89: The Downside of Buzz....

We had a very well attended launch party. People really enjoyed the beer, even several people I knew not to be craft beer lovers were enjoying the beer. Enough to wade back to the bar and order our beer again and again. That was cool to see. It was also cool to see old friends and new who were genuinely enjoying themselves and our beers. We couldn't have asked for more.

However the downside to this upside is that some people began to wonder if the beers in question are really worth all the fuss. Which I understand. I'm a beer geek too. I've gone through it. I've listened to effusive praise about beers and breweries and then based on that praise gone to great effort to get the product in question. Only to be disappointed. I can't blame people for being skeptical about a new brewery because I've been around long enough on the craft beer scene to know skepticism is warranted.

There is currently a long thread on ratebeer.com that encapsulates the feelings of both the folks that think we make good beer and the folks that think the people who like our beer are a bunch of shameless homers. The homerisim is the part that I don't get. Sure, each individual should judge any beer for themselves, but Floridians being homers, really? Florida beer raters have (at least in the half a decade I have been paying attention to online beer ratings) been very tough on their local beer. Which is why Florida beer lovers tend to be such active beer traders/travellers. They mostly don't like the local stuff. If homerisim were so rampant then my colleagues at Orlando Brewing Partners should have a slew of highly rated beers on the beer geek websites. But OBP tends to brew lower abv, style consistent beers. Beers the geeks tend to not go gaga over. And their ratings reflect the more sessionable, low-key, beers they brew, rather than rampant homerisim.

I do know many of the people rating our beers. As a fellow beer lover our paths have naturally crossed many times. More than a few I count as friends. Though as each day passes our beers get into the hands of numerous people I have never met. Perhaps those that I do know just don't want to insult me. But, I think spending five minutes with most of these folks would disabuse anyone of the notion that they are interested in sparing anyone hurt feelings. If we brewed flawed beer their interest would be in having a laugh at out expense I do not doubt it.

Which brings me to the other thing that bothered me in the thread. The notion that we are an upstart brewery and how could we possibly make beers as good as some people say. We are upstarts the way that two guys with a combined 20 years of experience relating to beer are upstarts. Wayne has been brewing beer commercially for a decade. He has been homebrewing longer. I have been in the beer business for 7 years and getting paid to research and write about a beer for the last 5 years. It is certainly correct to say that we are a new brewery. It is not correct to say that we are new to brewing. Wayne was winning gold medals at GABF before most of the beer rating websites were even around. When I drank my first craft beers, there was no online site dedicated to craft beers. We are a new brewery, but we are by no means inexperienced.

That experience does not mean we will automatically create anything worth a damn. That is up to the people who drink the beer to decide. But, Wayne is not new to brewing. He brings 13 years of experience to his approach and recipes. But, beyond that he brings a remarkably finely tuned palate, a passion for his profession I have seen in very few people and a genuinely creative personality. I too have some experience with beer and brewing and feel I am a capable evaluator of beer. Everything we release at CCB is something we are proud of. Something we think is worthy to tag hands with a brewing tradition that goes back 10,000 years. But, that is just our opinion. Form your own opinion when you drink the beer.


Cheers,
Joey Redner

Posted by Cigar City Brewing at 3/31/2009 11:29 AM
Categories: uncategorized
 

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