Industry Marketing – Page 11

Friday Bullets For The Week Of The Blackout

The power went out. From 3 pm to midnight yesterday. Sat around in one room for the evening and marveled at the power of the battery. I tweeted and listened to radio. Ice was to blame. Ice from the sky. Fortunately, it appears to have rained all night washing away the coating. A few trees in the neighbourhood fell. Now, there is good reason to have those ribs in the freezer:

♦ I like beer as much as the next guy. Probably more. But I am not sure why one of Ontario’s less interesting brewers deserved $1,000,000 in tax support annually.
♦ Really? I assume the PM does not know every implication of every Federal legal brief. And besides. If the brief was correct in relation to same sex marriage, it also means that the same is true for different sex marriage – if you don’t meet a foreign level of consanguinity in your home country, a Canadian marriage would not be valid. No one believes that.
♦ Let’s be clear, then. I am the guy who backed Harper this week, not the National Post. No Senate reform, please. No need to entirely lock up Federal governance, Steve.
♦ Scots apparently are not free to make up their minds. Time to revive the Declaration of Arbroath. “It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.” Makes you weepy just thinking about it.

There. Done. Gotta work one more day before the gorging of rib fest begins. Thanks, blackout, for reminding me to make time for ribs.

Is This The Gold Standard Of Brewery Tours?

I have been on a lot of brewery tours. In Halifax in the early 1980s it was a euphemism for college kids being locked into a room at the brewery and given all the beer they could down in a Friday afternoon hour. More recently, it’s the chance to hear craft brewers explain their processes. At one Japanese brewery, however, it’s now a chance to test out their equipment and your own ideas:

Soon they called our group, and we entered the brewing room. Our brewmaster sat us at a picnic table and brought us more beer. She asked us to taste all of their standard brews and choose one to use as a base for our own beer. We chose an amber ale and increased the alcohol content by adding more sugar, in the form of grain, for fermentation. We also increased the amount of hops added to bring up the bitterness and add more flavor. The whole process took about four hours and we did all the important things ourselves. We measured out the grain, milled it, threw it in a pot and boiled it. There were even tasks — as our brewmaster warned us — that, if done incorrectly, would allow bacteria to contaminate our beer.

I like this concept – even if the cost of $235 for a delivery of 15 litres of beer seems a bit much. But for all I know that might be the cost of a donut and coffee there, too. The brewery in question is no dud – the Kiuchi Brewery in central Ibaraki Prefecture is the maker of the Hitachino Nest line of craft beer imported into North America like this stout and this wit I had a few years back.

Could it happen here? I don’t know. There are likely 15,387 regulations between here and there but what a great way to reach out to your customers and to let them know how your business works.

Is CAMRA Run By Puristans Or Precisionists?

That is surely an unkind thing to say but recently I read a fascinating book about the first leader of the good if extreme folk who settled Boston, Massachusetts in the early 1600s. In that book, I came upon the distinction between “puritanism” and “precisionism” which boiled down to the distinction between the passionate approach or a technical approach to matters of correctness in faith… and the precisionist’s need to be correcter than the next guy. I was reminded of the distinction when I read Martyn’s strongly worded post this morning about some unfortunate things said by Colin Valentine, the chairman of the UK’s Campaign for Real Ale:

Excuse my intemperate language, but I’ve just been reading some total lying crap by the chairman of the Campaign for Real Ale about beer bloggers. Apparently we’re the “bloggerati” (eh?), and we’re “only interested in new things”, and for beer bloggers, Camra’s “40 years of achievement means nothing, as the best beer they have ever had is the next.”

Sitting at a distance across an ocean and up a rather large river, I have wondered about the point of CAMRA’s pronouncements from time to time. At one level, it’s really just like an automobile club offering discounts to members and lobbies for sensible things like pouring full measures. But the organization is also argumentative and seems to lack its senses of humour and perspective. For example, CAMRA is as much anti-keg as pro-cask. And now it appears to be anti-beer-blogger.

To be honest, I couldn’t care less what Colin Valentine thinks, says or has for breakfast as he represents a financial interest in the brewing trade that is as established and self-serving as any brewery or pub chain or industry publication. He also no doubt has an abiding faith in the correctness of doing so. But, regardless of correctness, Valentine has a huge stake in making sure CAMRA continues to be considered the authoritative voice on things beery within the marketplace of ideas. And if Dredgie is correct – and I am not quite sure he is – beer bloggers are the new vanguard of modern beer media. Which means a threat to CAMRA.

Which brings me back to those first Bostonians. Who in the beery discussion are the puritans and who are the precisionists? And who are neither?

Delaware: Theobroma, Dogfish Head, Milton

Mark Dredge has a piece in this morning’s Guardian out of the UK entitled “The Beer of Yesteryear” which scans the range of recent brewing efforts to recreate beers older than, say, 500 years ago. These are beers which use ingredients available to former culture including Theorbrama by Dogfish Head. I had one on hand and thought I would see if it has any appeal. Mark tells me:

Theobroma, part of Dogfish’s Ancient Ale series, is based on “chemical analysis of pottery fragments found in Honduras which revealed the earliest known alcoholic chocolate drink used by early civilizations to toast special occasions.” It contains Aztec cocoa powder and cocoa nibs, honey, chillies and annatto.

