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bengy81 posted:Thank you for confirming my feelings about Ska. I have been feeling like my dislike is irrational because It seems like a ton of people are in love with them, especially their Modus Hoperandi. I haven't tried that one, so I can't comment about the quality, but they are one of the few micro's in CO that I don't really like, also they have crappy label design. I love Modus Hoperandi, but it's also the only one ive ever had from them.
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Apr 30, 2012 00:18
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Modus and ESB are good. Steeltoe is decent. Blonde is kinda bad. Even worse than their mediocre brews, their web site starts right up with loud, obnoxious "generic ska groove" music, and has mouseover noises on every button and link.
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Apr 30, 2012 03:03
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I am in the process of reading Sam Calagione's book, and while not being a very good business or brewing book, he does make a few good points, like how important it is for your business to have GOOD marketing. It amazes me how many brewery sites (and beer related sites in general) have such an amateur feel to them, and how bad some of the packaging is, or how many companies think its ok to ship out bottles with crooked or missing labels.
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Apr 30, 2012 03:44
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bengy81 posted:...or how many companies think its ok to ship out bottles with crooked or missing labels. Mendocino 
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Apr 30, 2012 05:22
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bengy81 posted:I am in the process of reading Sam Calagione's book, and while not being a very good business or brewing book, he does make a few good points, like how important it is for your business to have GOOD marketing. It amazes me how many brewery sites (and beer related sites in general) have such an amateur feel to them, and how bad some of the packaging is, or how many companies think its ok to ship out bottles with crooked or missing labels. poo poo I was contemplating switching my major from marketing because it's focused on superficial poo poo, but then something like this reminds me that there are certain marketing aspects that need to occur for a product to be successful, then again they seem to be common knowledge to those who know good taste. Then again there are a bunch of successful breweries based on great beer alone. I just hope the craft market doesn't come down to whoever made the nicest looking webpage over whoever made the better beer.
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Apr 30, 2012 06:31
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It's entirely possible to market a product solely based on subjective truth. That's why I love selling beer. I can make recommendations honestly and sincerely. I bash the lovely beers - especially the lovely craft beers. The only thing that makes this job worth doing is when someone comes back, a day or a week later, and says that they're done drinking Bud Platinum because they fell in love with the Allagash White or the Victory Prima Pils that I sent them home with. I can't think of any other product out there that I could sell and then go home and sleep soundly each night. Maybe I sound like a huge human being, but really the only high point in my day is when someone comes back and describes the life-altering experience they had the night before when they tasted a decent beer for the first time and came to the realization that beer doesn't have to be fizzy and pale-yellow and characterless - that there is a whole universe of beer. Otherwise, this lovely near-minimum-wage retail job would be utterly soul-crushing (it's only semi-soul-crushing).
FreelanceSocialist fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Apr 30, 2012 |
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Apr 30, 2012 06:56
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bengy81 posted:...or how many companies think its ok to ship out bottles with crooked or missing labels. Westvleteren
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Apr 30, 2012 07:16
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Perfectly Cromulent posted:Westvleteren Doesn't ship.
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Apr 30, 2012 07:45
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rage-saq posted:Doesn't ship. Way to ruin my terrible joke. In actual beer news, Gravity Mountain, an IPA collab between Terminal Gravity and Double Mountain, was really disappointing.
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Apr 30, 2012 08:59
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bengy81 posted:or how many companies think its ok to ship out bottles with crooked or missing labels. This used to bother me a lot before I started working at a brewery, but now that I work with a labeler I realize how incredibly fickle they can be. Our labeler at Terrapin is as ancient and lovely as they come. No matter how much we work on it (which is all the time) it always puts on every other label slightly crooked. It also drops a lot of labels, and we lose some labels to our drop packer, so no matter how hard we try we're going to be sending out beer with lovely labels or no labels until we get a fancy new(er) one. So this is one area to cut smaller breweries some slack, cause they generally can't help it.
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Apr 30, 2012 12:22
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rage-saq posted:Doesn't ship. Doesn't label.
