Whales.  If you’re a craft beer lover, you’re constantly on the lookout for them.  I’m not talking about aquatic mammals, I’m referring to those ever-elusive yearly craft beer releases that you never can quite get your hands on but will pay almost any price to acquire.  You drive a whole day to stand in line all night with knee-high snow on both sides of the streets and spend more than you did on groceries last month for just a few bottles.  You offer 5:1 dollar-for-dollar trades on beer forums, paying ridiculous shipping costs and hoping the carrier doesn’t toss the box around like a sack of potatoes, all while praying the guy on the other end doesn’t screw you.  You hoard them.  Date them.  Take selfies.  Fill your #feed with the day’s haul and the beer being poured into your new brewer-designed beer glass.  Damn, it feels good to be a craft beer gansta!

So what happens when the big names in the craft beer world, with some of the most anticipated yearly  releases and whales that are staples in your beer cellar, are purchased or allows an outside ownership of more than 25%?  I was thinking about how thin and lifeless I was finding some of the beers that I’d been jumping on had become, as well as the ridiculous price tags that were coming with them, and realized that it’s the beginning of the end, in a way.  That may sound a little grim and dramatic, but allow me to explain.

Why is a quarter interest in a brewery significant, you may be asking?  The Brewers Association, the voice of craft beer here in the United States, defines a craft brewery as a brewery that has an “annual production of 6 million barrels of beer or less” and “less than 25% of the craft brewery is owned or controlled…by an alcohol industry member that is not itself a craft brewer.” In addition, and I’ll just paraphrase this, most of their beer flavorings must come from ingredients and fermentation.  It’s rare for someone to give you money for your business and then not want a say in the goings on.  You needed money because what you were doing wasn’t working, right?  You needed money because you want to increase your production and expand distribution, right?  The Money Lender has great ideas, and insists they be heard.  And if the brewery was bought outright, forget about it.  The philosophy is changing.  The identity is changing.  The product is changing.  It won’t be for the best.  It may not happen right away, but it will happen.

In 1992, there was a relative explosion in the beer world, with a more than 400% increase in the number of breweries by the end of the decade.  In 2006 that beer boom became a rampant industry standard, and now we have more breweries operating now than at any point in this country’s history.  Not long after, Big Beer decided to adopt the “If you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em” mindset and began slowly but steadily gobbling up breweries.  Chicago’s Goose Island was acquired by AB-InBev, followed by an investment by MillerCoors into the Athens, GA based Terrapin Beer Company, which later turned into a complete buyout in 2016.  The dominoes continued to fall.  Boulevard.  Uinta.  Sweetwater.  Southern Tier.  Founders.  Elysian.  Oskar Blues.  Firestone Walker. Lagunitas.  Ballast Point. Breckenridge.  Cigar City.  Victory.  Wicked Weed.  The Bruery (just to name a few…and I’m not going to include Brooklyn Brewing’s sale of 24.5% to Kirin Holdings; this slick move allows them to continue to call themselves craft beer).  These breweries, many of them standard setters and torch carriers for the industry, sold either their breweries or a decisive stake in their businesses that would take them out of the label “craft beer”.  Why is this a bad thing?  What happens? Before you roll your eyes and call me a sloppy, crying beer geek screaming into the wind, I do have a point and I’m getting to it.

In a nutshell, Big Beer likes to dominate and they don’t really care how good or bad their product is in doing so.  They incentivize the monopolization of the market to their distributors, who get paid to push Big Beer products while mothballing actual craft beers, even to the point of claiming ownership of the draft systems they were paid to install.  Big Beer uses massive advertising dollars to insinuate their product images anywhere and everywhere beer is sold, and with their equally massive distribution footprint can put their product on every shelf and draft line almost anywhere they want, and they want it all.  And because the game is to maximize profits, Big Beer starts by cutting corners with beer production.  Why brew with just barley, when beer brewed with a high corn or rice content produces a beer-like substance? Why actually take the time to age a stout in a bourbon barrel, then a maple syrup barrel (trust me, it’s amazing) when you could just squirt a little Bourbon and Maple Barrel Aged flavoring into the stout as soon as it comes out of the fermentor?  Why keep the same, low price customers have come to expect?  People are salivating over this annual barrel-aged release; let’s double the price and enjoy the coast to coast sales!  What’s that?  You had success with a flavored IPA?  Let’s turn it into a clown car, pumping every imaginable fruit flavor into it until everyone who used to love it completely rights it off (but not before millions have bought it and grimaced) and everyone who is just getting into craft beer thinks these artificially flavored malt beverages are what the industry is all about?  I’m talking to you, Ballast Point, but especially you, Terrapin.  You broke my heart.  You were my first.  Letting you go will hurt, but it’s better this way.

As for private equity firms, they pump liquidity into a successful brewery or a brewery that can be perceived as successful, do their best to maximize profits for the brewery and in turn the firm, and at the end of the deal’s lifespan, the firm takes their money and leaves the brewery holding the bag.  New output demands to satisfy distribution?  Not our problem.  Outstanding financial obligations (loans) that were planned to be paid with increased profit margins that never really came to fruition?  Sorry.  Maybe you should close the second brewery location we bankrolled.  Perhaps you can sell off some of the equipment you needed.  Have you thought about selling to Constellation, I heard they pay big!

Are these negative things happening to the breweries that are selling or allowing large investment stakes?  Maybe.  In my opinion, probably.  I’ve worked as a bartender, beer ordering manager, distribution driver, brewery employee, beer consultant and a serious craft beer consumer, and I have experienced the negative effects of such movement in the market.  The two factors that led me to write this, however, are from a beer drinker’s perspective: flavor and price.  I’ve noticed a change in some of my favorite whales’ flavor characteristics over the past year or two.  What used to be wonderful, well-rounded flavors have become thin and oily, sometimes cloying.  Why do I want to pay for a milk stout that has been faintly and badly flavored with Nutella if you’ve reduced the size and increased the price? Why would I buy a maple bacon coffee porter that used to retail for about $10, but is now nearly three times that and the only noticeable difference (besides a dwindling palate) is a cool label?  And these whales are now beached everywhere.  A year ago, the Florida panhandle would be lucky to get one case of a certain maple barrel-aged stout from Grand Rapids.  This year, everyone had it.  How did the breweries manage these huge new production numbers?  Years ago they talked about how traditionally time intensive it was, and in the space of a year they’re seemingly able to fill shelves country-wide.

I’m not telling you, dear reader, to write off any of the breweries that I included in this article.  If you’ve never had some of these whales, go catch one and enjoy.  Is it as good as it was when people were standing in line for it like it was a pair of Pink Floyd tickets?  Is paying the newer, bigger price worth the experience?  I don’t know, but I kinda doubt it.  There are thousands of breweries in the U.S. brewing tens of thousands of beers.  Going forward, I think I’m going to expand my horizons and see how the smaller breweries are doing.  It may label me as a elitist beer hipster, but I’ve decided to make a career out of craft beer and I’d like to see where it will take me by being as true to its roots as possible.  I may miss out on some great beers, but I’m sure I’ll encounter many more in their place.  Besides, I need to stop hoarding beer.