Magic hat leaves behind a transformed craft beer industry in Vermont
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But there are downsides to all of this as well. The market is SUPER trendy, and breweries have the choice of either jumping on the bandwagon of the style-du-jour or being left by the wayside. Because there are so many breweries and they are so young, the overall quality is just okay with maybe one beer being notable and the rest being slightly sub par. Then you have this issue of investment firms and bigger conglomerates buying up successful microbrews and sucking the life out of them.
I love beer, and in many ways you could say that the American beer scene has never been better. But that doesn't mean that there aren't dark sides to all of that. I drank plenty of Magic Hat over the years, and it's a shame that there are certain names out there (Goose Island is one that comes to mind) that used to stand for a solid craft brewing operation that are now just marketing veneers on top of investment bankers and big corporations.
Founders All Day IPA is a solid go to. Other session IPAs/APAs I enjoy are Notch Left of the Dial, Lagunita's DayTime, Harpoon Rec League, and Zero Gravity Little Wolf APA.
But, to your point, even Cigar City's flagship IPA is 7.5% and way too heavy for the climate. We find it very ironic that a brewery from Michigan makes a wider, better range of refreshing beers.
I hope they're able to stay open after all of this, but my favorite brewery in the area is Flying Boat (St. Pete). They don't distribute, but their beers are consistently refreshing across styles. It's located at the end of a quiet, suburban neighborhood, so you you can have a beer outside and watch the neighbors mow their lawns.
It seems like the "American piss-water" jokes have finally subsided today, but for a good decade there, I was real defensive about the American beer scene :)
[*] Note: This is a friendly, lighthearted anecdote about my personal experience 15 years ago. Please take it in the spirit it is intended. I miss you, Europe.
The old brewer's joke which goes like this (I'll use your examples): A Budweiser salesman, a Coors salesman, and an Anchor Steam salesman meet in the hotel bar at a beer convention. The Budweiser man says, "I'll have a Budweiser." The Coors man says, "I'll have a Coors." The Anchor Steam man says, "Just water for me." The other two look at him and say "What? Just water?" "Well," he says, "since you guys aren't having beer I won't either."
The American craft beer Renaissance has been an amazing thing. Thank you Jimmy Carter! https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/08/how-jimm... ... err, maybe: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/08/jimmy-c...
[1] One of the comments on that YouTube clip complains that it was originally a Canadian joke. The canoe makes me think that might be true.
The differences between them are also huge with Irish dark stout, British pints without collar, German lager only made from basic ingredients, Belgian specialty beers, etc.
The effect of tradition and culture makes almost every beer in those regions taste perfectly decent and some very good, while in the US most are piss-water and some might indeed be very good.
With Bud Light still having the biggest market share, I believe the piss-water jokes still stand today.
However, that's the UK. Elsewhere I think there is much higher representation of the styles of a particular country. Germany epitomizes this with their beer purity law...
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/28/brewdog-law...
Anyway, had a ton of great conversations with Europeans about this. We were sad that it's really tough to get Mikkeller around here, and they were like "I cannot believe you say that while you live near Jester King."
I totally get being tired out of an extremely prominent style, but I'd encourage you to seek out some brews made with new hops as some of them are just very different and exciting. Of course, there's tons of other beer out there that's not an IPA, so by all means please continue to explore those spaces too!
You might be missing out on some really goods ones with this strategy
I understand the want to change it up. I seek out breweries that I haven't been to before or that have a deep catalog of beers that aren't found on shelves. Flights are a great way to try those beers, and their styles are usually of more variety.
One of my favorite breweries is Hermit Thrush in Brattleboro, Vermont. They specialize in sours, mostly aged. They source their aging barrels from all types of industries. Not only does the same recipe result in a different beer across multiple barrels, the same recipe results in a different beer each time a barrel is used.
If you look, you will find so much to explore. The space might feel dominated by IPAs, but other styles are benefitting from the rise of beer culture.
Even more shocking to me is what happened to ciders. Even with Seattle/WA ciders, which used to be far better than east coast stuff, taste like soda by comparison. There are a ton of incredible ciders on the east coast that are much drier, more nuanced and drinkable than current West Coast ciders. East coast ciders are a nice happy space between a sparkling wine and a beer. Honestly disappointed that the west coast has remained relatively stagnant recently.
