Alright, so I'm going to take a little bit of a dig at the craft beer community here.
I think the craft beer community is trying to build its reputation by, in some ways, mimicking the wine industry, and the wine community, and there are some ways in which that's great, and some which just aren't a good idea.
One of those, in my personal opinion, is special or limited release beers, with a few exceptions.
The basic attraction to me, and many others, of the craft beer scene, is that anyone can get into it. You can taste something truly special, and as pleasant as any nice bottle of wine, right in your own neighborhood, at a much lower price point. Beer people, although a little quirky, are generally more down to earth than wine people, meaning anyone can jump into the craft beer scene, and have an enlightened and enlightening conversation about a particular beer or style without being intimidated by suits, somelier certifications, and fancy words, as well as high price tags.
Well, I think specialty and limited release beers are a clever way to build a brand, focusing on the "exclusivity" of it, but that exclusivity is exactly what many new beer drinkers are looking to get away from!
Simple differences make the rarity and price tags on some wines more acceptable than similar rarity and price tags on beer.
1) Wine is a seasonal product. While it is consumed year round, there is about a 3-5 week window to harvest, juice, and start fermenting grapes. After harvest is over, what you have is what you have.
2) Wine is much more a product of terroir. While winemaking takes skill, and yeast, barreling, and other factors affect the finished product, a pinot noir made with the same yeast and same procedures from two different vineyards will taste different. Again, what you have is what you have.
3) Wine grapes vary from year to year, making some vintages just mediocre, and some outstanding. Again, what you have is what you have.
4) Beer, on the other hand, while ingredients matter, allows brewers much more choice. All of the key ingredients in beer (with the exception of fresh hopped or fruit beers), are commodities. They are available year round, and produced in excess of what just the beer industry uses. While the barley or hop crop yield may affect the price of these commodities, more will be available. And because of the way in which both barley and hops are processed, by the time barley becomes malt and hops become pellets, a certain consistency is achieved regardless of slight variations in the original product. This means almost any batch of almost any beer is re-creatable (assuming the exact recipe was written down somewhere).
This is a huge difference. Let's look at some legitimate (in my own opinion) reasons that beers can be rare (what I call the exception):
-Certain beers use ingredients which don't fit the general mold above. Namely, fresh hopped beers, spontaneously fermented brews, and beers with fruit or other non-commodity adjuncts. These beers could vary from batch to batch, even if they are made using the same recipes. This means some batches will be better than others, and have an inherent value, and the beers will all have some value, as tasting them next to each other is a worthwhile exercise.
-Certain beers undergo treatment after fermentation which is less controllable. The two major categories here would be barrel aging and keg/bottle conditioning. Because the exact same barrel can't necessarily be re-used (and even if it could, the wood will have been changed by the first batch), barrel aging provides an inherently unique product. Cask, keg, and bottle conditioned beers are subject to all types of factors after they leave the brewery's control. Travel distance, time allowed for conditioning (does the yeast finish its work?), and temperature, altitude, and lighting conditions where the beer is stored will all create a variable experience for the drinker. These beers are inherently unique.
-Beers which are not available due to distribution issues. For many reasons (some legal or business related, some branding or personal preference related), most craft breweries don't distribute nationally or internationally. Beers from great brewers which are not usually available in your area will, of course, have more value to you, and this is as it should be.
-Beers which have been aged. If a great beer was made once, or even multiple times, and you managed to save a bottle or keg, this beer has some inherent value to it (assuming it's a beer that holds up well to aging, many of which fit into one or more of the above categories).
-A brewery is at capacity, and has decided, for financial or branding reasons, not to expand. This is the area that has the most gray space in my opinion. If a brewery is brewing at its full capacity, it simply can't make more beer. This is a problem which most craft brewers hope to have one day. They then have to ask themselves, 1) can we afford to expand (probably if you're selling that much beer!) and 2) do we believe that we can expand and still be the same great brand? This is a tricky one, as as local, small batch focus is what draws many to craft beer. Moreover, larger equipment yields different product. And more small equipment, running concurrently, means owners and brewmasters have to give up some control of each batch, potentially losing consistency or quality. When a brewery has decided that they don't want to expand, and their beers are good enough to sell out in their current market, it makes sense that their beers would sell out.
In my mind, however, many craft breweries release "specialty" or "limited" release beers in small quantities (or brand them as if they have) for the wrong reasons. Here's a list of those:
-To add value to the product (this is pretty rare on the brewer side, fortunately)
-To create buy in with accounts, who feel special being given this "rare" beer. Usually, these allocations are highly sought after, and involve buying a lot of year round/open availability beers to "win over" your reps. This flips the basic business relationship between a bar (customer) and a distributor (vendor), and also creates tension or competition between retail outlets, which, in the craft beer scene, should all be supportive of each other.
-To create a cult following behind a particular beer and build the brand of both that beer and the brewery as a whole. Fortunately, these beers are pretty damn good. On the other hand, if they're so good, and people love them so much, why aren't they made year round? Beer should be an enjoyable hobby, not a task or a chore. So why make people continue to call around about the availability of a certain beer, only to usually be told "We're not sure" up until a week or two before the release? Why make people take time off of work, stand in line, buy tickets, and even fight for a pour of this beer? If these beers are so good, and people love them, why not raise the price a bit (the one I have in mind is actually pretty reasonably priced wholesale), and make it year round, or at least multiple times a year? Yes, your brewery may be at capacity. But there's a few options here. 1) Expand. 2) Pull out of out of state markets to make sure you can supply your home state year round with the beers they want (again, the beer I have in mind has already done this once). 3) Switch up your brewing schedule. Many of your beers (to that same example) are hard to find year round because of your brewing capacity. They're all great, but there are a handful people actually hunt down and wait in line for, including your special, February release beer.
The reality of it is, craft beer is supposed to be about making a great alcoholic beverage available to as many people as possible. Releasing these beers once a year doesn't do that. What it does do, is build a particular brand. Again, not naming names, but the brewery I have in mind makes several hard to find brews. They are all great beers. I would argue that some of them (which, coincidentally fit into the categories I view as acceptably rare) are well worth the wait. Others, including the rarest of the rare (the annual release is one of, if not the, most anticipated in the country), are great, but not all that special. And eventually consumers will catch on to that. Maybe a few years ago, a really great Double or Triple (oops, did I give it away?) IPA was a rarity. There are now several out there, including some year round, non-allocated brews, which easily meet or exceed the quality of some of these rare beers.
The smart move for these breweries, both from a business perspective, and from the perspective of giving craft beer lovers great beer, is to switch it up a bit. Pull back on producing some of your other great beers, and make the "cult favorites" available year round.
No comments:
Post a Comment