July 25, 2006
Insulting Some Beer Drinkers
It’s always fun to read something like this. Really makes you think an industry respects its customers:
“If you’re going to play with multi-billion dollar companies, you better come up with something really original,” he says.
Palmer adds it also helps that many beer drinkers aren’t sufficiently savvy to understand they’re being sold the bottle, not the beer. “Consumers are dumb. In a blind taste test, they couldn’t tell the difference between ale and lager but they say Steam Whistle tastes better because they bought it in a green bottle and paid more for it. It’s all perception,” he says.
Thankfully, after re-reading the article, I realized that this guy [Palmer] doesn’t work for the brewery being profiled here. But he is “a leading beer industry analyst”, which means he’s trying to take the industry the exact opposite way I’d like to see it go.
And unfortunately, they’re following his lead:
Forget the ’80s, Steam Whistle Brewing is real retro.
The six-year-old Toronto-based microbrewery is all about the 1950s, from producing its premium pilsner recipe in green bottles, to the ‘57 Chevy pickup trucks that deliver it, to the black and white television set watched by patrons at the inhouse pub. (Okay, so the brand isn’t 100 percent pure; the TV is hooked up to a satellite dish.)
“What we wanted to create here was the type of brewery you’d see in the 1950s and the type of beer you’d drink in the 1950s,” says Greg Taylor, co-founder of Steam Whistle and a veteran of Upper Canada Brewing Co. for ten years prior.
“Instead of having Chrysler vans out there with logos on them, we send these ‘57 Chevy’s out there. It sends a similar message about the ’50s — overbuilt quality and a lot of style,” he says.
Easily its biggest point of differentiation is Steam Whistle’s distinctive green bottle, a vessel that according to Taylor was commonly used a half-century ago. It costs a little more, but it’s well worth it, he says.
I don’t have a problem with the branding, with the attempt at being “retro”, or any of that. It is true that the number of craft breweries in North America is rapidly expanding, and you need something to differentiate yourself.
But green bottles? I’d prefer they do something that won’t make their beers skunky:
Skunky or cat-musk aromas in beer are caused by photochemical reactions of the isomerized hop compounds. The wavelengths of light that cause the skunky smell are the blue wavelengths and the ultraviolet. Brown glass bottles effectively screen out these wavelengths, but green bottles do not. Skunkiness will result in beers if the beer is left in direct sunlight or stored under fluorescent lights as in supermarkets. In beers which use pre-isomerized hop extract and very little flavoring hop additions, the beer will be fairly immune to damage from ultraviolet light.
Especially since they make a light-colored pilsner, which is much more prone to having this problem than something dark like a stout, and yet is still hoppy enough to have enough of the compounds discussed above. Ever wondered why Heineken tastes better out of a keg than out of the bottle? It’s because it’s shipped from Germany and then stuck in supermarket or liquor store refrigerators under flourescent light.
Style may count, but if you’re sacrificing quality in order to acheive that style, you might be making a bad deal. This brewery may be trying to differentiate itself from the macro market, but they’re getting into a market that increasingly understands that green isn’t good.
Hat Tip: Matt Duffy
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