This week is a festival-y week. This past weekend was, of course, the Great American Beer Festival. This coming weekend gives us the World Beer Festival in Durham, NC. It’s my home beer fest, and this particular one will be the first one that my little startup brewery has a booth at, however unofficially.

It’s meant that I’ve spent the past week or so thinking a lot about the festivals themselves: What do I want out of them? What are people getting out of them? What are they all about?

This year was my first GABF, and for the most part it seemed like a nice beer festival. I quite enjoyed it. It was well organized, there were nice wide aisles, there was a good selection of beer and nice side events. (The Farm-to-Food Beer Pairing Pavilion was brilliant.) Indoor beer festivals are also my favorites because there’s no smoking and there are actual bathrooms and not port-a-johns. So, awesome on those counts. What I really noticed, overall, was something that Andy Crouch brought up in his recent GABF recap which is that there was a tremendous lack of brewers. There were, however, scads of volunteers (yay!) that didn’t know anything about the beer they were pouring (boo!). It’s something that made me reflect back upon local beer festivals and seeing brewers hanging out behind festival tents chatting with one another while volunteers were pouring their beer just feet away on the other side of a flap.

What’s going on here?

Before I answer that, let me ramble on a little more.

While I was in Denver, I had lunch with a friend who does not drink. Over the course of lunch, she asked, “So, what’s the point of this festival? Is it a good way to get exposure to a lot of people?” and I thought about it and had to answer: No. Not really. Not at all, actually. I drank beer from dozens of breweries, and I doubt that I can tell you more than a handful that I had and enjoyed.

And it’s a sort of woogy answer. Here in Durham, with an almost-open brewery, I am looking forward to getting a lot of exposure. But I am largely an exception. I am pre-new and many people haven’t heard of me (or have only heard of me have no idea what I’m all about) and this is an excellent way to get in front of my local crowd. But what about for everyone else?

Again, what I told my friend: I don’t think most brewers really care about getting in front of drinkers, anymore. They care about getting in front of the 1% of people that are in there that can actually help expand their market – the beer buyers, the bar owners, the restaurateurs, the distributors. Everybody else is just getting trashed.

And that, in a nutshell, is my problem with beer festivals.

To wit (and I’ve said this before): Beer festivals used to be about education. For years and years, they served as a way for a population that was eager to learn to get a wide array of beers easily, and to learn about a vast array of different styles in a way that just wasn’t available to them anywhere else. Now they can go do that at the package store. Total Wine has just as many beers as you’ll see at most beer festivals, maybe more, and it’s cheap to build your own six-pack. Sampling is just a lot easier in the marketplace than it used to be. That means when people go to beer festivals they’re not interested in learning. They already know what they’re looking for. They’re interested in drinking – which in and of itself is not a terrible thing – but as beer festival prices go up and up and up, people tend to try to get their money’s worth out of the price of their ticket and that generally means pounding as many 2 oz. samples as possible.

Is this true for every festival? Certainly not. But the bigger ones, the more well-known ones? Almost universally true.

From a brewer’s standpoint, if people aren’t there to learn from you there’s no incentive to try to engage with them. There’s nothing more disheartening than having somebody walk up to your booth and ask for “your lightest beer” or “whatever” and then just slug it back, regardless of what it was. We put a lot of work into making these products, and we’re proud of what they taste like. It’s frankly a little insulting to watch somebody pound a sample of your product without any thought. I’d rather you hated it and dump it out then to drink it without thinking about it.

If it’s not about educating consumers, it’s really about that small contingent of people that can effect a brewer’s bottom line in a real way, the people who will end up buying a large portion of product (eg – kegs or cases, not a bottle or a 6′er), and that makes hanging out at a booth and giving beer to people who don’t care fall under “not a good use of time” in most circumstances. After all, a brewer can hang out around the back of the booth and wait for that 1% to come around and focus on them while volunteers pour the beer.

So, if this is the overall trend, then what does the future of beer festivals look like? I struggle with this. I can’t help but think that brewers will get more and more jaded about spending large amounts of time and product going to beer festivals that help them less and less and that more and more people will stop showing up to something that is become more and more of a chugfest.

I offer these possible future solutions for beer festivals:

• Stop pretending it’s about the beer and focus on something else. Get bands in and make it an all-day concert that happens to have a great beer selection (a la Brewgrass). Give brewers a chance to sell their beer instead of give it away and you’ll end up attracting a lot more breweries and take a lot of pressure off of the breweries.
• Stop pretending it’s about the drinkers and make it a trade show. Make it industry-only. You want to see brewers show up and show off their products? Make sure that the only people there are buyers, retailers, and distributors. General public can have their own drunk-fests with all-volunteer staffs and maybe a few special guests.
• Get the education back into beer festivals. Get rid of the damn band – no one cares – make it event-heavy. Put beer-and-food pairing sessions front and center, have talks by brewers about ingredients or techniques that are more than introductory bullshit schlock. Realize the fact that craft reaches a much larger portion of the marketplace than it used to and cater to that market. After all, those are the people that are going to beer festivals now.
• Limit attendance. For the love of all that’s holy. Anybody will tell you: small beer festivals are more fun.

