May 25, 2012
Chicago is my ancestral home (or close to it), and as such I pay quite a bit of attention to the Chicago craft beer scene. It helps that said scene is absolutely exploding right now, as home to dozens of breweries that are in the planning or licensing stages. Chicago Craft Beer Week has been one of the great developments that came along with this rapid expansion. Currently wrapping up its third year, the 11-day “week” is a fantastic way to celebrate all of these new breweries as well as the other midwestern ale factories whose beers are found in the city.
Unfortunately, I only had one weekend (one day, really) to spend in the city for CCBW this year, so I picked the event that seemed best to me on the day I was there–the first-ever Mash Tun Festival in Bridgeport, organized by one of my favorite Chicago beer bars, Maria’s Package Goods & Community Bar.* The organization appealed to me: a single $40 ticket bought unlimited sampling of most beers, a set of four tickets for special pours (more tickets available), a commemorative glass, snacks and a copy of Mash Tun, the new craft beer journal for Chicago and namesake of the festival. I like that. Getting lots of stuff for my money = good.
*An aside: Maria’s really is an awesome bar. Not only do they not even try to cater to non-craft drinkers (they offer “$2 random shitty beer” on the menu), their beer-to-go store in the front of the venue often has hard-to-get local stuff that has long sold out of bigger package stores like Binny’s. If you’re looking for something that nobody else has, check Maria’s. Unless, of course, I’m also looking for the same beer as you, in which case, go to hell. Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments | 
Beer Festivals | Tagged: Chicago, chicago beer, chicago breweries, Chicago craft beer week, new chicago breweries, pipeworks brewing, pipeworks brewing company | 
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Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
May 17, 2012
You know, despite having become a huge fan of all sorts of American-made Belgian beer styles in the last few years, Belgian beer that is actually from Belgium can still be something of an oddity for me. I find it much more difficult to select a random Belgian beer off one of the shelves than a comparable American brew, unless I recognize it as being a trappist ale or something else that I figure is a near guarantee of quality. A lot of the breweries I just don’t know, and it’s not like there’s a lot of helpful English description on the side of the bottle to enlighten me.
In the end, I often find myself looking at a beer I don’t fully understand, noting how much more expensive it is than the American-style brew from a brewery I know, and then putting it back on the shelf and buying the “better deal.”
So it was with heightened interest that I actually purchased and tried De Dolle Special Extra Export Stout the other day. Why did I do it? Well, the guy at the package store said “You should try this,” and then graciously allowed me to buy a single bottle, that’s why. And I don’t say no to that sort of thing. It’s part of my “accepting things from strangers” rules–if the thing is beer, then you always say “yes, yes, a thousand times yes.”
What do I expect? I have no idea. “Belgian stout” is such a nebulous pseudo-style that seems like it can taste anywhere from “stout” to “quadrupel” at will. And I am afraid of all the extra descriptors–were “extra” and “export” really needed after “special”? Anyway, on to the tasting. Read the rest of this entry »
4 Comments | Tasting Notes | Tagged: De Dolle, de dolle special extra export stout | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
May 7, 2012
I love Chicago Craft Beer Week. The fact that we all get to revel in American Craft Beer Week each year is already cool enough, but when you throw in all the incredible beer events of Chicago Craft Beer Week at the same time, it’s a true embarrassment of riches. In the last two years, I’ve made it to at least one awesome CCBW event during each celebration, like last year’s closing party at Revolution Brewing (it’s at the end of that post, scroll down), and as more and more breweries get on board and the event organization gets better, each year has more and more reasons to get excited.
Reason the first for this year’s third rendition of CCBW: It’s a “week” lasting 11 days. Now that’s my kind of week! You know that when they’ve got so many cool events to cram into a beer festival that 7 days isn’t enough, you’re probably looking at a surplus of opportunities to drink good beer.
