
Magic hat leaves behind a transformed craft beer industry in Vermont - AndrewLiptak
https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/magic-hat-leaves-behind-a-transformed-craft-beer-industry-in-vermont/Content?oid=30705701
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polygotdomain
As a craft beer lover, I'm really at odds with what to think about where the
scene is today. There are so many breweries out there that are brewing some
really great beer and coming up with some interesting styles. In many places
there's a recapturing of what I'd call "beer as place" with beirgartens, brew-
pubs, and breweries themselves having a more open and inviting experience to
hang out and drink beer. It's tasty, fun, and enjoyable.

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.

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kevin_thibedeau
I'm really getting tired of the IPA fad. I loved IPAs when they were a niche
product and you could sample most of them in a reasonable time span. Now
they're 90% of the shelf space and other deserving varieties are hard to find.
Most of the newcomers are poorly executed hacks that follow the simplistic
formula: IPA == bitter hops, therefore let's overload on hops. I won't drink
any IPA that wasn't around 10 years ago just to filter out the garbage.

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AnotherGoodName
As someone that just wants a refreshing but quality lager there's nothing for
me in this current wave. It's all group think. IPAs and Imperial Stouts
everywhere. To the extent that you will find entire categories of beer on beer
rating sites with nothing above a 4/5 in that category due to the groupthink
that says more flavor = higher ratings. Refreshing, crisp and other such
metrics don't count right now due to the current fashion. Overpowering flavor
is what we judge beer on.

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catalogia
I have similar preferences and share your frustration. I wonder if part of the
problem is that "refreshing and crisp" are hard to quantify. Because you can't
put objective numbers to them like IBU or ABV, you can't hope to sell your
beer by having "better numbers" than your competitors.

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cat199
think this + undeveloped palates is exactly it.

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.

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ErikAugust
Vermont today has much better beer than Magic Hat (even at its height). They
tried a lot of different stuff, and most of it just wasn't very enjoyable.
What Magic Hat did have was beautiful marketing and wider distribution.

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!

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tarentel
Lawson's started brewing at Two Roads in CT and got a distributor in CT and
it's been a lot easier to find at least here in NJ within the past year. I
also recently got Heady and Focal down here but I am not sure where the
distributor got it from or if it was a one off thing. You probably already
know about them but Hill Farmstead is my favorite in VT. I used to go there a
few times a year when I lived closer by.

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ErikAugust
I still find Hill Farmstead nearly impossible to find, even being in Vermont.
They make great beer, but also show that exclusivity adds a lot to the
mystique.

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beezle
AFAIK its only available on tap, frequently at ski area restaurants.

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ErikAugust
There are a couple places that may sell it outside of bars... Beverage
Warehouse in Winooski comes to mind.

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jdhn
Wow, this is such a throwback. Along with Hoegaarden (pre-Inbev acquisition)
and Harpoon's UFO White, #9 was one of my first forays into craft beer. That
being said, it's been years since I've seen any Magic Hat on a shelf. Perhaps
I'm not looking hard enough? Either way, here's hoping that Magic Hat makes a
resurgence!

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corporateslave5
There’s a trick to #9. It is 10x better freshly brewed! I went to the magic
hat brewery and had #9 there. The taste was so much better, you could tell it
was due to the freshness. It ruined the beer for me though, because now I know
what I’m buying off the shelf is a bit old.

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seibelj
Most beers are better at the brewery IMO, and most beers are better on draft.
One beer I especially like in a can is Boddingtons because of the CO2 capsule
that makes its pour quite similar to a draft beer. I think a few other beers
have the same innovation. I believe I’m the only person at my local package
store who buys it, as they order very little and I always seem to buy the last
couple 4-packs.

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corporateslave5
Right, but I think because it’s an apricot beer, the freshness has more of an
impact on taste than other beers. Just speculating

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Obi_Juan_Kenobi
Fruit ages pretty well in general, but I'd strongly suspect that Magic Hat had
DO levels back then that would horrify the industry today.

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nkozyra
I think while Magic Hat holds a place in the craft beer renaissance story,
much of the regional beer from that era was unremarkable. The idea that it was
better than the macro beers stemmed largely from the experimentation and
derivation from American adjunct lagers.

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.