I’m sure there are dozens of other ways we could see festivals revitalized. It’s time for some innovation.

I enjoy beer festivals, but I am jaded by their expense to the brewer. You’ll see us at our locals, but not at many outside of our area. They need re-imagining to continue to be relevant to both brewers and drinkers and I kind of wish I was in a place to help move them along. Unfortunately (for festivals), I’ll be on the other side of the tent flap making beer.

A brief editorial piece on the website “AshVegas” caught my eye this morning, asking Should Asheville officials offer tax breaks for a [New Belgium] brewery?

I find myself roiling with thoughts and light rage, and so I’m doing what I always do in these situations: write.

Let’s set the stage to begin: New Belgium is working on opening an East Coast plant to cut down on shipping costs on their quest for country-wide domination distribution. There are lots of rumors about Asheville being on their short list of cities to open the plant in and, of course, New Belgium has neither confirmed nor denied these reports (to my meager knowledge).

I have really conflicting feelings about New Belgium. On one hand, they are some of the early pioneers in the craft industry and the industry as a whole has a lot to thank them for. They are leaders in brewing science and innovation. They produce high quality beer and are responsible for a whole LOT of craft beer lovers finding their way to industry in general. They are known as an excellent place to work and they have a strong commitment to being environmentally friendly and generally pretty awesome.

They also have some of the most invasive marketing and distribution tactics I’ve seen in craft. When New Belgium pushes into markets (as they recently did in North Carolina) with multi-million dollar marketing campaigns and sponsorship deals, small, local breweries cannot possibly hope to compete with them. Who sponsors the “local beer, local band” night around the corner from me? New Belgium. Who sells beer at the “Best of the Indy” parties? New Belgium. Who has been at every freakin’ local event before almost every local craft brewery? New Belgium. Why? Because in a morally dubious pay-to-play environment, they have the cash to pay – and pay a LOT – where small local breweries do not.

Is New Belgium the only brewery who does this? No. Good heavens, no. But in North Carolina, they were nowhere one day and everywhere the next, forcefully filling the niche I would have expected a lot of local breweries to fill. While most of that is their distribution partner, New Belgium also doesn’t seem to be in any sort of rush to stop those practices, either.

So, now maybe they’ll actually be a local brewery and that makes me a little sad and a little angry. They feel like a threat to our growing and thriving local beer industry, primarily because they have the ability and the apparent lack of scruples to muscle small business out of the way where they need to.

But that’s not what I really want to talk about. What I want to talk about is the ludicrous idea of offering them tax breaks to move in. The fact that it’s New Belgium makes no difference. My position would be the same for any large brewery moving in; however, the fact that it’s New Belgium in this case does feel a little like insult upon injury.

Tax breaks designed to entice big business is the kind of topic that drives me nuts regardless of industry, but in this specific case – and in MY industry – it seems even more ridiculous than usual. The idea, of course, is that Asheville would give tax breaks to New Belgium to entice them to open a brewery in the area, thereby creating jobs (and tax revenue).

Asheville, look around. You already have 9 breweries in you including the largest craft brewery in the state. Are you giving them tax breaks? Can you imagine how many jobs you could create by easing the tax burden on the businesses that are already there, already a part of your community, and already employing your local population? Instead of throwing money at a business coming in from another state (where most of that money will go), giving a large company with deep pockets even deeper pockets and an advantageous position over your local businesses, why not reward your local businesses for the excellent job that they’ve already done for you?

The local breweries in Asheville, along with its craft-beer-loving populace, have already brought country-wide attention and recognition to the area. Asheville has earned the moniker “Beer City USA” not because of its tax breaks, but because of its (stay with me here, this might get complex) beer. Why on earth would you, as a city council, make it easier to bring a small-business-crushing competitor to town? Sure, you might create jobs in the short term, but in the long run how is that one brewery opening going to effect the already existing breweries in your city and the already existing jobs? How many jobs could you create by reducing the tax burden on the businesses that already exist and thrive in your city, helping them open up new distribution channels, and grow enough to be able to stand up to the largest of breweries?

Tax breaks for incoming industries only make sense when you’re enticing an industry that doesn’t already exist into an area that economically depressed. Neither of these conditions seem true in Asheville.