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Apr 30, 2012 14:20
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Josh Wow posted:This used to bother me a lot before I started working at a brewery, but now that I work with a labeler I realize how incredibly fickle they can be. Our labeler at Terrapin is as ancient and lovely as they come. No matter how much we work on it (which is all the time) it always puts on every other label slightly crooked. Seconding this. The labeler I worked with at Søgaards loved to leave the shoulder labels with hanging flaps, skew the hell out of the shoulder and front labels, and occasionally put three labels on one bottle. We did what we could to catch any bottles whose labels weren't put on properly, but you can only do so much when you're bottling three tanks worth of beer between two people in a 14-hour day, and trying to keep the packing robot from destroying bottles or making sure fill head #2 hasn't mysteriously stopped working again. I've never had to do anything with Goose Island's packaging line (thank gently caress), but I imagine they run into similar things sometimes. They're large enough to have multiple people to catch skewed/off bottles and a maintenance team to fix any problems quickly, though, so I imagine far fewer hosed-up bottles slip through. But no matter how good your equipment is or how many people you have watching it, you'll always get the occasional low-fill or label problem. Smaller breweries generally have to work with a lot of quirky, inconsistent, sometimes downright lovely equipment. Cut them a bit of slack on the little things and just enjoy the beer.  /edit: Would anybody be interested in an Ask/Tell thread about working in a brewery? Would any of the other brewers here be interested in contributing to it? RocketMermaid fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Apr 30, 2012 |
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Apr 30, 2012 16:24
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rage-saq posted:Doesn't ship. Will be soon. Once. 
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Apr 30, 2012 17:02
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FreelanceSocialist posted:Will be soon. Once. I want that so, soooooo bad. This is one of those instances where living in a beer city is bad, because while we will get some, mobs are gonna descend on any place selling it and buy out the stock immediately.
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Apr 30, 2012 17:04
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Ubik posted:
I would be interested in gaining some more inside knowledge. I am fascinated how some of the smaller craft breweries exists (The Alchemist comes to mind) and part of me wonders how easy (or not) it would be to start a small nanobrewery
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Apr 30, 2012 17:08
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FreelanceSocialist posted:It's entirely possible to market a product solely based on subjective truth. That's why I love selling beer. I can make recommendations honestly and sincerely. I bash the lovely beers - especially the lovely craft beers. The only thing that makes this job worth doing is when someone comes back, a day or a week later, and says that they're done drinking Bud Platinum because they fell in love with the Allagash White or the Victory Prima Pils that I sent them home with. I can't think of any other product out there that I could sell and then go home and sleep soundly each night. Maybe I sound like a huge human being, but really the only high point in my day is when someone comes back and describes the life-altering experience they had the night before when they tasted a decent beer for the first time and came to the realization that beer doesn't have to be fizzy and pale-yellow and characterless - that there is a whole universe of beer. Otherwise, this lovely near-minimum-wage retail job would be utterly soul-crushing (it's only semi-soul-crushing). That's not exactly what I'd be doing with a marketing degree. Selling beer to people is fun, because I can be honest about the beer, when you're in marketing your goal, usually, is to sell a lovely product. Good products tend to speak for themselves. I mean I never bought craft beer because of the marketing behind it, other than labels sometimes, most of the time I'm buying good beer is because of word of mouth.
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Apr 30, 2012 17:13
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Marketing, for craft breweries, is also public outreach, event sponsorship, tastings, cornering distributors, and so on. It's not all that bad.
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Apr 30, 2012 17:23
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Another point in favor of cans: no crooked labels!
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Apr 30, 2012 17:28
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Speaking of labels, Victory must have lovely label machines because the top label that goes around the neck is always peeling off with their beers.
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Apr 30, 2012 17:44
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RiggenBlaque posted:Speaking of labels, Victory must have lovely label machines because the top label that goes around the neck is always peeling off with their beers. I noticed that too. The labels on every bottle of Whirlwind I've ever had practically leap off the bottle with minimal provocation.
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Apr 30, 2012 17:46
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RiggenBlaque posted:Speaking of labels, Victory must have lovely label machines because the top label that goes around the neck is always peeling off with their beers. You're absolutely right about that, now that you mention it. I always find myself playing with the loose top label when I'm holding a bottle from Victory. I ultimately don't give a poo poo, though. They make awesome beer. In a world where Weyerbacher can be a successful brewery with packaging that looks like the result of a weekend Intro To Photoshop seminar, crooked labels really aren't the end of the world.
