Beer

Since Mystery Brewing Company‘s appearance on Crowd Rules in May and the introduction of our brand idea on a national scale, I’ve seen a fair amount of discussion online (and in my inbox) about our “no flagship brand” model with varying degrees of agreement or disagreement. I thought it might be a fine time to talk about what seasonal-only brewing means to us, how we do it, why we do it, and why I think that it’s the future of craft beer. Why seasonal-only? It’s easy: people love seasonal beers. This idea didn’t just come fully formed into my head. Back when I attended my first Craft Brewer’s Conference, one slide during Paul Gatza’s State of the Industry presentation kept sticking in my head. I might get into a bit of trouble by pulling this slide out of an industry-only presentation, but here it is from 2013. It’s looked pretty much the same way for the past 4 or 5 years: Taken from CBC 2013 State of the Industry presentation Seasonal: #1. And, yes, IPA is coming up strong because IPA, but you’ll notice that the other big climber is “Variety.” These trends look the same year after year and they read to me like this: People are no longer brand drinkers. They’re portfolio drinkers. It’s always amusing to me that an industry that spends so much time trying to define itself as “not industrial lager” bases its primary business model on the industrial lager model, which is the flagship model: Make one beer, make it well, make it as cheaply as possible, use other brands to keep competitors off the shelf. There’s two obvious reasons why this model has worked so well and why it’s been adopted by the craft industry. In the early craft market, when there wasn’t a lot of brand recognition for craft beer, much less craft brands, it was a lot easier – and better for business – to emulate the big brewery model. In the 1980s and even the early 90s, it was necessary to have big iconic craft branding to stand apart from and against the industrial lagers. It’s the way distributors operate. Distributors are built around selling core brands and selling them well. Since distribution was key in the growth of craft across the country, craft breweries adopted the flagship model in order to move their beer. But this isn’t your daddy’s beer industry any more and drinkers have moved on from the core brand model. A quick look at Rate Beer, or Beer Advocate, or Untappd – or even the fact that those sites exist – will show you. Very few craft fans buy one brand and drink that one brand. Drinking variety is a badge of honor, sometimes even literally. A few years back, when I was just getting into the beer industry, I saw the results of a survey that showed that when people had a beer that they identified as their favorite – a brand that they were loyal to – they bought that beer, on average, once per month. The same survey showed that they consumed beer several times per week, and often 2 – 3 beers at a time. Some loyalty, huh? (I really wish I could find that survey and link to it and/or see the results of those questions today.) The young members of the drinking market – the kids just turning 21 years old – have something that their predecessors never had: vast variety. Any young drinker that walks into a beer store today is faced with not 10, not even 100, but thousands of varieties of beer. I can get 55 different pale ales at the store near my house. And that brings me to two different questions: 1) How could anybody choose just one of those without trying a ton of them? 2) With that much competition already in the market, why on earth should I make a pale ale? If you’re a craft drinker, ask yourself these questions: When was the last time you weren’t interested in trying something new from a brewery you like? When was the last ti

30 new beers added: Guinness, Brooklyn, Short’s, Terrapin, Mikkeller, Left Hand, Pipeworks, Thirsty Dog, St. Somewhere / Prairie, Laughing Dog, Otter Creek and more… Check them out here and here.

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During the last Saturday of June Elysian is hosting the crew from KISW for Red Fest. KISW will be in attendance and you’re encouraged to rock out to local bands The Mothership and Van EPS. Obviously since the event is hosted at Elysian’s “Airport Way” brewery there will be Mens Room Original Red, a yet unnamed Mens Room Summer beer, and a few other beers made especially for the event. Food will be available from local food trucks Snout & Co., Fusion on the Run, and The Grilled Cheese Experience. Tickets are $21 and on sale through Brown Paper Tickets. Price includes entry, first two beers, and a Mens Room Red mug. As always a small portion of the admission cost goes to the Fisher House. See you there! Saturday June 29th, 2013 3pm – 8pm Elysian presents Red Fest 5510 Airport Way S. Seattle, WA 98108 Cheers

(Belchertown, MA) – Label approval is in for three ‘Fuck Art…’ labels from Danish brewer, To Øl. You might recall that the beers were already approved in the U.S. though these labels show the word, “Fuck,” besmirched with random symbols now. To Øl Fuck Art Let’s Dance! is a Red Wine Barrel-aged Wild Tripel. To Øl Fuck Art This Is Advertising is a Belgian-style Quadrupel. To Øl Fuck Art This Is Architecture is a Belgian-style Farmhouse Pale Ale. A member of To Øl recently joined the Shelton Brothers podcast where there was some discussion around label approval difficulties. The chat touched base on a topic from last November in which we learned that the TTB would not censor the word, “Fuck,” but would censor a label with a hamburger on it out of fear that the label would mislead the buyer into thinking the beer contained hamburger or additives of some kind. As the episode suggests, it is not the TTB that has forced these labels to go through with the word, “Fuck,” censored but individual states. Some states will only approve a label if the TTB has approved the same exact one. During the episode, Shelton Brothers note that there is one state in particular that is giving them trouble. The file names for the new labels say the word, “Maine,” if not the phrase, “FuckMaine,” on them so that is a pretty huge hint. Shelton Brothers is hosting an event in Portland this weekend (for which tickets are still available from this sponsor, yes). The importer has been getting a slew of new labels approved in recent months leading up to the event as it switches from kegs to bottles. You can listen to the episode in its entirety here.

