Top Fermented Commentary on beer, brewing, and the craft brew industry. 2017-08-03T21:21:21Z WordPress erik <![CDATA[All the same old news is new again.]]> 2017-08-03T21:21:21Z 2017-08-03T21:19:19Z <p>A little earlier this week, a good friend said to me: Hey. I&#8217;ve missed you writing on TopFermented. I figured with all of these acquisitions that you&#8217;d have something to say.</p> <p>Sure, said I, I have a lot of thoughts, but not only am I busy as hell with the brewery these days, I also feel like I need to be a little more delicate with my words as President of the <a href="">NC Craft Brewers Guild</a>.</p> <p>And then, lo, the muse gods answered all of our prayers and <a href="">Anchor Brewing was acquired by Sapporo</a>.<a href=""><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-6028" src="" alt="" srcset=" 300w, 768w, 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a></p> <p>Since the <a href="">last time I wrote a post here</a>, disparaging ABI, a lot has happened in the M&amp;A world of the craft brewing industry, most notably ABI&#8217;s acquisition of local NC darlings Wicked Weed, which seemed to <a href="">hit home with a lot of people</a>.</p> <p>To me?  This one.</p> <p>Why?  Well, because it looks a lot more like a signal than all of the others.  This brewery was first.  Fritz Maytag rescued Anchor from closing its doors in 1965 and effectively became the first craft brewery.  It&#8217;s been doing what we&#8217;re all doing for longer than anybody.  It was the model for so many breweries over the past 50 years.</p> <p>On the other hand, it&#8217;s easy to forget that Fritz Maytag sold <a href="">Anchor to Griffin Group</a>, owners of BrewDog (hah, punks, sure thing fellas) and Skyy Vodka, way back in 2010, so no big shock that it was on the sale block as mergers and acquisitions are heating up in the beer industry.  You&#8217;ll see in the article that Keith Greggor, of the Griffin Group (and CEO of Anchor) said that &#8220;the move was a year in the making and the result of speaking with &#8216;many, many&#8217; larger breweries all over the world to find the right fit.&#8221;</p> <p>In fact, none of it is really a shock.  Many people in the industry are in the same space that Fritz came to in 2010:  In need of an exit strategy.  They&#8217;ve put their time in, they&#8217;ve grown their companies, they&#8217;ve done well by their employees, they&#8217;ve brought the brand they built into the world of success.  What else are you supposed to do?  Just close shop and lay everybody off?  Sell and go enjoy your grandkids, for gods sake.  Fritz was a pioneer in exit strategies just as he was in many other aspects of the craft industry.  He beat most everybody there by years.</p> <p>Still &#8211; it feels like a larger symbol &#8211; this beacon of independence, innovation, and entrepreneurship is now just another brand swept up in the great brand homogenization of the past few years.  Like it or not, it&#8217;s part of an international corporation that will benefit by dragging sales away from small, local, independent producers.  From now on, when you buy an Anchor beer, that buck will ultimately stop at Sapporo Breweries, Toiso, Eniwa, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan.</p> <p>So, you know, support your local international brewery.  Or just buy what tastes good, I guess.</p> <p>Ultimately, that&#8217;s the most disappointing part of it to me.  Every time one of these happens, a big wave goes through the craft industry in which a bunch of people who say: &#8220;Who gives a shit? If it tastes good, who cares who makes it?&#8221;</p> <p>Well, I do.</p> <p>And, sure.  I am biased.  The vast majority of breweries who will have M&amp;A as a viable exit strategy look very similar to the ones that have already been acquired:  Established, 15+ years old, growing, with a good on-site presence and wide distribution.  The vast majority of breweries who will suffer for it look a lot like mine:  Tiny, hyper local, battling with congested distribution markets and a variable tourism trade after 3 &#8211; 7 years of being open with 3000 new breweries behind us eagerly waiting to take our place.  It sure as shit matters to me.</p> <p>It&#8217;s difficult to see our forefathers and our pioneers &#8211; our independent giants and captains of industry &#8211; slip away from us.  It feels like a betrayal to the innovative attitude that seduced all of us 2nd, 3rd, and 4th rounders into the industry in the first place &#8211; the dreams of working hard with your own hands to make a cool product has gotten lost in the fast paced factory.  It hurts to see someone you idolized as a successful entrepreneur and businessman just become another suit and tie.</p> <p>But it&#8217;s what the future holds for our industry.</p> <p>On the wall of my production floor here at <a href="">Mystery</a>, there&#8217;s a quote from Fritz Maytag that reads, &#8220;Beer doesn&#8217;t make itself by itself. It takes an element of mystery and things unknown.&#8221;  Most people think it&#8217;s how I named my brewery.  It isn&#8217;t.  But it speaks to me enormously about the product and the reason that many of us are in the industry itself.  It&#8217;s more than just a business to a lot of us, it&#8217;s our way of life, it&#8217;s our passion.</p> <p>So, this week, I&#8217;ll go buy my last Anchor Steam.  I&#8217;ll hoist it in memory to the innovative business that Fritz Maytag once built, and I won&#8217;t look back, just like I&#8217;ve done with so many breweries lately.  Then, I&#8217;ll get back up on my brew deck and pour my heart and soul in.