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(Boston, MA) – Jim Koch of Boston Beer Co. penned a piece that went live today, another one responding to the same Beer Advocate thread that Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione did last week. Koch uses the same argument as Calagione…
Unless you’re a brewer you probably missed the “Beer Advocate” thread last week bashing several craft breweries for being over-rated. Seemed to me the criticism was really about popularity not quality. Today’s craft beer lovers are on a hunt to discover the next new thing and, as brewers, most of us are trying to create interesting new beers. That’s great – we all love making new beers – but that doesn’t mean that an established and successful beer is any less great because it’s been around for a while and has attracted a big following.
If you take a closer look at the thread, you will find that out of hundreds of replies, only a couple people brought up the argument that those breweries were getting too big. Rather, much more discussion centered around brewers failing to meet the expectation of quality for the price they were charging. Just do a search for “price” in that thread.
Despite the applause that arose after Sam “Calagiowned” the negative Beer Advocates and the likely applause that will arise from Koch’s statement today, they are actually a bit deceptive in reality. Per Wikipedia…
A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.[1] To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.[1][2]
That isn’t to say that the “paradox of popularity” doesn’t exist but we’re failing to acknowledge the giant elephant in the room: the beer drinker’s resistance to pricing of beer like pricing of wine.
Brewers want to achieve the same margins as winemakers on those high-end beers. They’re putting in just as much time and effort, right? The problem is that those experiments, for the most part, are being received only marginally better, if not worse at times, than core offerings from these breweries that are being sold at a much lower price point.
Brewers will continue to “innovate” with these new high-end offerings as more and more drinkers come into the fold, just now learning that beer can be appreciated like wine has been. Not to mention, the population of those lured by rarity is growing.
Don’t be surprised, however, to see savvy beer drinkers that have already gone through many (too many?) trials with new products go back to value and who knows…maybe old favorites.
“Overrated” can stem from many things. Popularity…and price…are just two of them. Let’s not forget that.
Let’s also not forget that some wines may keep after opening for a while.
Once carbonated beers are opened they do not last and must be consumed immediately.
That one factor effects what I buy more heavily than any other factor.
Here is the thing though Sam and Jim’s reactions are entirely based on the thread title and yes some specific quotes that exist inside the thread.
You have to recall, that people READ those threads more than react visibly to them. So while there were 495 replies, in varying forms of topic, before the thread was closed, there are nearly 55,000 views of the thread whose TITLE is “Most Overrated Brewery”. And Sam C in particular talked about multiple threads bashing and slamming breweries being the “thing” on Beer Advocate and other sites, and it is true. It is a natural pass time for beer site participants to try and create some personal platform for their grievance of the moment.
I really don’t think either is making a straw man argument. And no one is ignoring the elephant in the room. Dogfish’s beers are selling, so those complaining about price need not buy them, the brewery does not currently appear to be having an issue selling their beer as much as they have an issue producing enough of it with consistent year over year growth.
I definitely agree though that consumers are turned off by the price in many cases, and their are options, good options at varying levels of affordability.
I think beer fans need to lose the have to have it aspect. Personally I would love to have a ridiculous cellar, with three to five bottles of each year of Kate the Great, Abyss, Dark Lord, Angel’s Share etc. But I also know that there are other really great beers that don’t have the fanfare that are equally worthy that I don’t need to spend shipping and trading costs to procure.
At the end of the day the beer is going to be priced based on three components, the price of ingredients, the capacity of the brewery it takes up to produce it in a time frame and what the brewery is able to obtain for similar beers.
Been thinking about this a lot lately. If I were to for example only buy beer brewed in New York State, would I be missing anything really? Not terribly. Do I still want other craft beers, absolutely, but I could live through all of my favorite styles quite happily in my own backyard. That is exciting regardless of price. Random opinions can really tarnish a business, and one thing that is really difficult for these breweries these days, is not only satisfying their existing costumers, but also cultivating new ones. I’ve seen some really irresponsible beer “critics” (and I use that term loosely as it becomes evident they don’t know much more than what they like) use blogs and youtube to spread reviews about beers. Many are good, many are knowledgeable, but others are poorly thought out at best and at worst damaging a business for their own micro-fame.
