"How Beer Became a Moral Issue"
May 10, 2017 5:55 PM   Subscribe

What happens when craft breweries become part of big, bad megabrewers? From Beervana: "The age of consolidation has surfaced one of the more unusual quirks of the American craft beer segment: the strange morality that has come to pervade it."

"To moral transgression, societies exact the harshest penalties--shunning for infractions or, most seriously, excommunication--expulsion from the group. Craft breweries have several different identities and associate themselves with others according to these (size, location, beer type, etc), but the unifying morality is independence. It is the taproot for all that has grown up around craft beer--the punk rock attitude, notions of "craft," fealty to authenticity, creativity, and a vague sense of wholesomeness."
posted by Charity Garfein (69 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
The article suggests that the exclusion of craft breweries that have been acquired by multinational conglomerates on the scale of AB InBev is some kind of irrational indie-obscurantist hipster snobbery, and completely neglects what does happen once a beer makes the transition from being a product of a small craft brewery to being another set of items (trademark, recipe, brewery assets) in the asset register of a larger corporation whose remit is managing and brewing a diverse variety of beer varieties.

At some point, the brewing of the beer will be rationalised. The small, homely brewery it originated at is probably less efficient than whatever they use to produce their spectrum of mass-market and niche brands, or it can't scale up to meet demand, so some or all of production will be moved to existing facilities, alongside existing brands. After that point, the beer is disaggregated from its craft origins and is just another variety in the roster, albeit one with a “craft” theme, marketed at beardy hipsters or something. The recipe will end up being tweaked to make it more economically efficient; perhaps they'll run it through some focus groups and use the results to make changes. Then, as with anything, sales will inevitably dip, and some manager in whose territory this brand falls will decide to make a name for themself by overseeing an overhaul; redesign the logo/packaging, perhaps come up with a new theme/set of associations, aim it at a new target market. Cue more changes to the recipe.

Perhaps at some point it will stop selling and the company will stop making it. But they still own the name (of the beer and the craft brewery they bought). A few years down the track, they slap the names onto a completely different new beer, unrelated to the original, and launch it into a market. (A book I read about IPAs, titled Hops And Glory, recounts this happening to one of the original IPAs from the British Empire days; after a series of amalgamations, it was killed due to failing popularity during (I think) the 1950s; the name was reused a few decades later by the brewing company's one-time subsidiary in either Kenya or Uganda, to launch a mostly flavourless strong lager, closer to Special Brew or malt liquor than IPA, much to the author's sorrow.)
posted by acb at 6:25 PM on May 10, 2017 [38 favorites]


> I'm not even sure this morality is wrong. I can't entirely separate it out in my own mind. But it does exist and it is little discussed. It's also fading, and will continue to do so with every passing sale or acquisition. Something will linger afterward, but it will be a diminished thing--in countries like Britain and Belgium, family breweries have a slightly special status. We are stepping from a kind of naivete into a more mature, but perhaps less fun, more cynical, world. The sale of Wicked Weed shows we still have the capacity for betrayal, but not for many more of these.

Soo I'm not much of a beer guy and do sort of find craft beer culture alienating, but I am very confused by this article, and I don't think it's because I've internalized the ethos of the craft brewing industry or think I'm punk rock or whatever. It's because the ethos that this piece is critiquing is on the whole a good deal for consumers. The entry of very large scale producers into a market tends to squeeze out everyone else, since they can deploy economies of scale against smaller producers. This in turn results in those large scale producers largely determining the range of products available in a market wherein, previously, consumers held some modicum of power — and the rational play for large scale producers is to collectively reduce product quality in order to maximize profitability. The establishment of norms against "selling out" is a way to stave off this tendency toward product quality reduction implicit in market rules.

I suspect the reason why the author is "not even sure this morality is wrong" is because it's not wrong; their sense that it might be wrong is indicative that the author somehow believes that whatever is optimal for the largest market players is optimal for everyone. It would be lovely if that were true, and I suspect it's very comfortable to believe that that is true, but it is, unfortunately, not true.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:26 PM on May 10, 2017 [38 favorites]


No matter what happens, Pete Coors is still an asshole.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 6:29 PM on May 10, 2017 [20 favorites]




There's a flourishing brewery culture in my home town that was only just beginning when I left. One of the more popular offerings is Wicked Weed Brewing, apparently the first of the major local brewers to defect and sell out to a big name.
posted by wormwood23 at 6:42 PM on May 10, 2017 [2 favorites]


Somewhere there's a lovely graphic about decrease in brand value following acquisition. It's not about beer, but instead clothing/luggage/etc. the basic idea is that small niche producers will first be known only in very small circles, but as their reach expands pressure to reduce product quality builds, particularly following acquisitions. This results in a sort of treadmill pulling brands down over time.