Here’s the thing: If New Belgium is going to open a brewery in North Carolina, they’ll do it whether or not there’s a tax incentive thrown at them. They’re coming, and the best thing that we can possibly do is fortify our local industry so that we can welcome them as an equal level competitor, an enrichment of the local market. Giving them tax breaks that our local businesses do not enjoy is just inviting a fox into the hen house.

Announcing Pint/Counterpint Episode #3 – our “local” episode. In this episode we cover local issues, such as – what does it mean to be a local brewery? Is it using local ingredients, or just distributing locally? We also talk about local talent and that we’re looking for more of it (it’s not what you think!).

As a special guest star you’ll notice my very nervous dog Tessie who decided that the time to wander out of the office and look for comfort was the middle of our shoot. Isn’t she cute? Awww.

Special thanks again to Tres Bruce who continues to make us look and sound sharp.

Episode two is here, in which we discuss festivals, growlers, and a multitude of other good things and finally come up with a name (thanks Luke!): Pint/Counterpint. We’ll let you decide which is which.

What do you think? Have comments about festivals or growlers, retail or otherwise? Comment below!

Find yourself saying Episode two? Wait! There’s an Episode One as well. This one has better lighting.

Any topics you’d like to hear us pontificate about? Let us know! We’ll probably take you up on it.

Among other things, I consider myself somewhat of a feminist.

I know, I know. It might seem a little contradictory because I own a penis, but trust me: I’m all for equality among the sexes. Some of the most important people in my life are women and I want to see them treated fairly and, frankly, like people rather than some mystical, mysterious demographic. When I see something that I consider sexist, I tend to get up in arms. Unfortunately, I don’t really have the vagina uterus credentials to do it properly, and I’ve been known to get up in arms about things that I might be a little idealistic about, so there’s your warning for the rest of this article.

One of the first things I saw this morning via Twitter was this tweet referring to an blog post over on Smart Bitches about a “scientific” article about romance novels that was, essentially, very sexist toward women. The assumptions of said scientific article are basically long-perpetuated stereotypes about women and romance (and I won’t even get into the dodgy sampling/research).

That should give you a little bit of an idea about the kind of reading I do on a daily basis. Hi. I’m a complex individual.

Then, as I was trolling through Twitter this afternoon I came across a little discussion about Chick Beer.

Go ahead and click on that link, swallow a little bile, and come back. I’ll wait.

…

Got your eyes adjusted away from the pinksplosion? Right on.

I don’t even know where to begin with this. No – strike that, I do. I can start back about two years ago with the BitterSweet Partnership. (“Finally, a beer just for women!” – Nice market research!) Yeah-huh. This isn’t the first beer for women, but it does make the same basic assumptions:

Women are delicate creatures that need to be coddled. They can’t possibly determine what kind of beer they like out of such a complex array on the shelves, because hey: learning is hard! Not to mention, we all know that beer makes you fat, so slow down girl! You want something low in calories, low in carbonation, low in bloat! Something pink!

It’s the same damn thing as that article above. It’s women perpetuating ridiculous and insulting stereotypes about… women!

Here. Let me describe a beer for you that I think sounds disgusting. Women who read my blog, please let me know if you think this beer sounds appealing:

A slightly flat Light American lager.

Whooo-hoo! Can we serve it warm, too?

Does it sound more appealing if you know the six-pack looks chic, like you’re carrying a cute little purse? What about that the label is shiny? How do you think the six-pack carrier or label will change the flavor? Please frame your answer using as few expletives as possible.

Here’s the way I see it: If women really truly want a choice in beer that suits their taste and style, there are 1700+ craft breweries in the country to choose from and I guarantee that many of them will make something that suits someone’s individual taste and style … assuming they like beer. And if they don’t like beer? I suggest starting there instead of something they’ve probably already tried: slightly flat Light American Lager.

Where does this crap come from? Haven’t we been able to move past this in the industry? Women drink beer. A lot of women drink beer. And if my experience has taught me anything what they like is robust, flavorful beer. Not something designed for their delicate sensibilities, but ones that they enjoy because.. oh.. they like the taste of it, not because it comes in some fancy, shiny, carrying case.

It’s an exemplary example of something that I really like to argue: That when you separate women as a social group, regardless of your intent, you are being inherently sexist. What the underlying assumption to all of this is, is that women have to be treated differently than men. I see the intent: You want something that women will enjoy, that will make them feel special, etc. – but that underlying assumption, while well-intentioned, is also what allows this incredibly short-sighted and sexist example and will continue to provide many more as long as people continue to treat women as though they are inherently NOT people.

As a lot of people have said on the internets already today: I hope this is a joke. I hope this is designed as satire. But I doubt it.

Sorry, ladies. You’ll just have to drink it. After all, it’s designed just for you.