Get Your David-and-Goliath Story Straight

Boak and Bailey direct our attention to a spat  that, despite its ordinariness (these debates are hundreds of years old), captivated me. It's the classic little guy versus behemoth throw-down. Perhaps I've become more sensitive to truth and reality lately, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with politics. In any case, the whole thing got me thinking. But first, let's pick up the debate at Honest Brew, a British beer retailer, who is battling Beer Hawk, an ABI-owned beer retailer:

You see, the honest truth about Beer Hawk is that they are owned by AB InBev, the multinational behemoth behind Budweiser. For simplicity’s sake, let’s call them Blandy. Blandy likes a world where mediocre beer is made as cheaply as possible, sold at profit-maximising prices, and where as much shelf (and online) space as possible is colonised by its own ubiquitous brands.

To which, surprise upon surprises, Beer Hawk took exception:

In fact, the change has enabled us to do a better job of hunting out the world’s best beers. We have been able to secure a warehouse five times as large and employ twice as many people. As a result, we have added 300 new beers to our stock and reduced delivery charges by nearly 30%, making all our beer even more accessible to beer lovers.

There is of course a great deal more in the arguments of both companies, and connoisseurs of the "craft versus crafty" genre of fan fiction will know them intimately. I selected these excerpts because I think they illustrate the different stories people on both sides of the debate tell themselves, and where the true drifts into projection.

Since this post doesn't lend
itself to an obvious picture,
here's glowing beer.

Let's start with the pro-indie camp. Particularly in Great Britain, where brewing gigantism is far older and more nefarious than in the US, the David and Goliath stories are shot-through with moral overtones. Big companies exist do cause harm--harm to smaller breweries they wish to crush, harm to palates they wish to destroy. That leads to sentences like this one, which contradict themselves halfway through: "Blandy likes a world where mediocre beer is made as cheaply as possible, sold at profit-maximising prices...."

On the other hand, Goliaths are no great defenders of reality-based environments. One of the first arguments any whale makes when gobbling a minnow is that this is somehow an act in service of diversity and variety. This is also laughably self-contradicting (and self-serving).

To little breweries and retailers I would say: no one is more concerned with quality than big breweries. Their empires depend on it. Furthermore, they have no interest in leading the market to any particular flavor profile (bland or otherwise); their interest lies in following customers' every whim. The great IBU drop in 1960s and '70s was not a conspiracy to crush America's palate. It followed national trends toward hyper-sweet foods and beverages. Everything got sweeter, not just beer. Now that the national palate is moving into other flavors, ABI is moving right with them. It's a habit of mind for good beer fans to think that there's a structural barrier that keeps people from drinking saisons and IPAs. There is not: people just want to drink Bud Light.

But the bigs err, um, bigly when they think all we only care about price. One of the central lessons of the "craft" backlash is that people care a lot about things like localness and invention. Little breweries are quirky and they make oddball beers. They do so because they're not chasing a market of 35 million people. Although I hate the word "innovative," it's manifestly true that all the great things about good beer we now love and celebrate have all come from little breweries. Not a single one came out of St. Louis, Golden, or Milwaukee. Were we to leave beer-brewing to them, they would quickly dump all the marginal sellers (take that, variety!) and devote R&D money to consistency and efficiency.

If I were writing the talking points for the little players, I would tell them to stick to the facts. Cynicism is born of falsehoods, intentional or un-.  For the most part, an entirely-honest PR war between little companies and big companies would be won in a landslide by the little guys. There's really no reason to make up stories about the malignant effects of big companies. Just stick with the actual stories and everything will be fine.

Thinking of Endorsing Trump? Don't.

source

Four days ago, Eric Trump toured the Yuengling brewery with 73-year-old Dick Yuengling Jr, and declared himself impressed. Thereafter, on behalf of the brewery, Dick endorsed another scion of a famous dynasty for president.

Our guys are behind your father,” Yuengling said. “We need him in there.” 

Care to guess what came next? (Hint: it involved social media.)

It's not surprising that a fifth-generation business owner is a Republican. Nor would his personal support of a political candidate spark outrage and boycotts. But in associating his brewery and its product with a partisan campaign, Yuengling dragged his business into the middle of the ugliest presidential race in two generations. Advice to brewery owners: don't do this. Just don't. There is absolutely no upside to politicizing your product (and this isn't a matter of party--Yuengling would have erred by endorsing Clinton on the brewery's behalf, too), but a number of serious downsides. It will hurt business in the short term, make you some lifelong enemies (many people still nurse a grudge over Coors' anti-union and anti-gay stances of the 1960s-'80s), and tarnish your brand for years.

Yuengling is the fourth-largest brewery in the United States, and sells millions of barrels of beer each year. They appeal to, and depend on, mass appeal. Everything about their business model must depend on broadening their base of support. Choosing to jump into a nasty political campaign means associating your product with, for roughly half your customers base, a deeply loathed figure. (Worse, it is certain to have zero effect on Trump's prospects, particularly in the largely blue-state network in which Yuengling operates. Strategically, this was mammothly boneheaded.)

The rules of branding are simple: associate yourself with generic positive emotional cues. America, mom, apple pie, "innovation," working-class values, a local region, history, etc etc. These are things no one rejects. There are of course more subtle elements of branding that come into play, and courting controversy may be a viable route. But embracing political factionalism is not one of those controversies you want, and it's why so few companies ever do it. (And it's why companies that wander into policy battles or charge there intentionally usually end up walking their support back.) you can discard a failed marketing campaign like an unnecessary coat, and no one will remember it a week later. Supporting a divisive political figure leaves a scent you may never be able to wash off.

I get why Dick Yuengling was seduced into this endorsement. A presidential campaign wooed him; he imagined that putting the weight of his company and customers behind Trump might move the needle more than his private endorsement. But if you're confronted with a similar impulse, resist the urge. It will damage your business in the short term, and your brand will be tarnished for years after everyone has forgotten the politics of that long-ago election. It's just dumb.