It seems like microbrews have caused the same train to exist in the beer world.
posted by nat at 6:48 PM on May 10, 2017 [1 favorite]




I dunno. I get that the diminishing standards that come from corporatization are troublesome in some idealistic sense, but what stops a brewmaster who builds an acquired business from selling it and launching a new one ? Outside of some NDAs or trademarks, basically nothing - and there is even less holding back a new one.

I mean.... I love the infinite variety of brews at my local shop. But my tastes change over time, there are far more than I'll ever be able to do more than sample without a liver transplant, and I'm not so wedded to a particular one that losing it sucks in anything more than the abstract. And, at least for the time being, the forces that brought a particular beer to market outside of CoorsInBev still exist and that virtually guarantees that another will come along to take its place. Or assuming the Suits don't Fuck It Up, the beer can possibly gain a wider reach and be more available, which isn't a bad result either.

The craft beer market is exceedingly vibrant these days. As long as that continues, I'm not overly concerned about some brands selling out. I don't see how it is possible for CoorInBev to buy all the brands and even manage or produce them. The only real threat, as I see it, is legislation that kneecaps the craft market. They tried that in WI, and it failed miserably and I am certain they will try again.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:21 PM on May 10, 2017 [1 favorite]


What's with this genre of dismissal? I have seen it in an essay where someone describes white leftists talking about race issues as "virtue signalling", or people who describe environmentalists as "smug". Is the assumption that normatively we should be cynical, that we are all nihilists and believing in something is automatically a flaw? How many essays must I read whose central thesis amounts to "callout culture is bad because it holds people up to standards of behavior which is a bad thing"?
posted by idiopath at 7:38 PM on May 10, 2017 [25 favorites]


What's with this genre of dismissal? I have seen it in an essay where someone describes white leftists talking about race issues as "virtue signalling", or people who describe environmentalists as "smug".

Race and the environment have a moral weight as issues that doesn't really apply to the question of who makes the pricey version of beer. I don't have an issue with dismissing people who enjoy craft beer as a performative consumption of authenticity.
posted by zymil at 7:47 PM on May 10, 2017 [6 favorites]


If the price is the same or similar, and the quality is similar or better, why wouldn't someone want to support a small business as opposed to a large corporation? Even better yet if it's a small locally owned business.

It's not a hipster thing to support your local hardware store, is it? Why wouldn't you want to support your small business local brewery?
posted by el io at 8:01 PM on May 10, 2017 [11 favorites]


Competition is good for the consumer is economics, not morality.
posted by Zalzidrax at 8:06 PM on May 10, 2017 [1 favorite]


That's the thing, everything is infused with morality. If you're saying money is the thing, it says nothing about why at all. So why?
posted by Strange_Robinson at 8:12 PM on May 10, 2017


Zalzidrax: Competition is good for the consumer is economics, not morality.

I'm trying to think of examples of economic questions which aren't entangled with moral questions, and I'm coming up short. Even in your sentence there's a moral question: Who should benefit, how much, and why? Do you decide in favour of the moral good of free exchange, which leads to consolidation and oligopoly, or do you restrict free exchange in order to preserve competition? And how do you restrict free exchange, if you do - who do you decide to benefit, exactly, when you restrict the market in order to save it from itself? I don't think we've got a perfect answer to this messy moral question yet.
posted by clawsoon at 8:19 PM on May 10, 2017 [4 favorites]


Competition is good for the consumer is economics, not morality.

Modern market economics basically started with Adam Smith, who was an ethical philosopher before he wrote Wealth of Nations and all but invented the field of free market theory as a special field within the philosophy of ethics. Economics is supposed to be about what's most ethical.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:26 PM on May 10, 2017 [7 favorites]


The whole point of the field is to study how best to allocate resources for the maximum public good. Economics is morality all the way down.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:28 PM on May 10, 2017 [12 favorites]




Which is to say, I like what I've seen of brewers and moralizing.
posted by aniola at 8:29 PM on May 10, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm trying to think of examples of economic questions which aren't entangled with moral questions, and I'm coming up short. Even in your sentence there's a moral question: Who should benefit, how much, and why? Do you decide in favour of the moral good of free exchange, which leads to consolidation and oligopoly, or do you restrict free exchange in order to preserve competition? And how do you restrict free exchange, if you do - who do you decide to benefit, exactly, when you restrict the market in order to save it from itself? I don't think we've got a perfect answer to this messy moral question yet.

Of course, everything is ultimately moral. I just object to the statement that craft brewing fans' choice represents a "strange morality." It's not in the least bit strange!

People deciding in a system of free exchange to not support the oligopolies and instead support smaller craft brewers seems to be a good, if likely fragile way to address the dilemma you point out.
posted by Zalzidrax at 8:45 PM on May 10, 2017 [3 favorites]


Wicked Weed was always slick. They started with an expensive location and lots of money. They were courting a national audience immediately.