As such, with more events being added to the master list daily, you need someone to wade through the big ‘ole list and cherry-pick the absolute coolest of the cool events. That man-boy is ME. So here we go, the coolest events of Chicago Craft Beer Week 2012, arranged in chronological order. Click on each venue in bold to go straight to the event page. Read the rest of this entry »
6 Comments | Ale Factories, Beer Festivals | Tagged: Chicago, chicago beer, chicago breweries, Chicago craft beer week, new chicago breweries | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
May 3, 2012
Ever since writing a post a few months back about the 20-plus breweries in the process of attempting to open in Chicago, I’ve been fortunate enough to develop open lines of communication with some of the city’s nascent brewers. So when I got an email the other day from Arcade Brewery founders Chris Tourre and Lance Curren letting me know about the launch of their new Kickstarter campaign to raise funds and awareness for their project, I knew this would be a good opportunity to conduct an interview and help them get the word out about their unique concept. Through Arcade, these two nouveau brewers are planning a company that will combine unique, comics-based packaging with user-inspired brews.*
*Partially, anyway.
Because I interviewed these two simultaneously over the phone, I’ve condensed all of their dialogue into one amorphous mass that I have dubbed “Arcade Brewery.” They didn’t seem to mind.
Kid Carboy Jr.: Obvious questions first–how did you guys meet one another and decide you wanted to open a brewery? Read the rest of this entry »
9 Comments | Ale Factories, Interviews | Tagged: arcade brewery, chicago beer, chicago breweries, Kickstarter, new chicago beer company, new chicago breweries | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
April 27, 2012
Finally! The first official beer tasting from Chicago’s new Pipeworks Brewing Company. I’ve been watching them grow for what seems like forever, from the Kickstarter beginnings, to our first conversation at Dark Lord Day, until their final launch. A few Pipeworks beers have come out by now, but I haven’t had the opportunity to taste any until now. Making such small batches at a time, they flew off the shelves at locations like Chicago-area Binny’s Beverage Depots. I finally ran across bottles of their inaugural double IPA, Ninja vs. Unicorn, as well as their second beer, the imperial stout Close Encounter, at one of my favorite Chicago bars, Maria’s. All I can say is thank god for Maria’s, which somehow always seems to have things in stock that everyone else in the city has sold out of weeks before.
Pipeworks Ninja vs. Unicorn Double IPA
NOTES: 22 oz bomber poured into a tulip glass. Fantastic label art, by the way. It looks like all Pipeworks beers are going to be fun to look at. Read the rest of this entry »
3 Comments | Tasting Notes | Tagged: pipeworks brewing, pipeworks brewing company | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
April 12, 2012
Like many Chicago natives, I was caught completely by surprise Monday night when Lagunitas owner Tony Magee dropped a major bombshell via the brewery’s Twitter account, 140 characters at a time. Throwing formal press conferences to the wind, Magee revealed that the company had chosen the exact site of its brand-new brewery, and–get this–it’s on the West Side of Chicago.
Immediately, I began to imagine the impact that this will have on Chicago’s craft beer community. Most of the city’s breweries are quite small in their total output and distribution, with the notable exception of Goose Island. The reason for this is that most of the city’s breweries are relatively new, and as such are fairly small. Some of the city’s best beermakers, like Revolution Brewing and Haymarket Pub and Brewery, are just brewpubs as we speak, but almost all have plans for immediate expansion (such as the Revolution production brewery opening this year). As I covered a few months back, Chicago is a city in the middle of a true craft beer renaissance, with planned brewery projects that number into the dozens. Things have grown like gangbusters in the last five years or so, and within a few more, the number of places producing beer in the city will have doubled.
