Tough Topic: Breweries & Social Media

I have been intrigued by how different breweries have reacted to my blog posts.  By far I would say most breweries have no clue I am here.  That is fine with me.  I understand I am not on everyone's radar.  I often wonder what makes the cut.  Great Divide retweets or shoots off a "thanks" for the review to many bloggers on their Twitter feed, yet I have never received an acknowledgement.  What does Great Divide use as a metric to decide how they warrant a response?  Others such as Hook & Ladder often post a comment and promote a blog post of mine.  On my birthday Sierra Nevada started following me.  I think this is smart.  For one it shows an appreciation of someone promoting your product and an acknowledgement goes along way.

Recently I received backlash from a brewery.  I counted Metropolitan Brewing among my Twitter followers and assumed they read this blog on a frequent basis.  The day I published my review of Metropolitan I no longer could count them as a Twitter follower.  They de-linked me within hours of posting.  I know they saw the review, and I did not feel it was a bad review.  I gave an honest review of a two-year old brewery with a lot of potential.  Did I call them out on their issues?  Yes!  I am not their cheerleader.  I am a reviewer, and my commentary was not harsh.  Most of the problems I listed were either solved or easily solved, and I finished my post by telling readers to go buy their beer.  You can see my harsher posts here, here and here and Metropolitan's review was nowhere close to harsh.

By flat out disavowing my blog instead of just ignoring it Metropolitan annoyed me.  Actually, they pissed me off.  I stocked up on their beer to start doing beer reviews to further promote their products.  Social media counts as free marketing and by taking a passive aggressive stance Metropolitan lost out on marketing.  I am one of the few people I know who think Metropolitan will be successful.    With marketing skills like this maybe I am wrong and they will fail.

Breweries market mostly to a crowd that skews to the young and technologically savvy.  They need to embrace the social media world and not make snap decisions.  If a brewery feels a comment is not fair they should respond to it.  Engage the market and address what issue a consumer has, or at least ignore it.

Beer Review: Smoked Baltic Porter by Great Divide Brewing Co.

If you have not figured it out by now, Great Divide is on my list of favorite breweries.  Coincidentally BBQ is one of my favorite dishes.  When I saw this beer on the shelf I knew I needed to buy it because smoking a hunk of meat was in my near future.

Tasting Notes:

Poured from a 22oz bottle into a becker glass.  I had a lot of foam issues on my pour and again on my second pour.  I found this odd since most of the Beer Advocate reviewers reported lack of head as a problem.  It had smoke and chocolate aromas, but not as smokey as I wanted.  The smoke and chocolate carried through on the tongue with the addition of strong coffee.  Moderate carbonation and a medium mouthfeel along with the intensity of the flavors make this a tough beer to order multiples of but solid to go with BBQ.

#14 of 1001 Hibernation Ale by Great Divide

After spending all of the weekend snowed in, I felt Hibernation Ale by Great Divide was a wise choice for Sunday night.  Now I know the folks out in Denver are laughing at my measly Chicago storm, but I do not care.  Hibernation Ale is brewed in the summer and aged by the brewery for a few months until release, usually in November.  I am told this beer will age well.  However, I got this lone bottle off a singles shelf in Ohio so one beer is all I got.  I do think in the future I will try to find a six pack and age it a year.  It is worth noting that the side of the bottle brags about the well deserved Gold and two Silver medals from GABF .

Tasting Notes:
Poured into my Great divide glass it made a nice khaki head that gave off a chocolate and spice aroma.  The non-scientific descriptor of taste here is "warm".  Flavors of dark fruit, some alcohol, caramel and malt notes balance with a solid hop presence.  Hibernation Ale had a surprisingly full mouthfeel, but I found it to be an excellent winter beer.

Hercules Double IPA by Great Divide Brewing Co.

I picked up Hercules Double IPA when I was in Denver, and this has been lurking in the back of my fridge.  I decided that Open It! was the right time to bring that bottle to the front.

Tasting Notes:
Hercules poured amber with a medium white head and left some lacing on the side of my stemmed tulip glass.  Aromas of pine and caramel balance nicely with the citrus, tropical fruit and malt flavors.  This was a smooth well balanced beer with good carbonation for the style.  This was one of the few beers I was lucky to buy direct from the brewery and I do not regret it.

Great Divide's Fresh Hop Pale Ale

We only see fresh hop or wet hop beers twice a year during the fall in the northern and southern hemisphere harvests.  To be a wet hopped beer the whole hop cones are used instead of the processed pellets in making the beer.  Unfortunately, hops are highly perishable.  In order to successfully make a wet hop beer the hops are picked, overnighted and used within hours.  This requires a bit of timing on behalf of the brewery in order to make sure they have a tank ready to go.

Great Divide's Fresh Hop gives off a grassy, citrus pine aroma.  Not as pungent as I expected, but not lacking.  The beer is amber in color with a thick white head that resulted in lacing as time went on.  There were hops up front and at the finish, with a resiny feel.  The malt balanced the beer out nicely.  Fresh Hop is very light on the tongue to the point the beer was almost gulp-able.  Bud Light could learn about "drinkability" from this beer.  I do regret only buying one, but hey, there is always next year.

Denver The Initial Report

So I went to Denver over the weekend.  Here are my initial thoughts: SWEET.  Yeah that sums it up.  We started at a place called Cooper Smith's, New Belgium, and Odell's on day one.  And yes all were awesome.  Day two we took it easy apparently, I am one of those people prone to altitude sickness.  Although sick I still made it out to Tommyknocker on day two.  Day three I rallied and we visited Breckenridge's Ballpark location for lunch, followed by some of the best canned beer ever at Oskar Blues, and finished up with Great Divide before heading to the airport.  Oh and the airport led to more drinking.  Once there we stopped into Boulder Brewing for a drink and the Chophouse for supper and a sampler.

I hinted that I thought Denver made some genuine mistakes in beer.  One is the prevalence of taprooms versus brewpubs.  It caught me off guard that places like Odell's, Great Divide and some others don't feel the need to have a restaurant style environment.  I really think this hurts the business.  There is a movement to show beer belongs on the table just like wine.  A brewpub is the place to show that.  Secondly, the crowd was very young at these places.  Occasionally you would see a couple with kids, but not often.  The inability to create an environment that is truly kid friendly limits the people who will come and sit and sample your beers.  Finally, out of towners (like myself) need a place to sit and relax.  I felt without food I had to drink less.  Now I do understand adding a restaurant takes things like space and management and capital and blah blah blah.  Regardless, I think if some of these establishments truly want to achieve long term bliss it is a critical way to reach your market.  At least to me I felt many of these places where way out in the middle of nowhere.

The other problem?  GABF.  Yes I think GABF being in Denver is a problem.  Not really for Denverites (is that what they are called?), but for the rest of the country.  This obviously requires a much longer and dedicated post.

I plan on writing reviews of each brewery I visited along with tasting notes on a number of beers.  So stay tuned and of course my thoughts on GABF will come before this years event.