
Originally Posted by
EWG
I'm lamenting Anchor's loss as well, as I mentioned int he early post. But I gotta say that there's a real lack of understanding of the brewery business shown in a lot of these posts.
Bunch of stuff:
Just because you like or don't like something does not mean it's a good or badly brewed beer. Beer is different than wine. Wine is supposed to be different every year, vintages, grapes, climate, and is celebrated for that. Beer is supposed to always be the same, and that's really hard. From a technical standpoint, quality microbrewers have always appreciated the skill of the macros. A Bud always tastes like a Bud. Same with Coors, Miller, etc. That requires a ton of equipment and a high level of skill. When micros exploded onto the scene we used the macros to teach us how to do this stuff.
The regional beers are a great example of that lesson being put into practice. Anchor, Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, Great Lakes - they all made better, more complicated beer than the macros, with higher quality more difficult, more expensive ingredients, and did it consistently, often with terrible equipment. Huge amounts of skill involved there.
That all said, craft beer exploded because there was finally enough consumer money coming in to allow highly skilled craftspeople to explore what the beverage could be beyond basic corn based, inoffensive lager. And when consumers started to taste the new stuff they wanted more. Since the entire market was in it's infancy, the consumer tastes evolved super quickly, and craft brewers either evolved with that or died.
Pale ales then lagers then ESBs (RIP Avery Redpoint) then porters then IPAs then bigger IPAs then barrel aged then sours then farmhouse and Belgian then unfiltered beers then hazy IPAs. All this was driven by experimentation, mostly by larger craft brewers like Avery and Sierra using a small pilot system and selling the experiments in their tap rooms and seeing what stuck.
Then littler craft breweries started cropping up, mostly focused on a small window of beer styles. Some had been around for a while and got bigger, like Ommegang, and some were brand new, like Treehouse, and they created followings from people who liked that style of beer. And right then something peculiar happened. In 2 years the number of breweries in the US tripled. The fallout from that? For the first time, micro breweries had to literally compete for shelf space in the liquor stores. And no one knew it at that moment, but that was the exact point that the bubble popped.
It was during this few year period was when the millionaires were made. The smaller regional guys started selling. Golden Road, which had almost no sales, huge debt, but a beautiful unused brewhouse, sold for something like 200 million. Everyone looked around at each other and all these renegade brewers started to realize that they and their families could all retire for generations. Sales came fast and furious as the macros bought - for 2 reasons. The first was that they wanted in on the market. The other was to break the competition (by owning the micros the macros could use their distribution network to squeeze the micro out of shelf space. Which pretty much worked for the larger micros.) This peaked when Ballast Point sold for literally a billion freaking dollars. Which was insane.
But now, with limited shelf space, you had to either be big with a strong following or hyper local to get on shelves, and brands that were in between, like Great Divide or Anchor, got pounded. There was still a place for mid sized beers that were excellently crafted - if they made SKUs that people liked. Which meant chasing the market. At one point Avery was known as being the most advanced barrel age brewer on the planet. They barely barrel age anymore (and of course they sold to a big brewer.)
Beer has now advanced to the point where there is actual competition, which is normal and representative of a mature market. It's hard to break into a regional size these days. You have to be excellent at the craft, excellent at marketing and excellent at business. Which is rare.
Anchor Steam was a throwback beer in an age where most customers had more advanced tastes. It sat in between the corn based big beers like Miller/Bud/Coors and the newer more complicated micros. If you want corn beer you buy the big brands and if you want micro you want something more sophisticated than Steam, so their market dried up.
The biggest mistake they made was not leaning into their base market. Anchor was a blue collar beer for regular people that wanted something interesting but not challenging. Sapporo tried to make them fancy and trendy with their packaging and new non-core beers. It didn't work. But you can still survive with this kind of beer if you do it right.
Two of the breweries that I have the most respect for in the entire country are Matt's and Great Lakes. They brew blue collar, unpretentious beer that, from a craft standpoint, is super high quality. They haven't sold. They have an incredibly deep regional markets and loyalty - and part of that comes from the fact that they have been loyal to their areas. They never tried to go wide - they went deep. They have SKUs that allow people that like almost any kind of beer to find something they like with their label (Matt's through their Saranac brand.) They never sold. They are family owned. They make some great beers. Yeah, they make some basic stuff too, but it's sure not corn based crap. And the niche markets they sort've ignore. Quality, wide appealing beers are what they make, and the super inventive, super expensive brews they leave to others.
Lastly, good beer is good beer, regardless of whether you like it or not. I don't like farmhouse beer that much, but damn Great Divide Colette is a well crafted beer. Some of you may not like hazy IPAs, but Other Half's hazy IPAs are shockingly difficult to brew and so high quality it's mind boggling. There are maybe 20 brewers in the country with the skill and equipment to pull that off.
Yes, since beer has gotten so localized and you can be successful just by selling to your neighborhood there are a lot of bad craft beers out there - especially in difficult styles (hazy IPAs, barrel aging and sours being maybe the most difficult), but there are more higher quality beers out there than ever, and that's good. It's worth mentioning that Hazy IPAs are very unstable on shelves and quite expensive to do right, so it's hard to brew a big, mass distributed one that is high quality - which is why there are very few that are mass produced and are good representations of the style.
Anchor just had a dwindling consumer base that Sapporo stopped reaching. Oops. Pretty large amount of wasted money with that purchase, and SF loses an institution.
The talent in the industry is far, far higher than it has ever been. The next big shift? No one really knows, and I no longer have to predict it professionally, but I'm guessing the seltzers and non-beer alcoholic drinks in a can that are driving people away from beer are going to erode the market for "base" beer. I think, to some extent, that's part of what did Anchor in. Folks like Avery, who have put a ton of stock in Stampede Lager (Univ Colorado tagged easy drinker) could be in trouble unless they pivot. But maybe that hits the corn beers more. Who knows? All I know is that 2005 EWG could never, ever have imagined drinking the stuff we drink now. It's pretty awesome.
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