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Apr 30, 2012 18:00
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Although the Victory labels falling off doesn't bother me on a visual level, the first couple times I saw it were on bottles of Hop Devil and Hop Wallop and the labels falling off made me think the bottles were old, which made me not buy it (until later when I noticed all Victory beers have this problem).
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Apr 30, 2012 20:14
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If breweries were smart they would market these as "Easy-off labels" for home brewers.
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Apr 30, 2012 21:37
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Also speaking of Victory, it looks like we'll start to see Summer Love showing up soon, which is very exciting.
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Apr 30, 2012 23:21
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RiggenBlaque posted:Also speaking of Victory, it looks like we'll start to see Summer Love showing up soon, which is very exciting. I cannot wait.
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May 1, 2012 00:06
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Found some Ten Fidy for $10. Holy poo poo. Tons of malt/chocolate/coffee: pretty much the dessert to my meal. Right in front of Brooklyn Chocolate Stout. If it were cheaper I think I would end up being 300 lbs
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May 1, 2012 00:32
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Thanks to funkybottoms, I got my hands on some assorted goods from out of state. Tonight I'm having Dortmunder Gold, and holy gently caress am I jealous of anyone with ready access to this beer. This packs more taste than any lager I've had to date. The bitterness and malts work surprisingly well together, and the slight sulfur taste actually contributes to the flavor profile instead of dragging it down. I would session the hell out of this beer if I could. Very impressive, and I can't wait to dig into the other Great Lakes bottles sitting in my fridge.
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May 1, 2012 04:21
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New Belgium announced their next Lips of Faith beers. One's a sour brewed with Lychee fruit (I have no idea what this is) and the other is a collaboration with Lost Abbey featuring a 100% brettanomyces fermentation. Sounds interesting, especially the Lost Abbey collab. Should be available by mid May.
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May 1, 2012 04:25
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So what's up with the goons who went to DLD '12? I know there was a few of you... but none of you have posted about it! I'm a member of a few beer communities, and everyone else who went can't shut up about it... but goons seem to not even talk about it! Kraven Moorhed posted:Very impressive, and I can't wait to dig into the other Great Lakes bottles sitting in my fridge. What other GLBC did you get? I feel like I should like GLBC's beer more, considering I live within an hour from them. Kudosx fucked around with this message at 04:56 on May 1, 2012 |
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May 1, 2012 04:37
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Docjowles posted:New Belgium announced their next Lips of Faith beers. One's a sour brewed with Lychee fruit (I have no idea what this is) and the other is a collaboration with Lost Abbey featuring a 100% brettanomyces fermentation. Sounds interesting, especially the Lost Abbey collab. Should be available by mid May. The Lychee is great. It's nicely tart and sour and the fruit provides a nice sweetness. It doesn't remind me of lychees, but it tastes delicious.
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May 1, 2012 05:07
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Kudosx posted:What other GLBC did you get? I feel like I should like GLBC's beer more, considering I live within an hour from them. Burning River Pale, Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, and Eliot Ness. Also, never take nearby breweries for granted. For a long time I completely ignored Legend even though it's like 45 minutes from my house. Granted, I still mostly do, but now I always make sure to get some of their higher gravity winter releases as they tend to do those well. Also their ESB is one of my inexplicable guilty pleasures. The time I got 3 6-packs from Fresh Market for $2 each at the end of the season... 
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May 1, 2012 06:26
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USPS to potentially make shipping beer legal. It will only be for licensed retailers, but it's a pretty big step as I imagine many online beer retailers will start popping up now which could put a damper on Ebay selling potentially. This could also be a great way for stores to clear out stock getting old because they will be able to reach new customers. @Kraven Moohed, you don't have access to Great Lakes beers? The beers you have are readily available in variety 12 packs here. Edmund Fitzgerald is fantastic, their Blackout Stout is a beer you should definitely look for as well come winter time, it may be the best Imperial Stout that isn't barrel aged.