And now, suddenly, you add a giant into the mix. There isn’t any brewery the size of Lagunitas anywhere within Illinois. When it moves in, with its 250 barrel brewhouse, it is estimated that it will be producing more beer in a year than the likes of Goose Island, Three Floyds, Two Brothers, Half Acre, Revolution, Haymarket, Pipeworks, Finch’s, 5 Rabbit and the rest of the city combined. The overall national production will be even more ridiculous. Granted, only a fraction of that beer will actually be sold and consumed in the Chicago area, where Lagunitas is already distributed, but who knows what kind of reactions and concerns the brewers of Chicago might still have regarding this sort of announcement? Read the rest of this entry »
17 Comments | Ale Factories, Beer Industry, Brews in the News | Tagged: Lagunitas, Lagunitas Brewing, lagunitas chicago | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
April 3, 2012
If there’s one universal truth in the world of craft beer it’s these days, it’s that you, the drinker, will never be able to try all the good beers out there. No matter how many great beers you sample, there will always be more. This is the gift that the explosion of the industry has presented us with; an almost unlimited variety of choice, where new beers and new breweries are circulated into the fold so quickly that it is difficult if not impossible to keep up, provided you live in the right place.
Chicago, undoubtedly, is one of those “right places,” these days. I live downstate, but whenever I’m able to visit Chicago, I can always be sure I’ll come back with a variety of new brews. Thankfully, some of these beers are even headed to central Illinois now. With the first downstate opening of a Binny’s Beverage Depot package store, a number of “Chicago-only” breweries are now available in my neck of the woods.
One of these ale factories is Central Waters Brewing, which produces beer from smack-dab in the center of Wisconsin, in a small town called Amherst. They were a complete unknown to me prior to my five-day Wisconsin Beer Voyage, a year and a half ago, and only recently has their beer become available in Illinois at all. Read the rest of this entry »
5 Comments | Ale Factories, Tasting Notes | Tagged: Central waters bourbon barrel stout, central waters brewing, central waters glacial trail IPA, central waters happy heron, central waters ouisconsin red ale, central waters satin solstice, central waters slainte scottish-style ale | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
March 16, 2012
I’ve been looking forward to trying this brew for a while, since I first read about fairly new Latin-American brewers 5 Rabbit Cerveceria in Chicago. Randy Mosher, the guy who formulates their recipes, is my all-time favorite beer author and a great guy to talk to if you ever get the chance, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever had much of a chance before this to actually drink his beers. Now I’m very glad to say that I have, thanks to the singles rack in a suburban Binny’s Beverage Depot.
5 Vulture is the brewery’s spiced dark ale, and it is described thusly: “5 Vulture is a deep ambered-colored ale with complex caramel aromas with toasted sugar notes and a long, elegant spicy finish. Roasted ancho chile is used to add depth and complexity, without adding heat or strong chile flavors.”
I must say after tasting it that this description is as accurate as I’ve read on a beer label in some time. That pretty much hits the nail on the head. Here is my full tasting note. Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment | Tasting Notes | Tagged: 5 Rabbit, 5 rabbit 5 vulture, 5 Rabbit Brewery, 5 Rabbit Cerveceria, 5 vulture, chicago beer, chicago breweries | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
March 9, 2012
Way back when I first started writing for Aleheads and conducted a now totally out-of-date survey of the Chicago brewing scene, one of the places I glossed over in my haste to showcase all the big, burly ales out there was Metropolitan Brewing. Because they focus largely on classical German lager styles, they’ve just never been a place I focused much attention on. Sorry, Metropolitan guys. I know you probably don’t care much, because as I’m always reminded when I visit Chicago, there are plenty of people who are Metropolitan fans. And I’m glad that the brewery has been successful, because there are definitely places and times for traditional German beers.
Anyway. While visiting a Binny’s up in Chicago a few weeks ago, I happened to notice a selection of Metropolitan beers in a mix-a-six rack, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to give them the fair appraisal that they have no doubt deserved since the beginning. So here you go, tasting notes on three different Metropolitan brews. In the end, I was underwhelmed by one and quite impressed by two! Read the rest of this entry »
14 Comments | Ale Factories, Tasting Notes | Tagged: chicago breweries, Dyanmo Copper Lager, flywheel bright lager, Kölsch, Krankshaft Kolsch, metropolitan brewing | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
February 24, 2012
As some of you know, I work for a central Illinois newspaper in real life, and in the course of that job, I make an attempt to post on the newspaper’s entertainment blog about local, beer-related goings-on. Today, I had a piece there detailing the upcoming opening of a new brewery in Champaign, the college town of my alma mater, The University of Illinois.