Not just Treehouse, Trillium is another highly critically acclaimed Massachusetts brewery and its even younger (2013).
I have a similar rule for video games
IMHO americans aren't big on 'subtle' when it comes to anything food/drink (or really anything else) for the same reasons - 'really good beef' isn't the same as 'farm kobe with quadruple 5-adjective bacon and 10 cheeses' when it comes to a hamburger, and who wants a 'boring' ice-cream sundae when you can have a 'quadruple caramel chocolate oreo(tm) desertsmasher(tm)' or whatever have you
beer wise i tend to prefer english bitter ales which tend to be very well balanced and flavorful but are also subtle and not as 'clear' to explain as 'turbo bloodhound from hell ultra quadruple cascade hops mega super IPA brah'
same reason (+ more 'business' focus) we have comic-book branded wines which outline grape ratios in percentages with no thought as to terroir instead of subtly branded wines emphasizing regions/appelations/houses as in europe.
same thing is going on with the legal mj market where ultra-high THC percentages and max flavor are the focus
etc, etc, etc.
Back in the late 90's I fell in love with a Belgian beer called Moinette that came in a large bottle with a cork on top. It had a high alcohol level at the time. Loved it! To this day, it's still my favorite beer ever.
Today, you're much more likely to see a "New England IPA", "hazy" or "juicy IPA" in the star spot. This style is much less bitter, with a bigger body and a ton of sweet juice notes. It's a heavy beer but man is it tasty and refreshing.
Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing is a good example of the style that's widely distributed. Almost every craft brewer has one or two offerings of their own that are typically just as good.
I'm not much of a hop head but the New England style IPA is by far my favorite on the market. I'd encourage you to give it a try before swearing off IPAs forever.
For me it fills the place where a lot of people would put a stout or a Belgian - a really good one-and-done sort of beer.
It's funny to see IPAs dominate again, I remember when the last fad ended because hops became scarce and that gave way to the trend of absurdly strong imperial stouts. The sour trend was interesting but I'd much rather have a bad IPA than a bad sour.
And while IPAs dominate, at least on the east coast, there are a surprisingly large number of lagers, pilsners and lighter ales being put out by craft brewers, breweries are even making normal stouts! People always complain about the trending beers, but I still find more variety now that ever before in my drinking life.
Stronger beers will always dominate because frankly they're more interesting and diverse even if they aren't more drinkable. There's a lot more you can do with a barrel aged imperial stout than a lager.
That's why IPA dominates. You can "fix" a bad IPA. You can't fix a bad stout or lager.
They're not bitter at all, and instead they focus on extracting the fruit juice flavors of the hops. A lot of them taste like alcoholic orange juice mixed with other kinds of juice. I've developed a huge taste for them, and they're the perfect antidote for the storm of bitter nasty IPAs that have been flooding the market until a few years ago.
If you're looking for something from brewery that sells their products nationwide to sample, Lagunitas Hazy Wonder is really good. If you're in Texas, also look into anything from Tupps or Manhattan Project.
I long for the days when my college friends would bring me bottles of Augustiner in their suitcase when they came to visit. Absolutely boring. Utterly perfect.
I also live in Texas, where it gets really damn hot and humid out, and the refreshing citrus taste of hazies really helps deal with the heat in a way that wee heavies and milk stouts just don't.
Edit: I've also seen, thanks to Drizly, a new trend of light hazies that's starting to appear. They're a bit too thin for me, but if you don't like cloying you can always check them out. Sixpoint Trail Haze and Firestone Flyjack are the ones I've seen.
That's why I usually try the non-IPAs whenever I try a new brewery; I am also usually disappointed...
Bitterness =/= hoppiness
Regardless, sorry to tell you, but IPA has long since passed its initial fad stage. New styles of IPA can take over the IPA niche in an annoying way once in a while, but IPAs as a category have reached a stable level of popularity that seems to be sustained as new generations of beer drinkers enter the scene.
When I talk to tourists here in Seattle, of course they eventually ask about the best coffee places. If they're at least able to add "not Starbucks," I'm honest with them and tell them that there's really only two downtown that I like. These days, there are plenty of roasters, but the majority are pretty meh to outright bad.
Same thing with craft distilling in the past 10 years. The first wave of small batch distillers were revolutionary, but then many imitators jumped on the bandwagon.