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May 1, 2012 13:14
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Midorka posted:USPS to potentially make shipping beer legal. It will only be for licensed retailers, but it's a pretty big step as I imagine many online beer retailers will start popping up now which could put a damper on Ebay selling potentially. This could also be a great way for stores to clear out stock getting old because they will be able to reach new customers. Pretty sure they are still going to force anyone who wants to ship beer/wine to be 'licensed', and it's not going to change laws in states that prohibit the shipment of alcohol. Fedex and UPS have allowed shipments of alcohol from licensed retailers for years so....there's virtually no progress being made here. Now if they let just anyone ship beer/wine, it would be different. For now I'll just continue to ship my 'olive oil' through Fedex.
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May 1, 2012 13:43
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Great Lakes year-round beers are somewhat recently available in Northern VA and will be in the rest of the state later in the year (probably). don't think they've established enough of a market here to go all-out yet, though. KM, Legend's IS is pretty good out of the bottle, but the cask version i had the other day was kinda wack. Kudosx, i'm pretty sure Paul Proteus' "no more barrel-aged beers" post was a DLD reference; otherwise, i think the goons who went have been on silent running in the thread for some time. i'm happy not to see those posts, though, because a non-SA beer group i'm a part of is full of obnoxious neckbeard posts regarding the event. as for USPS shipping alcohol, i doubt it will do anything to stop ebay sales- in fact, with flat rate postage being so low, it will likely make it more attractive to buy single bottles/small quantities there than cases through regular retailers. also what Sirotan said- USPS isn't going to be changing existing state laws, i'm sure. funkybottoms fucked around with this message at 13:52 on May 1, 2012 |
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May 1, 2012 13:49
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Kudosx posted:So what's up with the goons who went to DLD '12? I know there was a few of you... but none of you have posted about it! Had a friend who got tickets and brought me back a bottle. He said it was the most over-the-top crowded he's ever seen a beer event (which I guess wasn't unexpected), but was pretty well run considering the crowd. He got one of the "golden tickets" and scored a bottle of BA Dark Lord with vanilla... Mmmmm. Yesterday, the friend who got me really into beer forwarded me this flickr gallery of DLD in 2005 (which he attended with some Ratebeer buddies). Very strange to see a release day that probably brought 100 people only 7 years ago. People walked out with multiple cases... And this year, the headcount was 7+ thousand. Beer is popular.
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May 1, 2012 14:50
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Just realized why there is no carbonation in my Ten Fidy. It was bottled at the end of 2010. What the gently caress. I have one can left to bring back to the store and ask them, politely, why they are selling 2 year old beer. Still tastes good though. TenaciousTomato fucked around with this message at 15:17 on May 1, 2012 |
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May 1, 2012 15:15
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I had kind of a singular beer weekend. On Friday I went to a friend's house for a beer dinner, she cooked and the rest of us brought beer. And what beer we brought! Highlights: Alpine Nelson, maybe a little old but I'm comparing it to super-fresh cask Nelson. It had lost a bit of the hop edge, but was still a very balanced, delicious beer. Barrel-Aged Rasputin - I wasn't really impressed with this fresh, but it's done good things in the bottle. Still powerfully oaky with tons of coffee and roasty flavors, maybe a slight cola background. Bruery Sans Pagaie. I wouldn't call The Bruery my favorite brewery, but they're pretty drat high on the list. This is a match for any American kriek, and can hang out comfortably with most Belgians as well. It was also delicious with vanilla frozen custard. Bruery Chocolate Rain. Here's where things got ridiculous. Chocolate Rain is huge, sweet, chocolatey and potent as gently caress. It's totally enjoyable on its own (though I wouldn't want to drink a whole 20% bottle if I had anything else to do that night), but it's really good for blending as well. We mixed Chocolate Rain with Sans Pagaie, and it tasted like a cherry cordial. We mixed Chocolate Rain with frozen custard, and it made an amazing beer float. Then my friend did something that ranks very high on my Crazed Things Done With Beer list: she got out the Utopias. I am happy to report that an even mix of Utopias and Chocolate Rain is both delicious and a fantastic way to turn a table full of beer nerds into comatose diabetics. On Saturday, I went to a different friend's house for an eight-hour sour-tasting extravaganza. I took my last bottle of Marrón