Tag Archives: Boston Beer Company

Meeting an Icon

One of my favorite books about the craft brewing industry is The Audacity of Hops: The History of America’s Craft Beer Revolution by Tom Acitelli. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting a very readable account of the emergence and evolution of craft brewing in the United States. In the book you will learn of the key events and key people that were at the heart of the craft beer revolution. One of the most enjoyable and informative parts of Acitelli’s book is learning about the part played by particular individuals. These include Michael Jackson (British beer writer), Fritz Maytag (owner of Anchor Brewing Company), Jack McAuliffe (owner of New Albion Brewing Co.), and others.

The Audacity of Hops by Tom Acitelli

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to meet and chat with one of the craft beer pioneers featured in Acitelli’s book. I was invited to be the opening keynote speaker at the 4th Annual Beer Marketing and Tourism Conference in St. Petersburg, FL. In attendance at the meeting was Pete Slosberg, the co-founder of Pete’s Brewing Company. During the early 1990s Pete’s Brewing Company was the country’s second largest craft brewing company, after Boston Beer Company. Like many of the early craft brewing entrepreneurs, Slosberg was a home brewer. In 1986, with Mark Bronder, he founded Pete’s Brewing Company. The brewery’s signature product was an American Brown Ale, called Pete’s Wicked Ale. While inspired be English Brown Ales, Slosberg’s creation was distinctively American – it sat somewhere between an English Brown Ale and a Porter, and was more bitter than both. As a result, Slosberg is credited with creating American Brown Ale as a separate style.

Hanging out with Pete Slosberg (left) at 3 Daughters Brewing in St. Petersburg, FL

At the conference Slosberg made a presentation titled “Modern Guerrilla Marketing”. Guerrilla Marketing is an advertising strategy that utilizes “low-cost unconventional marketing tactics that yield maximum results”. As the owner of a start-up craft brewery, guerrilla marketing was critical to the early success of Pete’s Brewing Company.

In designing the original packaging for Pete’s Wicked Ale, Slosberg wanted to make sure that his beer stood out on the shelf. He therefore chose purple as its dominant color, and included a mugshot of his dog Millie. Against the rather mundane packaging of mass produced beers of the late-1980s, there was no doubt that Pete’s Wicked Ale was a standout. As Slosberg told conference attendees, “weird things draw your attention. Little things can be memorable. Make people do a double-take”. In another marketing “stunt” to promote his beer, Slosberg found himself naked in a bathtub of Pete’s Wicked Ale. It was another one of those weird double-take moments.

Promoting his beer – Pete Slosberg in a bathtub of Pete’s Wicked Ale

Some of the advertising for Pete’s Wicked Ale was not cheap, but it still fell into the “weird” category and turned heads. A prime example was his 1994 television commercial which ran during shows such as Seinfeld, Melrose Place and Northern Exposure in major markets such as Boston, Minneapolis, and San Francisco. For the commercial Slosberg sat at a red-draped table on the sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. On the table were some bottles of Pete’s Wicked Ale. As pedestrians walked by, Slosberg called out to them, asking them if they would like his autograph. The commercial (which can be viewed here) shows most pedestrians shunning Slosberg’s invitation. One who did stop is seen, shortly afterwards, scrunching up Slosberg’s autographed picture and tossing it into the nearest trash can. Named by The New York Times as one of the ten best advertising campaigns of 1994, the newspaper noted that “the campaign deftly plays up his image as the quintessential little guy taking on the beer behemoths.”

During his presentation to conference attendees, Slosberg talked about his entrepreneurial philosophy. To Slosberg, initial discussions about starting a company should focus on the goals/core values of the company, and not on the product. In discussions with his business partner, Mark Bronder, Slosberg identified three goals/core values for Pete’s Brewing Company:

  • Make a world class product
  • Get in on ground floor of a new industry or segment of an industry
  • Treat the product with reverence and everything else with irreverence (the fun factor)
Pete Slosberg at the Beer Marketing & Tourism Conference speaking about guerrilla marketing

The success of Pete’s Brewing Company was achieved without Slosberg and Bronder owning a brewery. All of Pete’s beers were brewed under contract. Over the years they contracted with a number of breweries to brew their beer. These included Palo Alto Brewing Co. (Palo Alto, CA) and August Schell Brewing (New Ulm, MN).

