[Update #2: Peter Egelston, founder of Portsmouth Brewery, has released the FULL details of the release at the brewery blog. There will actually be 900 bottles of Kate the Great, not 540 as mentioned on the blog two weeks ago! And it will stay $10 a bottle! Amazing! (For the record, when we said it was "allegedly going to be $20," we pulled it from this poster who said he heard it "straight from the horse's mouth": Rixbeer at Beer Advocate.) Regardless, between KTG at $10/bottle and the Oatmeal Stout at $4/bottle, this brewery has been criminally generous!]
[Sunday AM June 1 Update: Tyler Jones, Portsmouth Brewer, posted yesterday that all bottles will be sold on day 1. 540 bottles will certainly be sold out in one day. Tod Mott, Head Brewer, noted in a post some days back that it will back again in January 2009.]
(Portsmouth, NH) – Booked a flight to Portsmouth next month? Planning to sell the beers on eBay? In either case, you may be disappointed. The brewery put it to a vote and, barring any unforeseen changes, will limit each person to two bottles of Portsmouth Kate the Great for the upcoming June 24 release. Not only that, they will no longer be filling growlers of it either.
The policy represents a stark change from years past when the beer, though difficult to find in bottles, was readily available in the form of growler fills when on tap. The brewery allowed six bottles and two growler fills per person during last December’s release. This June, the price will allegedly increase to $20 a bottle and “distribution” of the beer will be especially limited. The new price comes at a time when oil, hops, and malt prices have been skyrocketing. As The Portsmouth Brewery has learned though, there can sometimes be a fine line between running a profitable business and appeasing beer fanatics.
The changes to this release may frustrate beer people from far away who were hoping to make a day of it on June 24 (we don’t yet know if ALL bottles will be sold that day). They will certainly meet mixed reaction with local drinkers as well. After all, the beer was previously a bargain at $20 a growler ($5 a pint) and cheap at $10/$12 a bottle considering its status as #2 beer on the planet. However, a supply that was supposed to last a few months lasted only a few weeks last December. If that trend were to continue this June, the “KTG” tap lines may have dried up in just a few days.
The brewpub, a small operation, in a small New England city that is quiet much of the year, faced a tough decision. Word about the beer spread like wildfire in the last several months and there was already talk about early-morning lines forming for the Tuesday afternoon release (yes, lines on a Tuesday for a beer release). But the Market Street sidewalk isn’t nearly as spacious as the Three Floyds property in Munster, IN (not the same animal as the Dark Lord Day release but just to illustrate). The street is also in shambles at the moment as the city is doing a lot of construction. A Kate the Great release, without the new limits, may have been a disaster waiting to happen.
The new measures should help curtail some of the expected traffic though. It will also accomplish a number of things. For one, limiting purchases of Kate should lead to purchases of the brewpub’s other selections. Most have probably never heard of Portsmouth Oatmeal Stout, #6 in the style at Beer Advocate [Ed: this was available in the store at $4/bomber at one point which I still find remarkable]. How about the Portsmouth Wheat Wine, a 2007 GABF medalist that is locked up in a battle with sister company, Smuttynose Brewing, for title of best wheat wine on the upper East Coast. Come to think of it, the same could be said for the battle between Portsmouth Imperial IPA and Smuttynose Big A IPA. It is doubtful that these beers will be on tap for the release, but it shows that Head Brewer, Tod Mott, has a lot more in his arsenal than a single imperial stout. The brewery keeps an updated tap list on the blog site for those attending on June 24.
Restricting the beer on tap will also keep people returning to the brewpub, not that extra business is hard to come by during the late June tourist season. And for anyone who has witnessed a growler pour, a lot of beer is wasted depending on the care taken during the pour.
Love it or hate it, the beer is no longer a diamond in the rough. With these last two releases, the beer community has firmly established Portsmouth Kate the Great among other frenzied special releases such as Three Floyds Dark Lord and Surly Darkness. In line with these great expectations, this year’s Kate will be bigger than it has ever been before at 12% ABV.
