Why Pubs Don't Do House Beers

A quick follow up on Friday's post about The Commons doing an exclusive beer for Bailey's Taproom. I asked why more pubs don't do this. Turns out there is a small and large reason. The small reason is volume: it would be hard for most pubs to move through a batch of beer before it got stale, unless the brewery made pretty small batches. There are probably some work-arounds for that one.

The big issue is this runs afoul of the law. "The OLCC frowns upon anything that can smack of being a 'private label'" says brewer Ben Edumnds in comments at the Facebook page. He elaborates: " We've run into this issue the vast majority of times when we've tried doing a "house" beer for someone. Toro Red is the exception to this, but John Gorham's restaurant group has 7 outlets to move it at this point. We're able to do Wisco for Saraveza because we sell it beyond us Saraveza and our two spots."

Christopher Barnes, who knows the distributor side of things, elaborates. "The Oregon system is set up to be largely fair to retailers of all sizes. Everyone pays the same price for kegs and cases. There are no special quantity discounts. This allows small retailers to compete with larger retailers. Private labels can be used to circumvent this system by making something that could give larger retailers a competitive advantage."

So now we know.

House Beers for Pubs

Source: DigitalPour

As we ease into the weekend, a little aperitif to whet your whistles. (And the first time I've done two posts in one day in a long, long time.) An email came over the transom about a local project, reminding me of a concept I've been surprised is not more widespread. It comes from Bailey's Taproom, one of the first good-beer pubs in Portland, and long one of the leaders.

Debuting at BelgianFest VII, Bailey's Taproom will feature a rotating house beer, or Hausbier. Brewed by a different brewery each quarter, expect easy-drinking, sessionable styles that fit the seasons and our tastes. The series will be exclusive to both Bailey's Taproom and the current participating brewery.... We invited our longtime friends, The Commons, to collaborate on the debut beer of the series. 

This is such an obvious win-win. It's very cool for a pub, which gets an exclusive and also a beer designed specifically for its clientele. Pubs all have their own vibe and way of being, and this is a way of reinforcing it. Visitors to NYC have long delighted in the unique beers served up at McSorley's--only two offered, and offered nowhere else. It is impossible to imagine the experience separate from those beers. 

But it's a win for a brewery, too. It guarantees not just a handle at a pub like Bailey's (which reserves no handles for specific breweries), but one that will be highlighted and featured. At one time, when breweries weren't used to creating forty or fifty recipes a year, this might have been a challenge, but no longer. Brewers think in terms of new beers, so this fits their model nicely. So long as the brewery doesn't have to make batches in 100-barrel increments, it's a great way to serve your creativity, your brand, and make a little money on the side. Bailey's has long cultivated relationships with breweries, so rotating different breweries through quarterly is a nice "thank you" for these relationships.

Why don't more pubs do this?

The Paradox of Choice

I got into an unexpected Twitter conversation two days ago following this exchange:

Maureen's obvious and mild comment then sparked a discussion that ran 51 tweets, was joined by eleven people, and lasted 21 hours before everyone finally got exhausted by the terrible medium and wandered away. (Or anyway, that's how these conversations make me feel.) Along the way, it touched on just about everything that we love, hate, and worry about in the beer world.

Maureen's point was hardly controversial: "Sure, [they're] fun to try, but again, daily basis? I don't need zillion choices." I don't think there are many people who haven't confronted a wall of beer in the cooler and had exactly this thought--which is true at the pub as well. As the conversation went on, Maureen and others started stacking observations to the mix like cord wood:

• When retailers stock many different beers, it's inevitable that some will get stale. (Good retailers and distributors, of course, will remove that stock, but that doesn't happen in every case.)
• The risk of buying stale beer further makes consumers gun-shy.
• The proliferation of beer means a decent amount of it is meh at best.
• Lots of people do want choice, of course; this is true not only of advanced-case beer geeks, but regular consumers (who have made seasonals and mix-packs perennial best-sellers).
• As another data point, pubs don't pull out handles because there's too much choice.
• Breweries love choice, because it's a great way to attract new drinkers, but...
• They also hate the need to continually offer new products and worry when workhorse best sellers flag due to disinterest.
• The churn of choice can be expensive, particularly because not every choice is a win.
• Finally, Joel Winn pointed to this article in which Anthony Bourdain complains that some of this choice seems to feed the thirst of dilettantes: "the entire place was filled with people sitting there with five small glasses in front of them, filled with different beers, taking notes. This is not what a bar is about." 

The truth is, all of this is right. Beer is no longer simple. That is both its great strength and weakness. When I came up, you walked into a bar and there were four taps all pouring the same basic beer. Since all the beer was the same, people made decisions based on loyalty or price. You went to the pub to drink, but not for the beer--it was the opposite of what Bourdain describes. This was a time of simplicity, but it was dismal.

There is no doubt beer drinkers have it far better now, but the world offers no utopias. With choice comes chance--bad beer, stale beer, and of course wondrous beer. This bounty has delivered a new culture and several subcultures. Even those of us who (sometimes) love fussy taprooms with exotic beer and little glasses can sometimes just want a nice session with simple, nuanced beer and no complications. There's a reason craft beer has been subject to satire about twee hipsters. All this choice has given brewers many more customers and sales, but also headaches. Trying to stay ahead of the novelty curve is maddening, and some breweries have had trouble replacing capacity lost when a flagship's sales start flagging.

All of this is why Schell's brewmaster, David Berg, tweeted "the paradox of choice strikes again." These are the best of times--but even still, they're not without their troubles.

Related: Bryan Roth riffs on the same Twitter storm.

British Polling Places

I was trying to figure out a way to make a joke about hung over and hung parliament based on the results of the British elections and their polling places, depicted below. I couldn't, so I'll just show the picture.


But in some seriousness, I think this does demonstrate the way pubs can become a part of the fabric of a culture. A bit hard to imagine this in the US, isn't it? (You could almost see it happening in Oregon, except that we vote by mail.)

(And to our former colonial masters, perhaps dejected at finding chaos in your country this morning, I say to you: at least you don't have to deal with Florida.)
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English Tied-House Rules Loosened

Fascinating:

Nik Antona, the Burton-based national director of the Campaign For Real Ale, said the Government’s ‘12-point plan’ to help the pub industry would help stem the flow of an alarming trend which sees 40 pubs close across the UK each week.

The measures, announced by pubs minister John Healey, include plans to pump cash into allowing communities to buy out struggling pubs.

Meanwhile, councils will be given new powers enabling them to intervene before pubs are demolished while pub companies will be stopped from imposing ‘restrictive covenants’ when they sell off premises, preventing competitors from continuing to run them as pubs.

Alcohol laws are very often byzantine, and I'll confess that from this great distance, I don't always grasp the subtleties. But this pub crisis has been ongoing for years, and I've been following it with interest/alarm. (For a visceral sense of loss, have a look at these photos.) Hope this is a viable solution.
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Actual Email

"I went to Houndogs on Milwaukie for lunch. The special was a burger and beer for $3.75. I asked about it, thinking it would probably be a PBR or something but no. It was any pint on tap. So, for $4.50 I had a 1/2 pound burger with cheese and a pint of Obsidian Stout. My day has been improving ever since!"

Where is this Houndogs, and why don't I know about it?

Ah:

I was out carousing in Sellwood the other night and noticed that venerable watering hole Terry’s Inn (4463 SE Milwaukie Ave) has reopened after being shuttered for two years. As longtime lushes can attest, Terry’s, a comfy dive that had been serving up Hamm’s and Budweiser since the Eisenhower administration, was a veritable wonderland of weird, kitschy decor.

These are the kinds of things unemployed bloggers need to know about.