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“We’re sick of getting overlooked.”
This line in a press release snagged my attention Thursday as I skimmed through my inbox, deleting the majority of requests for coverage as not newsworthy enough to warrant my attention. But this … this was different.
“ Magic Hat has announced it will be dropping a big ol’ delicious double on keyboard warriors, beer snobs and name-droppers, thereby getting the last laugh, the upper hand, and regaining the hop high ground,” it read. “Laughing Stock is a brand-new Double IPA expected to slake thirsts on a year-round basis starting this summer.”
“Now that’s ballsy,” I thought, “and exactly what a lot of brewers whose beers get pre-emptively dismissively as stodgy think but don’t dare say in public.”
As the 24-year-old Magic Hat Brewing admits in its release, most contemporary craft drinkers view the Vermont beer pioneer as a “college kid gateway brewery,” thanks in large part to its best-selling apricot ale, #9, which enchanted beer drinkers when it appeared on the scene in the 1990s but has since been surpassed by thousands of bolder and better beers. Beyond that, middle-aged regional breweries like Magic Hat struggle mightily these days to survive as the stereotypical beer geek snottily snubs almost any well-established beer or brewery while single-mindedly chasing what’s new and tough to get. Plus, breweries that have lost the Brewers Association seal of craft approval by selling to larger conglomerates – again, like Magic Hat – experience even greater backlash from drinkers who resent them for “selling out.”
Dozens of these old-guard breweries fight to stay relevant by rebranding (AKA redesigning their packaging, sometimes multiple times over a short period); introducing ever more – sometimes seasonally changing – new products; adding IPAs and other popular styles to what started as a more narrow, thematic portfolio; or even, in the recent case of Sierra Nevada Brewing, retrenching into its core brands rather than going wherever the fair winds blow. Some of them, like Smuttynose Brewing and Green Flash Brewing, failed to impress fickle drinkers and, have, in desperation, sold to outside investors at fire-sale prices.
But I’ve never seen a brewery assert itself this directly.
"We’re doing great things here," says head brewer Chris Rockwood. "But we got to feeling like, 'Gosh, because we’re more of an heirloom brewery our beers weren’t on draft at the places we like to go.'"
So a year ago the brewing team started releasing a limited experimental beer each month at their on-site taproom in Burlington and to 20 top beer-focused accounts across Vermont. According to Rockwood, bar managers and drinkers loved them and asked for permanent draught placement, though they generally get ranked in the mid-threes on a five-point scale on the three most popular public beer review sites and apps.
“I can’t help but take some great pride watching detractors backpedal when they realize who makes it,” Rockwood says, noting that the brewery’s home in Vermont, whose cultish craft breweries and die-hard “live local” ethos almost single-handedly ushered in beer’s contemporary era of independent and new or nothing, puts it at an even greater disadvantage than others in its position.
So when a Double IPA called Laughing Stock emerged as employee favorite from an in-house competition a few years ago, Magic Hat’s sales team sold it as the second in the aforementioned Vermont Only series. The response was so strong they decided to package and sell it nationwide starting in late July. But with the sale would come the attitude.
“Our brewers are working hard to make great beer every day,” says brand manager Harry Kahn. “But they don’t feel like they’re given the respect they deserve.”
Considering that the brewery has always cultivated an offbeat, irreverent image (it takes one simple look at its early, ahead-of-their-time beer labels to understand), managers say they had no problem green-lighting the honest advertising approach.
“I don’t have any concerns,” Kahn says. “Our internal motto is ‘Guffawk yourself.’ So we’re gonna come out with a beer that reflects on how absurd it is that some people still only want to order what’s new.”
“I think it’s great. It’s just the type of marketing they need,” says Kurt Moody, bar and beverage operations manager at Houston’s Patrick Henry Creative Promotions consulting firm. “To Magic Hat’s credit I think the risk-to-reward is much higher reward. It’s going to get everyone talking about it.”
Including reporters like me. While I almost never promote or review individual beers, I find it fascinating to chronicle how breweries contort themselves to catch drinkers’ attention, and I always appreciate the honest approach in advertising. Will Laughing Stock single-handedly reboot Magic Hat’s reputation? Doubt it, though beers like Anderson Valley Highway 128 Blood Orange Gose and Otter Creek’s Over Easy pale ale have gotten many a drinker to revisit these two decades-old breweries, just as Magic Hat hopes Laughing Stock will do.
Moody isn’t sure the talking will turn into tasting but that’s not stopping the team from trying, then talking some more.
“Give beer a chance,” Rockwood says. “The minute you stop seeking it in singular places you’ll be amazed at what you can find.”
If its simple and sentimental messaging doesn’t work, Magic Hat can always choose to triple down and also package and distribute the two losing entries from that internal double IPA competition: I Used to be Cool and Yeah, I Could Drink That.