The brewery, Triptych Brewing, has successfully been fundraising using Kickstarter, a method that we have covered on a few other occasions. As it closes in on its goal with about a week to go, founder/brewmaster Anthony Benjamin confided in me that he is quite sure it will reach the $20,000 plateau (I think he’s got a “just in case” failsafe to make sure it gets there, if there’s any doubt). Of course, this is only a small fraction of the business’ overall fundraising to open a new production brewery, but I still think it’s a fairly impressive figure, considering that the majority of these donors are all coming from a fairly small, central Illinois city. Contrast this Kickstarter project with say, Lucky Town Brewing, which is having a much harder go raising their own $20,000, despite the fact that they would be only the second craft brewery PERIOD in the state of Mississippi.
What follows is a conversation I had with Benjamin, as he describes the genesis of Triptych, it’s session beer-forward portfolio, and the interesting three-phase expansion process the brewery intends to follow. Consider this just a basic look into the concerns and process of starting any new small production brewery. Read the rest of this entry »
Comments Off | Ale Factories, Interviews | Tagged: champaign, Kickstarter, triptych brewing | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
February 20, 2012
Can a beer really be an “India Pale Ale” when it weighs in at 4.7% abv? I think this is a pretty fair question, and despite a love of Founders Brewing, I can’t help but lean toward “no.” I had been looking forward to trying this new “session IPA” since it was announced, and although it’s a fine, tasty beer, I do think the labeling is rather inaccurate and a little misleading.
The problem is that it’s easy to see why a brewery like Founders would want to label a brew like this a “session IPA” rather than just calling it an American Pale Ale. IPAs get more attention from we aleheads, and the idea of one that weighs in at only 4.7% is a novelty. With session craft beer becoming one of the hotter trends in the brewing world, breweries are faced with the question of “How do we make new beers that are sessionable that will also capture some attention and generate a little hype?” Releasing this beer as a “session APA” with exactly the same recipe simply wouldn’t have gotten Founders as much attention as this brew has received from beer geeks and fellow bloggers like us. Would we accept it in exactly the same way if Founders brewed ”All Day Stout,” a 5% abv “session imperial stout”? Would the resulting beer not simply be a regular American-style stout?
The one other gripe that I must mention is a price point issue. I am a very cheap, very thrifty craft beer drinker. Because of this, the IDEA of session brews is often one that I find appealing, but a lot of that optimism goes away when these brews are priced exactly the same as their burlier cousins. Case in point: At the local package store where I picked up some All Day IPA, all year-round Founders six packs are $9.99. This includes the brewery’s regular IPA, Centennial, which clocks in at 7.2% and maintains the stronger beeradvocate rating, if you care about that sort of thing. Quite simply, because I am cheap, when I go out beer shopping, I am looking for the best “taste bargains”—the most flavor for my buck, as it were. If the brewery were able to produce and sell a beer like All Day IPA for even $1 less than the other six packs to denote its “session status,” it would make me purchasing it more likely on a regular basis. With all the people out there who are trying to stretch their beer budget, I can’t be the only one who thinks that way.
Like I said in the first paragraph, however, not to be lost in all this is the fact that All Day IPA actually is a good beer. Here’s your tasting note. Read the rest of this entry »
16 Comments | Tasting Notes | Tagged: all day ipa, Founders, founders all day ipa, Founders Brewing, session beer, Session Beers | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
February 12, 2012
I don’t usually go out of my way to try new beers from New Belgium, but in my central Illinois city there is very little beer variety in the local liquor stores (I go out-of-town to stock up). On Super Bowl Sunday I found myself browsing through the usual suspects at the local store, and decided to go with novelty instead of reliability in picking up a six pack of New Belgium’s new “Belgo” Belgian IPA. After sampling it, I’m happy to say that I don’t regret the decision.