</p> <img src="" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> 1 erik <![CDATA[America: The Beer]]> 2016-06-22T14:46:04Z 2016-06-22T14:46:04Z <p>You might remember a story from a few weeks ago: <a href="">Budweiser renames beer &#8216;America&#8217; this summer</a>.</p> <p>I&#8217;ll admit &#8211; I don&#8217;t get it.  I feel like they&#8217;re pandering to an audience that they&#8217;re not likely to lose.  I&#8217;m not sure if someone thinks that this will draw in consumers from some heretofore unknown market segment or if someone just thought it was cool (and if it&#8217;s the latter, then, fair enough).  The most thought that I&#8217;ve put to it beyond that was, &#8220;How did they get TTB approval for that?&#8221;</p> <p>I guess there&#8217;s nothing necessarily BAD about it.  But you&#8217;re not supposed to have anything on the label that suggests a government endorsement nor put anything on the label that&#8217;s designed to confuse or misrepresent the product to the consumer and, well, here&#8217;s the label:</p> <p><a href=""><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6012" src="" alt="america_label_1462891903025_2198395_ver1.0_1462914847434_2200648_ver1.0" srcset=" 534w, 300w" sizes="(max-width: 534px) 100vw, 534px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a></p> <p>I don&#8217;t know about you, but this seems to represent that Budweiser is American which I would consider to be confusing to the consumer.  And, look, it started here, but it&#8217;s clearly moved on and doesn&#8217;t really need us anymore.  And E Pluribus Unum?  One, out of many.  I guess it does make a lot of sense for the <a href="">King of Mergers and Acquisitions</a>.</p> <p>Anyway, that&#8217;s about the last I thought about it until a couple of weeks ago when I was preparing a lunch-and-learn about label approval in NC.  I always use Anheuser Busch as one of my examples because they just have SO many brands, and they tend to represent them legally differently than most small breweries.</p> <p>And that&#8217;s when I noticed this:</p> <p><a href=""><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6013" src="" alt="Screenshot-2016-06-22-10.19.56" srcset=" 621w, 300w" sizes="(max-width: 621px) 100vw, 621px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a></p> <p>Let me tell you a story about this picture.  When you register a brand in North Carolina, you need to turn into a label approval form.  On that label approval form, you designate the Supplier (Anheuser Busch), the Brand &#8211; which designates distribution rights, the Product Description (Pale Ale, etc.), and a Fanciful Name (where most small breweries put the name of their beer).</p> <p>Anheuser Busch generally lists their individual Brands in the Brand field instead of a Fanciful Name, which is a legitimate practice.   If you search for Budweiser, you get 75 different results.</p> <p><a href=""><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6014" src="" alt="Screenshot-2016-06-22-10.25.07" srcset=" 625w, 300w" sizes="(max-width: 625px) 100vw, 625px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a></p> <p>It means that they have the ability to control distribution rights on each individual brand (which is really useful if you&#8217;d like the ability to punish or reward an individual distributor).  So, okay, no problem, so I searched for America.</p> <p><a href=""><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6015" src="" alt="Screenshot-2016-06-22-10.28.30" srcset=" 618w, 300w" sizes="(max-width: 618px) 100vw, 618px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a></p> <p>Fun, right?  Now, I&#8217;m no alcohol lawyer, but this suggests to me that America is being distributed illegally in North Carolina.  So, I took my time and filed a little bit of paperwork, so now if you search in public records, you can find this:</p> <p><a href=""><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6016" src="" alt="Screenshot-2016-06-22-10.32.08" srcset=" 617w, 300w" sizes="(max-width: 617px) 100vw, 617px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a></p> <p>That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s my pleasure to announce that just in time for America&#8217;s birthday, you can find <strong>America, a Ridiculously Patriotic Extra Pale Ale</strong> available in cans from <a href="">Mystery Brewing Company</a>.  They&#8217;ll be available July 1 at our <a href="">Public House in Hillsborough</a> (and it&#8217;s really delicious).</p> <p>(high res if you click)</p> <p><a href=""><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6019" src="" alt="AMERICA" srcset=" 600w, 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a></p> <p>And hopefully I don&#8217;t get sued off of the planet. In the meantime, I&#8217;ll be drinking this baby on July 4. Happy birthday, America.</p> <img src="" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> 9 erik <![CDATA[Not Your Father’s Craft Beer]]> 2015-07-23T15:37:00Z 2015-07-23T15:37:00Z <p>It&#8217;s amazing just how complex my feelings are about the dumbest things. Not Your Father&#8217;s Root Beer is inexplicable to me.  Partially because I just really dislike root beer and I just can&#8217;t imagine drinking a whole bottle of this, and partially because of the witchcraft through which it hath been wrought.<a href=""><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-5963" src="" alt="NYFRB-Bottle" srcset=" 300w, 150w, 960w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a></p> <p><a href="">Drinkers</a> <a href="">apparently</a> <a href="">love it</a>.  <a href="">The</a> <a href="">press</a> <a href="">loves</a> <a href="">it</a>.</p> <p>Except for the handful who are decent journalists and<a href=""> smell</a> <a href="">something</a> fishy.</p> <p>Here, I&#8217;ll save you the trouble of clicking on those links (but please do if you have the time).</p> <p>1. Incredibly high ratings on RateBeer, alone, but especially within style.</p> <p>2. Fortune, Time, Bloomberg, and Consumerist posts about how alcoholic root beer is &#8220;The Beer of the Year&#8221; and the best thing EVAR.</p> <p>3.  Boston Globe and Philly Inquirer pieces revealing that Small Town Brewery isn&#8217;t a Small Town Brewery, but a subsidiary of Phusion brands, the fine folks who brought you Four Loko and that it&#8217;s probably going to be acquired by Pabst.</p> <p>Before I go into my problems on this, let me just get this off of my chest:  Not Your Father&#8217;s Root Beer is no more beer than actual root beer is.  It&#8217;s a <a href="">Flavored Malt Beverage, an Alcopop</a>.  It&#8217;s made in a factory <a href="">that makes Mike&#8217;s Hard Lemonade</a> and Smirnoff Ice among other things.  And I&#8217;m not telling you not to like it.  I&#8217;m telling you to <strong>stop calling it a craft beer</strong>.  It&#8217;s no more a craft beer than Twisted Tea or Bacardi Breezer, or Hooch, or, you know, root beer.</p> <p>Y&#8217;all know that root beer isn&#8217;t actually beer, right?  The <a href="">guy who first commercialized root beer</a> was active in the temperance movement and wanted to make Hires &#8220;Root Tea&#8221;.  He called it &#8220;beer&#8221; to appeal to the working classes and to stop them from drinking alcohol.  It&#8217;s just marketing.  It&#8217;s always been a sham.</p> <p>I don&#8217;t even doubt that Small Town Brewery <a href="">is what it purports to be</a> or that it doesn&#8217;t make <a href="">an array small of craft beers</a>.  For all I know, the original location in Wauconda still does on its 3 bbl system.  But that product that you see in stacks on the floor at WalMart?  That is being released en masse in 30+ states?  Not on your freakin&#8217; life.  I hope that Tim Kovac is getting enough in royalties and residuals on this to at least finally quit his <a href=";authType=NAME_SEARCH&amp;authToken=Nq5q&amp;locale=en_US&amp;srchid=47958961437661668371&amp;srchindex=1&amp;srchtotal=5&amp;trk=vsrp_people_res_name&amp;trkInfo=VSRPsearchId%3A47958961437661668371%2CVSRPtargetId%3A51008569%2CVSRPcmpt%3Aprimary%2CVSRPnm%3Atrue">day job</a>, because it&#8217;s a masterful turn that I am, frankly, quite jealous of.</p> <p>But why not admit it?  Why not take pride in it?</p> <p>The chicanery that Phusion and phriends have used to convince drinkers that NYFRB is a craft beer is, frankly, incredible and awe inspiring, and for a little while I was puzzled by it.  Why be ashamed of what you are?  Mike&#8217;s Hard Lemonade doesn&#8217;t try to be something it isn&#8217;t.  Why is NYFRB doing this?  But I think I get it:  Earn the trust of the craft beer nerds and a lot of people who aren&#8217;t sure about what to think fall into place.  Look at the comments on <a href="">this page</a>.  It&#8217;s described as &#8220;liquid gold&#8221;, &#8220;a small taste of heaven&#8221;, &#8220;nectar of the gods&#8221;.  It boggles the mind.  It&#8217;s fucking root beer.  But when you&#8217;ve got the snobs in a tizzy everybody else leans over and takes a look.</p> <p>What this is really teaching us is 1) The majority of craft beer nerds could give two shits about who makes their beer, or even, apparently, if it&#8217;s beer.  2) Most people think that &#8220;craft beer&#8221; means &#8220;not light lager&#8221; (<a href=";sa=X&amp;biw=1525&amp;bih=699&amp;tbm=isch&amp;;source=iu&amp;pf=m&amp;fir=Zi6_w-lIFDUlkM%253A%252C8r9hXzuK4bZI3M%252C_&amp;dpr=0.9&amp;usg=__75qhvrQBfKrAT-oSlKkYfRYg8BE%3D#imgrc=Zi6_w-lIFDUlkM%3A&amp;usg=__75qhvrQBfKrAT-oSlKkYfRYg8BE%3D">thank you Stone</a>).  3) People love soda.</p> <p>And now let me tell you a story about grocery stores and what products like NYFRB mean to small breweries.</p> <p>Grocery stores are funny places for beer.</p> <p>The next time you&#8217;re in a grocery store, count the number of facings there are for just Bud Light.  Notice that there are full cold boxes dedicated to Bud Light.  They&#8217;ve got a 12 pack showing long-side and short-side in packaging so that it can fit a whole shelf.  They&#8217;ve got 12 oz cans, 16 oz cans, 12 oz bottles, 12 oz long-neck bottles, single cans, single bottles, beer balls, party packs, drink your way out of a swimming pool kits, etc., etc.  Then there&#8217;s a stack in the shape of a recliner and a television to celebrate the fact that football season starts in 2 months.</p> <p>Just Bud Light.  Now start looking at Budweiser, and Bud sub-brands.  Lime-a-ritas, etc.</p> <p>Now, who do you suppose puts all of those facings up?  If your answer is &#8220;the grocery store&#8221; you&#8217;re wrong.</p> <p>Grocery store beer coolers and shelves are decided roughly twice per year at a corporate level.  Fortunately, both AB-InBev and MillerCoors pay the salaries of people who actually work for the grocery store corporate offices and specialize in building grocery store sets.  There&#8217;s software for it.  The contents of the shelves are decided down to the inch.  Occasionally there&#8217;s a bit of manager&#8217;s discretion for local brands.  A few chains have some local initiatives, but don&#8217;t think that the big guys are losing much space for that.