A longer post on my experience with Tavour (some of which is positive) is coming soon, but for now just a quick observation or two.
Tavour is selling some excruciatingly expensive beers, many from breweries that are quite often very new, and that have no track record. As such, they need some stealthy marketing. Often, their copy looks something like this;
“The Iowan Des Moines Inquirer describes this as the best unplaced beer at The Jackson Lake Lodge Beer Festival in Wyoming last month. It also won 3rd place in the ‘Porters with Marshmallows added’ sub-style, and was runner up in the, “Cloying for cloying’s sake’ side festival. One for the ages from this two week old brewery, that’s Men’s Douchbaggery magazine calls perhaps one of the best in the state, and the 5th best to open west of the Mississippi in the last fourteen days. $27.99 for the 375 mL bottle for Shit on a Stick by the Candy Factory Beverage Company.”
I understand marketing, so that’s fine. The adults amongst us can easily by-pass the nonsense and not purchase it if we see fit, but a few days ago this was accompanied by something that caught my eye, and something associated with a much more established player. Here’s the copy from Cocompany from The Bruery.
Several things bug me about this, and BTW I’m not even talking about the adjunct laden beer, here.
Firstly, Pastry Stouts are not a style. The Brewer’s association and the BJCP don’t recognize them as such. Even if we assume them to be a sub-style of let’s say, stouts, on what grounds does a few years of its/their existence disqualify them as a fad? When beer styles of several hues go back centuries, I think 3-4 years can still be a fad. Call me in 2130, and then we’ll talk.
Secondly, even if you are a big fan of pastry stouts, the line taken from the Chicago Tribune is wholly accurate (I suspect that this is the article that Tavour is referring to). This is the basis of much of my complaining about so much of the beverage (I refuse to call it beer) industry these days. A ‘beer’ like this, really does forget, “what beer tastes like”. These things are best described as “alcoholic desert beverages”. In 2017, Josh Noel was quite correct.
There’s also the reference to the “Sweet-toothed Crew”, building an empire on Pasty stouts. That implies that the Bruery’s success is (and was forever) somehow founded on such products. That’s just not true.
Truthfully I really don’t much care what other people want to drink, but I do object to it being called beer, and I do lament the fact that this fad as devastated the shelf-space available for real beer. The former has little tangible effect on me, the latter really does, and that’s why it matters to me.
Right on….one pastry stout king in our area was being hyped beyond belief a year or two ago ..things have settled a bit but still they have released a 500 box set and a some diabetes causing releases that people trade their left testicles for..