For those going to the brewery for the release, there is a parking garage that charges just 75 cents an hour and is just a short walk from the brewpub. That short walk may just seem a little longer than usual on June 24.
According to Chris and Morgan of North Coast Brewing, recently featured on The Brewing Network’s Sunday Session podcast, North Coast Barrel-Aged Old Rasputin will return next year. The website shows that “Old Rasputin XI” will be available this year but that appears to no longer be the case. The 10th anniversary version, released in April 2007, currently sits just outside of the top 100 at Ratebeer and is the second-highest rated beer ever by the brewery at Beer Advocate. The brewery is also working in the lab on something special for the anniversary in September.
Russian River Brewing will celebrate the brewpub’s 4th anniversary on Saturday, May 31. According to the website, starting at 11am, “Temptation, Supplication, Compunction, and Beatification will be tapped.”
Ballast Point Brewing just added some beers on tap:
Piper Down Scottish Ale will run out this weekend if it hasn’t already. “Brewed for the upcoming SD Highland Games. A drinkable, malty ale in the tradition of a Scottish Export style. Three hour boil and 60 degree ale fermentation. Clean with a candied sweetness and light roast.”
Brother Levonian Saison was recently released as a tribute to a friend that passed away earlier this year after a battle with cancer. “The beer is a Belgian-Style Saison brewed with Belgian Pale Malt, Belgian Vienna Malt, Oats, Wheat, Coriander, Sweet Orange Peel, Curacao, Grains of Paradise, Mountain Flower Honey and Belgian Saison 565 yeast (donated by White Labs).”
Others:
Even Keel- Our San Diego Style Session Ale brewed with loads of hops. 3.5% ABV
Sour Wench- Sour Blackberry Ale aged in french oak. 5.5% ABV
Nitrogenated Black Marlin and Nitrogenated Calico Amber coming soon
Finally, Shaun O’Sullivan of The 21st Amendment, based in San Francisco, recently revealed that the brewery is currently working with Cold Spring Brewery, the largest one in Minnesota, to help expand its canning operation. 21A IPA and High or Hell Watermelon Wheat will be shipped back to California for wider distribution, but it seems likely that Minnesota would be one of the first stops on the list should distribution expand to other states.
The East Coast edition of Beer Notes!
Pennsylvania-area beer fans could be surprised when Southern Tier Brewing releases its Cherry Saison early. The beer should be made available late this week according to a representative from Shangy’s in Enmaus. No word yet on distribution to other states but it should roll out elsewhere soon thereafter. Southern Tier Creme Brulee shouldn’t be far off either.
Terrapin Beer Company announced a little over a week ago that RoggenRauchbier, #2 in the Side Project Series, would be available in early June. Meanwhile, the brewery will also be releasing Terrapin India Brown Ale in bottles for the first time.
Mayflower Brewing is a fairly new operation based in Massachusetts. The brewery recently started shipping out bottles for the first time in and around the Boston area. The brewery may not see much respect on Ratebeer but Director of Brewing Operations, Matt Steinberg, has successfully got what appears to be a mini-cult following at Beer Advocate. The beers available in bottles now are Mayflower Golden Ale and Mayflower Pale Ale. Mayflower Porter will be available next month while Mayflower IPA, the most popular beer, has been sporadically available around Boston bars on tap.
Lastly, Smuttynose Brewing apparently stopped brewing its Portsmouth Lager and is replacing it with a Belgian-style ale of some kind. Portsmouth Lager has been around for years so this is quite a change for the brewery. [And it's nice to see folks getting riled up about a lager going offline.]
vs. 
[Update: When I made this post, I thought I understood web traffic analytics and believed the numbers I see online. Since adopting Google Analytics, I've seen firsthand how full of crap these Alexa numbers are, etc. I failed to listen to Jonathon at Beermapping among others. While I was glad to see that there was this much interest in a post, I also regret portraying it as one side vs. the other. I thought that as an unbiased third-party, I could provide some interesting analysis. What we really need to do is to figure out how to get the two sides on the same page and fight for craft beer. And we do have a big fight ahead of us.]