Jäger and Not Your Fathers? An inevitable Reductio ad Absurdum

Is there anything that could make me dislike Not Your Father's Root Beer more? Of course there is:

 Small Town Brewery, the creator of Not Your Father’s Root Beer, and esteemed spirits brand Jägermeister have teamed up for the first time to create innovative fall cocktails with a touch of herbs and spices;  the key elements both brands are known for. Jägermeister’s botanical flavors harmonize deliciously with Not Your Father’s Root Beer to create a brand new drink everyone will enjoy!

And because one "innovative" isn't enough, the ad copy continues:

“Jägermeister and Not Your Father’s Root Beer are both iconic brands that share the same roots and dedication to quality, pairing perfectly together,” said Marcus Thieme, chief marketing officer at Sidney Frank Importing Company, Inc. “We found that Jägermeister’s botanical flavors harmonize deliciously with Not Your Father’s Root Beer and this new partnership helps further our goal of reaching more consumers with an innovative take on fall cocktail offerings.” 

I think what's so innovative about this is that no one has ever conceived of anything remotely like it before. It really is a radical new idea. Add a lemon wheel!

A Gentlemen’s Root Deer is easy as one, two, three. Just add Jägermeister, Not Your Father’s Root Beer and a lemon wheel. pic.twitter.com/vuMCx5gruA

— Jägermeister USA (@JagermeisterUSA) October 2, 2016

For about six weeks there, Not Your Father's was getting amazing press and huge geek love. That was all a bizarre mirage. From their dream, drinkers awoke to discover that it was just another gross, overly-sweet flavored malt beverage masquerading as something appealing.

On the other hand, I might well whip up a batch of these on Wednesday to get me through that third presidential debate. One train wreck deserves another.

Does This Seem Slightly Sexist To You, Too?

See update at the bottom of the post.

On Monday, Patrick and I sat down with five women who work in the beer world to learn how far we've come from those babes-in-bikinis ads from the 80s and 90s (podcast to follow). It was an illuminating conversation, because we learned how far things have come--but how subtle sexism still lingers.

Well, today I got an email that makes me wonder if the more overt sexism isn't still an issue in at least a part of the beer world. AB InBev hired a firm to do some research about attitudes of women and what they drink, and the resulting "findings" are discouraging. Here's the set-up.

Picture this:  Three women walk into a bar.  The first orders wine, the second orders a cosmo, and the third orders beer.  Which woman, do you think, ends up in a conversation with the tall and mysterious stranger?  According to the Budweiser 'Beerpressions' National Survey—a first-of-its-kind study about how beverage choices influence first impressions—your drink may be worth a thousand words.    Based on a representative survey of 2,000 Americans conducted by Learndipity Data Insights, Budweiser asked respondents to match common bar drinks with the perceived personality traits of the people ordering them.

Got that? The research was designed to learn how men assess women in bars based on their beverage choice. At first glance, this appears to be a return to that neanderthal sexism of the ads, where women and beer become accoutrements for men's enjoyment. But surely that can't be right? It can.

Drink Choice #1:  Domestic Beer (Budweiser)

• 70% say a woman with domestic beer (Budweiser) is "friendly" and "low-maintenance."
• Conversely, only 36% believe a woman drinking imported beer is "low-maintenance."

To be scrupulously fair, women and men both rated each other, though the characterizations of women had a lot more to do with sexual availability than they did for men. ("Low-maintenance" is an especially freighted term.*) For a company that is trying to stanch the exodus from their brand, I wonder how effective this approach will be. Is this really going to be a winning pitch to a new generation of women drinkers?

__________________
*In comments, Nick asks about why "low-maintenance" would be especially objectionable. I almost made more comment of that when I wrote the post, so let's correct the oversight and do that now.

Sexism is an innately male-centered way of seeing things. The value of women is assessed based on what they can do for men. "Low maintenance" fits into this because it's not a judgment of the women themselves (like other words that popped up--"predictable," "shallow," or "cautious"), but how well women serve men's needs. Put another way, ff I call you shallow, I'm making a judgment about you. If I say you're low-maintenance, I'm making a comment about your utility to me. And that feeds a very ancient and unpleasant way of thinking.

What's the Half Life ...

...on alcoholic sodas?

NEW YORK (February 25, 2016) – Today, Anheuser-Busch announced the upcoming launch of Best Damn Cherry Cola, the second national offering from Best Damn Brewing Co. Hitting shelves March 7, Best Damn Cherry Cola is aged on whole cherries after brewing for a flavorful, harder take on the timeless taste of cherry cola.

“Best Damn Cherry Cola continues to build our portfolio of bold, approachable and down-to earth beers,” said Rashmi Patel, vice president, share of throat, Anheuser-Busch. “We named our Cherry Cola mission, “Put a Cherry on Tap,” and our brewmasters have outdone themselves with this new brew: a delicious combination of cherry, caramel and cola notes.”

Anheuser-Busch launched Best Damn Brewing Co.—a brand platform with the mission to bring you the Best Damn thing you’ve had all day—in December 2015 with its first nationally available brew, Best Damn Root Beer. Best Damn Brewing Co. exists within the portfolio of Anheuser-Busch brands and leverages the talent of its brewmasters and its state-of-the-art brewing facilities across the U.S. to deliver great-tasting brews.

Where do you place the over/under on the Best Damn portfolio--two years? Eighteen months? I think I'd actually be surprised if this product survives to 2017. A year ago I'd never heard of Not Your Father's Root Beer and was blissfully unaware of the tsunami of dreck that was about to overtake us. But what comes in must go out. If we bear up for a few more months, this too shall pass.


Update. Another press release came across the transom after the one above and I am much more impressed with it.

