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 Others contain other sorts of failings, from being straight-up annoying or ugly as sin* to being frightfully out of date.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.
After I threatened to inject my Thanksgiving turkey with his witbier, Chris Post, brewmaster at Wandering Star Craft Brewery in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, invited me over for a tour. His experience is a lesson in the opportunities and challenges faced by startup breweries. Oh, yeah–and his beers are awesome.
I had the “opportunity” to travel to Iowa last week, a state so boring I feel bad even making jokes.* In three nights we hit three restaurants and a bar that were nothing short of fantastic for food and beer alike.
*Ok, not that bad. It may be the only state more boring than the one in which I currently reside.
Ok, this is not really a beer bar, though none of us would go thirsty. It is a zombie movie themed burger restaurant, but it is awesome enough that Aleheads everywhere need to know about it. The place is full of zombie pop art, has about twenty or so cleverly-named burger options, (e.g. the Boomstick and the Juan of the Dead), and a milkshake called the Tallahassee (of course, with a Twinkie blended into it). The burger I ordered (named They’re Coming to Get You, Barbara) came between two grilled cheese sandwiches instead of buns. Yeah, I’m going to let that sink in for a sec. Oh, and there were also about ten taps including Bell’s Two-hearted, and 40 or so craft bottle options, which means it was solid on the beer front as well. Nice work, guys. Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
A business should practice what they preach. This is true for any type of business, but most important for a brewery. Why a brewery? Because a brewery is the most important type of business of all. Because they make beer.
One a recent trip out to San Diego to visit significant-other-family, I had the opportunity to visit one brewery. The fact that I only go to visit one brewery is a shame. It is also a shame that my selections of Carlsbad Pizza-Port and Lost Abbey were overruled, for the simple matter that “no one had ever heard of these places” despite them being within a 30 minute drive. Read the rest of this entry »
Greatness. Define it however you damn well please, but tell me, can it be sensed? I’m not talking philosophically or attempting to expand your mind to accept the unacceptable. I’m talking about plain old senses. Can you touch it? Can you see it? Does it have mass, substance, volume? I’m talking about a word here, a descriptor. Greatness. A word, nothing more than a word that’s used in conjunction with other words. So tell me, can you taste a word? Can you taste a descriptor like greatness? No dammit! NO YOU CAN NOT TASTE GREATNESS!. So why then, while I’m sitting on my couch trying to enjoy the “Greatness” that is American Football, am I bombarded with Miller Lite commercials telling me to TASTE GREATNESS? God dammit Miller, you’ve done it again! Read the rest of this entry »
After Brother Barley’s cool Alehead Nation map of the United States got such a positive response, we received requests to do similar things with individual states, celebrating all the breweries rather than just one representative choice. Without further ado, here is an Alehead’s map to the great brewing state of Pennsylvania. Did you know there were so many? Next time you’re visiting, stop in one of the state’s 70+ breweries and raise a pint to support our local businesses. Click the image or here for a high resolution version. Read the rest of this entry »
Barley and Slouch welcome Lucas, Chip, and Angela from Lucky Town Brewing of Gluckstadt, Mississippi to the show. We talk about the incredibly restrictive beer laws in the Magnolia State, their selection of (as-required-by law) session beers, how they got started, and much more…
Find out what it takes to found a brewery in a craft beer wasteland, how to avoid lighting your yard on fire after a long brew day, getting funded on Kickstarter, the real deal behind Biggs Blacklidge, supporting Raise Your Pints, engaging the homebrew community, and getting the ladies hooked on Oatmeal Stouts.
Yeah, you read that right. Over eleven percent. Mexican chocolate. Imperial stout. That’s what St. Louis’ new Perennial Artisan Ales is making, or to be more precise, that’s one thing they’re making. In reality, Perennial shows every sign of being a thriving new craft brewer that will push the boundaries of the nascent St. Louis craft beer scene. Along with their contemporaries, 4-Hands Brewing, Perennial looks to encapsulate the “extreme” side of the craft beer game in a city that until recently, had very little beer that was truly “out there.”