New Belgium Belgo, Belgian India Pale Ale:
NOTES: 12 oz bottle poured into a tulip glass.
ABV: 7%
APPEARANCE: Somewhere between straw and gold, very clear and pretty, with a finger and a half of pillowy foam that mostly faded in about five minutes.
NOSE: Very funky and “Belgian-y,” with aromas of straw and banana in particular, and maybe some black pepper. The hops do not come through strongly at all for something with IPA in the name. Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments | Tasting Notes | Tagged: belgo ipa, New Belgium, new belgium belgo, New Belgium Brewing | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
February 8, 2012
You know, given the choice I would strongly consider ingesting this nugget over a mouthful of BLP.
The first television commercial for Anheuser Busch’s new baby to run during the Super Bowl set what is perhaps a new gold—NO—PLATINUM! standard for stupid, macro-beer advertising. For a 30 second commercial, it features a truly staggering amount of misinformation, empty buzzwords and vaguely offensive subtext. Before doing anything else, you ought to just watch.
BEHOLD IT.
Back? Good. So, the spoken dialogue is thus:
“Man has long dreamed of turning lead into gold. We dreamed of turning gold into platinum.”
May I direct you to the closing prices of gold and platinum yesterday on the open market?
Gold: $1,747.43 per ounce
Platinum: $1,647.00 per ounce
So they dreamed a dream of transforming gold into a less valuable substance, then. SAVVY BUSINESS STRATEGY, guys. Read the rest of this entry »
5 Comments | Beer Industry, Beer Marketing, WTF | Tagged: Anheuser-Busch, bud light platinum, Platinum | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
February 6, 2012
EDIT: I am blown away by all the brewers who have shown up in the comments section to answer questions and check in. Thanks so much to everyone who said hi!
Considering that one of my first posts on this site was a breakdown of the Chicago brewery scene only 11 months ago or so, it’s downright embarrassing how outdated it now is. To sum up–it’s bad; real bad.
The evolution of craft beer in the Windy City has just continued accelerating at what is now almost a frightening pace. It is getting to the point where I am straight-up unable to keep up with all the different breweries in their planning stages, or under construction, or seeking licenses, or simply shopping their wares around town at little tastings and festivals. Everywhere you look, there are people brewing beer and saying to each other “We should totally open a brewery, brah.”
The biggest reason I’m so out of the loop is that I don’t actually live in Chicago. I’m from the suburbs originally, but now work downstate, several hours away from the fertile beer garden that the city has become. It really has been killing me to be missing out on some of these places as they come closer to their openings, but I am at least comforted by the thought of visiting them all at some point in the misty, uncertain future.
Of huge assistance in actually keeping up with this sort of thing are Chicago-centric beer blogs–ESPECIALLY the phenomenal Chitown on Tap. Seriously, without these guys, I would be lost. In this post, I’m going to try to give a vauge roundup of all the craft breweries they listed in a recent “2012 Chicago Craft Beer Preview,” with a bit of my impressions on the new businesses and some perspective for those who, like me, are actually living outside the city. So without any further ado, let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »
45 Comments | Ale Factories | Tagged: 4 paws brewing, admiral sasquatch, arcade brewery, argyle brewing, big dick brewing, broad shoulders brewing, brutally honest brewing, Chicago, chicago beer, chicago breweries, corazon brewing, empirical brewery, lake effect brewing company, last bay brewing, low dive brewing, new chicago beer company, new chicago breweries, pipeworks brewing, powell brew house, south loop brewing company, spiteful brewing, strange pelican brewing company, une annee brewery, virtue cider | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
January 27, 2012
Twirly...
