Mike Loves Beer

I usually don’t get deep into my personal beliefs on this blog as I don’t want things to veer of course too much from the focus of this site.  But it would be a terrible mistake on my behalf if I didn’t write something about the passing of a writer that has influenced me dearly.

Last night the world lost one of the greatest free thinkers of our time.  No actually, of any time.  Christopher Hitchens didn’t sugar coat a single word he said and never felt bad about doing so.  No matter if he wrote or spoke about religion, government or his heroes in life like Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell he did it with a passion that very few can match.  It is that passion that I try to do everything in my life, be it this blog or my everyday encounters.

Hitch, as he came to be called, always enjoyed a good drink and smoke; with the later ultimately doing him in.  And it was always a dream of mine to be able to share a beer with the man.  But much like Mitch Hedberg that chance will not come.  However his legacy will live on in the over 25 books he wrote or helped write.  The hundreds of videos on YouTube of him debating with new anchors and public figures.

Goodbye Hitch.  Tonight and this whole weekend as I celebrate my birthday I will raise glasses of incredible brews to your life.

Being a craft beer fan you are very likely to start meeting people that work in the industry.  Some work for breweries while others work at bars, stores and the local distributors.  And the distributors are a key in how craft beer gets to the masses.  Because of three tier laws that prevent breweries to sell directly to retail they must go through a network of distributors in the areas they wish to be carried in.  But how exactly do the breweries choose which states and areas they want to be in?

Some areas just make sense to a brewery.  If you are a California brewery you are likely going to distribute int he home state as well as probably neighboring states like Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, etc.  But when you start branching out to other regions how do you choose?

Let’s take a California for the sake of me already mentioning one, Lost Abbey.  The Southern California brewery is distributed in their home state of California along with other regional states like Arizona, Washington and Colorado.  But once they start heading east it’s a little more spread out.  They distribute in Georgia as well as the Chicago, Philly and Boston metro areas, not the entire states of those cities.

This looks like a very well planned idea to be hitting certain metro points in different regions.  Chicago services the mid west, Philly the Northeast and Mid Atlantic, Boston in New England and Georgia in the South.  This direction can make a lot of sense for a brewery that is not that big but has huge demand for their products all over.  They have tried to make it easy for some people to travel and get their beer more easily than heading out to California.

But there are expansion plans that I don’t quite understand.  They don’t seem logical so I would need some explanation as to why.  Case in point is the recent decision by Ballast Point to start distributing in the state of Texas.  While on the cover that seems awesome, especially for the fine folks of Texas.  They get to enjoy some excellent beers like Sculpin, Sea Monster and Victory at Sea.  But underneath it sort of seems Ballast Point might be missing something.

See Ballast Point is distributed in Central Florida currently but not in South Florida where I reside.  The apparent reason they are not down here is that they can not make enough beer to cover the territory.  Understandable, hitting capacity seems to be the only good problem in brewing.  But the news of hitting the entire state of Texas surprised me a bit.

I know Ballast Point is in the midst of expansions currently to help produce more beer, that’s awesome news.  But why not first finish off distribution in a state you are already in?  You already have all the legal work done in the state for your beers.  And the marketing of your products are a home run in the fishing heavy South Florida.  To me it seems like just finding the distributor for the products and you are done.  I mean I could be completely off and would welcome someone from Ballast Point telling me otherwise.  But it looks like a no brainer.

Sure you can tell me to go back to my point about Lost Abbey hitting key markets in certain regions and I can drive an hour to get some of their stuff.  Sure that could completely be plausible but when you are under the impression that their beer isn’t in your region because of capacity that is something else.  I would imagine supplying the entire state of Texas is much more beer than South Florida.

And look I’m not trying to rag on Ballast Point in the slightest.  I’m sure there is a reason for this and I’m sure it isn’t an easy decision for anyone that has to make these calls.  Texas, you are truly in for a treat with these guys.  Great beers all across the board.  I just hope that Ballast Point soon makes the decision to cover all of the state of Florida soon so I can more regularly enjoy a Big Eye IPA on a hot summer fall day.

I’ve met Garrett Oliver before and he was quite a nice guy.  He signed my book and a bottle for a friend.  After the event he went to a local bar and sat down and talked with myself and a few friends for at least an hour.  He didn’t have to do that but he did.

But Garrett is a very outspoken person too.  Maybe more so than any other people in the craft beer community.  So it stung me when I heard about the things he said about Cigar City about a year ago by saying that their Maduro Brown tasted like “dime store chocolate” and that their Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Brown Ale was a blatant rip off of Brooklyn’s one time brewed Cookie Jar Porter.  Despite that he was dead wrong on that accusation it didn’t need to be said.  Where is the community in saying something like that?

Now Mr. Oliver has opened his mouth again about things that really didn’t need to be said in this interview with Craft Business Daily.

Conversely, I run into some craft brewers who say, ‘We don’t get respect from the local press.’ And, well, could that be because you’re dressed like a small child? And you’ve been trying to disabuse people of the idea that you’re little kids playing with fun toys? And you’re a professional. Well, all these little things matter. How do you communicate?

This to me is absolutely absurd.  Okay so you want to dress in a suit and straw hat at every engagement you go to, fine.  That’s your choice to do so.  But we all don’t have to follow suit.  Pun intended?

Him being a music fan I would think he would understand that.  Punk rock took the world by storm in the 80s by not conforming and not dressing the part that musicians in the past made it seem you had to do.  They didn’t give a fuck and did what they loved.  They showed their passion and art through the notes that they played.  Not in the threads that they wear.  The same rings true for many craft brewers as they show their passion in the suds that they brew.

I can name numerous craft brewers that I never see in suit and tie at events.  And many of them are from some of the biggest breweries in the country.  So are you saying these people don’t deserve respect for their product just because they want to wear a t-shirt and jeans?  Because they want to wear flip flops instead of loafers?

I’m sorry Garrett but step down off that soap box.  Like I said if you want to wear your suits then go for it.  But don’t for one second think that because other brewers don’t want to that it makes them or their art inferior.