The bottle adds that it is based on chemical residual evidence from before 1100 BC with additives from later Mayan and Aztec drinks. So, seeing as the Aztecs come from about 1300 to 1600 AD, it is sort of a made up mish mash. Its as much a traditional drink as one from, say, that one Eurotrash era that stretched from the Dark Ages of around 800 AD to the world of George Jetson in the year 2537 AD. That would be an excellent era… right?

Well, as a beer it is a bit of a disappointment as well. Booze overwhelms pale malt which is undercut by the exotic herbs all of which has an oddly “beechwood aged” tone to it. I get the cocoa. I get the honey. But I don’t care all that much. It leaves me disappointed like that imperial pilsner experiment of Dogfish Head’s in 2006. Only moderate respect from the BAers. A bit of a boring beer that may be the result of a fantastically interesting bit of archeological work. Who knows? Maybe the sense of taste of those Central American practitioners of human sacrifice wasn’t as haute as one might have expected. Or maybe it paired well.

Are These Short Run Beers Actually “Rare”?

A pretty good story in the The Patriot News of the efforts some go to to get one time release beers and the lengths people go to get them… or even to be left disappointed.

The brewery planned to sell only 400 bottles to the public. Cochran, who came from Farmington, N.M., after hearing about Splinter Blue on the “Beer Advocate” website, got No. 401, a bottle originally reserved for one of the brewery’s sales representatives, who gave it up after hearing how far Cochran had come. Beer lovers began lining up outside the Paxton Street brewery shortly after midnight. By 5 a.m., there were close to 50 people in line. Sales were limited to two bottles per person. The brewery handed out bottle caps to the first 200 in line, similar to the wristbands used when concert tickets go on sale.

Quibble? Just that the newspaper chose to use the word “rare” to describe the 400 bottle release in question. I have no problem with special but shouldn’t “rare” be reserved for the uncommon? There are so many of these short run beers going around its well beyond hard to keep up with them – it’s hard not to run into them, trip over them, be pushed around by them. Frankly, there is so much brettanyomyces going around, I hear that Gold Bond is looking at putting out a new product.

“Rare” can’t really mean something that happens as often as short run brews any more than self-assigned connaisseur should be implied to be up there with completing a doctoral program. We all like our hobby. It’s nice to have a hobby – and this is a fun one – but just because you have the postage stamp the kid on the next block doesn’t, well, it doesn’t make it news.

I Am A Craft Beer Marketing Consultant…

The wonderful and ever posting Jay Brooks has posted the latest version of this odd video meme (pronounced “me-me” for obvious reasons) and it has me scratching my head as much as that Craft Brewer video of a year ago. Here it is:

As I noted at Jay’s, how many of these drinkers are really marketers in their day to day life? Can they not actually find 12 or 23 real, honest to goodness average Joes who like craft beer? And what the hell is it about the soundtracks of these things? Does anyone actually associate classical string quartets or whatever the hell that stuff is with craft beer? Would a little heavy metal or bluegrass not send the right marketing message? It makes me want to fall asleep about half way through.

It’s a form of denial, we know that. And a form of spin. But wouldn’t it be interesting to have one of these promotional video thingies based on the following:

I am a craft beer drinker. I am a fan of good beer. I buy good craft beer.
I earn my money through hard work and expect craft brewers to earn it from me.
I have no time for the floaters, the makers of dull amber ale, the brewers who are there for the government grants.
Me and people like me reject badly made craft beer or beer stores that pass on soaking costs for trendy unbalanced crap.
We have the conviction of our own ability to determine what tastes good. And know a great craft beer goes with a bag of chips.
We know when it is stinking hot nothing goes down like a Miller High Life and respect our friends who like that stuff just fine.
But we also know that when the BBQ smoker in the backyard is pissing off the neighbours, when we are sick and tired another mouthful of steamed corn gak, when there is extra money in the wallet and when our mouths demand something that has extraordinary taste…
…that is when we buy good craft beer.

Background music? Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” morphing into a little early Johnny Cash ending in a crescendo of grunge. “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” perhaps?

Session #39: Collaboration? Call O’ Bore-a-tion?

That’s not very clever. Or polite. But one must pun as one can. And one has to be always on watch for indulgence – especially when it comes to marketing… or is it marketability. That is what Stan mentioned: “Collaborations are good business, good marketing, good fun and often result in interesting beer.” Or a bit of what he said… or implied. Sorta. But can they also result in bad business, poor marketing, tedium and dull beer? Of course they might. If not, what point would there be to this month’s edition of The Session?