I drive a cab during tourist season and was in line to get my license renewed. Few other people in line were talking about the takeover and I asked them if they had ever taken a local there. None of us had.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 9:03 PM on May 10, 2017 [3 favorites]


I don't begrudge any brewer who decides to cash in on years of labor and be bought out, I also then choose to drink another beer by a different craft brewer. win/win
posted by OHenryPacey at 9:53 PM on May 10, 2017 [8 favorites]


The "fuck you, sellouts" vibe that comes of merger news is strange:
The excommunicators try to reassure their erstwhile community members that this is only a business expulsion--outside beer they hope to remain friends. It illustrates the conflicted feelings from the other side. (It also, remarkably, comes after this remarkable statement: "the beer we brewed with Wicked Weed here at Black Project will be blended with other existing aged beer we have on hand to make something totally different which we will not consider a Wicked Weed collaboration." Nothing more explicitly illustrates how how morally impure Wicked Weed has become--the beer has to be blended out to avoid polluting the entire brewery.)
That's something apart from "support local" or anti-corporate makeover or whatever.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 9:57 PM on May 10, 2017 [3 favorites]


After that point, the beer is disaggregated from its craft origins

So if I mash two-row with some crystal then boil it up with some Mosaic in a small brewery (whatever 'small' means) that's 'craft', but if I do the same in a bigger brewery (whatever 'bigger' means), the beer is now 'disaggregated' from its craft origins (whatever that means)?

How large does the brewery have to be before this disaggregation kicks in? Is it a sudden thing, like if I go over a certain number of litres it's lost instantly and forever, like some kind of craft virginity? Or is it a slow decline as the number of litres increases? Is it linear or is there, like, a big drop off and it levels out?

What if it's the same brewer at the new facility? Or given two equally large new facilities, would this magical craft factor remain if the brewer owned the first larger brewery, but shareholders owned the second? In the first case, what if they were only a part owner? A majority shareholder? A technical consultant on payroll?

Does it work the other way? What if I was trained at Becks, but then moved to Oregon and opened up a facility with a 1000L Braumeister? Would my beer suddenly be better?

If I brew a trial batch at home - say, 100L, then scale it up in a brew pub, is there a similar loss of craft-ness?
posted by obiwanwasabi at 10:05 PM on May 10, 2017 [3 favorites]


I dunno, a lotta people think it s pretty ethical to resist capitalism and the hollowing out of things, to resist what once held meaning turning into brands.

I support those ethics.
posted by eustatic at 10:18 PM on May 10, 2017 [17 favorites]


How large does the brewery have to be before this disaggregation kicks in? Is it a sudden thing, like if I go over a certain number of litres it's lost instantly and forever, like some kind of craft virginity? Or is it a slow decline as the number of litres increases? Is it linear or is there, like, a big drop off and it levels out?

I don't give a toss about beer, and I guess I give a negative toss about "craft beer," but while it's certainly technically possible that a large company buying a smaller independent brand of any kind might maintain it exactly as it is, just at a higher volume of production...historically, that's...really not what usually happens. It's idle to pretend otherwise, or to expect others to when considering the likely results of such a purchase.
posted by praemunire at 10:27 PM on May 10, 2017 [7 favorites]


If the price is the same or similar, and the quality is similar or better, why wouldn't someone want to support a small business as opposed to a large corporation? Even better yet if it's a small locally owned business.

It's not a hipster thing to support your local hardware store, is it? Why wouldn't you want to support your small business local brewery?


The price is not the same, and the craft beer devotee is not approaching things the same way as the local hardware store patron. The goal is often the good and rare, whether it's local or from a thousand miles away.

It's the value placed on 'rare' that opens this up to the hipster charge. You don't rave about the unique screwdriver you got at your non-chain hardware store, but you do crow about getting a six pack for your buddies they haven't tried yet. There's nothing wrong with this but there is this weird element when people complain that something they like will become more common or the people making it have been heavily rewarded.

FWIW I am typing this from Bend, Oregon on the last day of a microbrew focused vacation.
posted by mark k at 11:06 PM on May 10, 2017 [2 favorites]


If the price is the same or similar, and the quality is similar or better, why wouldn't someone want to support a small business as opposed to a large corporation? Even better yet if it's a small locally owned business.

It's not a hipster thing to support your local hardware store, is it? Why wouldn't you want to support your small business local brewery?


It often has something to do with local jobs (where are your kids going to work) and large corporations often have nothing invested in the community they have a branch in.