Bars and restaurants pitch them as being "local" and therefore, good. Being local has nothing to do with being good. Some of the worst alcohol I've had were "local." It's gotten to the point where I purposely avoid ordering anything "local" unless I know who's involved in the distillery. And don't get me started on "craft vodka."
As with the discussion of online communities (reddit, Facebook) recently, I wonder if there's anything that remains good once it gains popularity. Or maybe I'm just an elitist hipster.
Slate got some bad press last year on labor practices at their stores, but they still roast excellent coffee.
If you're just outside of downtown either in SLU or south of Pioneer Square, Elm is good, too. There's also Bluebeard in Tacoma which is fantastic.
I'm not in Seattle -- I'm in Silicon Valley, with a fairly high chance of ending up in Sacramento this time next year -- but I'm always curious.
I've actually spent many years in Sacramento and occasionally go back. Sorry, absolutely no worthy coffee there, but you'll have some great cocktail bars! Go try Shady Lady, Jungle Bird, and Grange.
If there's hope, and it's hard to see sometimes, it's that most of the trends are at most regional. It's more rare than not that one of these trends jumps coasts, for instance. Many of these trends seem to be truly localized, or at least move in waves. (Anecdotally, by the time my West Coast friends were talking about hazy IPAs/New England IPAs, the trend had already come and gone in Kentucky.) From the level of "everybody in my city is drinking the same thing" perspective it feels the same, but from a high level it mostly means that no big corporation is themselves dominating the trends, almost all of them look to be following the trends, lagging them quite a bit, and/or entirely missing them. Goose Island, to follow your example, is no longer seen as an innovator even if folks don't know the why is that they are a brand arm of A-B InBev (the international conglomerate owners of Budweiser, etc), and no longer "local" despite how much they pretend to be.
The last nationally distributed beer I can recall trending as a fad is the one mentioned in this article, Magic Hat #9, and as the article itself points out, it is possible to take comfort that in building that success model Magic Hat more accidentally burnt national distribution bridges behind them than pave the way for more conglomerates to follow (or even the shell of themselves owned by a conglomerate to continue to succeed at that level), all the while paving behind them communities more likely build locally, trend regionally at best.
Nowadays I'm going back to European beers. In particular, I'm looking for German doppelbock these days. But anything from Belgium is usually excellent.
It has to be partially by choice, but The Alchemist and Lawson's make some of the best beer I have ever had, but they are both impossible to find outside of New England and a few parts of New York.
I recently moved back to Vermont, and one of the first things I did was purchase Heady Topper. Even less than five miles from the brewery, it was hard to find!
Alchemist AFAIK only has local distribution within 25 miles of the brewery in Stowe by their own trucks/vans.
(adding) If you find yourself in the central VT area, the Lawson's tap room is really nice facility, definitely check it out.
As soon as the beer gets canned its got 2-4 weeks where you can drink it and say "wow, that's amazing". After that you'll have it and think "ok, a bit overhyped".
Distributing beer throws freshness out the window. A liquor store may put it in the back for a month before they throw it on the shelf and then your prospective customers won't get the best impression your beer can offer, as it's tarnished while waiting in that can. So now there's this surge of brewery controlled distribution where you make these pilgrimages to buy a bunch of beer that they'd canned only a few days prior, attracting people to enjoy it when it tastes its best and spread the word.
Part of what makes the most sought after beers so good is that you can sometimes drink them the very day they were canned.
If you ever end up in MA, Tree House is worth checking out and has 4 of the top 20 beers on Untappd right now. Vitamin Sea in Weymouth, MA is also very good if you're closer to the coast.
I feel like that is pretty much all craft beer in the US is.
I just wish we could get some good European style lagers that are ubiquitous in Europe but don't exist in the US for some reason.
In Denver off the top of my head, Hogshead specializes in cask, Prost brews most of their beers according to Reinheitsgebot, Crooked Stave specializes in wild yeast sours. There's a bunch of others too.
New England is much more heavily influenced by Ireland and the UK, and I think that's why we don't get many good examples of continental styles around here. I also suspect that a lot of people who move from a brewing hobby to a brewing business have a lot more experience with ales, and less experience with lagers.
I've never had an excellent hefeweizen made outside of Germany.
