'Beer's Black Market'

The estimable Washington Post has shone its investigative light on the sordid secondary market for spooge beer. Read the whole thing here. Woodward and Bernstein would be proud.

Of course, readers of my own estimable (?) e-organ would have picked up on this dark and unseemly activity in posts past. The Post's article is interesting in including views from such tickerific brewers as Lost Abbey, The Bruery and Stone. Greg Koch offers an interesting view, which I tend to agree with, that it isn't necessarily drinkability that drives this market, it's rarity. Hence RRBC's Framboise For The Cure going at $400 a bottle, and not a penny of that profit finding its way to the charity intended to benefit from its sale. Yet, if RRBC had offered it at double its original $12 price, they'd have been slaughtered by the same tickers for hyping the price.

I've been monstered for criticising the beer fanboy websites which offer trading forums driving some of this secondary market. Many of their members believe that it would all stop if these brewers bucked their ideas up and geared up to meet all demand. It doesn't seem to occur to them that not all brewers are in it for reasons other than global market domination. They simply can't accept they might miss a beer, and move on. I've been there and, trust me, it's not a happy place.

It will be interesting to see how ebay responds to this. Will they stop sales of 'collectible containers' (wink wink)? Police the listings looking for newly-released beers? I imagine their present ambivalence is partly driven by the easy money they rake off from this spooge. I expect the traders will find other ways to knock their spooge out - I believe Craigslist is used for this market, including to recruit mules for people who can't get to launch events. I'll be watching the reaction to this with interest...

(By the way, anybody interested in a 2005 Dark Lord?)

Arrogant Bastard?

This is Greg Koch, CEO of Stone Brewing, pictured, I am informed, at the National Homebrewers Conference in San Diego last month. And yes, that face on his tee shirt is, erm, Greg Koch.

Greg recently received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Award for San Diego, and will go forward as a finalist in their national competition. Accepting the award, Greg said,

Receiving this award is a true honor. I’m proud to accept it on behalf of the intense—yet rewarding—work that my business partner Steve Wagner and I have put in over the past 15 years to help unite people who have exquisite taste with craft beers that have the same.

Proud, determined, aspirational. Makes the heart soar. A bit like Bono. A true Mission Statement for the craft beer movement.

Here's another pic...

The picture on the presentation screen appears to be God as envisioned by Terry Gilliam for Monty Python & The Holy Grail. I think those people in the surplices are Stonies (like Moonies) ready for Stonestown, where Kool-aid will not be on the menu. We've had cult beers. Now we have the world's first Beer Cult.

Only kidding. However...

The point of all this is that we know that BrewDog take a great deal of inspiration from Stone in the marketing and promotion of their business. Therefore, I'm offering a prize for the first person to send me photographic evidence of either James Watt or Martin Dickie wearing tee shirts adorned with their own fizzogs. They're at The Rake this evening (flogging shares, I imagine...), so take your camera and be ready. I'll give the first person to send me the goods a bottle of decent beer. Or a beermat. Or something. BrewDog management and staff are encouraged to enter. Especially James and Martin.

Stone Brewery Europe: You Want Some?

US craft brewer Stone Brewing of Escondido CA have taken the next steps towards establishing a European operation, by issuing a glossy 'Request For Proposal' document. The prospectus provides an insight into the brewing; distribution and retail-facing operations; corporate ethos pertaining to sustainability and environmental responsibility, and 'good neighbour' arrangements.

It doesn't say anything about how much beer Stone presently ships to Europe, but it's clearer now they want to in some way replicate their Escondido HQ, which probably means they intend to brew at least their core range of beers in Europe, so they can be sampled fresh and without accruing significant beer miles. I wonder if they would be using locally-sourced ingredients, or whether they'd have to import from the US.

Interested parties have some 2 months to submit completed questionnaires. If all goes well, the brewer expects to have identified a site by October this year.

The more I think about it, the more bold and ambitious it sounds. After all, the idea of a US brewer setting up in foreign markets usually means a new BMC factory somewhere. Stone have a niche following amongst spoogebeerians, so will have to build a volume market more or less from scratch. If they stay true to their philosophy, they'll aim to do that without advertising spend and discounting, selling between 15,000 and 30,000 UK bbl a year from a new plant about the size of the new Dark Star premises in Partridge Green.

I hope it gets off the ground.