Visit any town that had a walmart open nearby and hollow out the town and leave when they figured out there was not enough profit there after all.
posted by boilermonster at 11:24 PM on May 10, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm a bit shocked that an article like this, with the obvious amount of thought put into the subject, would be so obtuse about the objections to selling out. So much so my first reaction is "why are they pretending not to understand this? Is it just to write a contrarian piece of clickbait?", which is probably completely unfair.

The draw of "independent" anything, be it beer or music or any type of art or craft, is the promise that the creators have decided to place the concerns of the consumers above profit. Likely in the specific manner that they personally prefer rather than a focus tested, profit maximizing manner. If it's something you care about you are more likely to find something that is closer to your ideal, but they will have a smaller market for their niche product. That sacrifice makes the people in that niche market thankful.

Selling out is the act of breaking that promise, of selling the reputation you have built to those who will always extract the maximum amount of money from the consumers who gave them this reputation.

Of course many humans will do their social animal thing and make it seem like a moral issue (either as shorthand or from actual confusion), some will see that servicing a niche makes you more obscure and start to view obscurity itself as a marker of quality or status and that's one aspect of what we label as hipsters. And of course capitalism has taken this totally reasonable pro-independent attitude and commodified it, that's what capitalism does.

I just don't find it strange at all, but like idiopath the morality I find strange is the one that looks at anyone who doesn't make mass market/mass appeal/maximum profit their primary focus as strange or smug or contrarian.

Then again, my username is jokey pseudo-latin for "lover of the underdog", so I guess my biases are out in the open.
posted by Infracanophile at 12:11 AM on May 11, 2017 [13 favorites]


There's nothing wrong with this but there is this weird element when people complain that something they like will become more common or the people making it have been heavily rewarded.

Maybe somebody who's not Nick Hornby should write a High Fidelity for beer.
posted by uncleozzy at 3:05 AM on May 11, 2017


AB-InBev Just "Commandeered" the Entire South African Hops Market

Along with the news late last week of ABI buying Wicked Weed, I was informed by SAB Hop Farms (part of ABI’s purchase of SAB-Miller) that ABI are commandeering all the hops that were to be allocated for distribution to North American craft brewers. The goal is to sell the hops internally to their acquired (former) craft breweries, even though they have not been able to sell all the hops as of yet. Regardless, they refuse to let US craft brewers buy any CY 2017 hops believing this will afford them a competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
posted by rodlymight at 3:55 AM on May 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


So AB-InBev are now the DeBeers of hops?
posted by acb at 4:10 AM on May 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


Are there similar soul searching screeds about small IT start ups that get bought by the microsofts and googles of this world? I suppose there must be, though I was under the impression that small IT start ups are frequently done with the specific purpose of getting bought out.

Small business is hard. Taking the money, well, I find it hard to fault the founders. (That having been said, once the large hands get involves, I tend to stop drinking the product.)
posted by IndigoJones at 4:55 AM on May 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


If I brew a trial batch at home - say, 100L,

An interesting home you have where you have a 25 gallon stock pot to put on the stove. And a pot that has a high enough side that does not overboil not to mention the muscle control to move 200 LBS of boiling wort. (If the point of boiling is to abuse the proteins, couldn't ya provide that abuse via a "proper" screw-pump geometry + speed? https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/wiley/extrusion-texturization-of-air-classified-pea-protein-9Nu8MB6qES It would cost less energy than the boiling the piss outta it and take less process time.)

Regardless, they refuse to let US craft brewers buy any CY 2017 hops believing this will afford them a competitive advantage

Sounds like someone should walk a lawsuit through the courts.
posted by rough ashlar at 5:04 AM on May 11, 2017


Modern market economics basically started with Adam Smith, who was an ethical philosopher before he wrote Wealth of Nations and all but invented the field of free market theory as a special field within the philosophy of ethics. Economics is supposed to be about what's most ethical.

And he was very much opposed to monopolies and their ability to harm competition and foster mismanagement. Funny how his modern day acolytes have largely dropped that part of his work. Hell even saint Ronny Reagan broke up monopolies.
posted by srboisvert at 5:35 AM on May 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


You don't rave about the unique screwdriver you got at your non-chain hardware store, but you do crow about getting a six pack for your buddies they haven't tried yet.

Hah. There's plenty of virtue signaling in hobbyist, craft, DIY circles, too. We're living in the golden age of the screwdriver.
posted by notyou at 5:58 AM on May 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


An interesting home you have where you have a 25 gallon stock pot to put on the stove. And a pot that has a high enough side that does not overboil not to mention the muscle control to move 200 LBS of boiling wort.

