Stop the madness
Craft beer has seen an amazing level of growth over the last five years. With that growth has come a whole lot of good. The quality of craft beer around the world continues to improve and the homebrewer’s penchant for experimentation is now firmly ensconced in the commercial craft beer industry. We see evidence of this in the community’s embrace of breweries like Cigar City and Mikkeller and we also see it in the increasingly high turnout at special brewery-only releases.
As a New Yorker, we have two local breweries for whom special releases are highly anticipated events. Everyone I know from this area looks forward to the release of anything new from Captain Lawrence Brewing. Scott Vacarro’s sour ales in particular are world-class and their reputation is well deserved (Rosso e Marone was the Gold-medal winner in the American-style Sour Ale category at the 2009 GABF and his Cuvee de Castleton has won the same category in previous years). Likewise, people from the area often plan long train and/or car rides from the city out to Southampton Brewing on Long Island, where their Double Ice Bock and Berliner Weiss have been perennial favourites (and GABF winners as well). These special releases are fun… loads of people show up, chat about craft beer, share craft beer with one another and generally vibe off of being at the site of production of the beers that they enjoy so much.
Increasingly though, these events have become less fun. They have become less about community and more about queueing up, waiting, purchasing, and leaving with your booty, in order to quickly run back to Ratebeer and Beeradvocate to hawk your newly acquired trade bait for everything you can get your hands on. Even worse is the dubious practice of hiring people on Craigslist to serve as proxies for you… either to ensure access to a beer and a location you wouldn’t be able to get to or to simply increase the number of bottles/growlers of precious liquid that you can get. The last few releases at both of these breweries seem to become victim to this type of mentality in contrast to the previous releases I’ve been a part of.
I’m not here to judge the breweries… their goal is simple, to produce beer that their fans enjoy and to sell it at a profit. Special releases are fun for brewers and (used to be) fun for beer geeks. I’m happy for all the success that these breweries have and especially for their general professionalism when things go awry (Vinnie Cilurzo’s recent response to the unanticipated demand on Pliny the Younger release day was truly classy) but at the same time it does irritate me to see people gaming the system in place for their own benefit. While I’m glad to see that craft beer is growing and that these special releases continue to generate buzz and profit for the breweries in particular, I can’t help but feel that something is getting lost in the process.
12 Comments to “Stop the madness”
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Preach on, Joe!
Well said, Joe!
As a long time beer geek, I’ve had the priviledge of participating in numerous special releases. I vividly recall the first Cuvee de Castleton release that was a bunch of Ratebeer locals hanging out sampling beer together then convincing Scott to allow us to pick up some bottles of his new beer to take home. The same is true of Kate the Great which I enjoyed on tap for several years before the release blew up to a massive free for all. Many people like myself have grown wary of special releases for the very reasons you outlined above.
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I couldn’t agree more with the contents of the article.
It’s not yet on such a massive scale here, but the writing is on the wall. It’ll take some time (read: years) to blow over, I’m afraid.
Cheers, Joe!
Great piece. I spoke with Phil the day after the SPH special release event and he was utterly shocked at the showing of people who attended. What irks me about these specialty releases is those who choose to not even drink any of their stash but simply bought the beer(s) due to their rarity and “trade value”. Plus, growlers of Pliny The Younger on EBay for $150 already? Are you fucking kidding me?
Madness? Disease is more like it.
Cheers!
what action can we take as RBs?
I think many of us do help by trading things for fair value and by sharing stuff with other people rather than hoarding it. I’m not against trading at all… many of the best beers I’ve tasted have been either through trades I’ve made myself or through the generosity of locals who are also active traders. The problem is when hype trumps common sense. It’s when one guy picks up 24 growlers of Pliny and then hawks it on one of the websites. There are all sorts of ways to justify that behaviour… “I was spreading the love”, or “I let more people try it who couldn’t” but in the end it feeds into the hype machine and turns these releases into the clusterfucks they’ve become. If people aren’t trading at face value, I think you should not trade with the person. If releases become more trouble than they’re worth, stop hyping them up and stop attending them. I’ve had very few beers where the quality of the beer matched the hype (to be fair, Pliny the Younger did match the hype, but my point is the same). I don’t think that any individual or even all of Ratebeer could reverse the course we’re on with these types of things, but I’m simply saying that if we don’t like the way something is heading, we can all make individual decisions to get off the train.
Well said, the sheer enjoyment of the beer gets lost at some of these event. Christmas in July at Lost Abbey was one giant line with cases of Duck, Duck coming out at one end. It made it hard to catch the subtle aromas of Tomme’s creations or discuss what you liked about a beer. I think these events should create more seating and be less about the “to-go” side of things.
I never go to these things. Read my post about Understanding Darkness Day here on the Hoppress. I have never understood the beer chasing mentality. As I often find myself saying, “It’s just beer for Christ’s sake.”
http://michaelagnew.hoppress.com/2010/01/04/understanding-darkness-day/
Well done, Joe. I have yet to go to one of these huge release events, but I think it would really frustrate and sadden me to see the mentality you speak of play into action. Some of my fondest moments with craft beer have involved sharing in a special beer with a few others, and I’d think this would be vital to celebrating a big release. Considering the passion and generosity of others I’ve met in the craft beer community, I can’t imagine taking well beyond my fair share at the expense of other enthusiasts.
Hell yes! If we all trade dollar for dollar this will slow down a bit at least. And do as footbalm said- remember it is just beer!
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