On Sunday, March 6, join Hopworks Urban Brewery and Jack Jewsbury for the release of Captain Jack’s Lucky 13 Championship IPA! This limited NW Style IPA is collaboration with Jack, a member of our favorite soccer club and post-match patron of our brewpub. Jack will be at the pub to share a pint with fans after the first soccer match of the season.

The beer is a tribute to Portland's first soccer Championship. “Lucky 13” references Jack’s jersey number and his thirteenth year in the league.

Very cool. Now, who's going to get a Lillard Triple IPA going?

The Argument Against (Henry's Hard Soda)

There is a lot to be said about the wave of consolidation among the larger American craft breweries right now (and I will say some of it later this week). In the meantime, I offer you a case-in-point for one of the reasons that argues against selling your brand, and particularly your name, to another company. Once it leaves your possession to become a brand in someone else's portfolio, terrible violence may be done to it. I forthwith offer you Henry's Hard Orange Soda (in a classic corporate move, where marketing precedes everything else, the website is not yet live). The bold is mine.

Today, MillerCoors proudly unveils Henry’s Hard Soda, a new line of deliciously refreshing hard sodas made with real cane sugar. Crafted for beer and non-beer drinkers alike with 4.2 percent alcohol by volume, Henry’s puts a playful spin on familiar flavors with Henry’s Hard Ginger Ale and Henry’s Hard Orange Soda.

“One of the main reasons why I love this product is because life is busy with work, kids and bills, but there’s always time to sneak in a little fun with friends,” said Bryan Ferschinger, MillerCoors senior director of innovations. “Beer is great, but now we also have Henry’s Hard Soda – an option that gives a little more flavor and excitement.” 

The new hard sodas are inspired by the spirit of Henry Weinhard, a brewer known in the Pacific Northwest for making flavorful beers and great soda for over a century. When Portland unveiled a new public fountain in 1887, Henry offered to pump beer through the fountain for everyone to enjoy. Today, Henry’s fun-loving personality lives on in this refreshing hard soda. 

MillerCoors will support Henry’s Hard Soda with a national marketing campaign, kicking off at the end of the month with advertising on primetime networks and high-profile cable partners such as ABC, FOX, TBS, Food Network, and Bravo. A custom digital presence in top pop culture sites, traditional print media support, dual-language public relations programming and influencer initiatives complement the rollout.

Henry is now a playful cartoon figure, like the Hamburgler or Twinkie the Kid. All he needs now is a catchphrase. Sad face on behalf of all the good citizens of Portland.

Big Beer Bets on the Future

Another week, another buyout, another yawn. Except not this time, because the topline number has startled even cynical old beer writers like me:

Corona and Modelo beer brewer Constellation Brands Inc (STZ.N) said it will buy San Diego-based craft beer maker Ballast Point Brewing & Spirits for about $1 billion to compete in the fast-growing craft beer market.

A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you're talking real money. Some quickie comments as the news comes in.

The Rationale

Ballast Point is one of the strongest brands in the US. There aren't a ton of top tier brands out there, so it makes sense that Constellation paid premium dollars for it.

The Valuation

On the other hand, the brewery only made 115,000 barrels and was only the 31st largest craft brewery in the US last year. Which means Constellation paid super premium dollarsar--far in excess of the current value of the company. (No financials were disclosed on the Lagunitas deal, but reports said Petaluma's--and Chicago's--finest was also valued at $1 billion, and it brewed five times as much beer in 2014 and has far greater capacity.)

The Radical Shift in the Market

All of which leads me to this last point, which is one I think most people haven't fully digested yet. Big beer companies are betting on the steep decline of mass market lagers in the US. I constantly get asked whether we're in a bubble or not, and this should be gold-plated proof: we're not. A permanent upheaval has begun in the beer market, as mass market lagers get replaced by what we formerly called craft beer. Whomever can hoover up market share on the full-flavored ales and lagers  will be the big winner in the marketplace of 2030. And if you don't believe me, believe AB InBev, Heineken, MillerCoors, and now Constellation, who are paying way, way more for breweries than their absolute 2015 value. 

The reason is because they're betting on the future, and they're betting on "craft."

Update. I elaborate on this post at All About Beer: "Betting a Billion Dollars Against a Bubble."

Odds and Ends, Plus a Great Press Release

Three things for today's shorty post before I head to San Francisco for Beer Bible events. Should you have miraculously not gotten your fill of Beer Bible stuff, let me direct you to my post at All About Beer on why I wrote the book.

I can’t answer the most important question people have about this book (“okay, it’s long, but is it any good?”)—though I hope you’ll find a copy and see for yourself. What I can do is tell you why I wrote it, and why I think we need yet another book about beer.

Patrick Emerson and I have finished the most recent Beervana Podcast, and the subject, likewise, is a ranging discussion about writing the book. Patrick joined me on the first leg of my travels (in Great Britain), so he joins the conversation as well.


Finally, I want to leave you with one of the more interesting and amusing emails I've gotten lately. It comes 10 Barrel Brewing, which as everyone knows was recently acquired by AB InBev. This is the email introducing the press release:

Since people seem pretty stoked on 10 Barrel’s new Portland pub, we’ve decided to get a little more aggressive and announce seven brand new pub openings in Oregon. Some may say that we’re growing too fast, or that 10 Barrel is losing sight of who we are, but we took the restrictor plate off to give the people what they want! Check the video (https://youtu.be/_V0xnzeNHJY) and feel free to share it before we announce on our social channels on 8/24.

If that doesn't seem skittish enough, how about the final paragraph from the press release itself:

“Honestly, these pubs have been in the works for a long time,” added 10 Barrel co-founder Jeremy Cox. “We started talking about these way back in May or June, and we’re glad they finally came together.”

You think anybody's feeling a bit scorched by the blowback from said buyout?

Churn on the Fringe

Yesterday I discussed the beer products aimed at people who don't like beer, specifically fingering the Bud Light -Ritas (Lima-a-Rita, Apple-ahh-Rita, etc.). I got a bit of push back about how long these products actually last in the marketplace, and it reminded me that most people don't get to see those figures. So here's an update to illustrate just how fast they come and go. My numbers come from IRI/Symphony numbers from a few years back.

