Has Craft Beer Reached Peak Mindshare?

Quick, without Googling, how many local craft breweries can you name? How many regional breweries? National?

People are often worried about the craft beer bubble hitting saturation levels. Since it’s fall and harvest season, hop shortages have become the crisis de jour with no less than the Wall Street Journal crying havoc. Concerns about shelf space, the number of tap handles at each bar, and even the supply of aluminum cans have all caused worries before.

But are we nearing a point where people simply can’t keep track of all the craft beer out there?

peak-mindshare-2

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The Session #111: Succumbing to a Beer Midlife Crisis

The Session is a monthly group writing prompt for beer bloggers to share their thoughts on topics. Oliver J. Gray of Literature and Libation put forward the topic this month, Surviving a beer midlife crisis. He prompted us with a simple question:

Do you find it hard to muster the same zeal for beer as you did a few years ago? Are you suffering through a beer-life crisis like I am? If so, how do you deal with it?

My answer to the first question is a clear yes, the second question requires contemplation, and the third question requires explanation.

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Good, Great, Greatest: The Minimal Difference Of Most Beer

After over ten years of enjoying craft beer, and five years of really thinking about what I was drinking, I’ve realized that there is a minimal difference in most beer. My observation is that the vast majority of beer is very good, a bit of it is great, and very few things rank as the greatest. Luckily, not very few beers are bad, though they are out there. I could just write about my anecdotal evidence, personal thoughts, observations, and opinions, but I decided to collect some data to see if my observation is correct.

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Beer Nutritional Info: The FDA Isn't Going To Take Your Beer Away

It’s been making the rounds over the past week that the FDA will require beer nutritional info on menus. I feel like the information I’ve read has been vague and full of hyperbole, I mean

“Government health nannies are thirsty for a new target, and this time it’s craft beer.”

That sounds like something from some random blogger and not a writer for the New York Post. You’ve also got the headline Craft beers grabbed by Obamacare’s long reach from the Washington Examiner. While it’s true, this change by the FDA is part of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) it wasn’t set out specifically targeting craft beer, or beer at all.

I set out to research and read the rules myself. The final verbiage is available here. You can also read the comments and replies about the proposal as well as the FDA’s guidance for the industry. The comments and replies were more interesting and revealing because this was not going to apply to alcohol until the comments came in. Let’s skip the claims made to garner clicks and take a look at what the rule says.

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David Wondrich on Cocktails, Cincinnati, and Surprises

One of the major highlights of the Cincinnati Food + Wine Classic this year was getting the chance to interview a spirits writer that I greatly admire, Esquire Drinks correspondent David Wondrich. Thanks to his books and articles, most notably Imbibe! and Punch, his name is closely associated with the classic cocktail movement and documenting the history of drinking culture in the Unites States. My partner Charlie and I sat down (more accurately, stood up in the corner of a tent in Washington Park) to talk with him about his writing and why he decided to attend the Food and Wine Classic in Cincinnati. You can listen to the full interview in Episode #195 of The Charlie Tonic Hour but here are the highlights.

David Wondrich and Ginny and Charlie Tonic from the Charlie Tonic Hour

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The Bane of Pumpkin Beers

Ed. Note: What follows is a rant by friend & sponsor of the blog Brent Osborn. As always if you’ve got something you want to say then shoot me an email at Tom@QueenCityDrinks.com and I’ll check it out. Personally, I abhor pumpkin beers, plus many other writers have already trodden this path. But, since Brent felt like ranting I was happy to post it!


Fall’s just around the corner.

Fall is a wonderful season: leaves changing color, 2015-09-02football games, Reese’s pumpkins, hoodies, fires, and all that good stuff. Yet it’s also a time I dread for one very specific reason: the pumpkin-spice apocalypse. The list of pumpkin-spiced things has grown from run-of-the-mill lattes to include Oreos, gum, and even english muffins. But the worst culprit—the bane of my existence this time of year—is the pumpkin beer. And in case you didn’t notice the endcaps are full of pumpkin beers.

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For Real Happiness Buy Experiences, Not Things

I recently discovered a new podcast, You Are Not So Smart, and really enjoyed an episode called Happy Money, focused on money and rewards. Shortly after that I read this article from Scientific American. The takeaway from both is simple: Buying experiences makes us happier than buying things.