A quick and dirty web traffic comparison of the two most beloved beer sites on the internet. Keep in mind that the tools discussed here can be used to learn more about your other favorite sites. If any of this appears confusing, just skip down to the summary at the bottom. Here’s a quick profile of Beer Advocate and RateBeer:
Beer Advocate:
Site started: May 31, 2000
Founded by: Todd and Jason Alstrom, Cambridge, MA
Beers in database: 40,687
Reviews in database: 606,663
Ratebeer:
Site started: March 8, 2000
Founded by: Bill Buchanan
Beers in database: 81,005
Reviews in database: 1,664,306
There are three sites that come to mind when discussing traffic rankings (for me, at least): 1) Alexa, 2) Compete, and 3) Quantcast. I won’t go into it too much here but for legitimate reasons, there is controversy surrounding internet stats because they’re inherently unreliable. But for purposes of our comparison, the traffic sites work OK. Without further ado, let’s look at Alexa, perhaps the most well-known web traffic stats service:
Beer Advocate:
3 month avg. ranking: 23,776
Ratebeer:
3 month avg. ranking: 32,011
Both sites appear to be generally trending upward though Beer Advocate has separated itself in the past few months.
Beer Advocate:
Monthly rank: 15,166
Monthly people count: 124,393
Ratebeer:
Monthly rank: 24,017
Monthly people count: 77,765
Note that ‘people count’ probably refers to unique IP addresses. So the actual number of people using the site is probably much less than these numbers indicate when factoring home AND work usage. The graph below paints a different story than Alexa does, showing that traffic has plateaued for both sites though Beer Advocate is still showing more activity here.
Beer Advocate:
Rank: 23,370
Ratebeer:
Rank: 37,238
The image below shows daily unique visits since Quantcast doesn’t show traffic graphs. It appears that these visits are actually dropping though traffic appears to be level or at a slight incline according to Alexa and Compete.
If you’re not snoring away already, let’s look at one more thing at Quantcast: demographics. More specifically, what makes up the monthly traffic at the two sites? Below is a chart showing that very few users make up the lion’s share of traffic at Ratebeer.com. If we take 3% of the unique visits per month, we come to 1600 unique (IP addresses). Say that a little more than 1/3 of them access it from either multiple computers or at work, etc. So we have 1000 actual people accounting for 67% of the total visits per month or about 250,000.
That is extreme. Beer Advocate is not quite as extreme but still more drastic than the norm. Type in Dead.net, the official site for the Grateful Dead (another cult following similar in nature to beer enthusiasts), into Quantcast stats and you won’t find anything near the level of loyalty of these two sites. That’s great if you’re looking to sell something (like a premium membership or a magazine). Whether it’s good for site growth is another discussion.
There is a ton more that can be discussed looking deeper into Quantcast’s demographics including income, ethnicity, etc. but we’ll stop there and summarize what we’ve learned.
1. Beer Advocate is seeing stronger traffic numbers than Ratebeer.
2. Ratebeer appears to be more community-centric in that it has a deeper interaction between its core users.
3. Unique visits appear to be dropping though traffic is steady if not slightly on the rise.
If anything, these figures raise more questions. Why would unique uses be slipping? Where else might the regular and fringe users be going? There are a number of possibilities. Without giving it much thought, I might hypothesize that it boils down to homebrewing. The niche is growing and homebrewing boards like homebrewtalk.com and northernbrewer.com boast over 20,000 and 11,000 board members, respectively. As commercial beers become more expensive and more people decide to experiment with or are exposed to homebrewing, one would think that trend will continue. That begs the question: how viable will the two sites be if their core users leave the commercial niche and flock to the homebrewing niche?
What do you think? Post a comment or bring this discussion to one of the boards!
