Lazy craft beer marketing

I love craft beer (whatever 'craft' means exactly) and I respect many of those involved in its production. The problem is that there is a mountain of marketing gibberish to deal with before you even get to the beer itself. I understand that marketing isn't going to go away but there has to be a way to communicate with consumers that doesn't treat us like we're too stupid to be taught. And the crazy thing is that educating consumers is the business that craft brewers need to be in if they want to keep growing and selling their beer.

So at the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, here is my list of the best worst craft beer marketing nonsense I come across regularly.

1. 'We use only the finest ingredients'/'finest natural ingredients'

'Natural' malt, finest quality of course.

Really? Do you forage for them and pick out the individual grains and hops? No. You buy them from the same suppliers as everyone else. These days most malt and hops are high quality, packed and stored well. It's not that this kind of statement is necessarily wrong, it's just meaningless because everyone is in the same boat. Adding natural to the phrase and you just create a more dense ball of meaninglessness. The malting process is not natural, hop pellets don't occur in nature.


2. 'Our beer is handcrafted'

Beer is not a piece of wood or marble to sculpt. It's made in an industrial process. And if a human is pulling levers and connecting hoses rather than pressing the buttons to run an automated system, does that make the beer intrinsically better? And if it really does give it a level of authenticity that outweighs any losses in consistency, then shouldn't you brew using a completely manual process? Give up on electricity, thermometers, gravity readings and all of that stuff. Brew like Boegedal or Ramūnas Čižas. If you just mean 'we worked hard to create a great tasting beer', then say that.


3. Anything about water

Beer brewed with this water would be way better than beer
brewed with what comes out of the tap. Of course.

Please don't tell me anything about your source of water. You brew beer, there's water in it. That's a safe assumption. In this day and age it should be at least decent wherever you are. And with RO and other purification and modification techniques employed by breweries, talk about pure spring water is just silly. It comes from a tap, not a stream, and has gone through a treatment plant before it ever made it to your brewery and went through whatever further treatments you make to it.


4. Co-opting history unconnected to your brewery to sell your beer

Australian breweries seem to be in love with this. I realise that stories are important in helping people connect with the brewery but it's so tired. Pick some obscure historical figure or location, massage the story to make them your theme, tie in your roster of beers in some tenuous way. Doesn't do anything for the beer, it's just a story to suck people in.


5. Emphasising the setting of a production brewery

Brewing equipment on a farm works way better
than elsewhere. It can feel the authenticity.

Does it really make any difference if your beer is brewed in a shed on a farm or in a shed on an industrial estate? A farm is more romantic and perhaps a nice place to drink but if the beer is being consumed off-site, it's not at all relevant. If you want people to connect to your brewery, give them a sense of your attitude, character or philosophy. The place you brew can be part of that but it's not even close to being sufficient.


6. Anything that invokes the Reinheitsgebot

Step back craft brewers, better save all that rye and wheat
for the bakers. Your beer will taste better this way.

Really? An obscure German law designed to free up wheat and rye for bakers and keep bread prices under control means your beer is better than one that uses other adjuncts? That's some solid thinking right there. Anyone who equates craft beer with this law really doesn't understand what's been happening in the beer world over the last 45 years.


7. Stunts & weird ingredients

I'm sure this is what the keg raft looked like

You're so wacky and crazy! You made a raft out of your beer kegs and sailed it to India to recreate the journey of the original IPAs or you made a beer using some native herb instead of hops. I'm all for innovation but the wacky thing is pretty tiring and limited and feels like a smokescreen hiding the absence of any real philosophy or personality. It's similar when it comes to using unusual ingredients, it's fine if it adds something but often it seems like a gimmick. Either way, it has a very limited shelf life.


8. Describing your brewery as traditional

Maybe what they mean by traditional is that they
wear traditional clothes while brewing?

Another meaningless description. In what sense is it traditional? Did you get your recipes from a historical source? Are you brewing a traditional style? Are you using historical methods? Stainless fermenters aren't traditional and most beer styles are 'traditional' in that they've been around for 100+ years.


Conclusion
I'm guessing that marketing without all this nonsense is a bit harder to pull off. At the very least it'll take a bit more thinking than the normal stuff. I don't think it's too much to ask for to have marketing that educates and communicates love for the product rather than gibberish and weak narratives.

Russian River's Pliny the Elder has messages around the edge of the label telling consumers to drink it fresh. The Stone Enjoy By IPAs communicate a similar message in a different way. Hop aromas fade quickly and IPAs shouldn't be aged. That's useful information and not widely enough known and they're great ways to communicate it. It doesn't have to be strictly informational but it should communicate passion, care and thought. Actually, I think that's why I don't like puns in beer names (because they're usually lazy and don't communicate an attention to detail) but that's a whole other thing.

There are some really good breweries that avoid most of these marketing moves and do a good job of expressing who they are and what they're really doing. If craft beer is going to grow and gain more market share, it needs more breweries like that. It's best bet is to educate people and teach them to expect certain qualities from the beer they drink. The more meaningless drivel that's part of the conversation, the more obscure the important details become and the less people care about it. Craft beer can only thrive when consumers are interested, educated and know what they're dealing with.