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zeveb
> I think while Magic Hat holds a place in the craft beer renaissance story,
> much of the regional beer from that era was unremarkable. The idea that it
> was better than the macro beers stemmed largely from the experimentation and
> derivation from American adjunct lagers.

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.

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coldpie
> 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.

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 :)

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ilamont
A lot of really good entrepreneurial food companies have come out of Vermont,
Ben & Jerry's being the most famous. Like MH, it was acquired by a
multinational company (Unilever) although it still strives to retain its
independence and Vermont character. We live in an adjoining state, and get
cheese, chocolate, beer, and syrup from Vermont producers. There's even
roasted coffee beans from a producer up there that my wife likes. Most aren't
known outside of the northeast.

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]

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waterfowl
minor nitpick - B&J was purchased by Unilever which is similar but less
reviled online than Nestle.

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ilamont
You're right ... I always mix those two up.

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chrisseaton
I think an issue the American craft beer scene has is quantity over quality.
Some American beer places I go into have like forty different beers _on tap_ ,
and are really proud of it. I find it hard to believe that forty beers are
being kept fresh and live and maintained properly. Are they replacing them
every few days or are the less popular ones in a range that wide sitting there
for weeks? I feel like they're ending up quietly taking lower-quality
shortcuts like using kegs rather than casks. I don't know why they don't focus
on fewer, higher quality beers, rather than a ridiculously wide range.

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dvtrn
_I find it hard to believe that forty beers are being kept fresh and live and
maintained properly_

Asked honesty and earnestly, why?

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chrisseaton
Fresh beer ideally lasts about five days. Are these places getting through a
whole cask of all their forty beers every five days? Doesn't seem likely to
me. I'm guessing that they're using shortcuts like putting it into kegs rather
than casks, Pasteurising rather than keeping it fresh, and using carbonation
instead of pumping it naturally, in order to support their huuuuuuge ranges.
If they focused on a smaller number they woudln't have to do this and they
could have higher quality instead.

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monocasa
Are you from the UK? Cask is considered a sub genre in the US, and not
something to shoot for in the general case here.

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.

~~~
chrisseaton
Yeah. Oh right I thought 'craft' sort of implied 'cask' and the kegs were a
cheap shortcut, but maybe the taste in the US is more for carbonated beers.

~~~
monocasa
I edited the above, but if you ever find yourself in Denver, check out
Hogshead. Really great brewery focusing on cask beers. Haven't had a bad beer
there.

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tomc1985
There are so many good east coast brews that we rarely, if ever, see on the
west coast. I pick up Magic Hat whenever I see it, and they've always been
good -- didn't know they were such a revolutionary force, and that the (very
good) beer that I buy from them was even better back in the day.

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zoomablemind
Craft beer craze seems to overpower any ability to discern flavor subltieties
across so many offerings. Won't balme consumers to shop by the labels, one
craftier looking than other. Even established brands like the MH can drown in
the colorful sea of the labels. So gone the days, when I readily paid for
overweight luggage just to bring home a case of UFO from Boston.

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 :)

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freefal
#9 is one of my favorite beers so I was bummed to see the title of this HN
post. Reading the article it sounds like production is just being moved to
Rochester though.

~~~
bluntfang
>production is just being moved to Rochester though.

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.

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fastball
I think GC was more referring to the "fall" in the article's title. This might
be bad for Vermont, but it's hardly the "fall" of Magic Hat.

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beezle
There are more than enough brewers and distillers in VT that it won't be that
big a deal. Regionally at least, Alchemist, Lawsons and Switchback are bigger
names now.

Hemp has also become a thing.

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beezle
Never really got into most of the Magic Hat offerings. Single chair was ok. I
was surprised they never really did much with the tap room, instead keeping it
to just to small samples and merchandise rather than going full tap room like
everyone else

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coldpie
> I was surprised they never really did much with the tap room, instead
> keeping it to just to small samples and merchandise rather than going full
> tap room like everyone else

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.

~~~
beezle
You are probably right, though I know I never had a full pint and don't recall
seeing others with them when I was there.

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iloveyouocean
The post title should be 'Magic Hat leaves behind a transformed craft beer
industry in Vermont'. Magic Hat is the name of a company.

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adamc
I don't even drink, but this is a great story.

