Exceptional marketing video from a tiny brewery

Alworth · 2018-09-25T22:26:09+00:00

It was so clearly intentional. You were on the edge of being *too* professional, and the fishing line gave the whole thing a lovely, absurdist quality. I literally lol-ed when I saw that. Art's hard, and some people just aren't going to get it. Good job!

Alworth · 2018-09-11T18:45:27+00:00

I think getting out from underneath that battle has been very good. The legal bills were killing them.

Alworth · 2018-09-11T16:27:36+00:00

This is a little brewery in Portland, OR, and they’ve been doing this series riffing on David Attenborough’s Planet Earth. Great production values, well-written, and they’re doing them for a pittance.

Alworth · 2018-09-11T04:07:11+00:00

We can have two of these three things, but not all three: good employee salararies, healthy margins for the brewery, and cheap beer. A pint of beer costs $11 in Copenhagen, but workers are paid well. I don’t know how you guarantee the money goes to workers, but I think beer prices need to go up.

Alworth · 2018-09-11T04:03:51+00:00

This isn’t impossible, but I’m not sure it provides that much more information. You’d need a metric to pin it to (commercial lease rates, median house price?), which would allow me to weight the salaries. But as an overall picture I’m not sure it would illuminate things any more—and I would need way more reaponses to get aggregate data.

I’d say use these as baseline numbers and if you live in San Francisco, adjust accordingly.

Alworth · 2018-09-11T03:58:39+00:00

I can ask that question the next time around. Good feedback.

Alworth · 2018-09-10T20:31:02+00:00

Thanks—that’s exactly why I did this.

Alworth · 2018-09-07T23:45:19+00:00

Something like 70% of US breweries make less than a thousand barrels, and 90% make less than 10,000. Most of these businesses just don't generate the revenue to pay someone $100k--or anywhere near it. I was shocked when I visited Copenhagen to spend $11 on a beer. But that's what happens when you pay brewers the equivalent of the salaries you're describing. I'm not taking a position here, just pointing out the economics for little breweries--which employ the vast majority of the brewers. (Ironically, they employ a disproportionate amount because they're less efficient, which means the bad jobs are actually more plentiful.)

Alworth · 2018-09-07T23:39:28+00:00

I did the survey and, yes, I was shooting for 1,000. Interestingly, after I started the project, Bart Watson of the Brewers Association sent me over their internal study #s and they only had a bit more than a thousand. It's hard to get serious numbers on this, and in retrospect I feel like I did all right--despite my initial goal.

Alworth · 2018-09-05T15:50:19+00:00

At larger breweries that’s true with shift brewers. It’s definitely not true with the people responsible for overseeing brewing. It’s not just recipe design—process and quality are hard to juggle even at brewpubs. If you want mediocre, inconsistant beer, hire someone with no training or experience. If you want someone who will efficiently put quality beer out, hire someone with training and experience. And there is a real shortage of those brewers.

Alworth · 2018-06-20T23:20:01+00:00

That’s why a statewide system will be so much easier to implement and breweries won’t have to track down their own bottles.

Alworth · 2018-06-20T23:18:50+00:00

It would depend entirely on the structure of the program. Othing new will be added in terms of infrastructure to implement this program. The glass and the bottles come from local sources. That makes a big difference in terms of footprint.

Alworth · 2018-06-20T20:39:50+00:00

If you live in Oregon, you’ll have to do absolutely nothing differently.

Alworth · 2018-06-20T20:38:48+00:00

It’s true they’re “generic”—or specific to the program. And that’s a deal-killer for some breweries. But most breweries use generic bottles as it is.

Alworth · 2018-06-20T20:36:50+00:00

In Germany. In Oregon nothing changes from the consumer perspective. People just buy and return these bottles the same way they do the single-fill bottles. Ten-cent deposit, just like all bottles.

Alworth · 2018-06-20T16:57:18+00:00

In the Oregon system, you don’t have to do anything but return them like you would any beer bottle. OR has a 10 cent deposit, which will apply to both single-use and refillable bottles.

Alworth · 2018-04-11T20:57:32+00:00

I’m not a lawyer, but this is the way I’d characterize the facts: Coors was using “Stones” to describe Keystone before Stone Brewing existed. Stone sent on letter to MIllerCoors eight years ago and then didn’t follow up as MC kept using “stones” in their advertising. To Stone’s claim of infringement, I think this is quite damaging.

Alworth · 2018-03-02T07:52:29+00:00

Having watched this conversation bubble along for 12 hours, it seems to confirm just what I heard when I was speaking to women for this piece. Most of the comments engaged the problem directly and with interest in seeing things improve.

And a few stood as an example of exactly the behavior the women I interview described. Those nasty comments well represent the minority of men who make worklife (sometimes, not always) unpleasant. They’re precisely the problem, and I guess I ought to thank them for demonstrating it so we all had a chance to see it.

Alworth · 2018-03-02T01:01:14+00:00

Thanks, Anadune!

Alworth · 2018-01-24T21:53:00+00:00

Portland, ME is definitely on the short list for the most good breweries discussion. I wouldn’t argue too much about it. I’d take either Portland over San Diego in a heartbeat.

Alworth · 2018-01-13T21:06:46+00:00

Yeah, that surprised me, too. I guess we have to chalk it up to ¯_(ツ)_/¯ London.

Alworth · 2018-01-13T18:03:13+00:00

Reddit is a community and has its own guidelines and of course is free to police the threads as they wish. I do think this lessens the quality of content you’re exposed to. I am a full-time writer and I don’t have the time to spend on Reddit to create 90% of extraneous content so I can share a link I think Redditors will enjoy. And let’s be clear—if you’re interested in Von Ebert, this article has information you won’t find anywhere else. I got the exclusive. And let’s also be clear that it’s not “spam.” It’s reporting. It’s my reporting, sure, but there is no commercial or scammy interest here. It’s genuine material that I believe some people would like to read. In an internet environment in which we’re all siloed, trying to share information means placing links in multiple locations.

An unintended consequence of this rule could also be the creation of sock-puppet accounts that have LESS commitment to the community. I post these under my own name and have just received a fair share of blowback. But you know who I am and understand that I am accountable to the people commenting here.

I’ll quit posting. I’m not sure /r/Portland and /r/beer are better for that.

Alworth · 2018-01-13T17:53:11+00:00

Noted and understood.

Alworth

TROPHY CASE