Who knew that the straw that broke the camel’s back would be carried there by a stoat, much less a stoat in a rather dapper kilt?

I don’t want to write about this beer – about whether or not it’s a beer, or whether or not it should be packaged in a squirrel, or anything. I’m on the side of things that, I believe, would make me a “hater“, even though I think I have fairly reasonable views. I do think that this is the most striking photography of roadkill that I have ever seen, and also I have a secret love of stoats that.. well, I guess is not so secret anymore.

What I want to write about is how fascinating I find it that BrewDog has apparently worn out their welcome on extreme beers so quickly. It’s really pretty amazing. Less than a year ago they were the new darlings of the craft beer industry. This past week, you’d think that they had made a beer made with dead stoat, not packaged in one. I think it’s a really interesting lesson.

Certainly, BrewDog is still getting a lot of really great coverage from mainstream media, but mainstream media continually shows their inability to report about craft beer. They still include things like how many Budweisers that would equal or use wine experts to talk about this new beer fad. Make a splash that will sell a couple of papers or make people keep their cable news on for more than a few minutes and the mainstream media will flock to you. In this case, I think that BrewDog deserves it. They have certainly made a statement.

I’m not sure that I think that BrewDog deserves the ire that it is receiving from craft beer enthusiasts, but I think I know how they got there. If I may:

Over-exclusivity: Craft beer geeks love hard-to-find stuff. Like any comic book with Superman #1 or baseball card collector looking for that Mickey Mantle rookie card, there’s prestige to be had amongst peers for those who can get their hands on rare beer. Why else is there such a hullabaloo over Dark Lord? No doubt, it is great beer. But there are many comparable imperial stouts on the market that are much easier to get your hands on. They don’t have the exclusivity.

With Tactical Nuclear Penguin, Brew Dog created their fair share of exclusivity by having a limited amount of a high end product and by being located in the farthest northern reaches of Scotland. It’s a real pain in the ass to get the product out of there, especially if you happen to live in the U.S. (which appears to be their primary market – I’d be interested to find out how much beer they sell in the U.S. vs. the U.K.). Somehow, TNP seemed like it was a fairly reasonable cost, up front. In the end, I was surprised that the bottle I partook of was only 12 ounces, but hey – there’s a price for exclusivity, and that price was ~$75.

Sink the Bismarck seemed like it carried on the joke, and actually got good reviews, but the price went up. And, of course, this happened again with The End of History leaving most beer geeks to wonder:

What’s the point of spending your time creating a beverage that nobody will ever drink?

and

Is something exclusive worth having if it’s specifically designed to be exclusive?

If a baseball card is release with a misprint, it becomes an immediate collectible. The value of the card goes up because the baseball card company will correct the misprint, thus making the misprinted card hard-to-find. The value of the card rises in the hands of collectors, but the original cost of the card was just the same as any card.

If baseball cards started getting released with intentional misprints, and sold by companies at a premium because of the exclusivity of said misprint, I think that the value – in the hands of collectors – would drop significantly.

Products become collectibles if everybody has a chance to attain said item but only a few do. By pushing the envelope like this, I think that BrewDog has actually pushed itself outside of realm of beer geek collectibles, simply because the product is not readily available to the common man. It’s, “Buy this if you’re rich.”

What I don’t think that BrewDog understands (based on their comments/responses to critics) is that people aren’t angry because the product was made, and most of them aren’t even angry that it’s packaged inside a dead animal. They’re angry because they’ll never get to try it. They never had a chance.

Gaudy Self-Promotion:

I like the BrewDog guys. I think they’re funny, and I think they make some good beer, even though I don’t think they push the envelope nearly as much as they think they do. I was surprised, upon meeting James at the Craft Brewers Conference this past year, that he seemed kind of shell-shocked and nervous. Maybe it was jet lag. I expected a little more Trainspotting, a little less polite Brit.

I dislike their videos.

Why? Because they make me laugh, they’re well-done, and I can tell that they know it. They’re always so fucking cool. It’s not irony and sarcasm that doesn’t carry to America, gentlemen, it’s the lack of self-loathing. Watch a few weeks of normal American sitcoms for a while to find out what kind of depressing drivel constitutes our national pastime (ie – watching television from 6PM – 11PM) and you’ll understand.

Okay.. really: That the product releases seem designed to be marketing campaigns for the brewery and, specifically for James and Martin and their costume rental outlet, rather than to actually promote a product available for general consumption is what irks. They’re funny, but the only thing they tell me is that you’re so cool for having made this product, and I’ll never get it and also, you’re awesome. It’s hard to swallow. I’ll keep watching them because they make me laugh, but they’ll make me cringe a little each time.

Responding to critics: Biggest. Mistake. Ever.

