Grow up!

The ugly, distasteful, entitled (dare I say, Millenial?), ultimately self-defeating attitude of some of 'craft' brewing.

This is a small batch brewery. The amount of time a beer spends in a tank, sometimes due to limited human resources, variances in ingredients, and other shit like this affects the beer. We do not have hops contracts this year. We are small so we get the shittiest pick of hops. Grain does not all come from the same field.

We tinker with all inputs to work to improve the beer. This is part of what makes small batch brewing and craft brewing what it is. I know there are a lot of experts out there, so to you, if you want to get schooled on this, drop by and speak to Travis or one of our other biologist [sic].

On the other hand, if you want more consistency, you can find plenty [sic] brands that never try to improve. Brands that have the money and access to gigantic tanks that they can blend into to make more consistent beer. We will gladly give you some recommendations.

BTW, other craft breweries have these issues. Exploding cans, srm/color variances, haze variances…give them a break. Don’t think this is professional, well that’s good cause I am not a professional, I am a fucking scofflaw. #webrewbeerforgeorgia

—Scofflaw Brewing (Atlanta, Georgia)
as posted to Facebook (15 August 2017).

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YFGF responds

I now reside in Georgia and, no, you do not brew for me: not with that condescension, not with that sheeple 'craft-oblige.'

Ask me to give you my good money for your defective product? No. Ask that I accept your sanctimonious pontification that poor brewing and risk of consumer injury is what 'craft' is? No, I won't. That is not 'craft.' It's crap (and, in the case of the latter, it's a large bowel movement: a potentially brewery-shuttering lawsuit).

It doesn't matter if I or any of your potential consumers am/are or were brewers or not (and, in fact, I was a brewer when you were in diapers and possibly even before then). Packaging a beer in a can or bottle or keg (and don't get me started on casks) requires a whole new set of understanding, technology, and yes, funding. If you can't do it right, don't do it. Or at least don't get upset when consumers aren't pleased with sub par results. It's their cash, your problem. You operate a factory. Learn how it works.

In the 2014 edition of their book, Beer Packaging, Ray Klimovitz and Karl Ockert wrote:

Packaging is the most expensive aspect of brewing, representing up to two-thirds of the cost of beer production. It is also one of the least forgiving steps in the brewing process.

Maybe, you might read their book, first. (I could loan you my copy.)

You say that your 'birdie-fingers-in-the-air' photo was a joke. Maybe, but childish. But when you accompany it with a pathetic 'poor-poor-pitiful-me' routine [as above], it appears to be not a joke but an obnoxious whine.

On your Facebook page, you say to a customer: "skip ours and buy something else." Agreed. There are thousands of other 'craft' breweries who give a damn. To be fair to you, they too may occasionally suffer similar brewing and packaging follies, but a difference between you and them is that they 'own' their errors and correct them. Too bad for you.

Put on your big boy pants. Grow up.

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• I attended a Scofflaw pre-opening release-ceremony, in August 2016, pleased, then, to sample the wares of a new brewery. Such a consequent social media stance is ill-advised.
• My usual modus operandi is to mention when praising, keep obscured when castigating. The idea of the thing is often the thing, rather than the thing itself. In this case, however, the sheer gall of this social-media posting required application of caustic in bright light, even if the brewery's' puerile behavior might be rewarded with clicks and views as the result.
• This post was originally published, in slightly different form,  at YFGF's Facebook page: here.
• Read Paste Magazine's coverage: here. (It was their story that alerted me to the situation.)
• Read Scofflaw's post at its Facebook page: 15 August 2017.


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