Anyhow, this is going to continue being an excellent discussion in 2012 and beyond. Because like it our not, there is a clear fissure in the craft beer world, it not multiple ones.
Cheers Adam, you continue to do a great job getting onto these topics with a candid and thought provoking opinion really quickly.
I think that, to a very large extent, people in the beer community at very bad at thinking clearly about these things. Which is why these straw men come up time and time again, and not just by the brewers.
If anything, I’d argue that the bigger breweries are more often called “overrated” simply on the grounds that more people have had the opportunity to sample their products.
Additionally, the larger the distribution radius, the more likely that anything that somebody on the periphery of it has had is more likely to have been less than optimally stored (or is just old), thereby increasing the number of negative opinions of the product.
Finally, for some of the larger regional breweries, some people might just be burned out on the dominant ones in their area – being in SW Michigan, for instance, stuff from New Holland, Founders, or Bell’s isn’t necessarily all that exciting. It’s always there, and (usually) available in quantity.
All of these things could feed into an opinion that a larger brewer is “overrated”.
Calagione + powned = Calagiowned. Brilliant.
There were a lot of breweries mentioned in the thread as being both overrated and overcharging, whose beers were rated very highly by the same members who were critizing them in fairly rough terms. I think there is more to *some* of the opinions there than what is at the surface of their posts. I think that for several of the posts in that thread, the overpricing and overrated arguements are the posters rationalizing their “hate”, where other issues are at the core, such as popularity and growth, seeing their once favourite breweries grow out of the mystery that once got them into their beers.
In my experience, most beer geeks would applaud Sam Adams, Dogfish and other popular craft breweries for bringing attention to the craft beer segment, and they enjoy most of their “normal” offerings that they have a long-lasting relationship with, such as Dogfish’s IPAs. But I think there is also a lot of resentment towards them hidden away in the back of our minds. Doesn’t it sound familiar that every time the seasoned beer lover finds himself talking to a new convert, they hear these breweries praised along with less informed opinions?
We see this in any subculture, the point where the romance gets lost. Where we feel that the old, respected bands arent delivering that “essence” of the culture anymore. I think a lot of what is going on on forums and comment-fields comes out of that frustration.
I’m not saying that beer pricing is always handled well, and it seems breweries have a lot to learn on the issue of both pricing and distribution. That said, you can’t honestly say that Sam and Jim aren’t at least partly correct in assuming that the size of their brewery and their mainstream popularity is to blame for a lot of the negative attitudes on display across forums and comment-fields. They just failed to address the other issues, in spite of their role in this.
-Kim
Excellent points Kim. The issue with pricing though is that they can set a suggested price, but at the end of the day the distributors have a big role in doling out the product and the retailers are going to set prices accordingly as well.
Really tough for breweries who distribute to deftly manage the pricing, even those who do rare events are seeing their beers go up on ebay for obscene prices.
I dunno, 200$ for Utopias seems a bit outrageous to me. But then again, im not a big fan of most of the beers Boston Beer Co. tries to pass off as craft beer. Oh and Koch, thanks for buying up all the Ahtanum, jerk.
I think we’re mostly on the same page, Kim & Patrick. And thank you for the thoughtful responses.
This post is my way of keeping the diverting the dialogue to a real issue.
I agree it’s the case in any subculture where popularity leads to some lack of enthusiasm from a small segment of the customer base. It’s also the case in our subculture, and likely others, that we’ve beat the drum of small and independent for years. So now that some of our small brewers are successfully growing to “big,” that way of thinking isn’t convenient anymore or it is but selectively only where it fits our purposes. I mean, is Jim going to applaud MillerCoors’ efforts with Blue Moon Belgian White because of their sophisticated brewing technology? Of course not. The size/popularity thing is there as you say…in every subculture. Let’s move along from it, brewers.
Pricing, on the other hand, is fascinating to me. Beer can achieve wine-like margins and they have. As Tomme asked last month, can beer push into Vintage wine-like pricing? It will be interesting. I’m not a wine guy so I can’t speak for how often those high $ wines are hits or misses. But these beers are clearly experimental and have often “missed” or “disappointed.” A buyer is taking a risk in shelling out $20 for a 750ml beer. As long as beermakers are willing to push the boundaries on price, be prepared to take flack when the beer fails to meet the high expectation set by that price. As I said in a previous post, I’m all for brewers innovating if the value equation is there.
