Another perspective
April 23, 2008 by knutalbert
Some brewers, often anonymous, grumble about the beer rating sites like ratebeer and Beer Advocate, nicknaming them hatebeer. They feel that they are put down by a small number of geeks who make hasty judgements and don’t appreciate the high quality some of the craft brewers are offering.
Some take the other approach - they embrace the online beer community and use it for spreading the gospel. Here is a clip from a Scottish paper about BrewDog, which I have covered repeatedly:
James, 25, said: “I spent a lot of time in the beginning trying to create some interest in the product in Scotland but a lot of places wouldn’t even take free samples from us.
“They just didn’t want to know.
“It was frustrating, as well, because Fraserburgh gets such a lot of bad publicity and attention for all the wrong reasons. But here we were, two young lads trying to do something positive for the area and give the community something to be proud of and no one wanted to know.”
……..
Thankfully, the pair had access to thousands of more appreciative beer drinkers on the internet.
After selling no beer at all for four months, the two pals decided to focus on the export market and began sending samples out to “beer bloggers” around the world.
In a matter of weeks, BrewDog was the hottest name on the lips of those in the know in the world of beer and, before the duo knew where they were, they were being lauded by fans and connoisseurs around the world.
The problem was, they still hadn’t sold a bottle. But as interest grew, retailers across the globe started putting in orders and they suddenly found themselves shipping as many as 25,000 bottles at a time to countries including America, Canada, Japan, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Italy.
James said: “A lot of the beers we make are quite strong, so they are not for those looking to down 10 pints in a few hours.
“So we found a perfect audience among the beer geeks and hard-core beer fans who use the internet. They just got really excited about what we were doing and, unlike retailers here, once retailers abroad got wind of the beer, they were quite happy to try samples.
“We got fantastic coverage across the world and, suddenly, around last August, the orders started flowing in.”
Since then, the boys have shipped out around a quarter of a million bottles to Sweden and half a million to the US.
There are probably several lessons to be learned here. I think one major point is that you should try to start a business when you are 24 and do not have decades of antiquated information on how things should be done…
OK, I’ll consider opening one of my Paradoxes tonight. We’ve already drunk up our Punk IPAs…
De Molen in the Netherlands is another microbrewery which takes great pride in its Internet ratings. Does cracking beer, too.
That Paradox Islay was really something! Yum!
Paradox looks like it’d be a tasty one. I’m a big fan of Scots whisky, and have recently picked up the 12- and 16-yr. Ola Dubh from Harviestoun.
More Scotch-aged beers please!
I don’t like rating beers. I believe it is simplistic and gives the impression that everything is measured with the same bar.
But how can you compare something that is brewed in very small ammounts, using the finest and most expensive ingredients, and only to be sold to a selected few, with a mass produced session beer (and some mass produced beers aren’t at all bad for their purpose?)
Still, I do like sites like ratebeer, specially the forums, tehy give beer lovers a chance to share the experience and opinions. Yes, there are those beerfundamentalists, but you can ignore them. Also, as the above article well says, they even give brewers a chance to get their products known.
I see your points, but they also apply to the beer market. How do you educate people to go for the craft beers instead of the bland multinational lagers?
ratebeer is also a tool for finding that elusive beer that you have to make a detour to get….
I think the main problem why people don’t go as much as they should to craft beers is that most people aren’t curious. They stick to what they know, if they want to try something new (and this can be applied to most products), they will try something they’ve seen in an ad, or that is offered to them at a supermarket. That is, something with a massive marketing budget behind it, and in average, products with massive marketing budgets are not the best.
I always tell people, even Czechs, to try different beers, be them craft or from smaller bottlers. Many of them are reluctant to do so, but then, when they finally go for it, they are surprised at how good they generally are.
Sites like ratebeer do that in a more global scale, but on the other hand, only people who are beer curious visit them.
I don’t post so much in the ratebeer forums, but I do a lot in traveller’s forums. Fortunately, many people who come to the Czech Republic want to know where to have the best pints. That’s is why I mostly write about places where you can get lesser known brews.