...or you could do five batches of wort in a 25L pot or something and then mix them in your 100L fermenting vessel, say. Or two 50L fermenting vessels. Or in any other way that is much more feasible than insisting on handling a 100L boil as a single operation.
posted by Dysk at 5:59 AM on May 11, 2017


I thought this map might contribute to the discussion. For me, it was a real eye-opener.
posted by Mr. Fig at 6:08 AM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


10 or so years ago a local craft brewery got bought out, and my local bottle shop could no longer stock the beer because he didn't meet the volume minimums of the big distributor that now controlled distribution of that beer. The craft market has grown a lot in the last 10 years, so that may not be the issue it once was. But simple unavailability of the beer in your local shop after a buyout was an issue. Yes, I could have then bought the beer in a mass market grocery store, but I made of point of buying all my beer from the neighborhood shop.

That friend has long since converted the bottle shop into a bar and restaurant, and still serving only craft beers in the place.
posted by COD at 6:09 AM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


I can see why people wouldn't like their favourite brewer bought out by a giant. Deuchars went noticeably downhill after the Caley got bought by Heineken (so yeah, I was upset about this before it was cool!)
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 6:13 AM on May 11, 2017


Your favorite beer sucks.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:46 AM on May 11, 2017


I'm not nearly as concerned with 'craft' and 'authenticity' as I am with tastiness. I think I'm doing this wrong...
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:49 AM on May 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


rodlymight: "Regardless, they refuse to let US craft brewers buy any CY 2017 hops believing this will afford them a competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive marketplace."

Hops grow like a weed here and recently a group has got together to develop a new farm locally; the first hops farm in the region since the 50s. The old farms used to be owned by the brewers. I wonder if that will be the first step again in setting up a larger scale craft brewery.

rough ashlar: "Sounds like someone should walk a lawsuit through the courts."

To force a vertically integrated company to sell raw material grown by that company to a competitor? Good luck with that.
posted by Mitheral at 6:50 AM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


I mentioned the blowback for Wicked Weed accepting a buyout in an earlier thread and a lot of beer bloggers (mostly male, shocker) were virulent in their disdain, enough where it was this very uncomfortable display of macho pride in "macro beer is trash", "selling out is for p****s", etc. I mean, I have been to Wicked Weed, their beer was pretty good, but it already felt like they were ready to be bought anyway given their marketing, their reach, and the way they branded themselves. At the end of the day, it's their call.

I guess I just wanted to voice my discomfort the current very male-driven beer climate of ticking boxes, one-upping for beer, and generally just being shitty bros in the craft beer industry.
posted by Kitteh at 6:54 AM on May 11, 2017 [9 favorites]


notyou: "There's plenty of virtue signaling in hobbyist, craft, DIY circles, too. We're living in the golden age of the screwdriver."

Interestingly about half the screwdrivers on that page are made buy the same company.
posted by Mitheral at 6:55 AM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


I don't understand why no one has brought up the ultimate calculus against consolidation: there is X shelf space for K category of beer at $STORE. If InBev buys a brewery, the shelf space that brewery's brands occupies is now theirs to lose. That guy who takes his buy out money to go start a new operation? He's now competing with his own former product from a disadvantaged position.

Squeezeing out doesn't need to be metaphorical.
posted by PMdixon at 6:59 AM on May 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


Are there similar soul searching screeds about small IT start ups that get bought by the microsofts and googles of this world? I suppose there must be, though I was under the impression that small IT start ups are frequently done with the specific purpose of getting bought out.
- IndigoJones
The craft/artisan/indy types are incredibly rare these days, but they exist. The whole Valley culture is against the very idea of making a high quality product for customers in the first place, especially niche ones. The idea that startups are like that is all marketing, they have fully imported finance/MBA culture. If you want to be really cynical then you could say it's there, but the users are the product and the VCs are the customers; "sell out" to the users and your investors will be very unhappy.

The Valley startup culture should be viewed as the object lesson in what happens when you accept and then glorify the concept of selling out. Do you want Juicero? Because that's how you get Juicero. And Theranos.

Most of that type of person end up working in FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) now and try to make a living with support contracts/consulting. And if you sell out that kind of project to a corporation the blowback is severe, since a lot of donated labor built it, it rarely happens. People like Ladar Levison are considered heroes in that community, as are many of the creators of excellent quality-first developer tools and libraries.
posted by Infracanophile at 7:01 AM on May 11, 2017 [11 favorites]


I am very, very close to the point of declaring that I oppose all acquisitions on principle.
posted by kevinbelt at 7:17 AM on May 11, 2017


I am in favor of anything that brings some variety to craft beer land because I'm a special snowflake who hates IPAs.
posted by lydhre at 7:21 AM on May 11, 2017


it already felt like they were ready to be bought anyway given their marketing, their reach, and the way they branded themselves. At the end of the day, it's their call.

I'm having a hard time articulating my feelings on this whole thing, but I think this is part of it. If you want to grow beyond a certain size -- which is to say, when you're thinking about national instead of regional distribution, or even regional instead of local -- your focus begins to shift from brewing to marketing and distribution. And there's nothing wrong with that; if you aspire to grow, that's the way to do it. And to pretend that all of these mid-sized craft breweries are virtuous by dint of being independent is foolish (cf. Rogue).

