The Beer Thread • Page 114

Totally agree, I live in an apartment so home brewing just doesn't really make sense for me, but being able to do it elsewhere was pretty fun. The way they do it is they will source everything for you for the specific price, but you can make any recipe you want and bring in any specific extras you want as well. They are new, but the idea of someone like you bringing in everything just to use their equipment is definitely something I see them allowing as well.

One thing I found particularly interesting is that I was able to do the entire process EXCEPT adding the yeast, this legally is because that is the moment it is "making beer" instead of "making wort" and legally only they could do that. Clever loophole, but pretty funny how tiny of a thing makes such a difference

 

So I think my final Christmas period beer list will be the following...

Brouwerij Westvleteren - Trappist Westvleteren XII x1
Buxton Brewery - Yellow Belly x1
Goose Island Beer - Bourbon County Stout 2016 x1
Hoof Hearted Brewing - I'll Have What She's Having x4
Hoof Hearted Brewing - Musk Of The Minotaur x4
Other Half Brewing/Monkish Brewing - Blowin up The Spot x1
Other Half Brewing - Stacks on Stacks x1
Prairie Artisan Ales - Bomb! x2
Russian River Brewing - Blind Pig x1
Russian River Brewing - Pliny The Elder x2
Terrapin Brewing - Moo HooChiato 2016 x1
The Alchemist - Focal Banger x4
Three Floyds Brewing - Dark Lord 2016 x1
Three Floyds Brewing - Zombie Dust x6
Toppling Goliath - King Sue x1
Tree House Brewing - Alter-Ego x1
Tree House Brewing - Bright x1
Tree House Brewing - Bear x1
Tree House Brewing - Doppelgänger x1
Tree House Brewing - Doubleganger x1
Tree House Brewing - Green x4
Tree House Brewing - Haze x1
Tree House Brewing - Hustle x1
Tree House Brewing - Julius x1
Tree House Brewing - Single Shot x2
Tree House Brewing - Single Shot w/ Vanilla x2

It's a pretty ridiculous beer list. I really can not wait. Finally crossing off some beers I've been dying to try for years.
Hopefully get some Heady Topper in there as well as a few others (dependant on my bank balance). It's going to be great.

 

One day I'll make it to Treehouse.

 

Jesus that's a good list. Who accumulated all those?

 

Myself personally. I live in Scotland, but I'm spending Christmas in San Diego with some family. Figured I may as well take the opportunity to try some beers I probably won't have another shot at, so I've spent a small fortune, as well as trading some great British beers with some people I know. Totally worth it for the selection I have though.

 

Every year I forget how good Plead the 5th is.

 

You get them to send the beers to Cali? Travelling with that much has to be a pain.

 

Yeah, the majority are being sent to Cali. 99% are not available anywhere withing the U.K.

 

Absolutely. I probably would as well in that position.

Also, the irony is not lost on me that we're having a conversation about breweries selling out on a website with a long history of debating bands selling out. And speaking of that, just out of curiosity, would you be equally willing as a musician to sell out to a major label as you would be a brewer?

 

I would probably sell out as a musician in a sense, but I think that's different than beer. If I sold a brewery with a Sculpin/Two Hearted/Insert Really Good Standard IPA Recipe Here, it's a thing that my brewery (if I was still apart of it after the sale) could continue to produce. As a musician, you constantly have to make something new every time you release something. Not sure that makes sense, though. I'd have to think about that more.

 

Was BS'ing with a friend and thought of a Triple Black IPA. Anyone had one before? A quick search shows me a few but I've never come across one in the wild. I just threw together a recipe in BeerSmith I'd really like to try out as a 5 gallon batch at some point.

Leads me to another question: What do you guys like in a Black IPA? For me, I love Black IPA's with as little roast character as possible. I love that I'm conditioned to the vast majority of dark beers tasting a certain way, but when I get a low-roast Black IPA that drinks 98% like a normal IPA, it's right up my wheelhouse. A place like five miles from me makes one of my favorite Black IPA's. I believe that it's Citra hopped and there's next to no roast on it and it's near perfection, IMO.

 

Not a style I'm really a fan of. Did have a good black ipa at Tired Hands once. Also not a fan of triple pas.