I was able to visit Perennial on my St. Louis Brewery roadtrip a while back, and I even had the extreme good fortune to arrive on the day of the brewery’s soft opening. I had a chance to take in the place as it opened to local beer geeks and writers for the first time, as well as interview its co-founder and brewmaster, the uber-friendly and engaging Phil Wymore. In all honesty, it was probably the best place I stopped during my two days in St. Louis–needless to say, I was very impressed. Read the rest of this entry »
Houston’s St. Arnold Brewing Company received some criticism last week with the release of Santo, their newest year-round beer described by St. Arnold founder and brewmaster Brock Wagner as a “Black Kölsch”. Looking to capitalize on a dearth of craft offerings to pair with the region’s Tex-Mex cuisine, Santo was in development for five years and underwent numerous recipe tweaks and even a dumping of the 11,000 gallon initial batch. The final product features pale 2-row, pils, Munich, and black malt with Hallertauer Hersbrucker hops, fermented with a Kölsch yeast. Despite the long road getting product to market, Wagner is proud of his newest beer, noting: “While we were a little embarrassed about announcing that we decided to dump our first batch, we are happy with the decision, especially given the beer that we are ready to release now. Our brewing team has been thoroughly enjoying this new version. We haven’t waited for the release date to tap some for ourselves.” Read the rest of this entry »
Pumpkin Ales. You either love em’ or you hate em’. Several weeks ago we Aleheads attempted to concoct a Top 10 list of Pumpkin beers but after a few tired email exchanges we came to the conclusion that no one was overly excited about posting the results. For every hoozah! for the Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin or Southern Tier Pumking there was a collective “Meh” for everything else that was presented. There’s only so much fun you can have in ranking mediocrity so the whole idea was scrapped. So here we are, almost midway through October, with nary a post solely related to the king of Fall seasonal brews. I feel it’s my duty as a born and bred New Englander to end this vicious cycle. With that, I give you Cambridge Brewing Company’s Great Pumpkin Ale! Read the rest of this entry »
I’m sure most of you are as sick of reading about the Terrapin/MillerCoors situation as I am of writing about it. However, it’s important enough in the grand scheme of the craft beer movement that I thought it necessary to jot down a few final thoughts on the subject. I’ll try to be brief, but, as most of you know, that’s not exactly my strong suit…
I’ve read a number of counter-arguments and rebuttals to my original piece that essentially boil down to, “You just don’t understand how the business world works.” That’s fair. I never painted myself as an industry insider or a business expert. And no, I’ve never had to deal with a situation involving greedy investors trying to sell my company out from under me. I honestly feel for Spike and John in this scenario. They, presumably, put together local funding from sources they trusted, only to have those sources try to undermine the company. They needed the financial leverage to buy their company back from those investors and that’s where Tenth and Blake came into the story. Read the rest of this entry »
After yesterday’s somewhat incendiary post regarding Tenth and Blake’s acquisition of a minority stake in the Terrapin Beer Company, many folks commented on the story both on our site and throughout the beer blogosphere. Some agreed with my take and said they would eschew Terrapin’s products in the future. Others felt we were being naive and that as long as the product remained great, we should get over our anti-Big Beer sentiment.
Today, John Cochran, one of the co-founders of Terrapin (along with Spike Buckowski) graciously left a comment on our site. He certainly didn’t need to take the time to respond to our middling, little blog. He also didn’t need to respond in such a measured, thoughtful manner. We always appreciate when brewers and industry experts take a moment to add their voices to our posts and it’s particularly welcoming when the post in question was written in frustration over Terrapin’s recent business decisions. For those who didn’t see John’s comment, I’ll post it in full for you: Read the rest of this entry »
I just finished off a bottle of the tremendously tasty Big Hoppy Monster from the Terrapin Beer Company.
It is the last Terrapin beer I will ever drink.
On Wednesday, the brewery’s founders sent an e-mail to their employees explaining that they were converting debt from Tenth and Blake, a subsidiary of MillerCoors, into a minority stake in the company. In a nutshell, that means that MillerCoors now owns a part of Terrapin. If this strikes you as eerily similar to the Goose Island situation, well…I agree with you. Read the rest of this entry »
Pretty much all the art associated with this place immediately jumps out at you.
I’ll draw you a picture–it’s the first day of my recent St. Louis brewery vacation, and I’ve just come from interviewing the good folks at Civil Life Brewing. I’m stopping in on the next brewery of my tour, the soon-to-open 4 Hands Brewing near St. Louis’ Soulard neighborhood and right on the edge of St. Louis Cardinals parking, to check out the cavernous new warehouse-turned brewery…and owner/founder Kevin Lemp is nowhere to be found.
As it turns out, the hard-working Lemp (whose name is of no relation to the famous St. Louis brewing family) was called away briefly on business, leaving me pretty much to my own devices in wandering the brewspace and checking out the operation. Thankfully for him, however, head brewer Will Johnston was there to stop me from indulging my natural compulsions, like falling into a mashtun or being vaporized by a gout of superheated steam. Johnston is a pretty well-known brewer, having worked quite a while at Goose Island before the Inbev-AB takeover, being one of the people who helped first develop Goose’s line of Belgian specialty brews.
In our conversation, I was able to learn quite a bit about the brewery’s plans and future beers from Johnston and then the returning Lemp. As we stood and chatted beside the brewery’s tiny pilot brewhouse/homebrew setup, Johnston revealed their plans to push the boundaries of St. Louis brewing. Read the rest of this entry »
Every brewery needs a big round guy with a mustache and a bowler hat, I always say.
I admire Jake Hafner and Mike Bianco, the founder and assistant brewer, respectively, of St. Louis’ brand new The Civil Life Brewing Company. They’re two guys who, along with head brewer Dylan Mosley, simply know what it is they want from their new venture, and that’s a place to take a load off, relax, and drink a beer.