</p> <p>On an individual grocery store level? Those guys don&#8217;t stock the shelves, either.  That&#8217;s done by distributors.  When you see somebody walking through the grocery store aisles restocking beer, or fixing the way something is sitting on a shelf, take note of what they&#8217;re wearing.  It&#8217;s probably a polo shirt from a local distributor.  They are trying as hard as they can to get as many brands from their distributor on the shelf as possible because that&#8217;s how they get paid.</p> <p>Why am I talking about grocery stores?  Because the only real way to make money in beer is by selling a LOT of it.  Margins are paper thin.  Volume sales are where it&#8217;s at.  And grocery store chains equal volume.  There are 37,716 grocery stores in the US (or were at the end of 2014).  If, by some miracle, you could sell only case of 12 oz bottles in each one of those once per month through a whole year, ignoring any other sales outlet, you&#8217;d be making 33,000 bbls of beer.  That is roughly the size of the large regional craft brewery in your area.  There are 90 breweries that size or larger in the U.S., out of 3500.  Fewer than 2 per state.</p> <p>Next, go find out how many actual craft brands your grocery store carries.  I bet it&#8217;s fewer than 90 in most stores.  Make sure you don&#8217;t count any of <a href="">these brands </a>or any of <a href="">these brands</a> or any of <a href="">these brands</a> or any of <a href="">these brands</a>.  It&#8217;s a fun exercise.</p> <p>Grocery stores, like beer reviewers on the internet, don&#8217;t really care who makes beer.  They care about sales.  They want to know that sku A sold faster than sku B.  The next time shelves are edited, sku A gets more space, sku B gets less.  That&#8217;s it.  It is, yes, why Bud Light has so much space and won&#8217;t lose it.  It&#8217;s also why small breweries have a hard time with shelf space: because they&#8217;re not instantly recognizable; people who aren&#8217;t sure about what they&#8217;re buying avoid them.</p> <p>Finally, you&#8217;ll notice that there&#8217;s a limited amount of space for beer in grocery stores.  It doesn&#8217;t really change.  There are, however, a LOT more breweries, to the tune of 100% growth in the past five-ish years.  Space is a premium.  The largest challenges to a craft brewer today are shelf space and tap space.  They are difficult and expensive to get and even more difficult to keep, because every day there is someone at your heels saying, &#8220;Hey, want to try this? It&#8217;s NEW. You should sell it.&#8221;</p> <p>When something like NYFRB comes along, an alcopop disguised as a craft beer, a mass-market beverage disguised as a small time brewery, what I see is danger.  Why?  Because not only is it being bought by the people who don&#8217;t know and don&#8217;t care, it&#8217;s being bought by the people who DO care.  Because the elaborate ruse that Phusion and Small Town Brewery have engaged in through their incredible (and expensive) PR firm is masterful and has fooled an enormous amount of people from drinkers to journalists.  Craft beer stores that would normally never carry alcopops are buying it by the pallet &#8211; and why wouldn&#8217;t they?  It&#8217;s like instant money.</p> <p>But, make no mistake.  Every time NYFRB or something like it comes into a store as a craft beer, something else goes out.  And since people have no problem buying the ever living shit out of it, they&#8217;re guaranteeing that there&#8217;s one less spot for a small, local brewery to inhabit in the future.</p> <p>So, sure.  If it&#8217;s good, drink it.  Who gives a shit, right?  Get TRASHED.  You&#8217;re an AMERICAN.</p> <p>But don&#8217;t be fooled.</p> <p>Know the choice that you&#8217;re making and what it means.  And don&#8217;t call yourself a craft beer fan if you don&#8217;t care.  Let the small breweries know who their fans and allies really are.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <img src="" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> 9 erik <![CDATA[On North Carolina Beer Politics]]> 2015-05-09T17:48:05Z 2015-05-09T17:48:05Z <p>You know, it&#8217;s been a while since I&#8217;ve had a good rant.</p> <p>I&#8217;ve been pretty quiet lately. Since becoming the President of the <a href="">North Carolina Craft Brewers Guild</a>, I&#8217;ve often felt like it&#8217;s probably not the best idea in the world to be the guy that pops up the rash ranty blog posts. After all, we&#8217;ve seen what happens when I make <a href="">large sweeping statements</a>. But I feel like there needs to be another voice out there about North Carolina beer politics that isn&#8217;t a 3rd party covering us, especially <a href=";utm_campaign=2d5eee2de8-mailchimp&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_6026cb3473-2d5eee2de8-168474494">one that&#8217;s quoting the NCBWWA</a> without contacting oh, you know, a brewer for an opinion.<a href=""><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-5919" src="" alt="I'm Just a Bill" srcset=" 300w, 640w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a></p> <p>So, let&#8217;s talk about NC Beer. And to be clear, and safe I guess, this is me, as a person. This is not an Official Statement by the Brewers&#8217; Guild. This isn&#8217;t a Mystery Brewing company statement. This is me, elucidating my thoughts in the only way that I know: writing.</p> <p>If you&#8217;ve been following along in NC lately, you might know that there have been a couple of bills that were up for discussion in committee. Here they are:</p> <p><strong><a href="">House Bill 278</a>:</strong> Its sole purpose is to raise the self-distribution cap from 25,000 bbls/year to 100,000 bbls/year.  