A few years ago now, in February 2007, I asked whether we should love the beer or the brewer. A post by the excellent Joe Stange last week led me to comment and majestic Stan Stan the Hieronymus Man to post... which made Joe post again. And of course, I commented. The issue? Vagabond brewers. Here is what Joe wrote eight days ago:
Basically, all the reasons I think brewers with breweries deserve more applause are the flip side of what's so attractive about itinerant brewing. It takes a lot less money, and therefore less risk. Someone else can maintain the machines. Someone else can pay the rent. So we are enjoying the work of a greater number of creative types who otherwise might not be brewing at all -- or at least, not be making exactly the recipes they want to make. Which occasionally are exactly the recipes we want to drink.
Stan built upon that. He spoke of the rhythm of breweries and asked: "If somebody isn’t in the brewery almost every day, maybe even cleaning filtering or mopping up after a boil over, is that brewer part of the rhythm?" Now, I am not going to point fingers at the rest of you... but Stan and Joe are two of the brightest guys in beer thinking I know. We all know that Pete sorta hides behind the fact that he is an excellent writer. And Lew and Jay unfairly leverage their warmth, intelligence and humanity. But Stan and Joe? They are just plain clever. So I usually agree with everything they write.
Trouble is in this: I don't care. I don't buy any of it. I think there is a romanticism to their points of view that is irrelevant and maybe even harmful to the consumer. As a consumer, all I want is what I want at the best price. There is a old saying in investing - do not fall in love with a stock because it does not love you. That is true for all of business and brewing is business. One of the oldest in fact. Just as porn created the internet, brewing created much of industrial production as well as organic chemical science. It is massively important to our cultural heritage and our way of life. But at the end, all I want is good beer at a good price.
So, why wouldn't I praise the ingenuity of both the brewery owner and the vagabond brewer when the owner realizes he has 10% surplus and rents out his equipment to someone who has an idea but no resources? It's cooperative, it's succession planning, it's a revenue stream for both parties - and gets us all more tasty beer. It's like people forget that the "brewery owner" - a term that now should include most celebrity conference podium holding brewers - get an income out of it. Sure they do. Just like when they contract brew. It gets a wee bit puritanical when we the drinkers get to judge which business model is the more ethical, the more pure.
Bottom line? The only purity that matters to me is what is in the glass and what it took to get it there. I don't care who owns the machine, whether the label matches the taste from bottle to bottle or whether you like to pretend you are an artist or a tradesman. Those things are as relevant to me as whether the brewery pumps Mozart or Metallica out onto the brewery floor when the work is being done. Frankly, I want to live in a world where I don't pretend I have a personal relationship with each of the thousands of staff at hundreds of breweries that get beer to me each year. Each person in themselves might be really really nice but, like that stock in my retirement fund, they don't love me.
Just make the beer tasty and sell it at a fair price. That is all I ask.
Comments
The Beer Nut - October 29, 2010 6:00 AM
Well said that man.
Stan Hieronymus - October 29, 2010 12:47 PM
Thanks for the nice words, Alan - even though it might cause readers to question your good sense ;>)
I can't argue with your conclusion, but I continue to want to be able to ask who is responsible for the integrity of what is in the bottle. That's easier when you can ask, "Where did this come from?"
For instance, buying Mikkeller beer here in New Mexico - where travel and age become more of a factor - is a crap shoot. I've quit gambling on that one.
Joe Stange - October 29, 2010 1:04 PM
I'm going to stick to my guns but concede that tasty beer at a fair price is far more important than all the rest of this stuff.
But since you brought up prices: It's surprising how many of the vagabond beers are sold at a premium. It wouldn't be fair to conclude that those guys aren't paying for overhead, since that would obviously be included in the rental price. An owner is going to recover his expenses. And it would be fair of those owners to make an added profit off the visiting brewers... It is a business, after all. Meanwhile the vagabond is trying to make a living off a relatively small amount of beer. So the price goes up a little more.
Which all raises the possibility that consumers are paying extra for an arrangement that is more convenient to a brewer without capital. Their challenge is to make beer tasty and interesting enough for us to fork over more.
Alan - October 29, 2010 11:58 PM
"...many of the vagabond beers are sold at a premium..."
But so are many of the owner-brewed beers. I think that has to do more with faux celebrity than business model. Yet, I agree, scale is there as an issue as well. So maybe the synthesis is that "local" vagabonds are fine but don't get all uppity or pretend to brew for the planet.
Ethan - October 30, 2010 11:49 AM
Why does it have to be a dichotomy, and either/or? I think it's akin to when I was being taught how to "read" English literature in high school and college. On one hand, you can just like the damn book, and there is absolutely no reason why that's wrong, or bad, But, you can also get all into the other aspects of the creation of that work- the author's bio, circumstances, and his/her personal foibles and dysfunctions; the era and culture in which it was conceived; the circuitous path from manuscript to publication (or instant hit, depending); even the author's own thoughts on the meaning and interpretations... all those things have (or can have) an impact on how you personally experience a work of writing.
Is beer any different? No, it cannot be. When I imbibe the beer, there is always more to it than pure enjoyment of the liquid within the glass. Your sense of perception--from a psychological, scientific perspective--is a combination of past experience and the expectations and inference derived thereof, as much as the action of chemicals on your receptors. The artwork matters. What you know about the brewer, brewery, circumstances, ingredients of the beer will have an impact. How many adjectives you have at easy command in your lexicon will obviously impact your overt report of the experience. &c. Even when judging blind, which of course helps reduce the effect of many factors, there are differences in sensitivity, differences in judging experience, and other things to produce natural variability. The experience of beer is a multi-factorial moving target!
So I guess I don't feel like I have to choose. I think Pretty Thing's beers, the ones I have had, are very good to exceptional- a range, and the high end of it. I'm sure partly Dann & Martha's humorous and offbeat personality, which is <i>in</i> the beer but which is also all over and around the beer, is playing a role, but it's not the only role- I am still tasting the beer.
Alan - October 30, 2010 1:07 PM
Are contract brews the opposite? Is the point of view as valid when reversed? I don't know that I like a beer less because I know less about it. But I don't disagree, Ethan, I am just thinking out loud about where it gets us.
Swordboarder - November 1, 2010 1:42 PM
Alan, if you could like it more because you know more about it then you would indeed like it less because you know less about it. But right now, you don't know what you don't know, and you refuse to investigate it.
And for the record, the brewers do love the beer drinkers.
Alan - November 1, 2010 2:00 PM
Well, that is your opinion not the record. Proof: I have yet to receive the prizes and gifts I so justly deserve from my loves.
And - so, tell me which of the thousands of staff of hundreds of north American Craft Breweries I need to be pals with to make this dream play out?
Ethan - November 1, 2010 10:10 PM
"I don't know that I like a beer less because I know less about it."
Not like it less, like it differently, is my thesis.
Swordboarder - November 2, 2010 1:36 PM
As a brewer I can say that I love the drinkers of my beer. More Agape than Eros though. And Eros is the only one that gets gifts. ;)
Alan - November 2, 2010 1:52 PM
Well, that is a good way of putting it. But even at that, one has to be wary of the suitor. You may be agape-ridden... but is it wise to ride along with you?
Swordboarder - November 2, 2010 6:17 PM
And here I thought love is all you need.
Alan - November 2, 2010 7:55 PM
No! No Way!!! I need well made value priced beer as well.