Let's start with the biggest-debuting products in the years 2006-2012:

• 2006: Captain Morgan Parrot Bay Wave Runner
• 2007: Miller Chill
• 2008: Bud Light Lime
• 2009: Bud Light Golden Wheat
• 2010: Smirnoff Blueberry Lemonade
• 2011: Shock Top Raspberry Wheat
• 2012: Bud Light Platinum Lager (#2 was Lime-a-Rita)

As far as I can tell Wave Runner is off the market and Miller Chill and Bud Light Golden Wheat have been killed. I suspect Platinum is not long for the world--and that's probably true for Bud Light Lime as well. To put an even sharper point on it, of the 15 top new releases in 2008, only 7 were still in production by 2011. That slightly understates things because two of the fifteen were variety packs. In other words, 62% of the biggest-selling new products in 2008 had been killed by 2011.

As you can see from the list, these are gimmicky products that taste bad and die early. But whenever a Chill dies, there's a Straw-Ber-Rita to take it's place. They're worth big money ($100 million or more a year for each best-selling brand), but they don't last. Buy your commemorative cans today--they may be museum pieces tomorrow.

Bud Bombs Again

Wow. Just wow.

On Tuesday, Bud Light was pushed to apologize for a tone-deaf (and avoidable!) tagline that appeared on a number of bottles as part of it’s “#UpForWhatever” campaign, which advertised the beer as “perfect” for “removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night.” The label was criticized for promoting rape culture after an image appeared on Reddit, prompting social media backlash.

The feminist site Jezebel gets my vote for best response:

Ideally, what I’d like out of this is several free 30-racks and a promise that they will hire at least one woman or even one non-idiot to help out at the Budweiser copy desk: how many people do you think this label had to go through without anyone side-eyeing it to the grave? 

The company has offered an anemic apology, which the internet fires received as gasoline:

“The Bud Light Up for Whatever campaign, now in its second year, has inspired millions of consumers to engage with our brand in a positive and light-hearted way. In this spirit, we created more than 140 different scroll messages intended to encourage brand engagement. It’s clear that this particular message missed the mark, and we regret it. We would never condone disrespectful or irresponsible behavior. As a result, we have immediately ceased production of this message on all bottles.”

What a disaster. But by cultivating a bro campaign in a social media culture, I suppose this was inevitable.

Collagen Beer for the Ladies

Since we've been having this discussion about gender and beer, it seems appropriate to pass along this little tidbit:

Recently, Suntory Holdings Limited launched the latest beer targeted at women in Japan and named it “Precious.” It has five percent alcohol and two grams of collagen per can. The tag line is: “Guys can tell if a girl is taking collagen or not.”

Now, aside from that 1960s-era sentiment, what's the story with collagen?
And as far as anti-aging elements go, the collagen expert believes topical therapy (like using advanced moisturizer with retinol, antioxidants, DNA repair enzymes etc.) is the most effective. But...

While more collagen in your skin could make you look younger, collagen in itself isn’t considered an anti-aging ingredient, according to Dr. Ostad. Our digestive system works to break up the collagen just like any other food or drink.

And so...

It would, according to Dr. Ariel Ostad, collagen expert and Clinical Assistant Professor of Dermatology at New York University Medical Center. Alcohol is not healthy for the body or for your skin’s complexion. It actually inflames the skin resulting in puffiness, rosacea and irritation. With only two grams of collagen per can, “there isn’t enough collagen to make a remarkable difference for your skin’s complexion,” said Dr. Ostad.

This is far from the first time a beer company has tried to appeal to women and it surely won't be the last. I can't speak to how this Japanese-only product is likely to sell because I'm ignorant of the market. But it has all the hallmarks of a classic #fail. 1) Beer company tries to lure women to beer with a specifically feminine flourish (additive, brand, label, name)? Check. 2) Fails to see how this ghettoizes a product, limiting its appeal, and subtly (or not so subtly) condescends to its target audience? Check. 3) Appears to have completely ignored flavor in favor of packaging and branding? Check.

Ah well.

In All the Little Ways, Newcastle Really Says "Macro"

Last week we had some nice chat about a large beer brand proudly proclaiming itself "macro."  When one of these craft-vs-macro debates springs up, we always get lost in the definition weeds: what do the terms mean?  Back at the dawn of the new-brewery age, there actually was a standard charge against macro (a term born when craft beer was "micro").  It was made cheaply of filler ingredients, hid that it was made in a factory plant far removed from the town it claimed to be from, was owned by a foreign company, and survived mainly because of a massive ad campaign that kept the truth hidden and the reality safely locked away.

That actually doesn't sound like last week's macro--Budweiser--which has always been extremely forthright about their beer and production.  It does, however, perfectly describe Newcastle.  Behold:

A spokesman for Heineken confirmed: “We are in the process of changing our recipe for Newcastle Brown Ale and it will no longer include caramel colouring.

“We will now achieve the distinctive colouring and flavour of Newcastle Brown Ale, that our consumers enjoy, by using roasted malts instead.”  

This is pretty amazing--and revealing.  I thought caramel coloring went out with leisure suits.  I heard rumors that various companies would turn their regular lagers into "dark lagers" with judicious use of caramel color, but those were crude times when people thought "dark lager" was something impossibly exotic.  That Newcastle, presumably to shave a few pennies off the bottom line, has been using it well into the new millennium--well, just spectacular.  Better to spend all the money on ads like these instead:



Other things to know: the brand is owned by Heineken and brewed in this brewery, in Tadcaster, by John Smith's:

It is largely an export product.  Boak and Bailey, who sent me a wonderful report showing that it has only 4.5% of the bottled ale market in the UK (and ales are a wee minority of the beer market), said, "We've only ever seen it in bottles but it's pretty widely available in pubs in that format, hidden behind the bar in the fridges next to Hofmeister Pils and Mann's Brown Ale."  Mark Dredge agreed, "You might see it occasionally in supermarkets or a dusty bottle at the back of a bar fridge, but that's about it." 