Look, fellas: You are pushing the envelope on the extreme beer department. In this case, you’ve packaged a $1000 beverage inside of roadkill. Could you not foresee that this would cause some sort of a stir? It doesn’t matter if it’s a joke or you guys are goofing around. By responding to critics (with a numbered list on BeerAdvocate, a.k.a. snotty critic central), you leave us with one of three basic assumptions:

1) You had no idea that this product or the manner in which it was packaged it would cause this type of response, (which, frankly, raises some doubts about how much you’ve thought through product development) and you are honestly responding with surprise at how it’s being received.

2) You knew damn well that this product would be controversial and that responding to your critics in the fashion that you are is some sort of calculated part of your marketing.

3) You’re just making all this up as you go along.

Please, take this piece of advice from a nerd: Don’t feed the trolls. You knew that you’d get shit back about this. Why? Because you’ve been getting shit back about everything you’ve done pretty much since you opened. Responding only does two things. It gives people more ammunition and it makes you look like you’re either clueless or a dick. You’re the best representation your company has – you’re not doing yourself any favors by attempting to go point by point with anonymous douchebags on the internet. They have nothing to lose. You lose face, especially since you’re so effortlessly cool in your videos.

There are a lot of things you can do when people start to talk shit about your product on the internet. Direct response suggesting that they don’t understand? Low on the list. Real low.

All in all, BrewDog is, of course, going to come out ahead in all of this. Sure. They may have lost money on each stoat. They may lose cred with quite a few beer geeks who have watched this all unfold, but they have received an untold amount of international press which will probably end up selling enough 5 AM Saint and Punk Dog IPA to people who have never heard of them to make it all worth it… for now.

It’ll be interesting to see their next product release, how it’s handled, how it’s received, and how long BrewDog will be referenced by people outside of the industry as the “dead squirrel beer guys.”

The challenge: To not be a total freakin’ douchebag.

The prize: I send you my two Dark Lord tickets, and you get beer.

The catch: You also use one of the tickets for me, and send me the beer.

What? Exactly. So what happened was this: Dark Lord tickets went on sale. “Awesome!”, thought I, “I’ll check that out!” And then I looked at the cost of the tickets and thought, “That’s reasonable – all I have to do is get to Indiana on Dark Lord Day.. how hard could that be?”

Well, as it turns out, I’m already committed that weekend, so no overnight roadtrip to Indiana will be made. That means that you, my friend, can profit. I will give you one of my tickets, if you send me some Dark Lord. I will even cover the cost of shipping.

Edited to note: I’ll pay for my portion of the Dark Lord. All I need from you is pickup and (safe) mailing.

How do I participate? You write, in the comments here, a good reason why I should trust you to not be a total asshat and keep all the beer – or worse – turn around and sell my tickets for money. I’ll pick a winner and contact you individually about how to work out the transaction.

I will admit to having the same thought while I was brewing. It was a novelty idea: “I want to have a dark beer that tastes like an IPA.”

For me, it was about trying to make something dark where the bitterness wasn’t contributed by the roasted grain, but by the hops. A nice malt backbone, a nice dark kind of chocolaty flavor, but a nice hop profile as well. It was a challenge to make something with a unique, balanced flavor from two essentially distinct flavor profiles and have them meet somewhere in a balanced, drinkable, middle ground.

I brewed it up for Fullsteam’s Backyard Brew Fest, and it got great reviews.

Later, I found out that I had actually been brewing in, what people are saying, is a new style. “Cascadian Dark” they call it. In fact, there are already proposed style guidelines for it. Here, let me show you where that style guidelines surprises, bold emphasis mine:

History: A style that came to prominence on the Northwest Coast of North America in the early 21st Century. Northwest hops play key flavor roles, balanced with malt, roast malts give color and flavor, but body should be reminiscent of an IPA, not heavy like a porter or stout. The style celebrates the hops of the Pacific Northwest, but is commonly brewed in other regions.

Really? That’s a lot of Northwestiness. No offense to ya’ll up in the north-left corner, but this is not only limiting, but a little cocky. You don’t think a Black IPA or an IBA or whatever can’t be made without using hops from the Pacific Northwest? I made mine with Goldings and Fuggles. Should that be a new style, too since I wasn’t celebrating the Pacific Northwest? English Cascadian Dark?

I hear the English Cascades are beautiful this time of year.

And, for the record, let me throw this article out there that puts the origin somewhere around the 1880′s. Also, this article which pegs the idea behind the “style” to Greg Noonan up in Vermont. So, nyeah.

I’ve got a healthy load of snark saved up for the name “Cascadian Dark”, too, but I’ll hold onto that because what all of this really got me thinking was this:

How does a new style come into being these days?

