Beer, Bars & Brewers #16

Welcome back to our bi-weekly Beers, Bars, and Brewers! This time around we take a look at BrewDog’s “Equity for Punks” program, the IPA Day, and a study that reveals new data on craft beer consumers. Prost!

Interested in some beer cocktails? We got you covered. Ashley Routson, aka “The Beer Wench”, shares her favorite five beer cocktails with Paste magazine. Head this way to see what’s up.

Equity for Punks: BrewDog is no Underdog

Earlier this month the Scottish brewery BrewDog sent out an email announcing plans to open operations in Columbus, Ohio. This new venture will be partly funded by its “Equity for Punks” program, the press release states “Equity for Punks is a completely new business model in the States. It is a revolution in small business finance. It’s an opportunity to enlist the people of the nation that changed the beer landscape forever, and invite them to join our existing 46,000-strong global investor community and help us change the face of small business finance in the US as we share our passion for great craft beer”. Jacob Grier though, appears more skeptical.

He questions the location of Columbus, Ohio only to figure out that Columbus is a part of a subsidies program, which encourages big businesses to build in return for a incentive package. He goes on “This doesn’t sound very punk, and venue-shopping to avoid paying local taxes doesn’t sound very community-driven either” and mentions other brewers that have made use of these sort of subsidies (namely Stone, Deschutes, New Belgium, and Sierra Nevada). What annoys Grier is the fact that BrewDog is “particularly brazen about doing so while maintaining a public image of brash independence”.  Rightly so.

The Real IPA Day

The South African beer blogger Murray Slater cleared up some confusion about IPA Day last week. IPA Day is, of course, a brainchild of our American friends. The website  states that it takes place on the first Thursday of every August, and is a “worldwide event”. Apparently though, there’s been some confusion as to when IPA Day is celebrated on an international scale. Technically, the first Thursday it August was August 4th. Slater gets confused when googling the term though, his search throws up a lot of “talk about a day to celebrate the style internationally on the 7th August”. He comes to the conclusion that, though the origin of the “holiday” is American, some international beer enthusiasts have taken it upon themselves to celebrate the day of IPAs on Sunday, August 7th and that the 4th of August remains a “American event to celebrate an American beer”. He says that “other countries have there own luscious aroma and flavour hops.

So why can’t countries like Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have its own IPA day based on its hop harvests? We should start creating and celebrating our own identities or forever live in the shadow of our American Pioneers”. He goes on to suggest that perhaps whole years should be dedicated to one beer style, though that might be just a tad much, we understand where he’s coming from. We should all get over this confusion and just sit down to enjoy a cold IPA, whatever the day.

New Data on who Loves Craft Beer

“The Brewer’s Association has released a new set of data showing that craft beer is now most popular among women, millennials and Hispanics”, so the drinks business reports. The BA released a study that was conducted in May titled “How to Build a Craft Beer Drinker: The Attitudes That Identify Prime Prospects” which interviewed more than 10,000 participants to find out more about “the attitudes, values and priorities of U.S. consumers”. The results?

“Millennials, women and Hispanic people are amongst the biggest proponents of craft beer nowadays. When it came to age, millennials lead the way as younger drinkers continue to look for a more individualistic way of drinking, which shows that they are continuing to stray away from bigger beer brands. When it came to gender, it was women that featured more prominently. But as Julia Herz wrote: Although it’s dismal for sure to see that men of drinking age are close to three times more likely to drink beer weekly than adult women, things are not always black and white”.

This study comes by a warning by the drinks business – take this information with a grain of salt. While some big beer companies might identify as craft, and subsequently their consumers identify as “craft consumers”, that might not always be the case.