NEIPAs are by definition excessively hopped, it's just mostly (if not all) dry hops that impart the aromas you described instead of bitterness that's associated with classic IPAs.
I went to a national chain today and I ended up with this - https://halffullbrewery.com/beer/bee-enlightened/
Is it great? Absolutely not! Is it serviceable? yes.
As the smaller, more rabid craft beer industry grew from the late 90s, bigger regional brewers like MH never really evolved. Some of that might have been due to the acquisitions, but survival in this extremely saturated space means making a name for yourself via taste and/or quality and Magic Hat didn't measure up. Very few people I know would reach for a MH over a cheapo adjunct lager.
By American adjunct lagers, I assume you mean budweiser, coors, etc? Maybe Magic Hat also made a lager but I was most familiar with their #9 which was a floral, light IPA that was definitely a big step above a cheapo lager. And the article is saying that if anything they were too out-there and experimental, which is basically the opposite problem as being undifferentiated from all the other cheapo lagers.
If somebody makes a standard porter, not only are they going to lose that high-concept audience, but if it's bad, people are going to know it's bad and not blame it on their own palate. You'd better have a very wacky label or name.
Using a porter as an example here is even strange, though, because aside from the high concepts, a vast majority of these beers are labeled IPA and virtually indistinguishable from generic lagers aside from possible hoppiness and their high concept.
In many ways, beer is like pizza. The best recipes already exist. There is nothing new to create or innovate. Microbrews are like hot-pockets filled with canned tomato sauce, yak cheese and caramelized watermelon. It might be novel, but it's probably not very good.
I guess I agree with this in a way, in that what most people are looking for are water substitutes that will give you a low-level buzz. I don't think most people want "good" brews, they were just told that's what they should want, and since the mass-market beer prices rose to nearly meet small brewery prices, there was little benefit in continuing to drink cheap. Buying an apricot flavored light (colored) beer in my view is similar to buying something from the new "flavored water" category. Or a White Claw.
I think this is a market failure rather than a failure in taste, though. Distinguishing yourself by quality in a glutted market is not going to work. It's better to think of a variation that is easily marketable than to compete on quality (except in a luxury market, where you can signal quality through pricing and exclusivity and rely on the effects of conspicuous consumption.) It's going to be easier to sell an IPA flavored with violet essence with a lot of flowers on the label, strong branding through color, and an evocative name than a beer whose only notable characteristic is that it tastes better than others of its type.
All that being said, as long as I can still get Edmond Fitzgerald porter, all is right with the world.
This is not really what I meant. I mean to say, for instance, I prefer Sam Adams over 90/100 microbrews I've tried. Name the top 6 non-economy beers in the supermarket, I enjoy most of them more than 75/100 microbrews. Taste-wise, I think most microbrews are a bad product, even if they were priced less than the premium national beers, I wouldn't buy them.
In many ways, it's like self-proclaimed 'audiophiles' and people that love vinyl. It's about something other than just the enjoyment of music. Similarly, as you suggest as a result of market forces, microbrews are about things other than taste. That explains the brewery's side of the equation, but no so much the customer's. Are people drinking microbrews simply because it's cool? Probably, and probably most of them.
I often visit local breweries when I travel as a form of supporting local businesses and such. I do enjoy trying new beers. I found, up until about 10 years ago, a local beer that had supermarket distribution was usually pretty dang good. It was the 'locals beer' which is not really the same as the microbrews we have now.
TBH, though, preferring the top 6 macro-micros to 75/100 microbrews is praising with faint damnation. 1/4 of microbrews being better than all non-economy macro-micros is a good hit percentage in my book.
Not precisely what I meant. I meant, pick the top 6 (probably in terms of gross sales), not my favorite 6. Also, I don't mean to say that all microbrews are bad, but the majority of them are, and the ones that are good are no better or only slightly better than the macro-microwbrews. My top 3 favorite beers are micros (or IMO, really more of a regional, has supermarket distribution).
All a matter of taste, of course, but I've always found Sam Adams to be on par with Magic Hat as the worst of the Big 'Craft' group. They tend to produce the most inoffensive option of any style, typically devoid of any of most palatable of its respective flavors.
After years of drinking these kinds of beers and being consistently disappointed, I'd rather reach for a macro lager or a small brewery's pale ale, gose or berlinerweisse. I think this is because they tend to appreciate what makes each style work and demonstrate that.