That&#8217;s it. Small change to small change. To put it in perspective, NC distributors delivered just about 6 million barrels of beers two years ago (and undoubtedly much more than that now). Based on their reaction to this bill, the .04% that they don&#8217;t have access to is an enormous threat to their livelihood and must be stopped at all costs.</p> <p><strong><a href="">House Bill 625</a>:</strong> A multi-purpose bill meant to make contract brewing legal in North Carolina, and meant to make Alternating Propietorship (which is a form of contracting) legal in North Carolina. The bill also allowed brewery taprooms to serve wine without the requirement of serving food. The sponsor of the bill also included a provision that would mean that on-site pint sales would not count toward the self-distribution cap. Fun fact: Not only are contracting brewing and AP brewing legal on a Federal level, they are also legal for NC wineries, just not breweries.  In fact, because it is specifically allowed for wineries, it is not allowed for breweries because our law states that anything that is not <a href="">specifically allowed shall be prohibited</a>. Guilty until proven innocent. The American way.</p> <p>Here&#8217;s the truth about both of these bills, regardless of what <a href=";utm_campaign=2d5eee2de8-mailchimp&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_6026cb3473-2d5eee2de8-168474494">that Brewbound article</a> might tell you: Dead on arrival. No chance. Not a prayer that they would even pass through committee to get to the floor of a chamber for a vote.  Why? <a href="[{3|gro=y,c-t-sts">Money in politics.</a> It&#8217;s that simple.</p> <p>But hey, I&#8217;m supposed to be ranting, right?  Let&#8217;s rant.</p> <p><strong>The Hubris</strong></p> <p>Frankly, it&#8217;s the Brewbound article that set me off. The hubris. The utter hubris. The idea that somehow we, the brewers, were so goddamned concerned with this stupid &#8220;anonymous&#8221; website that we somehow couldn&#8217;t keep up with the legislation. What utter and total bullshit. The bills were dead before the website published. And while, sure, we spent some time getting<a href=""> a followup website online</a>, to think that it was the all-consuming effort is insane.</p> <p>In fact, a few days after the &#8220;misdirection play&#8221;, I &#8211; and good number of other brewers &#8211; spent the entire day in Raleigh talking with our representatives and senators about our breweries, our local economy, and the bills that were important to us before inviting them all down to a reception at the Lt. Governor&#8217;s office which was attended by quite a few them. Come to think of it, over the course of the day, we didn&#8217;t mention the website at all.</p> <p>What we did mention is that small brewers in North Carolina <em>are</em> the local economy. We put people to work. When people buy our beer, the money stays local. We reinvest in our communities and we help grow and revitalize our towns and cities. We bring tourism dollars into the state and keep them here. We were met with good support. Republicans were supportive, Democrats were supportive. I mean, look &#8211; beer is pretty bipartisan. You can enjoy an IPA no matter what color tie you&#8217;re wearing.</p> <p>The only negative feedback we received all day was from the committee chair of Alcoholic Beverage Control. You know, the guy that&#8217;s in charge of reading our bill in committee and passing it along to the floor where it can get voted on by everyone else? Weird to see where the <a href=";default=candidate">largest part of his campaign funding comes from</a>. (Click the &#8220;As a candidate&#8221; tab and check that Top Donors item.) I know that correlation does not equal causation, but it&#8217;s hard not to draw that line.  Well, that and the fact that he gave me verbatim talking points from the <a href="">NCBWWA</a> playbook before I even made an ask. It felt pretty goddamned obvious.</p> <p>But hey, look. That&#8217;s politics. Money talks, and we&#8217;re busy reinvesting in our businesses and our communities, not buying politicians or putting up anonymous slanderous websites. So, we&#8217;re at a bit of a disadvantage.</p> <p>No, the hubris and misinformation that somehow we fell for some petty &#8220;misdirection&#8221; while the <a href="">NCBWWA</a> were doing an end-run around us is insulting and a gross mischaracterization. The truth is that the bills were already functionally dead due to pressure applied to politicians outside of the public eye. That they are now claiming some kind of amazing victory, as if they were some sort of underdog and we were struck dumb by their dazzling display of chicanery in the form of something that simple, is mind-boggling and naive.</p> <p>On the upside, I get to write a blog post now. And I&#8217;ve really been ignoring my blog.</p> <p><strong>The Blatant Lack of Support</strong></p> <p>A large portion of the brewers in North Carolina and ALL of the brewers who distribute into North Carolina from out of state are represented by a distributor.</p> <p>I guess we see how they really feel about us.</p> <p>We talk a lot about how we&#8217;re partners, about how we&#8217;re all in this together. Craft is pretty much the only growing segment of the beer industry. It&#8217;s growing so much that the beer segment as a whole continues to grow despite the declining sales of International Lager. We represent a good source of income for distributors (though admittedly still a small portion for many) and, frankly, we are the future of the industry.