Acidifié. It died in good company. - 2009 Sang Royale (way more fruit than I expected from an older beer, excellent tart/funk balance, basically everything Cascade does well.) - Upright Fantasia, a peach sour. More assertive acidity than Sang Royal. The peach was maybe a bit too muted, but it was still a great beer. - Marrón Acidifié. The most barrel-forward offering of the night. Lots of vanilla, grapes, and red currant flavors and the perfect level of sourness. Anyone who's sitting on some of this, it's ready to drink whenever you care to. - Bruery Sour in the Rye - this one was a big ol' brettanomyces bomb. More tart than the Marrón but less than the Fantasia, the rye character was mostly lost aside from a slight pepperiness. Any other night, this would have been an outstanding sour. - 2008 Cantillon Lou Pepe Kriek. The whale of the evening, this was in a class of its own. Spicy, perfectly mixing sour and funk, this reminded me just how goddamn good Cantillon is. It was also the prettiest beer of the night, a clear beautiful red. And such perfect, delicate lacing!  - Lost Abbey Framboise de Amorosa - It's drinking well now, and I've got more than half a case left so I think I'm going to continue being aggressive with it. Really and outstanding beer, the best sour offering from Lost Abbey this year. Poppy may eclipse it eventually with age, but for drinking now Framboise wins hands down. - 2011 Cantillon Rose de Gambrinus. It smelled like an open sewer line. It smelled like cask beer farts. It tasted like heaven. - Bruery White Oak. This was the most wine-like sour of the night, with complex menthol, pear, and apple on the nose. The mid-palate was all spicy wheat flavors, with a huge round bourbon finish. This is a really classy beer. - Fremont Brewing Company Bourbon Abominable. A little palate cleansing in the form of a bourbon barrel aged imperial stout. It was a good example of the style - bourbon, coconut, and a bit of smoke from the barrel; roasted grain and burned toast on the finish. Straight out of the bottle I got a lot of fusel aromas and flavors, but those mostly blew off as it warmed. This was a good ber, I'd buy it if I saw it in a store. We paired some cheeses with the sours. The hands-down winner was a Saint Marcellin that was so ripe we had to serve it out of a bowl with a spoon. When I took the plastic off the top, people across the room noticed. All of that funk and fatty creaminess was perfect with the sours, especially the Sang Royale. Last night I opened a bottle of 2010 Parabola with friends. It's aged well, there's almost no heat to it and it's not a one-note bourbon bomb like a lot of barrel aged stuff. I prefer Abyss, but I'd never turn down either beer.
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May 1, 2012 15:33
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I went down to The Bruery on Saturday of this last weekend. I had avoided purchasing their beers for awhile because only their Belgian-style offerings were available to me and I am not a big fan of Belgian beers. I do love sours, though. I bought a bottle of Sans Pagaie while sampling Mother Funker, Salt of the Earth, Loakal, Tradewinds with Basil, and Humulus. My sour experience includes mostly American sours, such as Russian River, Lips of Faith, and Jolly Pumpkin, but Mother Funker had a... sulfurish taste to it? I loved the funkiness, but found the "burnt" taste a little off-putting. Luckily, Sans Pagaie did not have the same sulfurish taste and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Salt of the Earth tasted like brine and I should've known better. I cannot say I was a fan. I enjoyed Loakal and Humulus and their hop-forward approaches, but would prefer any IPA over Humulus and thought Dirty Hippie from Kern River was a much better amber/red. Did I just try the wrong beers, bartolimu?
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May 1, 2012 15:54
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TenaciousTomato posted:Just realized why there is no carbonation in my Ten Fidy. It was bottled at the end of 2010. What the gently caress. I have one can left to bring back to the store and ask them, politely, why they are selling 2 year old beer. That makes no sense. If anything, a huge beer like Ten Fidy should improve with age. I'd be kind of excited to find pre-aged imperial stout. Unless the can itself is defective and leaking CO2 or something. Btw, Oskar Blues cans so I am assuming that was just a typo. But if you got a bottle labeled Ten Fidy then I don't know what the gently caress you got unless it was hand bottled off a tap.
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May 1, 2012 16:04
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TenaciousTomato posted:Just realized why there is no carbonation in my Ten Fidy. It was bottled at the end of 2010. What the gently caress. I have one can left to bring back to the store and ask them, politely, why they are selling 2 year old beer. people age 10.5% beers for much longer than that on purpose- i considered myself lucky when i found a 2009 Ten Fidy on the shelf last fall
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May 1, 2012 16:09
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