For what it's worth, when I was writing The Beer Bible, I tried to contact someone from the Newcastle division to hear about how the beer was made and maybe get some archival photography.  It was I think the only English-language brand that completely blew me off.  I have a clearer sense why now.

So to recap: made cheaply of filler ingredients? Check.  Hid where it was made while still trading on the reputation of the old location?  Check.  Owned by a foreign company?  Check.  And finally, keeps the truth safely hidden away behind a massive ad campaign?  Check and check. 

You want an authentically crap beer where the cost of production is scrimped on to make way for the cost of sales?  You could hardly do better than Newcastle Brown.

New, But Not Innovative

I received an email yesterday so brazen and cynical in its scope that it left me briefly stunned.  It begins:

Just in time for the holiday season, Guinness introduces the perfect option for beer connoisseurs and enthusiasts alike with Guinness The 1759, a limited edition ultra-premium amber ale. [Their bold.]

Source: CNBC

In this one sentence are two fascinating details: 1) the name of Diageo's latest is "Guinness The 1759," which I think must be bizarre even in Irish-English, and 2) Diageo announces a category heretofore unknown to beer drinkers, "ultra-premium amber ale."  Surely this must augur even more fascinating details?  It does!  Carrying on:

This latest innovation from Guinness brings artistry and elegance to the beer category by combining  the famous Guinness yeast with both traditional beer malt and peated whisky malt – the very same used in the world’s most deluxe Scotch and Irish Whiskies - for smooth and quality tasting beer.

You know something deeply suspicious is afoot when the fifth-largest drinks company claims to be "innovating," and suspicions mount when the reader discovers that peated malt seems to be the sole innovation.  Let's hold our horses, though--something more must be on the way, right?  Glad you asked:

This unique beer is the first from Guinness that uses a cage and cork mechanism to seal the bottle (typically used with champagne) and packaged in a stylish back velvet lined gift box.  Only 90,000 bottles will be produced, which makes this commemorative release the chance to be part of Guinness’ brewing history.

Wonderful!  In addition to the extremely rare use of whisky malt*, this "unique" ale will be packaged in the same manner as Champagne!  And sold in a gift box!  And will be sold in small quantities for no other reason than to justify an obscene sticker price!  (Thirty five bones.  And so you know that this beer will retain its exclusive, just-for-the-one-percent cachet, Guinness brand manager Doug Campbell promises that "We will brew it one time only and basically throw away the recipe afterward."  Which is quite a statement, given that Diageo also claims the beer is based on a 200-year-old recipe.  Once they're done with this beer, they're throwing out all the old log books!)  But wait, can there be even more?  Yes:

This is the first offering of the new Guinness Signature Series™ which offers a range of limited edition luxury beers. This series gives beer drinkers more options for different occasions, from fine dining to exquisite gifting.   

"Which is to say this isn't rare or special at all, just the first in a series of scams we plan to run on what we imagine are endlessly gullible rubes willing to fork over $35 for an amber ale."  (That last bit is, despite being in quotes, only what I imagine went through the email-writer's head as he put the finishing touches on things.)

This is probably the most shameless email I've ever received, and the beer is definitely in the chutzpah sweepstakes as well.  But this debacle isn't actually Diageo's fault.  It's the poison fruit of wildly over-priced craft beer--resulting from a combination of fan lust and brewer manipulation.  A company like Diageo, with a brand as valuable and important as Guinness, would be stupid not to play the same game.  It represents a moment of decadence inevitable with anything so heavily hyped.

It's a shame, too.  Some beer really is expensive to make and necessarily limited in quantity--Rodenbach, Cantillon, and Cascade (among many other fine and reputable American craft beers).  But you have to know something about beer to appreciate that, and in the not knowing, there is room for the unscrupulous to make quickie beers, pop them into a glitzy package, and jack the price up 500%. 
______________
*Not rare.

Big Beer Bets on Cider

From time to time, I get to take a surreptitious glance at the Symphony/IRI tracking numbers for beer.  Because Symphony tracks grocery store sales, it's a great way to see what's happening in national trends, especially among the bigger breweries.  For decades now, a portion of big beer's income comes from a slice of marginal products aimed at non-beer drinkers.  A few years past it was hard teas and lately shandies have been popular.  They're all light and sweet--alcoholic sodas--and sold more on the basis of novelty and hype as flavor.  In a few years, the novelty wears off, sales tank, and they look for the next big thing.  Now it's cider's turn.

AB InBev releases Johnny Appleseed next month.

St. Louis-based A-B, the North American headquarters for A-B InBev, confirmed the beverage will launch next year, but more details about the packaging and marketing plans won't be released until early 2014, according to Paul Chibe, vice president of U.S. marketing.

It follows the release of Stella Artois Cidre, which must have been a winner for the company.  Whereas Cidre is positioned (absurdly, but much like Stella beer) as a sophisticated premium product, AB InBev is hoping Johnny Appleseed captures the success of Bulmers a few years back.  They're pitching it as a product to pour over ice.  (You may now shudder.)

MillerCoors, by contrast, is going for the "common man" with Smith and Forge:

TV spots, which begin on March 31, feature a mutton-chopped character named Cornelius who witnesses male feats like boulder-splitting and blacksmithing, while describing Smith & Forge as "strong, sturdy, but not too sweet." At 6% alcohol-by-volume, Smith & Forge is slightly above the average cider alcohol content. Packaging for the cider, which comes in 16-ounce cans, highlights the alcohol content in orange and includes the tagline: "Made Strong."

Actually, they don't seem to be going for the common man at all--they seem to be going for that coveted hipster demo.  Right on cue, the release party was last week in Brooklyn.  (You may now guffaw.)