</p> <p>We&#8217;re really starting to see that partnership means pretty much jack shit to our partners.</p> <p>I&#8217;ve had multiple breweries in the past two weeks tell me that the &#8220;misdirection&#8221; website has made them re-think their decision to go to distribution.</p> <p>The distributor that I use for my brewery, who I feel I have a <em>wonderful </em>relationship with, is owned by a Senator.  One of the executives of the distributor is on the Board of the NCBWWA. I truly enjoy the people that I work with and they&#8217;ve been fantastic partners, but are the NCBWWA&#8217;s actions indicative of how my distributor sees our relationship working? That instead of growing together and facing the future as partners who want to see the industry grow and prosper, our brewery is part of a faction to be trampled and controlled? That we&#8217;re somehow untrustworthy and irresponsible? What am I supposed to think now?</p> <p>If you&#8217;re a startup brewer, do the actions of the wholesaler lobby truly make you want to sign your business over right now? If you&#8217;re one of the self-distributing breweries in the state that&#8217;s currently approaching the self-distribution cap, could you feel good about signing on with a distributor right now? Would you want to do anything other than fight? If a brewery reaches that cap and is forced by law to turn over their entire production capacity to a distributor, could they do it with anything other than enmity?</p> <p><strong>&#8220;We Have the Best Beer Laws in the South&#8221;</strong></p> <p>Yes. We do. You&#8217;re right. That&#8217;s us. The skinny kid at fat camp.</p> <p>Seriously. This is an argument we&#8217;re given. &#8220;We have the most progressive laws in the South!&#8221; Sure we do. We also lead <a href="">the smallest group in the country</a> and have some of the highest excise taxes on beer. So.. yay us! We can settle for less!</p> <p>We&#8217;re number 42! We&#8217;re number 42!</p> <p>You know what I want for my business? A competitive disadvantage against the breweries who are importing into our state! Yeah!  Woo! Go us!</p> <p>It&#8217;s the biggest joke.</p> <p>Sure. Every other state in the South wants our laws. Do you know what I want? I want Colorado&#8217;s. Our excise tax is 775% higher than theirs is. They have great self-distribution rights, permissive taproom and pub laws, and a kegerator in the Governor&#8217;s mansion. They don&#8217;t even have gated access to beer on Sunday mornings. They have incredibly successful breweries AND distributors. Both. They only have half of our population, but <a href="">an economic impact from craft beer</a> that more than doubles ours.</p> <p>Yes, by all means. Let&#8217;s settle for less. Why try to be successful?</p> <p><strong>The Ridiculous Idea that Brewers Are Trying to Bring Down the 3-Tier System</strong></p> <p>I bring this up because so much of the rhetoric that I see spouted lately has to do with this fantastical idea that small breweries want to do away with the 3-tier system, like somehow we happen to be small business owners, entrepreneurs, AND colossal idiots. I&#8217;ve said it before and I&#8217;ll say it again: We have the 3-tier system to thank for the amazing proliferation of craft beer. It&#8217;s true. I wouldn&#8217;t be drinking a beer from California right now without it. No brewery wants to do away with it.</p> <p>However, that doesn&#8217;t mean that the current state of franchise law isn&#8217;t anti-competitive and unconstitutional. That doesn&#8217;t mean that I don&#8217;t also believe that breweries who want to distribute their own product should be able to do so. Just because a distributor <a href="">&#8220;can’t understand why someone who wants to grow would choose a different route to market&#8221;</a> doesn&#8217;t mean that &#8220;illegal&#8221; is the only other option. That&#8217;s the basis of free enterprise: People are free to make decisions that you might think are stupid.</p> <p>At some point, some expert thought that <a href="">tablet computers would never work</a>. Apple has only sold around <a href="">100 million iPads</a>, so, you know, they probably should have just settled for less.</p> <p>But the truth is, many of us DO rely on the middle tier. We appreciate it and use it because what we want to do is focus on making beer, not run a trucking or logistics company. But here&#8217;s the thing: That&#8217;s our <em>decision</em>. Somewhere (nearby), somebody does want to run a trucking and logistics company, and they also want to make the beer. They believe (rightly) that they are better represented in the market when they are the ones to sell their own product. It should be their decision to make, always, regardless of whether or not a competitor understands it.</p> <p><strong>The Lack of Foresight and Accountability</strong></p> <p>100% true: I cannot figure out for the life of me why distributors and brewers are on opposite sides. We all want the same thing: Success in our business, more beer on the market. With the exception of the ability to serve wine in my pub without Hot Pockets on the menu, the bills that are listed up above do nothing but help distributors. More beer in breweries = more beer for distributors to sell = more money. It&#8217;s the easiest damn equation ever.</p> <p>I can&#8217;t figure out why members of the NCBWWA aren&#8217;t calling their association saying, &#8220;Please stop. You are hurting our business.