Sam Adams pale ales are basically post hopped, skunked lagers.
Most of the macros have a 'flagship' product, and that's what I was more or less referring to. Most micros have a fleet of beers, all bad or mediocre. A handful of them have 1 or 2 flagships that are quite good. It's rare that a microbrewery has more drinkable than dumpable beers, IMO.
Strongly disagree; I believe that the late 90s to early 2010s were the high point of the American brewing renascence, before it all got completely carried away, IMNSHO in hipsterism and bitterness-chasing, but perhaps more charitably just in neophilia. Back in the 90s there were numerous breweries just trying to make good English-style beer; nowadays it is all American Pale Ales, so bitter as to be very nearly undrinkable.
It feels that there's not nearly the room in the craft beer scene for high-quality, traditional beer that there was not all that long ago.
Nah. There is way too much of that, yes, but there is tons of other stuff, too. Between all the *PAs on the shelf you can find plenty of tasty beers, probably many of them brewed in your city or at least your state. And if you find a good one, you can go hang out at their taproom and probably say hi to the brewer. You could never do that in the 90s or 2000s :)
The thing is, in order to survive almost all of these Vermont food ventures have to "export" to other states. The local market isn't big enough. This encourages them to be more experimental, which fits with the state's independent streak but is also necessary to attract die-hard fans elsewhere.
To give one pre-pandemic example, if the local cheesemakers attempted to sell product that was just like what you can find in the supermarket there's no way consumers in other states would notice it, much less the restauranteurs in New York and Boston.
[Edited Unilever reference]
Asked honesty and earnestly, why?
Beers brewed in casks obviously have a different fermentation cycle than something brewed macro systems but storage is less of a problem than you may think for brewpubs and gastropubs, generally speaking. Wits can last for a while if properly stored and rotated (physically as in turning the keg on end), for example. But even then, casks aren’t ideal for long term storage in many cases, and not all beers are suited for storage in casks as opposed to say: steel kegs.
(Spent quite a long time in the service industry and worked two large breweries in Texas)
I do hope the cap hasn't leaked badly and oxidized everything. The bottle's been in the cold all the time though.
THAT BEING SAID I’d love to experiment with this and see for myself and see if there’s any truth to this. Store one Imperial in my kitchen fridge for a year and one in my basement fridge where I’ve got other alchemy experiments (Read: homebrews) going on that very rarely gets opened, and is slightly warmer than the kitchen fridge, ask doctor girlfriend to do a blind taste test, submit results to the local home brew club for a fun beer chemistry discussion.
mad scientist grin
At least as it pertains to the article, not all of Magic Hat’s products involve this brewing process, unless I’ve misunderstood you?
Of course it’s entirely possible that local craft bars could probably clean their lines a bit better, I’ve definitely experienced this when ordering a beer made by one of the breweries I worked for and immediately Noticing “nope that’s not how this is supposed to taste”, we offered to clean their lines for free because it directly affected perception of our product if people think our beer is skunky due to poor cleaning practices, and wouldn’t you know it the next pour tasted much better.
Many craft breweries do this, as well, sometimes employees of bars just take one beer off a line and out on a totally different style of beer without a thorough flush (often times just out of ignorance not knowing better) and you Will definitely taste the difference. So maybe this is a quality control issue with the service delivery and not the way beers are brewed and stored?
I really miss the richer, softer head and 'alive' flavor from a proper cask ale. Well, not that anyone should be out drinking socially these days, anyway.
Most consumers here don't want a cask beer, but instead a carbonated one from a keg. If you serve them a cask beer they think it's flat. There's a craft brewery near me that specializes in cask (shout out to Hogshead in Denver if you've never been), but they're embracing the niche aspect of that rather than attempting to be "what beer should be". It's not a case of cheaping out.
Some styles do have quite short shelf lives, namely the ubiquitously popular IPAs. Even with miniscule DO (dissolved oxygen) levels - breweries measure in PPB - you have a few weeks until staling can be reliably discriminated. Distribution takes a couple of those good weeks right off the top in many cases, making stale beer a real issue for people that like hoppy styles.
Much of the trendiness is beer now is due to limited distribution. You can't get Pliny on the East Coast, and you can't get Alchemist or Treehouse on the West. You have to have them specially shipped, leading to one of the worst dick-measuring contests in history with the bottle-trade scene. Those breweries forgo huge sales because they insist on controlling distribution such that quality won't suffer.