I think that we're in sort of a narrow window right now where a focus primarily on brewing, and brewing small amounts, can earn you enough cachet to make a living, and you can be happy with that and stay small.

But if you want to grow, you need to brew more, and if you want to brew more, you need to invest in facilities and equipment, and if you're going to invest in facilities and equipment, you need money, which you might need to take from an investor, who is going to want a plan for further growth, and so on. The only way off of the treadmill is to sell the operation, and by that point you're so far divorced from the brewing and into the business that it probably feels like a natural step.

Which isn't to say, of course, that the multinational conglomerates don't have reprehensible business practices. But at the point where you're scrabbling for shelf space at the supermarket instead of selling directly to consumers from your brewery, you're headed down the same path anyway.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:11 AM on May 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


@zymil:
I don't have an issue with dismissing people who enjoy craft beer as a performative consumption of authenticity.
Wow, nothing like jumping right in with a blanket dismissal of people who like something you don't like.
posted by uberchet at 9:59 AM on May 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


So AB-InBev are now the DeBeers of hops?

I recall a parable about Milo Minderbinder cornering the market on Egyptian cotton. This will probably work out about as well.
posted by mikoroshi at 10:14 AM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


The mainstream appropriates the underground in order to stay relevant. Some undergrounds persist despite this ("true skool" et al), while others spawn new ideas because they don't want to resemble the "sellouts." Each is valid, nobody's twisting your arm, and change is the only constant.
posted by rhizome at 10:35 AM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


I just wanted to come back in to say that this isn't really a question of aesthetics or even preferences ("I prefer craft beer! prevent the hollowing out of all things by capitalism"). It's a question of power.

In a situation where people who sell their companies to very large market players (who can in various ways leverage economies of scale, as with the attempt to corner the hops market), power is held by those large market players — they decide what gets made, how it gets made, and can use their power to chase out anyone who tries to get around them. In a culture where people who sell their companies to very large market players get shunned — wherein the non-market norm against large scale production is enforced by social action against people who defect — it becomes easier for consumers to make a difference in the shape of the market, and it remains easier for other small-scale producers to enter the market.

It's not about authenticity. It's about who has power and who has control.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:50 AM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


I agree that beer is a moral issue, but I think the author has missed it entirely. The whole idea of moralizing over the hideous damage done by this industry is performed by companies small enough is absurd on its face.

According to NESARC data, the top decile of drinkers in America consume the equivalent of three cases of beer per week, which would seem alarming enough considering how extreme that is, but we're talking about moral brewing. What is really alarming in this context is that, those drinkers represent well more than half of all alcohol sales across beverage types. Available evidence suggests that, while most of the consumers were talking about protecting here in this thread have a perfectly healthy relationship with alcohol, most revenue of these companies comes from people who very much don’t. Indeed, if that top decile of drinkers were to simply cut back to join the still pretty heavy drinking 9th decile, then alcohol sales would drop by 60%.

The craft beer movement may have a variety of interesting differences from the rest of the beverage industry in how the business model works, but the way both drive sales by actively encouraging the abuse of alcohol in their marketing and branding is identical. Its how beer gets sold. If we want to talk about morality, those principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior that should lead us to better caring for each other, in the craft beer industry we could instead talk about ways for the industry to reshape the alcohol mores it constructs for us in ways that would be less harmful even if they aren't as profitable. Or we could talk about how the industry treats its founding father's conspicuous problem with his drinking. Or we could talk about the slow capture of our State and local legislatures and regulatory agencies by the beverage industry and how that impacts public health. Or we could talk about how pervasive industry talking points about the impact and nature of drinking are in our culture.

Preference for buying from businesses with revenue in the tens of millions instead of businesses with revenue in the tens of billions is a consumer issue, not a moral one. Public health is a moral issue.
posted by Blasdelb at 11:33 AM on May 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


Just because there may exist a moral problem with alcohol marketing does not mean there is not also a moral issue at work in choosing between a locally owned company and a giant conglomerate, Blasdelb.
posted by uberchet at 12:11 PM on May 11, 2017


Or we could talk about how the industry treats its founding father's conspicuous problem with his drinking.