For what it's worth, these both seem like half-assed responses to a market they don't understand.  Rather than attempting to help strengthen a product line and gain a foothold there--as Angry Orchard has done--these are nothing more than momentary lunges at a trend.  The "brands" (such as they are--more like "the lame ideas we came up with over lunch")  are transparently corporate and risible.  Smith and Forge, promoted by a fake lumberjack, is simultaneously weird (lumberjack?) and skit-thin.



A-B didn't even bother to come up with a terrible image.  They just lamely offer this excuse for a product: "Inspired by a legendary adventurer and storyteller, Johnny Appleseed Hard Apple Cider was created for anyone with a story to tell."   Yeesh. 

It probably won't be good for cider, but it probably won't be too bad, either.  They seem destined for the same dustbin as Shock Top Lemon Shandy and Twisted Tea.

The Battle for the Mass Market: Coors Batch 19 and Kräftig

The mass market is definitionally the thing people buy the most of.  Wonder was the king of breads once; now its parent company is bankrupt.  Since prohibition, very light, sweetish lagers have been the mass market style, but they're slipping.  One of the ways big beer companies have responded (aside from the constant stream of gimmick products and packaging changes) is to enter the "craft" segment and beat the insurgents at their own game.  But this has the effect of hastening the demise of their extraordinarily valuable base brands.  The other option?  Double down and keep the mass market right where it is.  Beer companies that want to own that segment are doing it by moving toward stronger, more flavorful beers--the opposite direction they've been going in the last forty years.

This year marked Budweiser's extremely high-profile roll-out of Black Crown, very much a legacy product. There are a couple other recent entrants that are a little lower-profile.  One finally made it to my grocery store shelves this year: Coors Batch 19.  Looking for a way to make a fuller-flavor beer that is still recognizably Coors, the brewery started digging around the archives and found a beer from 1919--the last gasp before Prohibition--that was to their liking.  What they found in basement logs was reworked to become Batch 19.

It was a beer made with Chevalier barley, an English type that was grown in California in the 19th century.  It was apparently not a great barley and was almost commercially extinct by 1919.  One source compares it to Scottish bere/bygg, a landrace variety optimized to grow on the sides of crags in the Scottish moors (I kid ... slightly). The varieties of hops, which might well still be available, were not listed.  Coors maestro Keith Villa, in an interview with Lew Bryson, said, "Hops, we didn’t know what they were using. They didn’t note the variety of hops until the 1940s... The hops were only noted as 'imported' and 'domestic.'"  The domestic hops were almost surely Clusters, which are still available, but not prized.  Imported could be anything, but if they came from Germany, they would still be available or, if not, decent substitutes could probably be found. Coors didn't go that direction.  If you look at the label, you'll see Hersbrucker and Strisselspalt.  Lew, doing some nice reporting, got Villa to admit there's a bit more, too: "I stuck in a little bit of Cascade to round out the fruitiness. There’s a little Mt. Hood, and some Hallertauer Select. They added hops at the beginning, towards the end of the boil, and right before the end of the boil."

The beer Coors made would definitely never be confused with a typical mass market lager.  (In the accompanying photo, we compared it to Pabst.  You see the difference.  While I'm huddling here in the safety of this parenthetical, I'll explain why we were drinking Pabst.  Sally has been mentioning our great mass market tastings and everyone kept asking about Pabst, which I didn't include.  So we got one so she could try it.  Pabst is ... basic.)  The malts are the most characteristic.  Villa calls his malt "Moravian," but it's not only grown in Idaho, it's "improved every year."  Well, it tastes American to me: husky and rough. This is a seriously full-bodied beer.  That is, of course, what the geek wants, but I'm not a fan.  Perhaps Germany spoiled me, but to my palate rough malts are bad malts.  Nevertheless, it does taste very American, and my guess is it does probably taste a bit of the old Chevalier.  This is a beer designed to both appeal to a craft-compromised palate and also keep the focus firmly on American lagers.  The rollout has been slow and deliberate, and it will be most interesting to see if it succeeds.

The next product is every bit as fascinating.  One of the famous Busch family has opened a new brewery to make exactly the kind of beers his family has always made.  William K. (Billy) Busch is one of the sons of August "Gussie" Busch Jr.  He only worked briefly for the family brewery and then was part-owner of a distributorship in the 90s.  He sold his portion, though, and was therefore not party to the non-compete clause signed by the Busch family when InBev took over Anheuser-Busch in 2008.  Which means he can proudly link his new beer, Kräftig, to the family heritage.  There are two beers and although they are brewed to the standards of Reinheitsgebot--no cereal grains--they are firmly in the American mainstream.  It's currently contract-brewed in La Crosse, WI, but Busch plans to build a large production brewery in St. Louis.  Kräftig is a 5% lager with 13 IBUs, and Kräftig Light is 4.2% (exactly standard) and 9 IBUs.  This video pretty much lays out every talking point in the business plan--including some not-so-subtle shots at the guys across town.




So what's at stake? Anheuser-Busch brews 15 million barrels of beer at their St. Louis plant--more than all the craft beer produced at the 2000+ craft breweries in the country.  They have 20 plants in North America.  Then you have MillerCoors, which adds tens of millions of barrels more to the equation.  Mass market lager is huge business.  If you have this kind of volume, you really don't want the market to turn to IPAs because your brand is not IPA.  I have long expected mass market lagers to become more flavorful as they compete in a market where people expect flavor.  These are just the two data points, but it looks like the big companies are thinking the same thing, too.  They need to save the segment they dominate.  And they ain't gonna do that by brewing IPAs, shandies, or witbier. 

Irresistible To All: Mass Market Lagers Compared (Part 2)

My survey of mass market lagers continued last night (part one is here), with more revelations and insights.  Minor ones, perhaps, but insights nevertheless.  Yesterday's batch was clustered much more around the median beer than the first, which featured impressive winners and losers--and glory of glories, we had only one skunked beer in batch two.  I'll list the beers again for you, and you can consider which came out on top. (Countries listed are origin, not necessarily where the beer was made.)