This brew is a good illustration of the quandary, Brewmaster’s (sic) Collaboration Signature Ale #1 which resulted from a brewing get together 3 years ago and two months ago between Tomme Arthur of Port Brewing and Dirk Naudis of De Proef. It pours a deep rich varnished pine under thick rocky clinging off white head. The aroma includes pine sap and nutmeg, bubblegum and marigold. The mouthfeel is very soft and compelling but turns on you with the twin bite of hops and alcohol. There is pear and honey in the malt. All very attractive yet it’s a bit of a muddle. It’s overly hot from just 8.5% alcohol, the hops also burn and the malt’s a wee bit flabby. There is a bit of brett or some other sour tang a bit down there as well as a little of spice. But the furniture polish hops overwhelm it all. As they usually do. Like using the fuzz or the waa-waa pedal or a car with an intentionally bad muffler. The label claims that “these notes could be out of balance were it not for the generous maltiness that holds the beer in check.” I am not sure I agree.

Could be that time or the shelves of the middleman have taken a toll? I think not. This beer is like a decent Belgian golden strong ale got mixed up with a good California double IPA which stumbled into little dubbel. Plenty of BAer love but hasn’t this been done? A hundred times? Could be by now – but had it “been done” back in March of 2007? Three years and two months is a lifetime in craft beer marketability trends. It took until 2009 before folks got a bit jaded on the idea. Maybe this was one of the first inquiries into the collaboration idea that branched into or at least was working with into that early late mid-decade Belgian double IPA idea. When collaboration was new and interesting.

Collaboration might be a great idea but it also might be an idea with less universal applicability or longevity than one might have hoped a few years ago. Let’s be honest. All craft beer is collaboration. Brewers work with other brewers, were trained by brewers and were inspired by brewers. Does it really matter that one craft brewer held the basket of hops as they were shaken into the other’s brewing kettle? After taking a jet?

I Have Never Really Bothered With The Pour

There are many things that can get attached to an idea or experience. I presume the more precious or particular the key advice, the more likely you are dealing with a barnacle that needs scraping off the hull of your given ship of life.. or a consultant hunting for someone to bill. Like this mystic wisdom about pouring your beer:

There’s more to pouring a beer than you may think. Pouring a beer improperly can pollute wonderful aromas, cause an improper release of CO2, and hinder the flavors of the beer. If you want your beer to fulfill its potential, consider this advice…You want to cock the glass a certain way depending on the style of beer. If the beer is highly carbonated, tilt the glass at a 45 degree angle and start pouring down the side. Wait until a third of the pour you want is in the glass, then tilt the glass upright and pour in the center. If the beer is lower in carbonation, start pouring downwards into the center of the glass earlier. A head the width of two fingers is a good rule of thumb for what you are looking for, Deman says.

I have never been particularly anal about how to pour a beer but even I would not look for a two inch head on a low carbonation style like mild. You’d drive the life out of it. But no doubt I’ve been a lifetime beer polluter and had no idea. Better rule of thumb: do what you like when you pour your beer and it probably works for you.

Joints: Collaboration Not Litigation, Avery / Russian River

cnl1 What to call these beers? For the last few years, brewers have been getting together to make something new together. This one has a deeper back story than most but the point is the same. In the end they are joint projects, opportunities to get together, to share and learn. And no doubt to have a lot of fun. But what do they offer us, the consumer? They are the specials of the specials. The seasonals with only one season. Yet surely they have to stand up for themselves as beer and not be the wall hanging commemorative china plate of the beer world. What can I learn from just this bottle?

Blended three years ago, it pours a lovely light cola colour with a frothy deep cream head. The aroma (aka smell) is dandy – date and sharp apple.with a floral thing that is almost rose. On the sip and swish, there is plenty of rich pumpernickel malt but with that Avery drying hard water. Dark chocolate, dark plum and a nod to cinnamon with an interesting juiciness that nods to pear or white grape. It is styled as a Belgian strong dark ale and that makes sense. Yet there is an the underlying tone. The hard water for me is not working but that is a personal thing for me that I have noticed since I tried a line up from Colorado’s Great Divide. I am a soft water man. Yet there is a rich plum dark sugar finish. Solid if, for me, slightly sub-moreish.

Plenty o’ BAer respect. Take their advice.

Is It True? Has Vermonster Been Saved??

There seems to be some news happening this suppertime around the Vermonster saga-ette with news today from the website of Rock Art Brewery and via their Twitter account. Vermont Public Radio seems to have a tidbit more than I am seeing elsewhere on the why and the wherefore of the outcome… even if they get the name of the beer wrong:

Vermontster president Matt Nadeau is cautious about spelling out the agreement before getting instructions from his attorney. But he will say that Monster has agreed to withdraw its cease and desist letter, provided that Vermontster doesn’t try to break in to the ‘energy drink’ market.

If that is true, what a come down for the litigious Hansens Beverage Company, taking a kick in the teeth and putting a shadow on its brands only to force Rock Art into submitting to agree… to not do what it never intended to do. Brilliant. And all of a sudden little Rock Art is well known in craft brewing circles. Bonus.