Who does this refer to?
posted by atoxyl at 12:27 PM on May 11, 2017


One thing that hasn't been quite clear to me about that graph and analysis - when they say the heaviest drinkers account for X percent of alcohol sales, do they mean in dollars or in volume of ethanol (which is presumably the unit of that consumption curve?) Because it's not that hard to construct an contrary argument for craft beer culture - in promoting spending more dollars on less alcohol it actually promotes a comparatively healthier drinking culture blah blah - but I have no idea whether data would back that up.
posted by atoxyl at 12:41 PM on May 11, 2017


Blasdelb: "Or we could talk about how the industry treats its founding father's conspicuous problem with his drinking."

atoxyl: "Who does this refer to?"
Jim Koch, the founder of the Boston Brewing company that makes Sam Adams, who was famously instrumental in both the original reincarnation of the industry, as well as its later salvation when the hops harvests failed and he made his frozen backup supply available at cost to his smaller competitors. Craft beer in the US simply would not exist if he had not stood up to the Beverage industry and stared them down in a way no one has since a bunch of women kicked ass and took names in the 20s, or if he hadn't stubbornly held open the trail he blazed for others to follow. Everything you see that isn't a pale lager made in the largest possible volumes is arguably a direct result of his vision. He also has a more quietly famous prodigious daily habit that is widely known to occasionally be a big problem and to require significant external assistance to keep him so high-functioning with such a constantly high blood alcohol content.

This is the same dude whose last appearance on the blue was for his habit of consuming brewers yeast with beer during the day when he didn't want to be drunk under the theory that the alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes contained in the yeast would magically metabolize the alcohol for him. That consuming lyophilized yeast could actually do this is not even remotely plausible, and what at least should have been painfully obvious to everyone is that the only magic involved came from his well developed tolerance and capacity for self-deception.

I'm generally not a big fan of Great Man theories of history, but they do kind of fit him and he is clearly an amazing guy, but imagine what he could do if he wasn't constantly drunk as shit. Not just Boston Brewing but the whole industry is profiting from keeping this amazing dude as the head of a major brewing concern, which is probably not the greatest place for encouraging a healthy relationship with alcohol for him. However, I don't think the biggest reason why the industry wide response to his addiction is to enable and minimize it as much as possible stems from the practicalities of tying him down, but are really more related to how acknowledging the obvious would attack the central lies underpinning the beverage industry.

The beverage industry, including the craft and 'craft' components of it don't sell beverages, they sell habits - remember that well more than half of sales go to drinkers who are way past having a problem? The bullshit he tells himself is the same bullshit that the craft beer industry sells and is really basically the same as the bullshit that the rest of the beverage industry sells. Its the idea that alcohol is necessary for a good time or social bonding, that alcohol is fun rather than a whole lot of danger and hideous harm with the potential to be fun, and that consuming alcohol is a way to become interesting or establish identity. Its not that they can't acknowledge his relationship to alcohol because it'd be inconvenient, its that his relationship to alcohol is the product they sell.
posted by Blasdelb at 2:22 PM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


atoxyl: "One thing that hasn't been quite clear to me about that graph and analysis - when they say the heaviest drinkers account for X percent of alcohol sales, do they mean in dollars or in volume of ethanol (which is presumably the unit of that consumption curve?) Because it's not that hard to construct an contrary argument for craft beer culture - in promoting spending more dollars on less alcohol it actually promotes a comparatively healthier drinking culture blah blah - but I have no idea whether data would back that up."
That chart is measuring units of alcohol, and it looks like it is using the American Standard Drink of 14 grams of alcohol.

I've got Cooke's book where that figure about alcohol sales is described in greater depth, and it is indeed measured in dollars. That said, while people in higher income brackets as well as the people who spend more on alcohol tend to have structurally very different problems with alcohol, drinking craft beers is not necessarily indicative of anything other than having the money to spend on craft beers.
posted by Blasdelb at 2:37 PM on May 11, 2017


How large does the brewery have to be before this disaggregation kicks in? Is it a sudden thing, like if I go over a certain number of litres it's lost instantly and forever, like some kind of craft virginity?

Every so often I consider this in relation to my formerly local craft brewer whose arc has gone up through most of my (long) drinking years. I can remember reading in 2000 a blogger from an America's width away who was having what we thought of that little beer up the road and it was kind of a WTF moment. Now they've got an east coast operation which makes weirdly labelled bottles of just-as-good, fresh-as-hell stuff one can pick up in dive bars in the Midwest. They're keeping it real, though. Grocery store always has a line of theirs available only in the region, just like in the day.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 2:51 PM on May 11, 2017


With beer people I think there's an unfortunate tendency to equate craft and independence. For me, personally, it's more about them being a legitimately local company somewhere, even if they have national reach via distribution (like Rogue, which I know has other issues, but still).
posted by uberchet at 3:24 PM on May 11, 2017


I don't give a toss about beer, and I guess I give a negative toss about "craft beer," but while it's certainly technically possible that a large company buying a smaller independent brand of any kind might maintain it exactly as it is, just at a higher volume of production...historically, that's...really not what usually happens. It's idle to pretend otherwise, or to expect others to when considering the likely results of such a purchase.

