. Nick and Block 15 and Alex at Upright have done some nice blogs themselves, which opens up the inner workings of a brewery in ways not possible a decade ago.

In comments, Jack also mentions the Beer Mapping project. Like Taplister, it's a great resource that incorporate new technology. I should also give a shout out to Barfly, which is a pretty indispensable resource for Portland bar-hoppers. I assume other cool projects are happening in other cities, too. What'd I miss?

Belmont Station, Saraveza in New York Times

So here I am brushing my teeth, reading the New York Times on the iPhone and what do I see? In the list of most-emailed stories, a curiously titled article: "Tastings With Craft Beers." The lede talks about some pub in Oakland with a lot of taps. Not particularly newsworthy, I'm thinking, but it's cool the Times has taken notice. But then these eye poppers:

The cultivation of gourmands is a common goal for the outfits, which put a premium on education. Belmont Station (4500 Southeast Stark Street; 503-232-8538; belmont-station.com) in Portland, Ore., which stocks more than 1,200 different beers alongside a 26-seat taproom, offers one or two free tastings a week. “Over the course of the year you can taste well better than 500 bottled beers,” said Carl Singmaster, the owner.

And

Food and beer pairings play a central role at the brick-walled Saraveza (1004 North Killingsworth Street; 503-206-4252; saraveza.com), which opened in Portland at the end of 2008. The kitchen turns out housemade sausages and a different special pasty, a savory pastry similar to a calzone, every few days. To accentuate the mildly spicy curried lamb and cauliflower creation on a recent menu, Sarah Pederson, the owner, recommended a lightly hopped pale ale from Amnesia Brewing in Portland. Then she said other pairings were possible: “It depends how you’re trying to drink and how you’re trying to eat.”

Whoa! (Eugenies will be pleased to see that the Bier Stein and Ninkasi also get a shout-out.) Nice work, folks--

Beer on the Today Show

Hopworks brewer Ben Love sent out a link to an interesting clip this afternoon of a Today show beer tasting. He was interested in the content that begins at about the 1:45 mark--when they taste the Ace of Spades. In fact, it's the only brewery that gets two beers in the line-up. Quite a coup.

I, however, was interested in the absolute inexperience of the tasters. (Sorry, I have no idea who these folks are. The last host I recall was Bryant Gumble. The guy who brought the beer knows his stuff, though.) Have a look.



This is both encouraging and alarming. Alarming, obviously, because despite how much we think craft beers have made it ("we" being Oregonians), this indicates otherwise. The VAST majority of Americans have never tasted a craft beer. But it's encouraging because the tasters are able to instantly get their bearings. Tasting the barleywine, the host tentatively describes it as "caramelly." Nice! See, beer's not so hard--once you actually crack a good one.
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Advice: How to Attract Media Attention

I receive three or four press releases on an average day in my inbox. For round numbers, call it twenty a week, eighty a month. Of these, I will post maybe four items--or 5%. I'm a bit harsher than the average blogger; I don't do a lot of event or release posting. But even among those bloggers who do, you have to figure that for every press release that goes out, probably only one or two sites will mention it at all. The issue here is that the people sending press releases and those receiving them have very different experiences.

Sender's View
Breweries and event organizers are really excited about their product. They think: "[Beer/Event X] is the best [beer/event] in the world. It commands all my attention and interest, and I have spent so much time working on this [beer/event] that its genius is self-evident. All I need to do is communicate how transcendent this [beer/even] is and people will want to write about it." And thereafter they compose a press release describing the beer or event as the best beer or event the world has ever seen.

Writer's View
"Let's see what I have in the old inbox this morning. Ah, an invitation to attend a beer release in New Jersey. Delete. An announcement that a brewpub has released a new IPA, their fourth. Delete. Information about a series of beer dinners at Restaurant Y. Hmmm, maybe I'll save this one in case I get really desperate for content later this week. An old email with information about a series of meet-the-brewers dates saved in case I got really desperate. Out of date. Delete."

Yesterday's post about the Apple iPhone "discovery" is an instructive counterpoint. I have no confirmation that commenter Gary McMahon's suspicions are true, but it seems likely: "I keep thinking of all the 'secret photos' of new vehicles in car magazines...given Jobs' history, I'm betting the 'done on purpose' scenario." If so, it was a perfect illustration of how to get good press.

Give the Writer a Hook
If you have a product and you want coverage, you have to give the writer a hook. Literally dozens of beers are released every week and, notwithstanding the opinion of the brewer, most aren't going to be earth-shattering brewing achievements. Events fill the annual beer calendar. Some are good, some aren't.

Personally, I chafe at Dogfish Head. It's a good brewery, but one among a pretty large crowd. Yet it gets at least as much press as all the other 1500 craft breweries combined. How? It doesn't hurt that it's relatively near NYC, but beyond that, Sam Calagione does an amazing job offering the press interesting stories to cover. Continual hopping, that hop-infuser thing, the South American wood casks, chicha beer. The brewery is constantly telling fascinating stories and making sure the press knows about it.

