Consolidation in the beer market bothers me less than it does my beer nerd friends. Many of the best-known, most-loved independent breweries run into major quality problems trying to scale up their output. ABI probably has advantages in regulating quality. Breweries that don't want to scale are unlikely to sell in the first place.
The whiskey market is almost entirely consolidated; you have to go out of your way to find quality products that aren't traceable to large concerns, despite a proliferation of brands. But we're in a 2-decade renaissance in whiskey quality (despite the No Age Statement movement!) and availability. The median big-brand whiskey is overwhelmingly more likely to be good than the median independent whiskey.
The barriers to entry for beer are far, far lower than for whiskey. We're not going to run out of microbreweries, or of interesting new beers. Why are beer nerds so freaked out about this?
(I have nothing useful to say about beer rating sites, which I think are pretty sketchy to begin with.)
The problem with beer consolidation is what "regulating quality" at scale entails. Consistent quality in gigantic batches often translates to lower quality beer than pre-acquisition. Maybe it's just not possible to scale every recipe to nationwide distribution, but if that's the case it still means a small brewery's acquisition and subsequent scaling to national levels generally means the taste you were used to is gone for good.
Case in point, Magic Hat. The beers are entirely different since acquisition by NAB, and terrible. There are nationally available independent breweries that make quality beer - Oskar Blues comes to mind. They scaled without selling, and I have no doubt NAB or ABI would have absolutely destroyed the recipes in their own scaling process.
Another acquisition model is what Goose Island did when they sold to ABI. As I understand it, they outsourced production of their less differentiated offerings like Honkers Ale and 312, but continue to run their brewpub and make their Bourbon County Stout and Belgian beers like Matilda and Sofie. You see this in some other industries, where a company will spin off or sell businesses that aren't its "secret sauce".
The brewpub was not part of the sale - ABI couldn't legally own a brewpub.
There remains a mostly-independent, somewhat expanded brewing operation in Chicago. They've experienced quite a bit of turnover since the buyout, with many of the experienced brewers going on to start their own breweries.
But a case in the other direction is Three Floyds, which is independent but scaling and suffering major quality problems.
You can lament your favorite beers attempting to scale production at all, and that's an understandable feeling to have, but it's ultimately no more reasonable a demand than that your favorite band continue playing your favorite tiny local club.
The sibling commenter here said something I believe as well, which is that in the US market at least, every acquisition is just going to make room for a new independent.
This is true, but separate from the real problem at hand. I can't lament the general natural patterns of new markets maturing, but I can lament ABI being the one to buy these breweries when they're trying to cover for the dramatic quality loss by buying review websites.
I remember years ago when I was living in Boston; many of my colleagues were brewing their own beer and were among the biggest "beer snobs" I've ever met. Every one of them, without fail would say about Anheuser-Busch (colloquially, "Budweiser") that the consistency of their product was absolutely astounding. While they may personally feel that it's a bad product, the fact that it is always consistent is a feat not to be ignored.
It's not easy. A local brewery couldn't produce for a year while they moved facilities. They did contract brewing in another state and were constantly testing the water here, sending equipment to condition the water in the other state, flying brewers back and forth, and it NEVER tasted anywhere near right no matter how many times they tried. While I love craft beer, I admit I don't have the most sophisticated palette, but it was immediately obvious when I tasted different samples of what was allegedly the same beer. My tastings started when I asked, unprompted, "Hey, why does <beer> taste so weird today?"
This is why I judge brewers on the quality of their lighter beers while being a fan of heavier stuff. If you can't get a Kölsch right I don'twant your Tripel or IPA.
The UK was an example of consolidation resulting in terrible quality and limited choice. The "CAMRA" (CAMpaign for Real Ale) group is a result of push-back against this, and has been very successful: http://www.camra.org.uk/key-events-in-camra-s-history
The US is nowhere near the same setup, though, so it's doubtful it would end up quite as bad. For beer at least, every time there's a consolidation, there's an opportunity for a new player to enter the market they just left behind.