At its peak, Pete’s Brewing Company had 85 employees and annual sales of $71 million. Its beer was available in 47 states and, within the craft beer segment of the industry, only Boston Beer Company sold more beer. And the beer was good. In 1987, Pete’s Wicked Ale was voted the top ale, and was ranked one of America’s top five beers. While Pete’s Wicked Ale was its flagship beer, the company did produce five other products- Pete’s Wicked Lager, Pete’s Wicked Red, Pete’s Wicked Honey Wheat, Pete’s Wicked Winter Brew, and Pete’s Summer Brew.

In 1996, twelve years after its founding, Pete’s Brewing Company was acquired by The Gambrinus Company of San Antonio, TX. The cost of the acquisition was an impressive $69 million. In 2011, Gambrinus announced that they would be discontinuing the beers they produced under the Pete’s brand. Following its acquisition by Gambrinus, Pete’s Wicked Ale struggled in the market place. Perhaps that was because Gambrinus changed the recipe to make the beer lighter. Or perhaps it was because the beer no longer had its charismatic spokesperson to promote it in the marketplace.

I feel both honored and humbled to have met Pete Slosberg, and to have engaged in a couple of one-on-one conversations during the two-and-a-half day’s of the conference. He had an unassuming personality, was easy to chat with, and, within a few seconds of meeting him, he put you completely at ease. As someone who is interested in the history of craft brewing in the United States, it was a huge privilege to meet and spend some time with one of the industry’s early trailblazers. As a craft beer drinker, the debt of gratitude that I Pete Slosberg, and others like him, is both huge and significant.

The World of Cider

I was in Dallas, TX last month. I was en route to Austin, TX to take in the U.S. Formula 1 Grand Prix. This has been something of an annual pilgrimage, since the U.S. GP found a home in Austin in 2012. My travel pattern has been to fly into Dallas (it is considerably cheaper than flying into Austin) and spend the night with my good friend Mike. The next day, he and I drive to Austin for race weekend.

Mike lives in the city of Corinth, a suburb of Dallas. During previous visits we had visited a number of craft breweries within an Uber ride of where he lived. This time, we decided to  venture farther afield, take the train into Dallas, and visit a couple of craft breweries there. We alighted the train in Dallas’s Deep Ellum neighborhood. Deep Ellum is a fascinating neighborhood. It was established in 1873, east of downtown Dallas, as both a residential and commercial neighborhood. In the late 19th century it was home to the largest manufacturer of cotton-processing equipment, the Continental Gin Company, in the United States. In 1914, Henry Ford chose the neighborhood as the location for one of his first automobile assembly plants outside of Michigan. During the first half of the twentieth century, it was a “hotbed” for jazz and blues music. Today, Deep Ellum, remains at the epicenter of the Dallas music scene. It also has a vibrant arts community and has, since 1974, hosted the Deep Ellum Arts Festival. It also home to a number of craft breweries, a couple of which we visited. Our first stop was Braindead Brewing. This was followed by a visit to Deep Ellum Brewing Company.

Public Art in the Deep Ellum Neighborhood

Deep Ellum Neighborhood

Deep Ellum Neighborhood

Braindead Brewing

Deep Ellum Brewing Company

After leaving Deep Ellum, wandering the neighborhood, we came across Trinity Cider. Neither of us had been to a cidery before, so we decided to give it a try. As we learned from the bartender, the cidery had been open less than a week. In fact, it had opened on October 12, five days before we visited.  The menu had a selection of five different ciders to choose from. I opted for a glass of “Grow a Pear”. Trinity plans to specialize in dry ciders. I enjoy cider, although I only drink it very occasionally. I used to drink a lot more of it, especially as an undergraduate student at the University of Glasgow.

Trinity Cider

Trinity’s Grow A Pear Cider

Trinity Cider’s Menu

The origns of cider are unclear. While their is evidence that apple trees grew along the Nile River as early as 13,000 BC, there is no corresponding evidence to suggest that the Egyptians used them in the production of cider. When the Romans arrived in the British Isles in 55 BC, the local population were already drinking a cider-like drink, made from apples. In the Americas, cider was produced by the early colonists. At the start of the eighteenth century, the New England region was producing over three hundred thousand gallons of cider per year, and by 1850, per capita cider consumption in Massacussets was an impressive thirty-five gallons. As the population migrated  west, however, and as German immigrants started to arrive in waves and settled in urban areas such as Milwaukee, WI, St. Louis, MO, and Cincinnati, OH, beer (particularly Lager) increased in popularity. As beer gained a foothold among city dwellers, cider developed a reputation as the poor farmers beverage.