For all the talk of beer blogging, it strikes me after over a year of writing on these my blogs is how many of the best bits I've plunked down are at the blogs of others. This obviously implies that there is a insular nature to the reciprocal nature of bloggers but it also illustrates how there is one large conversation in a way. One of the things I wrote today struck me as pretty good was this, a defence of the jumble that is the beer culture to my south: OK, you bait me. You draw me in. Here is the problem with that argument. You have a beer culture. There have been premium exports into the US since at least the 1750s and beer made and drunk on a daily basis since the 1620s or before. Masses of people drink masses of beer as they have for coming on 400 years. When I cross the border, you see it all the time because beer is more in your stores and in a lot of places you can have a beer as you walk down the street. In most places now you can get craft beer and in many places you can sit in beer bars and hear people bragging about spending too much or going on and on about hoppiness. The US expresses itself through beer just as Canada does in a slightly different way.Just because you don't get a kick out of most of it doesn't mean it isn't your culture. Your suggestion about Cologne and the USA smacks a wee bit of "haute" culture. Or maybe just majoritarian culture. I like Belgian beer as much as the next guy but, having had a pal from there and having visited there, am pretty sure I am not moving there anytime soon. I am not getting into it but I am comfortable saying I like pluralistic states where the cops don't carry machine guns in the street. I like cultures. Up there you mention you can get anything in NYC. That is America, baby! Choice at a reasonable price, excess for only a little more and a whole hell of a lot at discount.It's been years since I recalled the snarl on the face of the long leather jacketed machine gunned cop in Brussels letting us know what might be better for ourselves if we knew what was good for us. But that is neither here nor there. What is important is the fundamental unimportance of what was written and what triggered it. And how, out of that awareness of unimportance, how something interesting might pop up. See, my comment was in response to Jeff's post written after he read Garrett's reaction to Jake's post. I don't really care about Jake's post directly and have no interest in most of the comments. Garrett's point is OK but it is based on his personal experience that I've simply never shared. But Jeff's tangent on the main discourse is interesting. Interesting in the sense of something I disagree with.But it is a disagreement that interests and takes me into a tangent of my own. And a post. With which you may agree with, disagree with or find pointless. And you may comment or link or mock or whatever in a spinning whirl of semi-thoughts in blog posts and comments, the existence of which to which I may never twig. I came across one of these today from a month ago. Here's another from last year. Who knows what other ripples there are beyond these?It makes me wonder sometimes what all this is. As we say goodbye to Google Reader at the end of the month, as we said goodbye to RSBS three years ago, we have to admit to the challenge posed by attempting to have a handle on what is being written now. You also have to compound that with the problem of what is then written next after now. And the next next after that. What do you call the spreading ripples of information, the shifting morph of conversation? And how can you capture it... how do you describe such a discussion? Or is it eventually lost, sitting well past the horizon? Not orphaned so much as a descendant.

Mikkeller rep, Jacob Gram Alsing, recently joined the Shelton Brothers podcast to chat about what is new for the so-called ‘gypsy’ brewer. Mikkeller’s most recent venture is Mikkeller Spirits and Alsing says that those may start coming to the States at some point. Conveniently, Shelton Brothers (Mikkeller’s beer importer) can also import liquor which it hasn’t done yet. Mikkeller is also hoping to partner with a U.S. contract brewer in the future that would enable it to expand production while potentially offering products in cans for the first time. We have uploaded 23 beer labels from Mikkeller in recent days and approximately 50 labels in the past six months. You can view the most recent 20 label on the Mikkeller page. Some new/upcoming beers (out of that 50) that Alsing mentioned include Betelgeuze, Spontancherry and Aarh Hvad?! (pronounced similarly to and based on Orval). The beer name is based on the popular fight-inducing phrase, “Oh yeah?!” Mikkeller will also be part of The Festival (Shelton Brothers is a BeerPulse supporter) which takes place in Portland, Maine, this weekend. Tickets are still available. You can download the 30 minute episode here.

The Full Pint 6th Anniversary Celebration – Celebrating bringing the craft beer news, reviews and event coverage for six ye…The post The Full Pint 6th Anniversary Celebration – August 10, 2013 appeared first on thefullpint.com.