Scratch that. What I meant to say was a place to take a load off, relax, and drink many beers.
Last month, I paid Civil Life a visit as part of my St. Louis craft beer road trip, and took some time to sit down with Hafner and Bianco, who made time amid a whirl of activity preparing for the place’s soft opening later in the evening. By complete chance, I managed to arrive on the exact day of two new brewery soft openings, which was really an incredible coincidence. We sat and chatted, drinking English-inspired session brews straight from the fermenter.* It don’t get no fresher. What follows is that conversation on the opening of Civil Life, its brews and its plans for the future.
*An ESB and a ryle pale ale. Tasting notes in the roadtrip post.
Kid Carboy Jr.:Is the session quality of your brews really the key point that you see as differentiating yourself from some of the other new breweries like 4-Hands or Perennial? Are you going to be “the session brewery?”
Jake Hafner: Most of the things we’re concentrating on in our first go at it are in that 4-6 percent alcohol range. We’re not really looking to go above that right now. It wasn’t something we really tried to make into a philosophy though; these are just the beers that we like to drink. Read the rest of this entry »
In the first day of my two-day St. Louis beer sojourn I focused mostly on the brand new breweries having soft openings or ones that are still in the planning stages, places like The Civil Life Brewing, 4 Hands Brewing and Perennial Brewing. On the second day of the trip, I hit a few more newcomers, and also the craft brewery that made things possible for St. Louis to be entering the golden age that it is today.
And it is a “golden age”–as a craft beer fan and especially as a roadtripper, there’s no better time to be visiting or living in St. Louis than right now. It’s home to what will soon seem to be a very well balanced craft beer scene, with some places making excellent interpretations of traditional beers and session brews, and others pushing the envelope with more extreme offerings. So let’s pick up where I left off.
Brew Trip, Day II
Urban Chestnut Brewing Company
There’s no better place to start when explaining St. Louis as a craft beer city embracing both tradition and experimentation. In fact, if you’re going to St. Louis, there may be no better place, period, to start than at Urban Chestnut, who I’m not afraid to crown as “the city’s best brewery”…for now, anyway. Read the rest of this entry »
For the third year in a row (if you count their 2009 tie with Portland), Asheville, NC was named the Examiner’s Beer City USA. For a small city of just over 80,000 people, this is an impressive feat to say the least. I decided it was high time I paid another visit to the beautiful mountain town to see why the Examiner’s readers consider it such a mecca for Aleheads. Fortunately, I only live about five hours from Western North Carolina, so the McHops clan decided to make Asheville our destination for a much-needed family vacation.
Let me add a caveat before you continue reading. If you’re expecting one of Kid Carboy’s beer travelogs involving seedy motel rooms, extensive interviews with brewers, and carefully planned days of bar-hopping and beer sampling, you’ll be disappointed by this post. Unlike the Kid, my beer trips are no longer solo endeavors. On my jaunt to Asheville, a pregnant Wifey and two-year-old Baby McHops joined me. While the long-suffering Wifey gave me leave to sample much of Asheville’s sudsy goodness, there’s only so much beer “research” you can do as a family man on vacation. More importantly, I’m an old man and beer makes me sleepy. A few beers at lunch and you can count me in for an afternoon nap right alongside Baby McHops. Read the rest of this entry »
Craft beer brothers! I’ve returned from Mordor, and with good news! Hopes springs eternal in the seat of ultimate darkness. By which I mean—St. Louis, home of the Evil Empire, has become a really great town for craft beer.
I took a two-day trip to St. Louie last week, planning what was essentially a miniaturized version of my previous beer trips, like my four-day quest into Michigan this spring. This time, I put my already fearsome degree of planning into serious overdrive mode, seeking out a number of audiences with brewery owners and brewers ahead of time. Using the advice and contacts of St. Louis Post Dispatch beer writer Evan Benn, author of the awesome St. Louis beer blog Hip Hops, I got in contact with the owners of three brand new breweries and arranged to meet them on the first day. Here is the itinerary of my two-day trip, complete with tasting notes and photos. That’s what you get at Aleheads–the full service.
Most of the Aleheads earned their diplomas within a quick strike of The Alchemist Pub & Brewery in Waterbury, VT. If it weren’t for one minor issue, chances are high that road trips to the brewpub would have been frequent and disastrous (Slouch Sixpack would most likely have been banned from the premises within 12 minutes of entering the front door). Alas, through a quirk of the time-space continuum, the exceedingly well-regarded ale factory did not come into existence until 2 years after the Aleheads left northern New England (sadly, it was right around the time yours truly departed his homeland and moved to ‘Bama by way of California and DC). So it is with much sadness that I report the death of The Alchemist at the hands of Hurricane Irene. The Aleheads never even got a chance to sample her wares.* Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr. 
