Spooge Breaks Out At CBC 2010

Each year, brewing's great and good (and Don Burgess) convene in a large US city and celebrate craft beer. Each city will extend a welcome to the gathering, with special events in beer bars and brewpubs. There is a jamboree feel. I remember being in Philadelphia in 2005 and catching the back end of the event, a disco at the old Independence brewpub. Pints $1.

This year, the fun took place in Chicago. As well as all the networking and imbibing, CBC features a comprehensive series of seminars covering all aspects of brewing business. This year for instance, Vinnie Cilurzo from Russian River gave a talk on successful barrel-aged sour beer programmes, market research mob Neilsen presented on brand loyalty in a proliferating market, and there were discussions on connecting with the craft beer drinker and key trends.

The one that caught my eye was entitled "Keeping Demand in Front of Supply: How to Build Grassroots Excitement for Limited Release Beers". Chaired by the Godfather of Extreme Beer, Dogfish Head's Sam Calagione led a panel including the aforementioned Vinnie Cilurzo, Patrick Rue from the Bruery and Scott Vaccaro from Captain Lawrence, through a discussion which encompassed:

* Percentage of sales going to non-core beers.
* Percentage of these beers sold through distributors vs. directly from their breweries.
* Processes leading to the release of specialty beers.
* Motivation and education of distributors to care about these beers as the world of retail/wholesaler consolidation and SKU proliferation becomes more challenging.
* POS/marketing/events/strategy that best allows them to captivate and intensify the excitement for these beers.
* What role do packaging and container size play in these releases?

The composition of the panel was interesting, as it included three brewers who are making beers which are targets for the spoogebeerian community. I don't believe the Brewers Association break down figures in the craft sector by "core" and "non-core" (i.e. one-offs) production, but I'd love to see the split for smaller brewers such as Three Floyds (their 2010 Dark Lord Day occurs this Saturday coming), Captain Lawrence and brewpubs such as Portsmouth, whose 2010 Kate The Great launch caused so much ill-feeling.

What didn't appear to be up for discussion (although you'd need to be a fly on the wall to know for sure) is as interesting. Clearly, not all brewers' beers generate the same excitement. Captain Lawrence released something called Barrel Select Batch #1 last Saturday, and while the brewery was busy, it wasn't the mayhem that accompanied the release of Rosso e Marrone, which is a GABF Gold Medal Winner, acclaimed world's best beer blah blah blah.

Then there's the matter of the secondary market around the most sought-after beers. Go to ebay's US site, and browse under the breweriana>glass bottles section in collectibles. Beers from Three Floyds, Russian River, Bells, even Westvleteren, all on offer at prices in multiples of retail.

In the wake of the Kate The Great launch, I wrote to a number of US brewers to ask how they felt about this market. No-one replied, but I do wonder how somebody like Scott Vaccaro feels to see his company accused of price-gouging by raising the price of Rosso e Marrone this year, knowing that beer tickers and hoarders are gaming the system by using mules to buy multiple bottles for selling on at multiples of his retail price.

Finally, who makes this market? I suppose Dark Lord Day provides a sort of template for a brewery-based event. It targets a local community, even if that community mean to make big bucks via ebay. But, can a brewer manage this non-core market? Tickers are notoriously fickle. They tend to flutter from one brewery to the Next Big Thing. The Bruery has been on the end of it. And Firestone-Walker. And Lost Abbey. Is the movement of this annoying but financially-significant niche predictable or manageable? Is the 'grassroots' Sam Calagione refers to, a different consumer demographic than the tickers and hoarders? Or, are the brewers sensing a South Sea Bubble they'd like to manage before it bursts?