It is absolutely a real issue.
Also, any homebrewer can tell you this first hand. Not just for hops, but delicate malt flavors are often at their peak about two weeks from brewing, just enough time to fully ferment and then mature cold in a keg for a few days. Good taprooms can get you this experience as well, but beer trends are decidedly against delicate malt character, though crispy bois (aka pilsners) are having a moment.
I'm not sure I can concur with this, distribution of spirits is an incredibly well solved problem and a speedy one, taking the forms of self-distribution, "hot-shot" distribution/delivery and wholesale distributors. They vary in scale and they all serve different customer segments in the marketplace. I'll concede that wholesale distribution can definitely sometimes take longer than the other two distribution models, but not by a significant magnitudes that it affects the product as much as many would presume, especially with refrigeration technology able to keep the product from heating up and suffering from basic chemistry doing its thing as the beer "cooks" in transit once it's been kegged and sealed
E.g.
Self-distribution models if your local state allows it lets brewers sell right out the back of their vans or right off site to any bar or patron that wants to buy and has the proper licenses to sell alcohol (I did this in Austin for 3 years driving from Austin to Houston weekly with a van full of kegs to bars that had made an order only days prior).
Hot-shot delivery isn't too different from this only it's usually upstart distributing companies (sometimes former brewery workers who split off, bought a van and got appropriate licenses) who will buy kegs and flip them to consumers.
Wholesale, name speaks for itself, but they often sell direct to retailers.
Ultmately though, alcohol distribution is a very well solved problem.
In regards to number of beers on tap, not every beer is going to by in your standard size keg which points to some of your concerns. Chances are a number of the craft beers are in smaller kegs so they stay fresh, but more importantly take up less space. Refrigeration is key at establishments like that and ideally the kegs would be in their own fridge rather than just in the walk-in like many restaurants do it. Worst is the kegerators at the bar where the untapped gets are at room temperature. Not only is that not good for the beer, it's also horrible if you're one of the first pours from that keg.
https://www.taptrail.com/world-record-for-most-beer-taps/
I really struggle to believe they keep 366 beers in the best condition possible. And I don't get why it's a goal in the first place. I don't think anyone is making a meaningful choice between 366 beers and I bet they often get a disappointing one when they select something that nobody else has picked in the last week.
If a bar has the sort of foot traffic/clientele/supply chain to support 366 different beers on tap then good for them, some do, it's not an easy operation to run. They also usually buy mini-kegs for quick turnover. If they are serving garbage quality beer that's been sitting for months then they probably wouldn't be in business.
The place I used to frequent that has around 25 beers on tap usually had a turnover of about 50% of taps/week from what I saw.
Shrug the Delirium Café in Brussels has 2000 beers on tap.
I worked for a pub for a while that did beer and wine only with 20 taps. We definitely had the occasionally stinker that sat around for way too long (if it sat around too long, it would start getting poured for the staff and regulars on the house), and we had our usual suspects that would pop almost every day. By and large though, it was rare for any given keg to last over 4-5 days.
40 is a lot more than 20, but we were a relatively small bar that didn't even open on Sunday.
These days, I'm very much utilitarian about beer, as long as on touch it's colder than room and not much more than 2bucks a bottle. In most cases (for me), the buzz and burp are just unwanted side-effects, so cool water sans ice serves the function ... free of charge. I pick up the missed carbs from the dessert :)
I don't think this really captures how important small business is to Vermont. This is likely culling a lot of jobs across the whole supply chain that locals rely on to survive.
Hemp has also become a thing.
I honestly don't think it's detrimental to the industry here: there are a TON of smaller breweries that are all doing really well.
Vermont doesn't have much going for it economically. Winters are hit or miss for skiing, dairy is dying, etc. Small scale agriculture is the business there. Once you leave Burlington and the immediate vicinity, things look alot less prosperous. Moving a small operation like this is a slow cut that impacts local farms, etc.
I guess I'm not sure what you mean here. I was at their taproom in Burlington a year or two ago, and you could get full pints of everything they had on tap. I think when I was there, they even had a keg of something they didn't bother to bottle. There's also a really well done tour through the brewing facility, which I thought was pretty cool.