&#8221; Because that&#8217;s exactly what&#8217;s happening.</p> <p>They&#8217;re losing face. They&#8217;re losing potential suppliers, and they&#8217;re losing potential sales. The crazy idea that contract brewing is somehow a way to get around the self-distribution cap is ludicrous. Brewers use it to grow. The largest contracter in the state? MillerCoors. They contracted Sam Adams for years. They have an Alternating Propietorship relationship with their own sub-company, Blue Moon. They use a distributor. When Highland was moving from their basement brewery in downtown Asheville into their new facility, they used contracting to grow their capacity so that they could pick up brewing on a much larger system seamlessly. They use a distributor. Carolina Beer and Beverage contracted for years before the sale to Foothills. They used a distributor. There are at least two other breweries in North Carolina that are currently contracting that move 100% of their product through a distributor. Contracting is a tool for successful brands, it&#8217;s a means of startup, it gets more beer on the market, which is almost exclusively carried by a distributor in the state. How can the distributors logically explain fighting it?</p> <p>The &#8220;end run around the distribution cap&#8221; argument is a red herring that anybody should be able to see through, <em>especially a distributor</em>. I cannot figure out why distributors don&#8217;t hold their own organization more accountable for the actions it takes and, most importantly, the tone that is being set in the marketplace with suppliers.  It&#8217;s insulting, demeaning, and derogatory.</p> <p>Yes, there are some breweries that want to self-distribute as much as they possibly can in the state. Yes, those breweries represent beer on the market that isn&#8217;t controlled by a distributor somewhere. Yes, it is a ridiculously small amount of beer by comparison and, yes, it always will be even at 100,000 bbls. It also doesn&#8217;t mean that those self-distributing breweries won&#8217;t use a distributor for some of their operation at some point. Maybe the successful brewer in Asheville doesn&#8217;t want to have a logistics arm to drive beer 7 hours to the Outer Banks, but really wants to distribute there. Are you really going to say no to an established and known brand who wants to use you for distribution?</p> <p>Well, not when they&#8217;re mandated to use you by state law, I guess.</p> <p>But the reality is that most, if not all, of those guys will never go down that path. Especially after the past couple of weeks, and the intensely negative posturing toward self-distributed breweries. They&#8217;ll find another way. They&#8217;ll limit their growth. They won&#8217;t lay off workers, liquidate equipment, and sign 30% of their revenue over to somebody they don&#8217;t feel they can trust with their life&#8217;s savings, with their babies.</p> <p>Look, I understand that the real issue is power. The real issue is that someone is scared to death of change and the unpredictability of the future, but you know what? It&#8217;s coming. It&#8217;s that simple. Change will happen. It&#8217;s unavoidable. It&#8217;s the only constant. We can all grow together and prosper or we can do it through pain and fire and brimstone. We can go through nasty tactics, threats, and slimy actions, or we can work together to set a precedent for the rest of the country.</p> <p>Come on NCBWWA, do you want to be leaders or do you want to settle for less? You have nothing to lose and so, so much to gain by actually being good partners.</p> <p>I tell people all the time that North Carolina is one of the best places in the country to have a beer. I&#8217;m proud of the breweries in this state, their innovation, their quality, and their leadership.</p> <p>I really wish our most natural partners wanted to stand proudly alongside us instead of attempting to quash us at every turn.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <img src="" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> 17 erik <![CDATA[Craft Beer: We care what you drink.]]> 2014-10-22T12:37:19Z 2014-10-22T03:01:58Z <p>Today, I poured samples of beer at the <a href="" target="_blank">North Carolina State Fair</a>. This year is the first time that samples were being poured there, so it was a novel experience for everybody involved. The staff, the brewers, the patrons, etc.</p> <p>Because I didn&#8217;t have much to eat today I found myself getting irritated by little things, like the fact that I had no idea how to get into where I was pouring beer. Like the fact that I was ridiculous and didn&#8217;t ask my distributor to bring beer over for me. Like the fact that the greeters in the complex we were in kept saying, &#8220;Yeah! The wine is this way!&#8221; but neglected to say anything about beer. It was fine. The whole thing turned out to be a great success, grumpiness notwithstanding.</p> <p>It was actually an incredibly refreshing day. There&#8217;s nothing like having a 50-year old, grey-haired, Southern boy walk up to you wearing a John Deere t-shirt, <em>dirty</em> jeans, and a yellowing farm equipment hat, staring at the bottles you&#8217;re serving for a bit and then saying, &#8220;Whaddya got that&#8217;s dark?&#8221; to remind you why you&#8217;re in this business. Sometimes you get so mired in sales figures and brewery efficiency and you get so involved in the business around you that you forget that a lot of what this is about is giving people good beer that makes them happy.