Get Creative
I just got an extremely cool invitation in the mail from Goose Island. They're hosting a tasting for the press next Thursday. The invite came in a black envelope sealed with a sticker reading "MATILDA." Inside is a beautiful invitation and three cards with information about the beers and brewery. No doubt this was spendy. Five bucks an invite, maybe? But the impact is impressive, and it underscores Goose Island's current branding. They want to seize the upscale Belgian market, and this invitation communicates luxury.

Think of ways to stand out from a crowd. When Double Mountain released their kriek last summer, Matt Swihart showed up with the cherries from the orchard he'd used in the beer. When Full Sail released their Berliner Wiesse last year, they made sure to get traditional Woodruff syrup to go along with it. Zwickelmania is such a hit because people get that value-added experience of trying beer straight from the tank. There are a lot of very interesting facets to beer and brewing, and you'd do well to figure out a way to fold those into new releases.

Make Yourself Available
Don't send me a press release. Invite me to your brewery. Even if I don't like the beer you're releasing, if you take the time to sit down, have a pint, and tell me why you love this beer, I am almost certainly going to write about it. It's almost axiomatic that brewers are cool people. (I hold out the possibility that there's a jerk somewhere, but I honestly haven't found him yet.) Put a brewer and a beer writer together, and you will get a story. More importantly, you'll get a better story. The writer will be drawn into the subject and spend more time thinking and writing it. Send a press release and you'll probably get a press releasey post--generic and dull.

Make Good Beer
I suppose it goes without saying, but I'll say it. If you brew good beer, I'll find it and drink it and write about it. I'm starting to get on a few breweries' mailing lists, but the honest truth is that this isn't necessary. I like beer and I want to try new beer. We all have different tastes, and what I think is an A beer, writer X may find so-so and vice versa. But in the main, good beers get good press.

Keep sending the press releases. It's good for me to know when new beers hit the market and which events are around the corner. But don't stop there. If you want press, your work only starts with a press release.


Update. Right on cue, here's the latest news from Dogfish: a beer to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Miles Davis' Bitches' Brew.
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NYT, One More Time

Yesterday, I used an article from the New York Times as a jumping-off point to discuss how I wished more Oregon beer were available on the East Coast. The writer of that article, John Holl, commented on my thoughts, and rather than let them languish deep in a day-old thread, I thought I'd pull them up to a full post so you could have a look. John wrote:

Thanks for mentioning the NYT piece.

I didn't mention Rogue simply because it's all we folks from the New York Area know, but because they have a hops farm and let people stay there. This wasn't a review of beer or even beer styles this article was a way to let people know that they can get more from beer than simply a taste.

This is a trend that brewers are embracing and if I can help spread the word to the millions of people who wouldn't otherwise make breweries a part of their vacation plans than I feel like this article helps.

I'm sure there are places that I missed where people can get a deeper experience with their beer. Such is the world of newspapers.

The article was about tourism, not Cascade Apricot Ale. When it comes to travel, Rogue stands out. That's why I mentioned them. Plus, the beer is pretty good too.

Periodically, I try to get Sally to read a blog post (generally a post from a political blog). She almost invariably complains that it feels like being dropped into the middle of a conversation you're not a part of. This is one of the major downsides of blogs. In my post, I used John's article as an example of a larger corpus of beer-related reporting from the east coast, and it was really the whole I wanted to discuss. John's article was just a convenient entry point. As a consequence, my speculation about his intentions appear to have been wide of the mark.

I do appreciate any light that gets shined on Oregon as a destination, and I should note that the Times has been especially good about this--last fall, they published that very nice piece by Lucy Burningham about fresh-hop ales. So even where my larger point may be true in general, it's probably not an accurate criticism of the Times.

Thanks, John, for stopping by and setting the record straight.

TV Segment

At long last, here's the segment on winter ales from KOIN's "Keep it Local." My gaffes were limited to staring at my shoes at the start (my, isn't Jeff bald!) and totally blanking out on what an alt was. KOIN, unfortunately, has gaffed by cutting this clip short--and leaving off most of the Oakshire tasting. Sorry Matt!

What if ...

...I went on teevee and no one saw it? As of this morning, much of yesterday's "Keep It Local" had been posted to the website. But not my winter beer tasting. I was there, though--honest! I even took some cell-phone pics as I waited for my segment.





If and when the clip gets posted, I'll let you know.

Beer Tasting With Jeff

Tomorrow I will be filming a shot segment for the show "Keep It Local," which airs daily at 4pm on KOIN TV. We will be tasting winter beers, four or five, of which I have three identified. Don't know if it will air on Tuesday, but it conceivably could. For those of you with the fortune to be near a TV set at four, tune in--if only to see how many gaffes I commit. I'll do my best to track down the video for those who can't watch at that hour.