Dave is it outrageous if people spend the money for it? and does Sam Adams set that as the retail price? nope, its expensive but someone is jacking it another $50 at that price. I doubt that Sam Adams bought 100% of the world supply of Ahtanum.
Adam I think a buyer is taking a risk on every beer they buy, regardless of price or the bottle size and quantity. Often time what are described as misses are very subjective palate issues. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen beers that have no intended hop character are reviewed and slammed for not having exactly what they do not intend to have.
The vintage pricing will never be controlled by the brewery unless they are willing to sit on beers for long periods of time. I don’t see that happening unless they are exclusively brewing sour beers, but even those have got to get out of the brewery at some point for space issues. Not sure with wine but I suspect it is the same, the winery itself does not reap the hefty benefits of a vintage being declared classic.
The higher priced beers are by and large the barrel aged beers, and the time, and effort that goes into that is what drives up the cost. If other breweries are selling mediocre production lines beers at jacked up prices that will not benefit them in the long run. But with more breweries and, more growth for existing breweries and likely less malt and hops to go around the price is not going to go down, that is a natural market effect. In many ways that is another reason it is wise for a brewery like Dogfish to NOT brew more 60 and 90 minute IPA or at very least not be a massive focus of what they do. It is not a sustainable business plan to brew either beer in that quantity until a boatload more hop farms open up.
True but the level of risk kind of correlates to price level, for me at least. Perhaps trying to make a business out of this site has taught me to be incredibly cost conscious more so than the average person. Hence, why I’m not a wine person (not that I don’t want to be!). $10-$12 on 72 oz. is a lesser risk to me than $10-$12 for 25 oz. that has to be consumed in one sitting. Unfamiliarity with a style or brewer will play some role in risk as well, of course.
We can agree that “misses” is largely subject to subjectivity whether it be a beer or a movie or anything else. I’m willing to take 100 reviews on something and view it as some kind of objective measure though. It is not perfectly objective (every individual review has some kind of superficial influence unless it’s blind IMO) but we don’t have that great of an alternative to consensus opinion when looking for ways to determine a purchase. Amazon reviews. Yelp reviews. Society has said, yup, that’s helpful to have and I agree. I think there may be more optimal ways but there are technical challenges. Until then, I appreciate the consensus.
Higher priced beers are sometimes barrel-aged or very clearly because of time/effort but not always. I look at Ommegang Tripel Perfection (750) and Victory Golden Monkey Tripel (6pk). I’d love to be a fly on the wall at those breweries and know what the margin is on each of those beers 🙂
Good on you, Adam, for bringing this up. I don’t think anyone begrudges DFH or Sam Adams for being successful. What people do begrudge them for is making a product that doesn’t live up to its hype and price tag. Sam C. was one of the first brewers to push the price envelope. It is actually something that he bases his business upon. So much so that he has given presentations to other brewers on it. The problem is that a great deal of his beers are not worth the hype or the price. If he made sure that they lived up to expectations, he wouldn’t have the overrated tag slapped on him. When it comes to situations like this I immediately think of breweries like Russian River and Cantillon. Their beers are just as hyped and have similar price tags to those produced by DFH, but I don’t hear many people complaining about beers from Vinnie Cilurzo or Jean Van Roy. It’s because their beers are consistently great and looked at as worth the price. When Sam C. starts making it a priority to make excellent beer, people will stop seeing DFH as overrated. As it is now, he just makes overhyped beer with weird ingredients.
Thanks, James. I do think there are plenty of people who think DFH and Sam Adams are too popular now. I also think that many more people brought up price as a reason for not liking certain breweries over size in that thread. The size thing was virtually non-existent save for a couple posts.
Adam, you made the point that price can correlate to risk. This is obviously true, the advent of 22oz beers seems to stem heavily from finding the cross point of the customers risk of price to approval and the brewers risk of cost to profit.