I think the hate comes from some shady stuff the big brewers have historically done to push out smaller brewers, limiting tap and shelf space for craft, sponsoring laws that reduce ways that beer can be sold direct from the breweries or adding fees that hurt small players
Consistently, my experience with market consolidation has been lower quality products for more money so I can susidize the wealth of merger consultants.
If consolidation has such a prior, why would I expect beer consolidation to end differently?
Similarly, I disagree about whiskey: distilleries from my state consistently provide a better and cheaper product than large firms, and are basically dead to me when they sell these days, after a few bad experiences.
Name the distilleries you like. Let's see if they even sell their own whiskey, rather than MGPI. There are very few independent "distilleries" selling real product, and the ones that do are pretty notable, and open about their limitations.
Reliably making Very Old Barton or Old Forester or Four Roses is extremely difficult.
OOLA is the only one that springs to mind -- but I could be mistaken, I'm partly relying on their marketing. (Which I mention in hopes you will correct me if I am.)
Edit:
Dry Fly used to be smaller and ship some of their stuff from the other side of the state over, so I also count them. Again, please correct me if I'm wrong!
Dry Fly's "Process" page, by the way, has the hallmarks of a distiller that actually distills their product; they're way too specific and making way too many falsifiable claims for it to be rational for them to lie. They even call out the process of augmenting a distiller's own make with NDP product.
That's respectable! It's neat that companies like these exist and I'm happy they do.
But that doesn't make their products better than Four Roses or Woodford Reserve. They almost certainly aren't. The major whiskey distilleries have huge advantages accruing to quality that small distillers don't.
Even simple stuff like volume works in their favor. Sazerac did an experiment where they the same product in 5, 10, 15, and the standard 53 gallon barrels. Indie distillers use smaller barrels both because it suits their production needs and because it "accelerates" aging, ostensibly due to the different surface area to volume ratio. The smaller barrels produce off flavors (presumably, they're extracting more and different chemicals from the wood in the same aging time).
You can do a bunch of things to counteract this, just like you can do a bunch of things to mitigate the fact that new distillers by necessity have to sell young whiskey (and probably will long after their first barrels hit a reasonably full maturation, because they're learning as they go, and each learning cycle costs them another several years!). But all those things impact quality and flavor and consistency.
Dry Fly's going to charge you between 35 and 75 dollars for a bottle of whiskey. Not only is Dry Fly not the best whiskey you can buy for $35, but there are better whiskies at that price point in big city supermarkets. At $75, Dry Fly is competing with Buffalo Antiques (at least their list prices). Come on.
I mostly just want to thank you for a detailed reply -- you clearly know more about this than I do and I've learned a bit.
In the interest of science, do you have some $35 bottles you'd recommend as better? It seems more productive to get a suggestion and try it than argue all night. (:
People seem to like them. But OOLA is mostly a clear spirit distiller. Keep in mind that it is way easier to distill vodka, gin, and rum than it is to start up and reliably produce whiskey. When you read OOLA's material, note that they are super specific about the grain and process they use for their vodka, but not as much for Waitsburg Bourbon.
The way they market, my guess is that they distill their own whiskey? Note that there are distillers that distill some whiskey, but then round out the supply with MGPI whiskey, which would allow them to talk about locally sourcing corn and barley while still relying on someone else's product.
That said, I don't know them well, and maybe they're like Few Spirits, a local distillery in Chicago that got started selling vodka and gin and gradually expanded into doing a whiskey. Few is not bad. I like Few. But I don't think a lot of people drink Few and tell themselves, "I'm drinking this because it is categorically better than Buffalo Trace".
Copperworks in Seattle is complete end-to-end whiskey. They brew their own wash (the co-owner Jason Parker was the first brewer at Pike in the late 80s/early 90s), distill and age everything in-house. It's all their product.
I really like Copperworks & think their stuff is super interesting but you are paying a huuuuge premium over equivalently aged whiskeys and I don’t think you are getting better quality.
You are getting novelty which is a fine thing to pay for, but it’s not the same as quality.
Oola sources “some” of there blend. They are at least upfront that they do it if not how much.
[edit] just looked at a newer bottle & they’ve removed the sourcing statement from the older bottles I remember. Either they don’t source or they no longer admit it. Bottle also doesn’t use any of the protected phrases I know of so could be anything.