 

I've only had a few black IPAs. The best I've had was Goodnight Bodacious by Shorts.

 

Stone's Self-Rightous is pretty good, but otherwise I don' think I've had many

 

Don't care about a brewery selling out as long as the quality of the beer doesn't decline.

 

Apples & oranges. Music doesn't have one band trying to accumulate the best musicians from other bands into its own, and then work on legally curtailing or financially incentivizing other artists to not be able to record anymore the way that AB InBev does in beer.

AB InBev's distributor incentive program:
Exclusive: U.S. queries AB InBev on distribution incentives amid merger probe

AB InBev lobbying against bills that benefit small breweries:
This Bud's for Congress: Anheuser-Busch InBev Burns Cash in Washington -- The Motley Fool

AB InBev craft acquisitions:
Anheuser-Busch InBev buys 9th craft brewer

 

If you see any Black Citra Pale Ale from Oddside, pick it up. Really good. Might be a weird thing about it that I love, but the carbonation level on that beer is always perfect. The creamiest beer I've had out of a bottle from Oddside.

But they've been doing these things for 25+ years with the "bitter beer face!" commercials in the 90's/early 2000's and craft beer has been continually growing, including some exponential growth in the last few years.

 

I think my whole argument for "selling out", is that essentially what you are doing is a job. Whether that be as a brewer, a musician, whatever.
If you worked in accounts for a company and someone offered you more money to do something, you're going to take it. I can't imagine anyone saying "I don't want a promotion, I'm all about keeping the small accounts small." People want to make money and succeed. You can't really blame anyone for taking full advantage of the opportunities put in front of them.

 

Bird Song Brown Ale tonight.

Also, the return of Leinenkugel's Cranberry Ginger Shandy.

 

I have zero Black IPA c

Overall, I was just looking for a general idea if people here were more-passionate about bands selling out or breweries selling out. Fans of both independent music and craft beer are often passionate about the issue of selling out, and this is a perfect community to discuss it with people who are members of both communities.

However, I would argue that its not so apple/orange as you suggest. I think the correct analogy should involve 'labels acquiring bands', not 'bands acquiring musicians' if being compared to the craft industry.

I mean, for almost all situations I agree with you. But both craft beer and music, interestingly enough, have some caveats that don't quite apply to the accounting/promotion/job analogy in my opinion. For instance, getting a promotion in accounting probably won't require me to give up part of my identity, or potentially losing the rights to my life-work. Breweries being bought-out often lose rights to their branding and their recipes, leaving them with little to no footing to stand on were they to separate from the parent company. Same with bands and their catalogs, etc. No accounting firm is going to bar you from promoting your accounting degree if you leave the company.

 

Trillium & Lawson's collaboration DIPA Pow Pow is really good. Been waiting for them to work together for a long time and it didn't disappoint. Wish Trillium would make like Hill Farmstead and just adopt their good collaborative recipes into regular rotation brewing them on their own.

 

An ad for your beer being better than others is not the same as offering your distributors a large amount of money as a bonus if they sell almost exclusively your beers - aka not selling your competitors' products. In fact, the Justice Department inquired about it due to anti-trust concerns.

 

Record labels are akin to beer distributors in this scenario. Breweries create beer that is sold to distributors to be sent to stores to be sold to consumers (depending on the laws of the state in which breweries are located).

Bands create music, distributed via record labels to stores that then sell to consumers (in most instances of a traditional record label / band model).

 

But AB Inbev... the company buying all these other breweries... doesn't make beer themselves. AB Inbev is the corporate management company that owns the conglomerate of beer-producing subsidiaries. The people making Budweiser (still Anheuser Busch) don't own Devil's Backbone Brewing now. Instead, DB is a sister-company of AB, both of which are now owned by AB Inbev.

Really, for this analogy to work, we would have to combine the corporate parent company and distributors into one in order to form the equivalent of record label on the music side.. since record labels both own/manage the talent/product as well as distribute their own goods.

 

This is really splitting hairs. Anheuser-Busch (a brewery) merged with two other companies to form AB InBev, it's not like it was outright purchased by some larger non-brewery corporation. Anheuser-Busch absolutely owns the smaller breweries in the AB InBev portfolio.