'Craft' brewers change their recipes all the time. Hops become more or less available. A particular malt is swapped out for something else. A much loved yeast strain reaches its used by date and something fresher gets pitched instead. Punters say they'd prefer something more or less bitter / dark / hoppy / malty / alcoholic and you respond. My favourite local brewery's flagship altbier is not the same beer it was three years ago - I know, I have both beersmith files. Has my friend the brewer sold out?

So if it's really change you object to - and it isn't, it's this immeasurable, unquanitifable, utterly threshold-less thing called 'big business', for reasons nobody here seems to be able to convincingly articulate - you've got a problem.

An interesting home you have where you have a 25 gallon stock pot to put on the stove.

Yeah this is massive oh wait it's only 50cm across and has a tap and even if I wasn't filling four 25L fermenters foodsafe temp-rated pumps are dirt cheap and you don't really know what you're talking about.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 8:27 PM on May 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


and that consuming alcohol is a way to become interesting or establish identity

And therein lies the rub. 'Spookydog Eleventysquillion IBU Double Dunkel Hemped IPA is a central part of who I am, even though it's only existed for two years and the recipe already changed like three times during that period but I couldn't really tell! Hands off big corporation because you might change it a fourth time!'
posted by obiwanwasabi at 8:44 PM on May 11, 2017


Wicked Weed was always slick. They started with an expensive location and lots of money. They were courting a national audience immediately.

(Mythical Asheville native here): This. A thousand times this. These guys came into it with a lot of family funding and a very expensive, ambitious model to get them national attention and $$ asap. It was never a bar for or about the locals. It was, in my personal experience (went once), a very New South hedge fund, popped collared tourist crowd, complete with head-set-ed doorman not letting people inside on busy summer nights. Complaining that Wicked Weed Sold out is kind of like saying you liked The Strokes before they were cool. Like, this was never a scruffy DIY operation. They were always slick, expensive, groomed and funded for maximum corporate success.
posted by thivaia at 1:30 PM on May 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


"You don't rave about the unique screwdriver you got at your non-chain hardware store, but you do crow about getting a six pack for your buddies they haven't tried yet. "

Somebody's not getting invited to my artisanal plunger release party.

The craft beer movement may have a variety of interesting differences from the rest of the beverage industry in how the business model works, but the way both drive sales by actively encouraging the abuse of alcohol in their marketing and branding is identical.

Bullshit. While there are some that follow the max rager aesthetic, a lot of craft beer marketing is explicitly opposed to that, you know, to signal that they're not Bud Light. Your opinion is one of someone unfamiliar with which he speaks.

"Everything you see that isn't a pale lager made in the largest possible volumes is arguably a direct result of his vision. "

LOL, nope. He's incredibly important, but there were successful micro and craft breweries before him, and a resurgence in home brewing presaged that with liberalized laws in the late '70s and early '80s. Bell's from Kalamazoo was started a year before Boston Brewing.
posted by klangklangston at 5:26 PM on May 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


Sure, but you could argue (though I'm not sure that I would, necessarily) that Jim Koch approached microbrew as a drunk MBA rather than a drunk brewer, and that was the distinction that made the difference.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:31 PM on May 12, 2017


"I've got Cooke's book where that figure about alcohol sales is described in greater depth, and it is indeed measured in dollars. That said, while people in higher income brackets as well as the people who spend more on alcohol tend to have structurally very different problems with alcohol, drinking craft beers is not necessarily indicative of anything other than having the money to spend on craft beers."

I've known a couple of those three-cases daily drinkers, and they're drinking Icehouse or Keystone, not Hopfuck Resinbomb or Ye Olde Barleywine.

"Sure, but you could argue (though I'm not sure that I would, necessarily) that Jim Koch approached microbrew as a drunk MBA rather than a drunk brewer, and that was the distinction that made the difference."

It made a difference, sure. Enough of a difference that everything not macro lager is because of his vision? No, that's bullshit.
posted by klangklangston at 5:35 PM on May 12, 2017


As a Californian I feel obliged to point out that Fritz Maytag and Anchor Brewing started releasing Anchor Steam in bottles in 1971 (note: not even trying to claim knock-on credit for the brewery's since-1896 history, only their modern releases), while Boston Beer Company started in 1984.

Claiming that "Everything you see that isn't a pale lager made in the largest possible volumes is arguably a direct result of [Jim Koch's] vision" seems unrealistic.
posted by Lexica at 7:53 PM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Are there similar soul searching screeds about small IT start ups that get bought by the microsofts and googles of this world? I suppose there must be, though I was under the impression that small IT start ups are frequently done with the specific purpose of getting bought out.
Our Incredible Journey
posted by one weird trick at 3:32 AM on May 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


« Older “Glory to Mankind.”   |   history of the entire world, i guess Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments