Okay, after being urged by Loyal Reader Dave, I watched the “I Am A Craft Brewer” film. You can see it here.
Nice piece of filmmaking. Lively, well-paced, well-filmed, and well-lit. Music aimed straight at the heart. Did what it’s supposed to do: Rally the craft beer troops.
Content? Hmmm. . . . Well . . . . Hmmmmm. Astounding lack of historical perspective — or, alternatively, “historical perspective” constructed so it matched what the filmmaker wanted to say rather than historical reality.
Once again, the drumbeat of “We are the American dream” (as if somehow the rest of us who don’t make beer or earn livings by working for larger companies can’t possibly represent that dream).
I was surprised that the film avoided mentioning the Big Talking Point that everyone who’s anyone in craft brewing always make: The number of American craft brewers. Craft brewers love to roll out the numbers. “We are 1489 strong!” they say. (Or whatever the current number is. Just under 1500.)
Except, ya know, they’re not. Because that number includes every outlet of every chain restaurant that claims to be a “brewpub.”
So, for example, every Rock Bottom outlet is counted as a separate “brewery.” Every Granite City outlet is counted as a separate brewery. Strip those down to what they are — a single brewing “company” selling its beer in a number of retail outlets — and the number of “craft breweries” plunges. I
ndeed, it’s not clear to me why those are even counted as “breweries.”
But hey, it’s not my organization and it’s not my turf to protect. And you gotta love the tiny core of “real” craft brewers who are doing just that: honoring and protecting their turf. Now — what was it someone in the film said about “snakeoil salesmen”?
Loyal reader, that’s nice… well you keep them honest! someone has to!so.. how far down does it plunge… I suppose the “BJ’s” in Fresno that does NOT brew is a brewery [surely not...]now… perhaps there are a few places like that guy who only brews occasionally up on the north coast, that is not on the list…ok maybe that wouldn’t offset it but are there any of those?dave
Of course. I thought your comment in the Beer Wars afterpanel was spot on as well: these people are in it to make money. They may ALSO be passionate about beer, so I’m not calling them liars, just disingenuous. But if you’re not in it to make money, just homebrew (it’s what I do).It’s odd that this video (which I admit I haven’t seen yet) is doing a much better job, much more cost efficiently I’d imagine, of galvanizing the craft beer aficionados on the internet than Beer Wars did. It wasn’t feel-good enough to be propaganda, but it also wasn’t dry-documentary enough to appeal to factmongers.(My BA is in history and my heart is in beer, so allow me to say thanks to you for combining the two)
Why do you hate [America] [the Troops] [Craft Beer]?Just kidding. Preparing you for the worst.I respect and value your perspectives and enjoy your writings.
Yes, ollllo, I suspect the worst is about to rain upon me, so thanks for the prep work.And to Dan’s comment: I think I said this in an earlier post about “Beer Wars” (or maybe I only imagined I did): that Anat wasn’t in it to rally the craft beer people. She really was trying to make a larger point for a much larger audience.Same with my beer book: I definitely didn’t write it for the “beer geeks,” who, truth be told, I didn’t even realize existed until AFTER I finished the book. And to Dave’s comment: I actually thought about going through the state-by-state list to count how many “real” craft breweries there are, but I realized it would take too long and I am supposed to be doing something else (like writing a new book; preparing a talk I’m giving tonight, blah blah blah). But I think a reasonable guess is that at least, bare minimum, we could reduce the count to one thousand simply by removing the chain restaurants, of which there are zillions. And then if we remove the places that are pizza joints with brewing kits in the back room, we’d probably lose maybe another hundred or two.
I think the number that the BA has is over 1500 right now. I know Charlie said 1400-something, but I’m pretty sure they’re really over 1500. In reality, based on what I’ve seen from my site and others similar, I think we’re closer to 1600.I’m not 100% sure that I understand what you mean by, “every Rolling Rock outlet is counted as a separate “brewery.””?One of the issues we’ve experienced at Beer Mapping for getting a complete total is factoring out locations like the BJ’s locations that serve craft brewed beers that are brewed at another BJ’s location. It isn’t easy to do and each location doesn’t really want to divulge that information either.But I don’t think that most craft brewers are discounting the work done at these chain locations. I know for a fact that the beers produced at the Rock Bottom in Chicago can definitely stand on their own if judged competitively.
Yes, you did say that it wasn’t ‘for us,’ and I agree, but I think then (and said as much on the @beerovision twitter account) it was mismarketed. Us folk got sick of the constant PR barrage but the uninitiated never knew it was there.But this isn’t a BW post. Sorry.I’d hope that the craft brewery number isn’t influenced by things like Custom Brewcrafters, a semilocal contract brewer. There are a bunch of local restaurants that have their own ‘house beer’ that’s actually from CB. The Buffalo Tap Room has a full flight, none of which is brewed by them at all, so saying that they, Duff’s (great wings but their beer sucks), etc are ‘craft brewers’ is out-and-out wrong.
Oh, Dan, you can comment about anything you want, on-topic or off! (I’m just delighted ANYone comments..)It’s my understanding that the BA counts every chain restaurants locations as a separate “brewery.” I could be wrong (Me? Wrong??? Not possible.) So if I am, someone correct me, but I think that’s the case.So the Rolling Rock here in Iowa is counted as one brewery, and the RR in Philadelphia or whereever is counted as another one. DItto for Granite City (which makes all its wort in one location and then ships it): every outlet is treated as a separate entity. So if Granite City has eight restaurants, each one is counted for a total of eight. Make sense?
Perhaps you meant Rock Bottom instead of Rolling Rock? For what it’s worth, it’s precisely because you don’t have “any turf to protect” that I find your take on the brewing biz especially poignant. Right now, “craft beer” is really big into creating its rock stars, like Sam Calagione and Greg Koch. I watched the video and found it especially ironic that Greg was waxing eloquent about being the “little guy” as he strolled through his 120 bbl, automated Huppman/Steinecker/Rolec brewhouse. Puh-lease…
Hi Maureen. Here’s some background so everyone is on the same page with the Brewers Association “brewery count.” There are two numbers you may see published by the BA. For either count we are talking about brick-and-mortar facilities where beer is made and then sold.One number is the annual count of operating breweries at specific point in time. This is a calendar year number for the BA’s annual craft brewing industry stats that includes each facility that brewed commercial beer in a calendar year. This number includes brewers that brewed for some or all of the year. It does not include facilities where beer has not been brewed in a calendar year, even if that is a “store” of a restaurant group that also includes brewpubs. The “annual” count for 2008 is 1501 craft brewers out of 1545 U.S. operating breweries. BA publishes the annual statistical report in the May/June issue of the new brewer. One tricky piece is when do we inactivate a brewery. In general if we get word a place hasn’t brewed in a month and doesn’t seem likely to in the near future, we will inactivate them. There are many very small breweries where a batch may normally last for, say, four months. and they may only brew three times a year. A brewery like this would be considered active by the BA as that fills the company’s demand and isn’t a true shutdown. Another model we see in specific places is a brewery that is supplied by another facility in a group of brewers (usually a restaurant group) yet brews maybe as little as once per year in order to keep a permit active or for other reasons. Yeah, it gets grey, and we need to use our judgment sometimes. Another place our counts are imperfect is that it often takes us time to get a status change through the natural course of information–for example, brewers telling the BA that they have closed isn’t usually high on their priority list–and we have to get that information on tips, media reports or online sites and then do the research and make the call. The same applies to brewery openings, but to a lesser degree. We love tips to research if anyone notices a listing on our online Brewery Locator that they believe to be incorrect. BA’s Membership Coordinator & Brewery Detective Erin Glass (with her trenchcoat and magnifying glass) is our crack investigator.We pull a report of this active brewery information from our database once per month based on the data in our database on the last day of the month. This “active breweries” count would be expected to be lower than the most recent “annual” count as it would not include brewers that closed in current year, past year, but would include current year openings. The current count is used generally for media inquiries, our mid-year stat review and our member mailings and emailings in our Craft Brewers Fact Sheet. , we could publish the current count online each month. Now that the Craft Brewers Conference has wrapped, we are redesigning the professional division site and can do some more with the craft stats if there is interest and a benefit for BA members.
Yes, I did mean Rock Bottom. Sorry! Rolling Rock is that great bar in Denver, right?And Paul, thanks for this thoughtful and useful comment, which, if you don’t mind, I will bump up into a separate post.
Rolling Rock is a beer. Falling Rock is a taproom in Denver.From what I have gathered, Granite City seems to be the only chain that does what you mention (transporting unfermented wort from location to location to finish). Rock Bottom gives their brewers the freedom to brew their own recipes as long as they have certain styles available. The corporation has developed many different “names” with marketing materials (Like “Walleye Wheat” or “Brown Bear Brown”) and a Rock Bottom Brewer/Manager can choose to use one of these names/graphics for taphandles or promotions. But the recipe will be totally different from location to location. This is likely confusing for the customer who visits multiple Rock Bottoms, but it is probably done because it is cheaper for the corporation to produce a smaller number of marketing/graphics that can be used at multiple locations.From talking to the Rock Bottom brewers that I know, and visiting their breweries and watching them work, I don’t really see how you can just slap the “chain” moniker on them and discount their ability to brew “craft” beer.Honestly, I don’t really understand why there is this need to sort all breweries into “craft” or “not craft” buckets.
Maureen,I had a great time meeting you and chatting with you. I loved reading your book when it came out a couple of years ago. I must admit that you have confused me a bit with some of your futurist comments backed up with your (quite accurate) statement “I’m a Historian.” Especially as it applied to the “See me in ten years…” comment to Sam and me during the Beer Wars movie panel, suggesting that we were going to end up just like the large brewers just because they too started out tiny. Doesn’t virtually every upstart company start out small?Making such proclamations is suggestive that you are inside of our heads, however I have not been privy to your actually attempting to do that. I completely understand if that is because you would prefer to remain on the outside for objectiveness purposes, however some of your perspectives that you have attempted to overlay on the world of craft brewers hardly seems objective. Instead, it seems of the “Believe me now, or believe me later” sort.It is important to note, as you well know (you’re an Historian!) that at the time of the beginning of the brewing giants, they were endeavoring to be ‘captains of industry.’ While that could possibly be true for some small brewers, I can say first-hand it is certainly not true for Stone.I appreciate the good words about the I Am A Craft Brewer piece in the first 1/3 of your blog post on the subject. Why you spent the remaining 2/3 on a debate of a subject not expressly expressed in the four minute and seven second piece is not immediately apparent. However, I am glad that Paul Gatza was able to add clarity on that subject (Paul and the Brewers Association are very insightful with their data and are always glad to share…either before, or after, a blog post is published).Regarding one commenter’s suggestion that it is disingenuous to say that we are “the little guy” (while we did not use those exact words, we did use the words “we are small”) I would suggest mathematics for perspective. Stone produced 83,000 barrels of beer in 2008. I was not able to put my fingers on the exact production numbers of the world’s largest brewer (Google searches revealed a lot about dollar figures, but I missed being able to find exact barrel numbers), but I think that it’s in the 200,000,000+ range. Based on that, Stone is 0.000415 times the size of the world’s largest brewer. I believe I can look straight into anyone’s eyes, or the mirror, and say that Stone is a “small brewer” with a straight face. Yes, we have grown to become the 18th largest craft brewer in the US, however we are still less than 1/20th the size of the largest on that list. I might argue that a brewery would need to be somewhere in the range of 5% the size of the largest in order to *maybe* be no longer considered small. As we know, the ENTIRE total of all craft brewers does not yet hit 5%.Cheers & thanks for the conversations!-Greg Koch, CEO & co-founder, Stone Brewing Co.
Hey, Greg! Thanks for taking time to stop by with your insights and info. MUCH appreciated. And I don’t think anyone would dispute that, relatively speaking, you’re a “small” brewer. As you note, the numbers say it all (which is why I like numbers.)