Most of the styles that we recognize have some basis in fairly recent history. Not many of our currently recognized styles go back farther than a few hundred years, and only a very few of them you see are from within the past few decades in which we’ve seen the rise of American Craft Beer: American Pale Ale, American India Pale Ale, American Brown Ale, Dark American Lager, American Wheat, American Stout, American Barleywine. You see a trend here?

In all of these cases, the new style is simply a regional style from elsewhere in the world, but with more hops. It’s very American; not just because of the hops, but because of the multicultural background, co-opting, and re-imagining of the concept.

It’s kind of what we’re seeing going on with Breakfast Stouts, as well, which (I’m told) is defined by the presence of oatmeal and coffee. Someone might have thrown coffee into their Oatmeal Stout because they thought that the flavors would work well together, but once many people start brewing them up at what point does it stop being an Oatmeal Stout with Coffee and start becoming Breakfast Stout? At what point is the critical mass upon which a new style is reached?

Similarly, we’ve got a handful of breweries making Black IPAs. Are they now a presence in the marketplace? Sure. But how many are there? 13? 15? 20? 50? Out of 1500 breweries in the country, is 3% enough to declare a new style? Are we just jumping the gun on this because beer geeks (and especially Americans) tend to be rabid classifiers? Or are we jumping the gun because whoever writes out a definition first has the best possibility of getting that definition followed? I’m looking at you Oregon.

Finally, if someone is jumping the gun and pre-defining style, how does that limit creativity in the evolution of that style? It took decades or longer for some of the styles that we brew to develop into how we recognize them today. Isn’t it a little premature to say that something that’s been marketed for a year or two is a new style? What if it hasn’t finished evolving yet?

I don’t have a good answer.

These questions certainly seem to fly in the face of my previous stance on style guidelines and what they mean for the industry, but I’m not sure they do. Part of me would like to see us hang out with these hybrid styles for a little while to see if they stick around before we rush to put labels on them. Brew them, drink them, enjoy them, and play with them in the creative forum that is the craft beer industry because we label them for posterity. I’m pretty certain people will know what you mean when you say a “Black IPA” for now, the silliness of the name notwithstanding.

What do you think? When is the time to declare a new style vs. a creative trend vs. “I put some new stuff in my beer”?

Tonight! Tonight’s the night!

Back in December, I hooked up with five other beer bloggers to have a brew off. The idea? Everybody makes the same recipe, but we each get to change one thing.

We made a stout, and sent it out, and all that’s left to do is drink. We’ll be having a 5-way conference call this evening over the internets, which will be recorded and shared as a podcast for anyone who’s interested in listening in later. At the same time, keep an eye on this post – any tweets made with the hashtag #brewoff will show up here. Stay tuned to find out if my beer got everywhere and still retained carbonation! [ducks]

Finally, watch this space for a bit of live-blogging as we go.

7:56 PM: Just blew my eardrums out testing my headset with Skype. Now, for the entire call I’m going to be saying, “WHAT? WHAT?!”

8:18 PM: Just set up a video chat room at http://tinychat.com/brewoff. Not sure how many of the bloggers will join me on it, but it’s there. If you’re not one of us 5, I’ll restrict you from broadcasting your own audio/video in the room, but you can watch and type.

8:45 PM: Possible monkey wrench. Just got a DM from @HopfenTreader: “I don’t have your beer yet ???” Uh-oh.

8:59 PM: Just connected via Skype to le conference call of champions. Being recorded; using my podcasting voice.

9:06 PM: And we’re rolling!

9:09 PM: Here’s the tally of what was added/changed to the beers.

Joseph: Toasted Oats in place of Flaked Wheat
Aaron: Lactose (1/2 lb added, last 5 mins of boil)
Derek: Molasses (~12oz added, last 5 mins of boil)
Erik: Abbey Ale Yeast in place of Wyeast 1056
Nate: Maple Syrup (~16oz added, last 5 mins of boil)
Peter: Bourbon Barrel (half of the batch aged in an oak barrel that had been soaked with whiskey, then half batch blended back into whole batch)

9:18 PM: Just tried Jospeh’s – probably closest to the base style out of all of us. Nice sweet slightly roasty flavors. Really, nice and drinkable. Going to be hard to comment on differences until we get into some of the others.

9:22 PM: Aaron’s beer is a lactose beer. I am lactose intolerant. I’m not drinking much of this so that I can.. y’know.. digest it. It is absolutely amazing how much different this is from the beer prior to this. Good. Maybe a little sour. I’m not a huge man of milk stouts in general, so I’m not going to comment on quality, but I can comment on the fact that it’s a BIG ol’ lactose beer.