Two Brothers Brewing in Warrenville, Illinois, is geographically the closest “major” production brewery to my suburban Chicago hometown, so when they announce big news, I’m always quite excited for them. Throw in the fact that the brewery’s founding brothers Jim and Jason Ebel share my alma mater, and you get a brewery that I’ve tried to support whenever possible ever since I first got into craft beer. This has included a number of trips to the brewery-adjoining tap house and special events like the yearly release of their DIPA “Hop Juice.”
I was excited, then, to see the brewery announce via its Facebook page* Tuesday afternoon that it would officially begin releasing canned brews. And surprisingly, it’s not even one of their year-round brews or a flagship beer like Domaine DuPage that they’re releasing! Instead, it’s an entirely new beer called Outlaw IPA. It’s something quite unexpected from a brewery that already makes a few different IPAs, but indicative of Two Brothers’ obvious confidence in their product and in their fans.
*The brewery mostly uses its Facebook page for all news, because its site is horrifically out of date, as I have pointed out at length before. Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments | Ale Factories | Tagged: Craft Cans, two brothers, two brothers brewing, two brothers outlaw | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
January 9, 2012
As you’ll likely recall, I had a lot of fun a few weeks ago compiling a list of some of the worst brewery websites on the internet. We live in an age where having a good website with actual, useful information is an inarguable necessity in operating a successful business, so it was fascinating to see just how badly some of them fell flat. Whether it was not being updated since 2006, having no information on the products, or just being an aesthetic nightmare, there was a little something for everyone.
Of those breweries that were listed on my post, perhaps the very worst was a tiny brewery in Riverside, California, called Krash Brewery. The site combines elements of everything that made up my criteria of awful: Incomplete beer information, buttons that don’t go anywhere, garish layout and grating sound effects on any button you click, broken links and what appears to be inscrutable Japanese kanji sprinkled about at random. It’s got everything! Read the rest of this entry »
6 Comments | A Series of Tubes, Ale Factories | Tagged: brewery websites, krash brewery, worst brewery websites | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
January 5, 2012
If you had told me yesterday that I would be reading a headline proclaiming the sale of St. Louis’ Schlafly Brewing in the afternoon and would later that evening be writing why it was a good thing, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. After all, Schlafly is a large company*, one that exists right in the shadow of Anheuser Busch, craft’s ancestral foe. It’s almost inevitable, then, that if you live around that area and see the words “Schlafly bought out,” your immediate reaction is going to be automatic, paralyzing terror that somehow, the AB eagle is swooping in to rend and tear a beloved local brewery assunder. But it turns out I needn’t have worried–or so it seems, anyway.
*The #42 largest U.S. craft brewery in 2010, which doesn’t take into account the 20% growth in volume the company experienced in 2011.
Schlafly has in fact laid out a template for every regional brewery that is considering its own “endgame.” This sale shows that it’s not impossible to sell a brewery without kowtowing to the big boys–that there is in fact a practical way to “sell out right” with respect to the company’s legacy. As covered in detail by St. Louis Post Dispatch beer writer Evan Benn (who was quite helpful during my beer trip to St. Louis earlier this year), Schlafly co-founders Tom Schlafly and Dan Kopman chose to avoid a sellout to a larger brewer like Anheuser, Miller-Coors or Tenth and Blake by selling a majority stake of the brewery to a group of 13 local investors. Read the rest of this entry »
6 Comments | Ale Factories, Beer Industry, Brews in the News | Tagged: schlafly beer, schlafly brewing, schlafly brewing sellout | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
December 22, 2011
If this is on your brewery website in December of 2011, that's a bad sign.
This post is going to piss people off.
I’m aware of this even as I begin writing, because I know that at least some of the folks who read it are going to be unable to disassociate my condemnation of a brewery’s website from condemnation of the brewery itself. To those people, I can only shrug in a semi-defeated, exasperated sort of way, and suggest that maybe you’re missing the point.