Hello Greg, et al., First off, let me say for disclosure’s sake that I love me some Arrogant Bastard and Ruination. I buy your beers, I LOVE your 120 bbl brewhouse and would kill to work on a system like that some day. So, please don’t take my comments a slight upon your business, your ethics or your products because I have no issues with any of them.I never said you were disingenuous. I said that it was ironic that you called Stone small. Yes, next AB-Inbev, Stone Brewing is insanely small. Yet, you are comparing your brewery to the one extreme outlier of brewing in this country. *Everyone* is tiny next to them! Stone is the 18th largest out of 1,501 breweries in this country, placing it squarely and firmly in the top 1% of U.S. breweries. In those terms, Stone is not tiny at all!What I *do* find disingenuous is this need, in the “craft” beer world (in which I have spent almost 15 years) to define itself in terms of “us” & “them.” In so many ways, we “craft” brewers have relied on the technology, the innovation, the distribution networks, and the downright help from the big guys that we demonize now. 15 years ago, Jim Koch used to talk about the big guys spilling more in a day than he made in a year. He now runs a public company that is the second largest brewing company in the US. I just hope that someI think I can understand why brewers want to define themselves and be seen as small as small. Because it sells beer! Craft sales have been the fastest, if not only, growing segment of the beer market in this country. If I were in your shoes Greg, I’d want people to think I was small too!On that note, I would argue that if you own/operate a brewery that distributes nationally, you are recognized as one of the faces of the “craft” brewing movement, and you are hiring brewers like Mr. Steele away from Anheuser-Busch, you can no longer be considered small.Remember, 99% of the brewers out there would probably love to be in your shoes. Cheers and thanks for your response! Nate
[...] from the I Am a Craft Brewer video (embedded here, in case you missed it). There was a little right after it came out, but for the most part there was a lot of fawning. As it has been pointed out, the video has [...]
Hey Maureen-”I was a craft brewer.” That’s the movie I want to make. Because, I was at one time, according to the BA and the video. But alas, I work for August Schell now, and we are not craft brewers (just ask the BA). Never mind the fact that we will celebrate our 150th year in 2010 as the second-oldest family owned brewery in the US. We survived prohibition, a Native American uprising that burned New Ulm to the ground, and the vanishing of regional breweries in the 70′s and 80′s. Forget the fact that we sold a tree on our grounds in the 80′s to pay the bills. Discount that we brewed a German Pilsner and Weizen in 1986.Because, the fact is, the bulk of our production uses corn as an adjunct. And even if you discount that beer, we would still produce a larger volume of non-adjunct beers than most of the top craft breweries. But hey, what does that matter?No, I am not a craft brewer, and I’ll happily be that for another 150 years.Cheers!David BergAugust Schell Brewing
I have been pinging around the internet all day with Greg tweeting his followers towards any site that dissagrees with him. He dropped them on my blog today. Granted my comments weren’t nice. After seeing his comments on all these blogs where he acts like people who dissagree with him are insulting him personally I’m starting to regret apologizing for saying he had a big head.I think Greg has mischaracterized your comments about becoming the new big guys of brewing. Those commercial lagers didn’t succeed because of marketing alone. People wanted those beers. What happens when Stone or Sam Adams can only stay alive, not by watering down the beer that people want, but by undercutting the next big thing in beer in order to stay in business? Greg has good intentions, but what about 50 years down the road when there’s someone else in charge? For a long time there were still local breweries in many states when the big guys ran their own companies. Will Stone or Sam Adams close their doors and throw in the towel when their beer is no longer the next “big thing”?@ David BergThat’s a great comment, and a great story man. I’d love to post it on my blog if you don’t mind. Got an email bud? Just this year a local brewery called Widmer no longer met the BA standards to make them a craft brewerie from what I hear. The BA is a private club and only people who fit the mold can play for their team, even if they do make good craft beer (that Widmer Rye I had wasn’t adjunct, I can tell you that)
[...] acts sanctimonious regarding adjuncts. Again, taken verbatim from IAACB. I thought it was Maureen Ogle, one of the few people immune to the ‘ohmygodthisisawesome’ properties of IAACB, who [...]