• Coors (US) "The legend since 1873"
• Kirin Ichiban (Japan) "One of the world's most unique beers"
• Kona Longboard (US) "Island lager"
• Miller Genuine Draft (US) "Fresh draft taste/frescura y sabor"
• Pacifico (Mexico) "Imported beer/brewed in Mexico"
• Sapporo (Japan) "Irresistible to all ... masterpiece of the brewer's art"
• Singha (Thailand) "The original Thai beer"
• Spaten (German) "Premium lager" 

Now, while you're considering those, let me mention that this batch contained three beers I'm quite familiar with, and as I was drinking them, the role of familiarity and nostalgia came into focus.  I can't drink a Miller without thinking of my youth.  Miller and Hamm's were two of my go-to cheapies, and that spritzy corn beer holds a lot of associations.  Singha I drank in Thailand, one of the nicest countries on the planet, and its slightly rough malt and lemongrass character remind me of heat, humidity, and Phad Thai.  Finally, Pacifico is my current go-to beer for hot days.  There's something similar among the Mexican beers, and of these, Pacifico is my fave.  Maybe it's the sunny yellow label or the association I have with it as a summer beer, or the slight exotica it brings with it when it comes across the border.  In each case, it's actually impossible for me to decouple the mental associations from the flavor.  This is our boon and our curse as humans--we have big, flamboyant brains that we use for silly things like investing meaning in cheap beer and remembering lyrics to bad songs.  C'est la vie.

Anyway, to the beers.  The easy winner was Longboard Lager, but I wouldn't call it a ringer.  It is very much brewed to be a mass market lager.  It's the kind of beer I could hand to my father and he'd agree that it was beer.  Perhaps rich and "European" tasting, but beer.  It's got just 20 IBUs and 4.6% alcohol, and could never be mistaken for a pilsner.  Yet it is very full in flavor, with a kiss of toast on a grainy malt bed and a bright, slightly lemony dusting of hops.  (Full Sail Session Lager, by contrast, really isn't brewed to compete with these beers.  My dad would politely have one and then head back for a can of Busch.)

The Japanese acquit themselves nicely.  Kirin, which I have drunk very rarely, was hugely floral--Sally said Gardenia--and had a sweet honey malt base.  It was lush and tropical.  Sapporo started out tropical, with a touch of lychee, but then warmed into that classic very dry, toasty profile I associate with the Japanese.

Miller Genuine Draft is spritzy but a bit thin.  When cold, it has a subtle white wine note (Riesling?) that fades into a more pronounced corny flavor as the beer warms.  If you want to really get a sense of American beer and the effect of corn, Miller's your beer.  Coors has more body and is crisper, but is fairly neutral on the palate.

Pacifico is surprisingly full-bodied in comparison with these others, especially the American beers.  You think of hot-climate beer and you think crisp and light.  The malts are toasty and I couldn't find any cereal malts with my tongue and nose; anyone know what the grist is?  Singha beer (don't ask no questions, Singha beer, don't tell no lies) has a flavor that I pick up in many Asian beers all the way to India, and I would love to know what it is.  It's a bit rough, a bit grassy.  Singha is distinctive, but not in uniformly positive ways.  Nevertheless, I am powerless to resist its charms.

Spaten was skunked.  (Though I've had the beer fairly often, and it's a good one.  Spaten Lager is not exactly a helles--it's fizzier and has less prominent malt character--but does have the density and richness you'd expect from an all-barley beer.)

The survey was by no means complete.  Mexico and Canada were under-represented; Japan probably over-.  But this wasn't a bad start.  Perhaps I'll make another round, but perhaps not.  At a certain point, you come to the place of diminishing returns. 

Your thoughts?

Beer Sold at the Grocery Store is Fair Game

In response to my mass market tasting, part one, Jack writes:

re: lightstuck Stella and Beck's
For fairness, you should seek non-abused beers for comparison. Eg, a bottle from the middle of a light blocking cardboard carton box or canned beer.

Absolutely not.   I made sure to purchase the beer at a high-volume grocery store (Freddy's), but I bought the samples in a manner I could afford (twenty half-racks, just to get one beer from each that's not lightstruck, is crazy).  Where possible, I tried to determine how fresh the beer was, though not all breweries make that easy.  And come on: American breweries have figured out that if you're going to package your beer for appearance, you use hop extracts that lack the compound that gets lightstruck.  If you're going to sell me a bottle of beer in a green bottle, you can't say it's "unfair" of me to have noticed that it's skunked.  There is a lot that is out of a brewery's hands once a palette of beer leaves the brewery, but not that.

Indeed, it's naked contempt for your customers to sell them beer in a green bottle.  The brewery knows it's going to get skunked, but makes a calculation that the customer can be won over by a big ad campaign, anyway.  I want to give every brewery a fair shake.  I strongly reject the false correlation of brewery size and beer quality.  But if you don't want beer writers to excoriate you for selling skunked beer, don't sell the damned stuff in green bottles.  It's very fair for me to taste the beer the brewery puts on grocery shelves. 

Mass Market Lagers

Note: Post has been updated.

As you may have guessed from my most recent brewery tour, I'm working on a portion of the book involving what we variously call "macro" lagers.  Nomenclature and taxonomy are interesting here.  For some reason, people have felt it necessary to make separate categories for a ton of beers that consumers think of as one continuum--examples like Budweiser, Bud Light, Singha, Foster's, Stella Artois, Kirin, Pacifico, and so on.  Most countries have these beers, and the similarities far outweigh the differences.  Yet distinguish people do.

Here's how the BJCP does it:

• "Lite" American lagers (why does the BJCP use that spelling?)
• Standard American lagers
• Premium American lagers
• Helles
• Dortmund export

For reference, Kirin would be a "standard American Lager," while Singha would be a premium.  Clear?

BeerAdvocate, which speaks for the mind of the beer geek, does it this way:

• American Adjunct Lager 
• American Malt Liquor 
• American Pale Lager 
• Light Lager

By their lights, Budweiser is an adjunct lager while Kirin (also made with rice) is an American pale lager.

In my book, I have decided to dispense with these categories.  There's something supremely bizarre about using American brewing and its attendant prejudices to conceptualize style.  It's just silly to call a Japanese lager made with rice an "American lager" (standard or pale) while Budweiser, an American lager made with rice, is an adjunct or "premium" lager.  Those divisions of standard and premium (along with super-premium) are marketing artifacts of the pre-craft brewing era that the large American companies used to distinguish between pretty well indistinguishable beers.

The beer geek framework is equally dubious.  "Adjunct" is propaganda, too.  It's what the Brewers Association used to distinguish their membership from the big companies--more marketing--but it's ahistorical and misleading.  There's nothing wrong with adjuncts.  In saisons, the beer geeks' beer, we celebrate them.  But in our own indigenous beers, where corn and rice are as American an expression as invert sugar is in English brewing, they are somehow the stain of shame. Don't buy the hype.

The story of how there came to be mass-market beer is much like the stories of how there came to be mass-market everything: the industrial revolution made it possible to mass-produce beer, which led to mass marketing and mass distribution, the practices of standardization and preservation. In this way, beer isn’t much different from meat or bread or cheese. The development of mass markets make it possible to manufacture and distribute a product cheaply, putting it in front of the largest number of people possible. Tailoring products for huge populations, in beer as much as other product categories, necessarily meant appealing to the center of the bell curve, where most people’s tastes congregate. When made to serve the median palate, products lose their thorns and idiosyncracies and become a more generic, bland version of the thing. More or less, that was the story of the 20th century in beer just as much as it was in other products.

Kirin reflects the mass tastes of Japan the way Budweiser reflects the mass tastes of the US and Singha the mass tastes of Thailand.  To try to distinguish these in terms of their taxonomy misses the forest for the trees.  To add a moral component by focusing on ingredients is also a matter of putting on blinders.  These are a category because they evolved to appeal to the largest group in a population.  That's what distinguishes them.  There are a few wrinkles we can argue over, like light beer and malt liquor, but I'm defaulting to "mass market lagers" when I can see no other reason to try to sort beers like Singha, Budweiser, and Foster's.


Update.  In a case of synchronicity, Pete Brown has posted a fascinating video illustrating my point.   For what it's worth, my own experience at Budweiser was completely different.  In several hours of my tour, the only question anyone dodged was about future projects--which isn't actually a dodge, but prudence.  I would use the video to illustrate the nature of the product, not the perfidy of the makers.  Had the filmmaker been speaking to a brewer, this would have been a very different video.

Meanwhile, In Macroland...

This whole article is a fascinating document.  It's good antidote to the feelings of hubris that arise in those moments when you feel like everyone in the world drinks Pliny the Elder.  I'm going to do some cheap blogging here and just clip sections that left my chin hanging.  The bolding is mine, for emphasis:

[B]rewers are dedicating fewer dollars to reach him as the "subpremium" segment declines. Instead, beer marketers, on a quest for fatter profit margins, are encouraging drinkers to trade up to pricier line extensions such as Bud Light Platinum or new concoctions like Redd's Apple Ale.*

In the face of stiffer competition from craft beer, Miller gives you Apple Ale.  A different philosophy than the craft breweries are using.

Brewers are advertising economy brands less: Measured-media spending on the five largest low-end brews -- Natural Light, Busch Light, Busch, Miller High Life and Keystone Light -- fell to $6.9 million last year from $22.4 million in 2011, according to Kantar Media.

That's less than a third of what they spent a year before.  Amazing. Come to think of it, though, it has been awhile since I've seen a Keystone ad.

Trevor Stirling, a beverages analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said "Consumers are much more likely to "brand' themselves by what they drink, be it a quirky, heavily hopped IPA, or a "sophisticated' Stella; whereas Natty Light and Beast Light have, if anything, negative brand badging."

If you think you understand the beer market, you have to wrap your brain around the idea that Stella is considered sophisticated and that the bigger companies think in terms of concepts like "negative brand badging." 

Despite the competition from crafts, economy brands are not giving up on younger drinkers. A-B InBev's Natural Light, which targets college-age consumers, is seeking to stand out with new "stubby" bottles, dubbed "Fatty Natty," rolling out nationally. MillerCoors is targeting hipsters with its Hamm's brand via grassroots marketing. 

This is probably the only play left--doing a Pabst--but how many times are twenty-somethings going to go for the faux retro cred thing?

So there you go: intel from the front of the macro wars.  It's a whole different world. 
_________________
*No, I was not aware of the existence of this product.

The Future of Beer

Look here (hat tip, Adam Nason):

MillerCoors domestic sales to retailers declined 1.1% in the quarter on a trading day adjusted basis. Premium light brand volumes were down low single digits, as low single digit growth in Coors Light was offset by a mid single digit decline in Miller Lite. The Tenth and Blake division saw double digit growth driven by Leinenkugel’s and Blue Moon. Economy volumes were down low single digits.  Domestic sales to wholesalers were down 1.4% in the quarter compared with the prior year.

This is exactly where the craft versus crafty debate comes from.  To borrow a phrase from a different sector, we have seen "peak lager."  Large multinationals may cannibalize one another, but the overall barrelage of thin industrial lagers is going to continue to decline--and probably quickly.  So wise companies are doing what MillerCoors have done and sign onto the growth segment in ales.  It's the new reality.  Does that mean we are striding boldly into a future where good beer rules the day and big companies have to compete on the merits of flavor, or one in which all that is good and true and tasty will be blotted out by consolidating Wall Streeters who will leave us with only crappy ales? 

Time will tell...