Now to Dogfish Head. We have first hand experience from their nationally televised show that they are READILY embracing risk and also so big as to be able to mitigate the costs of such risks. Which is to say that the fact of their beers being good or bad (I personally think they are mostly awful. Black and Red is a bad idea with bad execution at a bad price point. I work at a bar and we’re sending the kegs back.) is not an issue in terms of deciding if they are doing the right thing with their pricing scheme. The fact is, if they are willing to completely dump batches costing $500,000 in materials and labor that means they have the means to capture profits at a lower price point (for example, by selling said beer under a different name at a very low price to recoup some of said cost. This is done commonly by smaller breweries that cannot afford to dump batches that don’t go perfectly.). I don’t think that they should. They are a business and this is capitalism. However, if the issue with their beer being overrated is that the price point doesn’t meet the expectation of taste then they MUST be overrated because regardless of the taste, we know they are readily able to lower the price.
As for Sam Adams, I think the issue here stems mostly from a descension from them being so large. They are the Third Largest beer company in the US. And even if the first and second outmatch them by by 97% they are still larger than almost all the microbreweries in the country combined. And although it IS a straw man argument, I agree with the premise that a long standing beer doesn’t make it overrated. Ask every person that wonders into my bar for a Yuengling.
Admittedly I’m somewhat biased because I’m from Boston, but I find almost all of Dogfish Head’s recent endeavors offensive (seriously, Black and Red… undrinkable. I’m pretty sure they used toothpaste to add the mint flavor), while the 4 most recent beers from Sam Adams (Tazman Red, Vixen, Griffins Bow, and Third Voyage) I find to be mostly excellent.
I am very much with you, Adam. In my eyes it has nothing to do whatsoever with popularity and everything to do with value.
I’m of the opinion, as are many other craft beer drinkers, that a lot of places are giving me better beer for each dollar than DFH or BBC. That’s a matter of taste. But heaven help you if you SAY that you think another place is a better value, because then the brewers respond as if you said “I don’t like your beer because it’s too popular.” They’re defending themselves against accusations that pretty much nobody is making, which is of course the definition of a straw man argument.
It’s like the Koch’s and the Calagione’s just don’t want to admit that there’s any reason people could prefer someone else’s suds that isn’t “they’re jealous of our success!”
This is a good thread of discussion. One thing that hasn’t been touched is the “hype” that is created from these varios styles of beer. The consumer creates this hype and expectations so we are responsible for any “disappointments” or over rated beers. Rating a beer based on your own opinion and not judging it according to the style is also a fault. As for pricing, there is a three tier system that affects that. Utopias are expensive, if you knew and saw what goes into making that beer, you would understand a little more. On the flip side of that I have seen retailers mark Utopias up 300 percent because they think they can. Beer is the most enjoyable beverage in the world, maybe we should sit back and enjoy a beer instead of “over rating” it.
I think your comments about price are right on. Many people consider beer a staple and are not willing or able to pay beyond a certain price (Sometimes a little of both). Those who are willing and able still are going to sometimes compare what they are getting to a more basic beer and, say, for example “Is this beer that costs 50% more really 50% better than Budweiser (or whatever)?”. And sometimes even when the answer is yes, they’re still going to say “My budget is tight, I need that money somewhere else.”.
I think there are large masses of people who would, if price wasn’t a factor, prefer to drink craft beer most of the time, or at least every once in a while. If your price is right, you can get those masses of people. And those masses of people aren’t going to overly critical or hobby-oriented- they’d love something like Boston Lager or the Sam Adams seasonals almost unconditionally if it only cost what a standard adjunct lager costs. I know I would.
When craft beer keeps raising it’s prices, though, it begins to target a luxury or hobbyist market that’s going to be more critical and really have high expectations. You’re going after a narrower focus and it’s going to have a lot of people who are either really sacrificing to pay that increased cost and thus expect a lot or simply expect bang equal to their buck. And they’re going to care about how big the brewery is a thousand other things.
If Dogfish Head, for example, wants less of that criticism, then they need to cut prices to go after a mass market that is less critical. If they price themselves at a point where a lot of people struggle to pay the freight, or can only rarely or never pay it, then those people are going to have really high expectations of it.