As I covered in the preceding post on what makes a “good” brewery website, I personally believe an ale factory’s web presence is its single most important public face, particularly if it’s a brewery serving a larger area than just one city or community. Small brewpubs can more easily afford to have a bad web presence if they’re able to connect with their target customers on a face-to-face basis, but if you’re trying to reach people the next state over who aren’t likely to be visiting anytime soon, your website, as a business, is going to be the first place a curious person will search for information. In 2011, this is a fact.
It’s shocking, then, how many brewery websites straight-up fail to give any of the necessary information that a business site should offer—like a list of the beers you make, for instance. Others contain other sorts of failings, from being straight-up annoying or ugly as sin* to being frightfully out of date. Many breweries these days have turned to social media to make up for these failings, participating actively on their Facebook or Twitter accounts and posting news updates there. This is a step in the right direction and a good thing overall, but it still doesn’t make up for a website that fails otherwise. Ideally, a brewery is able to embrace all aspects of its web presence, but at the very least it needs to offer the kinds of basic information I defined in my last post. Customers should leave your site having found exactly what they were looking for—anything less can be improved upon.
*Even to someone with absolutely no design experience whatsoever, like me. Read the rest of this entry »
28 Comments | A Series of Tubes, Ale Factories, Beer Marketing, Best/Worst | Tagged: alpine beer company, brewery websites, Bridgeport Brewing, butternuts, Butternuts Brewing, duck rabbit brewery, flying monkey beer, krash brewery, magnolia pub and brewery, New England Brewing, selin's grove brewing, two brothers brewing, voodoo brewery, worst brewery websites | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
December 5, 2011
There are surprisingly few interesting images out there when you perform a Google search of "beer," "websites" and "computers."
First things first: Let’s all remember what era we’re living in. The year is 2011. The internet is civilization. Craft beer is on a roll like it never has been before. We should all be able to agree then, that in this era, in the world of brewery and beer marketing, there should be one incontravertible truth:
A brewery’s website and internet presence is its single most important public feature. Likewise, it is the primary source of knowledge to beer fans out there looking to learn more about a business.
This is increasingly true the larger the brewery gets. Sure, a small, local brewpub probably doesn’t need a great website, but it sure as hell helps. If you’re distributing beer across your state and beyond, however, well…you’d better at least have a listing somewhere of the beers you make. Consider it common courtesy. Provide me with the most basic information that any normal person would want to know, such as what products you produce. That’s valuable information.
Some breweries are doing this well in 2011. Some are doing it terribly, but I’m saving those offenders for a follow-up post. Before I rail on breweries that are squandering the unlimited marketing opportunities the internet offers, I should talk about breweries that are doing it right, and determine what factors make a great brewery website. Read the rest of this entry »
16 Comments | A Series of Tubes, Ale Factories, Beer Culture, Beer Marketing | Tagged: best brewery websites, brewery websites, Sixpoint, Unibroue | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
November 19, 2011
Chalk this post up to my roving mind and propensity to randomly revisit old ideas and conversations.
So, a number of months back, the Aleheads were conversing via email about one inane subject or another, same as always, and a thought was born to, for whatever reason, compare each of them to comic book heroes. Then an even better thought followed: Match each Alehead up with the pro wrestler that best exemplifies his attitude, style, and characteristics. Clearly, this was a can’t-miss concept. In that conversation, I swore something akin to “I’m totally going to make that post.” Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments | WTF | Tagged: pro wrestling, wrestling | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
Chicago is my ancestral home (or close to it), and as such I pay quite a bit of attention to the Chicago craft beer scene. It helps that said scene is absolutely exploding right now, as home to dozens of breweries that are in the planning or licensing stages. Chicago Craft Beer Week has been one of the great developments that came along with this rapid expansion. Currently wrapping up its third year, the 11-day “week” is a fantastic way to celebrate all of these new breweries as well as the other midwestern ale factories whose beers are found in the city.