</p> <p>But tonight I had a bit of an epiphany &#8211; at the very least an idea. I think I still need to think about it (and write about it), and I probably won&#8217;t even define it perfectly here today, but it&#8217;s a start. Here&#8217;s what happened:</p> <p>A lady came up to my table. She was probably mid-50s to mid-60s, short cut, curly, dyed red hair with grey roots. She was wearing a zipper sweatshirt over a blouse and some mom jeans. She was staring down at the bottles that I had but not touching them, clearly not making eye contact with me.</p> <p>I asked her, &#8220;Would you like a sample?&#8221; She nodded, so I continued, &#8220;Do you want just one or do you want to try all three?&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Just one,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>&#8220;Well, then, what kind of beer do you like?&#8221;</p> <p>Pause. She looks up at me and says, &#8220;I like ales and.. uhh.. lagers. Ales and lagers.&#8221;</p> <p>Normally, this is the kind of thing that I internally roll my eyes at. It&#8217;s the kind of thing you laugh about with other brewers at beer festivals. You want to snarkily respond to them, &#8220;Oh, you like BEER? GOT IT.&#8221; You know what they mean. I drink that fizzy, yellow stuff &#8211; those are lagers &#8211; and sometimes I drink stuff that isn&#8217;t fizzy and yellow. Those are ales.&#8221; Probably. Maybe.</p> <p>So, I talked to her a little bit about flavor. Caramel and toffee, chocolate and smoke, oranges and pineapples. I kinda wanted to tell her, hey &#8211; it&#8217;s okay. I know you&#8217;re intimidated by this stuff, but &#8220;I don&#8217;t know&#8221; is a fine answer. Let me help you. And while I was talking to her it occurred to me in such a moment of clarity that it actually stopped me mid-sentence, and I paused in the middle of a tasting before I went on.</p> <p>Of course she doesn&#8217;t know what she likes. Up until now, the people who were making the beer that she was drinking didn&#8217;t care what she <em>likes</em>, they care what she <em>buys</em>.</p> <p>Now, look, I care <em>that</em> she buys. After all, I need to make money. I have employees to pay and beer to make, but follow me for a little while:</p> <p>This, to me, might be the new definition of &#8220;craft&#8221;: People who care about YOUR beer.</p> <p>Today, I was pouring an English Mild Ale (caramel/toffee), a Saison (pineapple/oranges), and a Smoked Rye Stout (chocolate/campfire). If she would have said to me, &#8220;I really love IPAs&#8221; I would have said, &#8220;Hey, sorry. I have nothing for you, but the three other breweries here all have great IPAs. They&#8217;re about 4 booths away from me. If you want to try something else, I&#8217;ve got your lineup.&#8221; because I am so much more interested in that lady having a good experience than I am in getting her $7.</p> <p>Mass market beer doesn&#8217;t give a shit about what you like in a beer. They&#8217;re not even trying to sell you that anymore. They&#8217;re trying to sell you sex appeal, cool friends, and chug-friendly packaging. Like it? Of course you like it. You&#8217;re getting drunk, aren&#8217;t you? Ugh.</p> <p>Craft: We care what you drink.</p> <p>It&#8217;s why beer festivals are so damn frustrating. They&#8217;re full of jackasses that come up to your booth and order, &#8220;Whatever.&#8221; No, man. Not whatever. I spend a lot of time and effort making these beers taste great. I want YOU to LIKE them. Bud Light is whatever. PBR is whatever. If you want to get whatever, just spend your $7 on a plastic bottle of Popov Vodka and tuck in for the night. These beers are ideas. They&#8217;re concepts. They&#8217;re little glasses of art. I want them to speak to you in the same way they speak to me. You might not even like it, and I&#8217;m okay with that, but I want you to just try because I care about what you like.</p> <p>&#8220;Whatever&#8221; means fun is drunk. In craft beer, fun is drinking.</p> <p>So, I care. And I think that&#8217;s what sets us &#8211; collectively &#8211; apart. At Mystery the other night, we had a conversation about what the mission of our company really is. Why are we here? It&#8217;s difficult trying to convey the sense of, &#8220;We&#8217;re here because we feel there&#8217;s an underserved market of people who want seasonal-only beer.&#8221; or some sort of line like that. It feels too corporate and stodgy, but it&#8217;s important to give the company the right direction as you grow. We&#8217;ll have something like that (but better) once we finish the process, but the following underpinning idea is still there.</p> <p>We care about what you like. We want to make great beer and we want you to like it and enjoy it because it&#8217;s delicious and that makes everyone happy. That&#8217;s what makes us craft.</p> <p>Because I feel like I need to finish my story, she tried all three. Stout was the hit. She liked the Mild, the Saison was okay (&#8220;Too much like Blue Moon.&#8221; &#8211; which I DID internally cringe at, because it&#8217;s not ANYTHING like Blue Moon and also Blue Moon. Eh.), but the Stout!</p> <p>&#8220;I ain&#8217;t never had a beer like that. It tastes like chocolate!&#8221;</p> <p>What I wanted to capture in a glass &#8211; I told her &#8211; were those cold fall evenings, when you&#8217;re walking outside and there&#8217;s smoke coming out of someone&#8217;s chimney, and the smell of damp leaves is in the air. That quintessential fall evening.</p> <p>&#8220;Well, you sure got it.&#8221; she said. And she handed me her $7 and left with a bottle.</p> <img src="" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> 5