I’m at the point where I drink a lot of adjuncts and only buy some of the cheapest craft beer on sale. The next price hike by even the cheaper craft beers like Sam Adams could price me out completely. In this economy, I’ve got to think I’m not the only one. If they could price Boston Lager or someone else could make an equivalent “basic craft beer” and meet the price point of a Budweiser or a Coors, though, that would be a regular in my fridge for sure.
I think you know, one thing that everyone keeps overlooking in this, is that Dogfish nor Sam Adams is having ANY trouble selling their beer.
In terms of pricing of macros vs. craft breweries, I just don’t see the argument at all.
I just don’t worry about quantity at all. To begin with almost every Sam Adams beer available in six pack where I am is the same price or slightly, like .50-.75 more expensive than Budwieser. If I really wanted to slum I could find some macro junk that is probably $5.99 and less, but I have no interest in that, I don’t drink to an ounce amount goal per cent.
If my option is Dogfish 90 minute at $9.99 a four pack, or Indian Brown Ale at $11.99 a six pack to American macro lagers at any price, the choice is just clear and simple. If that meant being able to drink just 4 or 6 beers a week, I am still coming out ahead.
Adam, insofar as the bottle sizes, what largely drives the price of the 25.4 oz bottles from Dogfish is less so the bottle type but the beer and what goes it in. For example, both My Antonia and Namaste are around $7.99 to $8.99 around me when available. They are both extremely drinkable beers for one person, in which two glasses won’t kill you the next day. Certainly the more extreme beers Black & Blue, Red & White, Fort, etal are not beers to be enjoyed by a single human being generally. But they are also much more limited batches, with often times a tricky ingredient bill, which then eats up some space in the brewery for brewing their standard year round beers.
At the end of the day is it disappointment in the beer, or that we would rather have access to 10-12 oz bottles vs. a 25 oz bottle of a particular beer? I can see that argument, but again, the breweries making special/seasonal release beers are unlikely to make a change because the reason for changing a particular package almost certainly has less to do with jacking up price vs consideration for how they want each beer to be presented. I have no idea why Namaste was put into 25.4 oz bottles vs. 12 ounce, but I assume it was production practicality at the time they were scheduling it, that and I believe a lot of that beer was made for a restaurant/brewery in Europe, the same as my antonia. It is much more practical in that case to send the larger bottles than breaking them up into small quantity bottles.
As far as the above post regarding Russian River not being pointed at, please. I love their beers, but in many beer geeks minds they don’t make enough, and two years ago Younger day turned into a disaster for them because of the hype around that beer. So you can’t win in this battle, you are too small, too big, too hyped, not appreciated enough, etc etal. And Russian River beers are anything but cheap, so, if they became more widely available my guess is that they too would become victims of the “Russian River was cool back when…”
There are shortly to be over 2,000 breweries operational in United States. We are on a borderline paradox of choice, if not already there. Hype is all what you make it to be. You can believe the hype and then either be elated or disappointed, but if your expectation of a beer is built on the rarity, price or need to review something, anything unique to get a step up on rate beer or beer advocate, you are almost certain to be either disappointed or having a near fictious rarity review moment.
None of us are compelled to buy any particular breweries beers. If the curious element is what drives you, hopefully you can find a few beer fests a year around you. Attend, you can get multiple samples of beers and decide do I ever want to buy this beer regardless of price or packaging? If you don’t have festivals near by, try to start one.
Most of all if price is a concern, absolutely without question buy beers that you want to drink and avoid beers you think you are not sure of. Nothing is gained or lost in my opinion by taking a risk, but if the price is gonna bring you down, you are definitely going into a situation with an expectation that may not be achievable.
I mean if a beer is $12.99 in a four pack and $9.99 in 25.4 oz bottles, other than the perceived saving per ounce, is the product any different? In general, if the beer is underwhelming, it is probably the beer and not how much it cost.
Also, John, Beer cannot and should not be considered a staple. It is not a staple, no one needs alcohol to survive. Food and water are staples, beer is a luxury purchase, no matter whether one is in poverty, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class, rich, uber rich or the guy from Monopoly.
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