The whiskey consolidation isn't really comparable. Most of the holding companies are just that, and have gone out of their way to not disturb the quality distilleries keep. They can even be keen to spend on improving it. Whiskey is a luxury market in that regard.
That has not been the case with brewery consolidation, which has mostly aimed to cheapen production. The reactions from enthusiasts reflects that.
But it's a direct reaction to the market. Whisky (and whiskey, but IMO, to a lesser extent) is a luxury market because people are willing to pay for the quality. I'm confident that if people would be equally willing for craft beer quality, these companies would behave similarly, too.
there's a booming market for sour beers, which typically sell for $20-30/750ml, and terroir is a major factor. ABInBev has resisted going after those breweries because they're very difficult to scale and risk is very high. Goose Island's sour program was essentially defunct for several years at one point.
Wine is the more apt comparison, since sour beer and wine operate on similar time scales.
I think some of the concern isn't so much over quality but diversity. Beer nerds almost necessarily like their beer esoteric, if not downright unpopular. If I really like a beer but know it doesn't have much of a market, I'd be worried if its producer got bought by someone who had a history of ramping up popular labels and killing off rarer, harder-to-market ones. Maybe when grocery stores had to go to micros to get enough fancy beer in their aisle they'd end up getting a Saison or two; now when they can just go to macro brewers they'll get a few IPAs and consider the aisle fancy enough.
I don't know much of a market is there is now or ever was for esoteric whiskey.
Another reason to be so proud of one of my city's best breweries, Modern Times. Totally employee owned and growing like gangbusters. I admire Jacob and the whole team there for being the Fugazi of beer.
They seem like very different markets to me. Beers are usually brewed, start to finish, in about a week. They also don't have a very long shelf life--they get skunky if they're not stored well or wait too long. I also think beer is mostly a lower-end product which deals in single-servings versus whiskey being an exclusively luxury good.
I think the beer nerds also just hate to see breweries they like bought up by big companies that, in general, ruin the product.
Scotch is dramatically consolidated. There are only a handful of independents left & most of those use consolidated malters and source materials providers.
The beer industry is taking their queue from the scotch industry in this. Consolidate but keep the small brands.
Sure, in name only. Laphroaig for example was purchased by Jim Bean (I think, or the company that owns Jim bean). The only real change was that they started using Jim Bean barells as part of their maturing process, which I have to say adds a nice flavour.
It's not as if they decided to scrap 300 years of tradition and start spewing out cheap brew under different names because their corporate overlords decreed it.
I'm not sure about the handful number, have you got a source for this? I visited Islay recently and there are at least 7 or 8 independent distillers there.
Yeah, a lot do use the consolidated maltings, but that's because there is not a discernable loss in quality. Malting by hand takes ages and ages. Islay distillers still use local peat though.
The scotch industry consolidation wasn’t about shuttering dustilleries & neither does the beer industry’s need be. Just like the scotch market apply economies of scale to purchasing, supply chain, distribution chain & marketing needn’t mean a loss of quality at the production facility.
I do worry that it will lead to too much uniformity. But that uniformity is usually in the form of improved consistency. You don’t get the really interesting stuff but you also don’t have to taste dozens of bad options to find it either.
I agree here - and many of my beer nerd friends religiously use this app to rate every beer they drink (Untappd I think its called?). Which I believe is free.
So if said beer nerd had an issue with the big corps buying up ratings... perhaps paying for apps or donating in some way is what one ought to do.
The whiskey market is almost entirely consolidated; you have to go out of your way to find quality products that aren't traceable to large concerns, despite a proliferation of brands. But we're in a 2-decade renaissance in whiskey quality (despite the No Age Statement movement!) and availability. The median big-brand whiskey is overwhelmingly more likely to be good than the median independent whiskey.
The barriers to entry for beer are far, far lower than for whiskey. We're not going to run out of microbreweries, or of interesting new beers. Why are beer nerds so freaked out about this?
(I have nothing useful to say about beer rating sites, which I think are pretty sketchy to begin with.)