9:29 PM: Just popped mine open. Low carbonation, which is a shame. I was running out of CO2 when I put everything together. Good, just low carbonated. The abbey ale yeast makes an incredible difference in the flavor. It’s a VERY different beer from Joseph’s. Peppery notes abound, not as many of the esters as I would have expected. I wonder how much is getting lost on the roast.

9:37 PM: Nate’s maple syrup beer. You can really smell it on the nose – doesn’t really come through as much on the flavor. Solid beer. The base style is there, and picks up a lot of nice fruit flavors, some from the yeast that Nate ended up using, but I imagine you’re picking up some fruitiness from the maple syrup post-fermentation.

9:44 PM: Derek’s molasses stout – big.. just.. huge wonderful sweet nose. Nice caramelly flavor on the beer. The molasses really comes through. Just a fantastic beer, and really well-balanced.

9:49 PM: Peter’s Bourbon Barrel Stout – wow – just a ton of oak. Peter put half the batch in an oak barrel with bourbon in there. The oak is really prominent to me – bourbon notes are very subtle. Over all, great beer, would probably be brilliant with aging.

9:55 PM: We just decided on Derek’s molasses stout as the “brew-off winner” – fantastic beer. 12oz of molasses, said he, at the end of the boil. Do it. Great freakin’ beer.

11:15 PM: I just made it back around to Joseph’s Toasted Oats stout. I don’t if it’s the fact that it’s warmed a little or that my palate has gone out the other side of “shot” and back again, but it’s a totally different beer this time around, and with the experience of having drunk all of these other beers all night, I have to say that I quite like it. I think now that it’s warming I’m picking up a little more diacetyl from the oats. There’s a nice butterscotchy undertone that’s really pleasant in the same way that the caramelly sweetness of the molasses beer was. I’ll make a recommendation for the toasted oats as well. Nice addition well done.

As a wrap-up, I’ll be serving my version at tomorrow’s homebrew fest and picking up people’s opinion’s there.

Oh my god! Stop the presses! BrewDog has done it again! Having been denied any long-standing shock value fame from the release of Tactical Nuclear Penguin by Schorschbräu and their 40% alcohol Eisbock, Brewdog has struck back with a 41-percenter: Sink the Bismarck!

I am as eager as anybody to try TNP, and through the magic of friends and corporate globalization, I will be able to do so next week. I can’t wait! But even in the spirit of friendly competition between breweries this is getting silly and it won’t be much longer before it’s just plain old.

I can only assume that StB is ice distilled a la TNP. I can’t say that I’m an expert in freezing beer or eisbock production, but as far as I know there’s no reason to stop at 41%. You can just keep on distilling it further. All you really need is a colder ice cream factory, right? So, in the grand scheme of things there’s no good stopping point for this marketing competition, right? It’s just going to go up and up every few months, 1% at a time until they’re selling super-sweet whiskey and calling it beer. Unless you can tell me that either the 40%-er or the 41%-er tastes like it was made by magic gnomes, then in the grand scheme of things I’ll still prefer a nice smoky scotch to this beer-flavored schnapps.

I can rant all I want, but these guys are really funny.

You want to REALLY impress me? Make a 4% alcohol beer that is flavorful and wonderful that I will want to order every single time I go to the pub. You know how hard that is to find?

I don’t really want to direct this rant solely at BrewDog. They’re the current perpetrators, but they’re only the current exemplification of an overall problem in the beer marketplace. I ask this:

Is “up” really the only direction to go? In the grand quest for beer to be treated as seriously as wine and spirits, are we really going to resort to gimmicks and marketing ploys? Are we so out of ideas already that the only thing we can do to make a better beer is “put more shit in” or “make it bigger than the last”?

I wonder how many people are out clamoring for the world’s strongest wine. I wonder how may people drink Bacardi 151 over the Bacardi 80-proof for reasons other than “fire” and “drunk.”

I guess at the end of the day, I’d love to see people creating these stories and indulging in this quirky creativity that could so easily define the craft market segment – BrewDog does that SO well – but I want to see it about a beer that is, oh, you know, available and accessible. Instead of creating something that will draw people in that’s delicious and easy to drink, the craft brewing industry seems to be hell bent on making products fit into smaller and smaller elitist niche markets. I’m not sure that’s the direction to go in to rise above that 5% market share.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe StB does tastes like it was crafted by elves and unicorns and it will be the beer that wins the world over and stops the A-B InBev machine, but somehow I don’t think it will be anything more than another badge for beer geeks. “You had Utopias? Well I tried Sink the Bismarck!”

Would I try it? In a heartbeat. Send some over. Prove me wrong. I want to be wrong. I want it to be accessible and awesome. But I bet it’s a try-it-once “can I just have an IPA please?” kind of beer.

What do you think?