Turns out a fair bit of research has been done regarding people’s perceptions of how much they’ll enjoy a thing before and after they buy something. We think we like buying things better because they give us more value, but we get more joy out of experiences. The reason is that we can place an objective value on a thing. “This bottle of Cantillon cost me $25 in 2013. I could probably sell it for $75 to $100 now.” Whereas memories and experiences have a much more subjective value to them. “I had an amazing time at that bottle share last month.” What is an “amazing time?” How much is it worth? Despite this, we pull more happiness out of the experience than the possession of material goods.

The study showed that this effect of enjoying experiences more than things increases with delayed satisfaction. That is when we buy a thing and pay for it now with the plan of experiencing it later we will enjoy it even more than if we bought it and enjoyed it immediately.

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6 Things Breweries Should Do, Or Stop Doing, On Social Media

A couple of things have bothered me for a bit, and it’s always better to get these things out than keep them bottled up. Nromally, I write everything with the intended reader being the beer-loving public. Today I’m writing to the brewers and the folks who have access to their social media accounts. Honestly, most of these apply to any company in any industry.

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Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself

Hi! My name is Chris Nascimento and I will be a contributor to Queen City Drinks from time to time. Why? Well, I used to blog about beer for a couple of other blogs, namely the now defunct Circle 3 and I did a couple of posts over at Cincy Voices as well. I had always meant to get back into blogging, but I got wrapped up in various projects. I should also note other people created beer blogs worth reading, so it became less of a priority and fell by the wayside.

Still, I’ve missed sharing my views and experiences with beer, which is something I am pretty passionate about. Back around last December, I mentioned as much on Twitter and Tom Aguero here at Queen City Drinks saw this,  reached out to me and offered me the opportunity to be a contributor. So before Tom could sober up, I quickly accepted the offer and promised to get blogging again with the specific, agreed upon date of “soon”. I have been busy with lots of other stuff, so “soon” ended up meaning about another four months.

What could be more important than blogging about beer? Well, I do a bunch of other stuff. I enjoy a beer now and then. I serve on the board of a few different organizations, including Cincinnati Beer Week. I run a homebrew shop called Brew Monkeys over on Cincinnati’s west side. I am also a member of the Cincinnati Malt Infusers homebrew club, presently serving them as PR officer. I have been involved with putting on a slew of other events, including beer festivals, and over the years I have judged in several homebrew competitions on a regular basis and made a number of beers myself. I have founded a few other events and otherwise kept busy working on stuff that allows me to enjoy craft beer & homebrew.

Oh yes, I’m not sure if my family wants me to mention them, but I will do it anyway. I am married to Wendy, a very tolerant, understanding woman who has attended way more beer events than what she has probably cared to even though she also really likes good beer. I have three children, two sons and a daughter. My eldest son is also a craft beer enthusiast and has dabbled with homebrewing. My daughter knows a lot about beer from overhearing stuff over the years, but has asked me not to talk about beer TOO much, and my youngest son, being autistic, just looks at me, shakes his head and says stuff like “Not beer again!” All three of my kids lead active lives, including many things that have absolutely nothing to do with beer. I try to be involved in or attend all their non-beer activities whenever it is appropriate for a Dad to do so.

While all these experiences may give me a unique perspective with a few things, let me be clear with the following DISCLAIMER: All views expressed by me on this blog represent MY views and SOLELY my views. Any opinions, thoughts, reviews I share here DO NOT represent the official views of ANY organization I currently serve, NOR those of my wife, family, friends or anyone else other than me.

A little bit of what to expect-I don’t write about every single beer event happening, that’s someone else’s gig. If you want to know about the fifty cent off deal on Yuengling at the Happy Canoodle Pub & Grill, don’t ask me. I simply don’t care enough to inquire about it or remember it, much less tell anyone about it. I try to stick to beers, events and topics I feel are worth exploring. If I don’t have too much good to say about a event or beer, I will generally just ignore it. If I feel a event or beer is REALLY BAD, and you, the craft beer enthusiast will likely waste your valuable time and hard earned dollars on it before finding this out, I WILL take the time to warn you. This is especially true if my perception is there is an attempt being made to scam you. But this doesn’t happen too often, so don’t look for much of this kind of stuff.

I have a few pieces I have been working on, so you will be getting to see more of my beer-fueled, innate ramblings in the near future. Among them are:

-Some homebrewing specific articles.

-An exclusive Q & A with the brewers at soon open Urban Artifact Brewing discussing what to expect out of their brewhouse.

-An update on new happenings at Old Firehouse Brewing

– Progress of the new nanobrewery opening soon in Mt Healthy, Fibonacci Brewing

-Opinion pieces on beer industry related topics I feel are worth exploring.