Today, North America accounts for eleven percent of the cider consumed worldwide. By far the largest consumers of cider are the Europeans, who consume fifty-seven percent of the world’s cider.

Cider Consumption by Region, 2016. Source: Statista

It is, of course, tempting to compare cider with craft beer. An estimate in October, 2017 suggested that there were somewhere in the region of seven hundred cideries in the United States. This compares with over six thousand craft breweries.  New York, with eighty-three, has the largest number of cideries, followed by California and Michigan, with seventy-eight and seventy-one cideries respectively. Washington (sixty-six cideries) and Oregon (fifty-seven cideries) round out the top five. Annual cider sales in the United States currently run at about $1.3 billion. Craft beer sales in 2017 were  $26 billion. In terms of the total alcoholic beverage category, cider accounts for only 0.4% of sales in the United States. This is, by no means,  a large market share, but it is a vast improvement on the  0.06% market share that cider held during the first few years of the current millennium.

In recent years, cider’s popularity has increased. After years of moderate growth, cider experienced an upsurge in sales between 2011 and 2015. The U.S. cider market went from 5.6 million cases in 2011 to 28.9 million cases in 2015: that is an increase of 416%. By 2016, it looked like its popularity may be on the wane.  However, the most recent data from 2018 suggests that cider may be experiencing a rebound in the U.S. market. According to a recent study by Nielsen, cider appears to be most popular among 21-34 year olds. The same study found that beer appealed to a slightly older demographic – 35-44 year olds.

Source: National Beer Wholesalers Association

Cider produced by local and regional cideries (craft cideries) account for approximately twenty-five percent of the cider sold in the Unitrd States. The remaining  seventy-five percent is produced by large multinational corporations such as AB InBev and Heineken. AB InBev’s cider brands include Virtue,  a “craft cider, made with 100% Michigan apples”. Virtue is located in Fennville,  MI. AB InBev’s cider portfolio also in includes the more well-known Stella Artois Cidre.

Boston Beer Company, the nation’s second largest craft brewer, produces its own line of cider – Angry Orchard. Debuting as Hardcore Cider in 1997, a rebranding resulted in the launch of the Angry Orchard Label in 2012. Angry Orchrard is an important part of the Boston Beer Company’s portfolio of drinks. In the third quarter of 2018, Boston Beer Company announced a 24.2% increase in revenue, compared with the same quarter in 2017. This increase was driven not by Samuel Adams beer (whose sales were down), but by sales of its non-beer products, including its Angry Orchard ciders.

As with beer, there are a number of different styles of cider. The United States Association of Cider Makers (USACM) recognizes ten distinct styles of cider. These styles are modern cider, heritage cider, modern perry, heritage perry, fruit cider, spiced cider, hopped cider, wood-aged cider, sour cider, and ice cider. Modern and heritage ciders are made with apples, while modern and heritage perries are made with pears (a perry is a pear cider). Fruit ciders are those made with non-pome fruits (essentially fruits other than apples or pears). Spiced ciders are those with spices, herbs and/or botanicals added, while hopped ciders, as the name suggests, have hops added. Wood-aged ciders have been aged in wooden barrels. Finally, sour ciders are made intentionally sour using bacterial fermentation. Cider does have the advantage that it is naturally gluten free – an attraction for some consumers.

It is difficult to predict the future of cider in the United States. It is likely to remain a minority alcohol, but will probably continue to benefit from the growing interest in locally-produced craft alcohol. Part of the challenge for cider is that, for a large part of American history, it has struggled to be mainstream. Looking into the foreseeable future, this is likely to continue to be the case.

How Many Breweries?

Every now and then, I come across a headline that raises the question as to whether we are reaching saturation point with respect to the number of craft breweries that we have in the United States. Very often, the question is asked with regard to a particular Continue reading How Many Breweries?

Last Call?

Jim Koch, who founded Boston Beer Company in 1984, is an iconic figure within the world of craft beer.  Forbes Magazine refers to Koch as a “founding father of the American craft brewery movement”. There can be little argument that the entire craft beer Continue reading Last Call?

The Meaning of Craft?

The terms craft beer and craft brewery are common parlance when talking about the modern-day American beer industry. Yet despite their common use and seemingly universal acceptance the meaning of the term craft is one that is often discussed and debated.  I’d like Continue reading The Meaning of Craft?