You have been warned. I should also note, any piece I write will dramatically improve when paired with the right beers while reading it. Usually, the more beer you drink, the better it will get. If you are really gluttons for punishment, I am an avid social media user. You can find me on Facebook, as well as on Twitter as @brewnas.

 

Reinforcing the 3-Tier System

Tomorrow (Wednesday, March 4th, 2015) the Kentucky Senate will vote on HB168. House Bill 168 will redefine the requirements for owning an alcohol distributor in the state of Kentucky. The Kentucky house approved it last week. The Senate’s vote is the last step before the Governor signing the bill into law.

3-Tier System?

In brief, a distributor is a company that buys beer from the brewery, stores it and employs sales people to convince retailers to sell the beer. Distributors form a part of the 3-tier system. For a full background on the 3-Tier system please see my series from 2013 beginning with my introduction.

Two extremely different companies are very upset about this legislation. I’d like to help clear the air and share my opinion on the situation. The two companies are AB-InBev and Rhinegeist, the elephant in the room and the mouse the elephant is afraid of.

AB-InBev owns a distributor in Louisville and last year they bought a distributor in Owensboro. The purchase of that distributor in Owensboro is what set all this off.  Currently, any brewery in Kentucky is unable to own a distributor in Kentucky, but out of state breweries can. [footnote] Thanks to Ryan Phillips for clearing that up for me[/footnote]That is exactly what this law is going to change. Anyone who owns a brewery will be unable to own a distributor in Kentucky, which is where Rhinegeist comes in.

Rhinegeist has used Ohio’s laws that allow a brewery to self-distribute their beer to do exactly that. Yes, self-distribution laws are a relaxing breaking of the 3-tier system, turning it into a 2-tier system. The way people argue for self-distribution is that Rhinegeist can only self-distribute Rhinegeist. When Rhinegeist decided to expand to Kentucky they couldn’t find a distributor “with the right craft-focus and a small enough portfolio to ensure our mindshare.” to quote Rhinegeist owner’s Bryant Goulding and Bob Bonder’s op-ed in The Courier-Journal. As a result, they decided to open Riverghost Distributing to carry Rhinegeist products and other breweries products, in the state of Kentucky. Now we see why Rhinegeist is siding with AB-InBev. Both AB-InBev and Rhinegeist will have to sell, or close, their distributors in the state of Kentucky if this law passes.

Sorry, Rhinegeist but that’s a GOOD thing

The good thing from my point of view. It’s a bad thing for the owners of Rhinegeist because this means someone else gets a cut of their profit. As it stands now Rhinegeist makes more per beer sold than MadTree does[footnote]MadTree is distributed in Ohio by Cavalier & Kentucky by Beer House[/footnote]. Rhinegeist also pays a number of sales people and delivery drivers. Plus they maintain a fleet of vans to enable them to self-distribute. Most breweries have distributors take care of that overhead. So, Rhinegeist losing Riverghost will mean lower profits per beer in Kentucky for the folks at the top. The same on all that goes for the AB-InBev owned distributors as well.

This is a good thing for everyone except these two companies. If Riverghost starts carrying other brands and there comes a day where one store only has one spot available on the shelf, who gets that spot? I have an extremely hard time believing that that spot will be fairly assigned to the product most sought after in that market. That spot will be assigned to Budweiser or Truth.

My biggest problem is that this is a slippery slope that could lead to decreased competition and eventual vertical integration. If a distributor or store is owned by a brewery there is far less reason for that distributor or store to care about other breweries products. Same goes for a distributor owning a store or bar. Why should they push someone else’s product when the folks at the top can make more money pushing the products of the brewery they own?

Part of what has allowed craft beer to explode is the separation of the 3 tiers. Sure, it’s not great but it’s the best we got for now and getting read of, or blurring the lines between, the tiers is not going to help anything. One of the reasons England’s craft beer explosion has been more muted than ours is because of tied houses, where a brewery owns a bar. As I said before, when one tier owns another it lowers the competition. The tied houses in England only serve the beer of the brewery that owns them, unless customer demand for other products reaches an extreme point.

This Will Cost Jobs

Both AB-InBev and Rhinegeist have said that the passage of this bill will cost jobs. That’s only true if AB-InBev and Rhinegeist decide to shut down their distribution companies. They’ve both proven that there is a strong need for these distribution companies to exist. They’re both savvy businesses as well. They’re not just going to dump all the money they’ve invested in this. No jobs will be lost. The only thing that will change is who is at the top of these 3 distributors and that the 3-tier system will be more reinforced in the state of Kentucky.