Rule 3 really breaks down into two sections. 

3A) Every time you introduce a new beer, it’s going to be someone’s favourite beer. It could be an incredible beverage and a wonderful experience. It could be middling, but suited to the person who is drinking it. It could be objectively bad but come along at the right moment for someone. It pressed the desire button in someone’s brain and you made an impact.

3B) Every time you take that beer off the market, you’re going to massively piss off someone who loves that beer. Doesn’t matter if it sold badly. Doesn’t matter if it was objectively bad. Doesn’t matter if the circumstances that allowed its creation will never exist again. You pressed the desire button in someone’s brain and you’re going to pay the price for that. 

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The idea that consumers are rational is fairly ridiculous. So far in this series, we’ve examined the idea that beer is mostly not about beer. It’s a luxury product that makes people feel good. No one needs beer, but people desire it. For nostalgia, for a particular flavour, for entertainment, for clout. It’s desire based. 

I’m sure there must be people who are acting rationally with the commodity, but I don’t know many. Sometimes, on the beer writer group chat we will discuss the concept of “the best cheapest thing,” which is usually a Euro lager of some kind, often Czechvar or Jever. Quality and price play into the judgment on that, but it still reflects a generalized desire. 

We have also examined the idea that beer simply doesn’t respect expertise. Drinkers think they know better than brewers. Brewers think they know better than owners. Owners think they know better than drinkers and brewers. An average Tuesday in the beer industry.

There aren’t a huge number of industries that expanded as quickly as craft beer. If the last fifteen years were about anything, they were probably about novelty. There are new releases on LCBO shelves! There’s a new brewery down the street! There’s a new brewing school in Niagara! There’s a new beer at the new brewery! A new festival!

I’m as guilty as anyone. When I chose where to live in Toronto after moving back from university, I chose Yonge and Davisville mostly on the strength of The Bow and Arrow. Not only did I know some of the bar staff, but they had Ontario Craft Beers on tap. When I moved back the best, most dependable beers in Ontario were King Pilsner and Black Oak Pale Ale and Nut Brown Ale. They were very good, but they were always available and for that reason people took them for granted.

Don’t get me wrong. Among the cognoscenti, there was always respect for these brands. Thornbury has brought King Pilsner back nearly 20 years later. Silversmith continues to make Black Oak Pale Ale and I still teach the Nut Brown in the class at George Brown as a prime example of the style.

However, on cask at the Bow and Arrow, they sometimes had Black Oak Nutcracker Porter. It was a darker beer with cinnamon in it. A perfect seasonal beer served on handpull from a cask in the potato cellar. The kind of thing that came out once a year and you could really look forward to. Black Oak’s business model depended on Pale Ale and Nut Brown, and those are fine beers for every day. Nutcracker was a periodic thing, but it quickly became my favourite.

I don’t mean to pick on Black Oak, but they punched above their weight for a while. The original Ten Bitter Years was the first and best Ontario Double IPA. I was there the day it launched at Volo. One of the regulars had four pints the first hour and had to be put in a cab. It quickly developed credibility, cachet, and status. People would travel for it. I remember some local beer nerds driving across town for low fills. Rumours circulated. It was new! It was hot! For about a six month period, it was the business.

As soon as you introduce the new thing, people ask what took so long. People ask why there isn’t more of it? Why isn’t it part of the full time lineup?

In practice, you have beers that are established, cheap to make, selling bottles across Ontario, selling kegs as far away as Ottawa. Beers that people understand, that they can find reliably and have a little loyalty towards. Pale Ale. Nut Brown.

Nutcracker is impossible to sell year round. Black Oak Ten Bitter Years, though legend, is expensive to produce. Hops? Fruit juice? I’ve never known the ingredients for sure, but it’s more expensive than the other beers in the lineup. And the audience for it is smaller. The upside is smaller. Yes, you get the true believers, but you already had them. And now they’re asking questions. Why does this batch taste different? Other breweries emulate your product. They horn in on your market. The true believers, already curious, take off for adventures and suddenly they’re in a tap room in Barrie or Ottawa and a little less true and a little less credulous.

Some breweries exploit the desire button. To get a keg of a novel Beau’s product, you had to carry Lug Tread. Some of the novel beers were terrible. At the Wallace Gastropub, which the Bow and Arrow became eventually, they had to mark down a Blueberry IPA that was part of the Febrewary event to the legal minimum to move the beer. It was on until April 15th. I can guarantee you it was still someone’s favourite beer. As was the beer they made with organic beet powder. And the Tom Green Milk Stout.

I hear from people all the time about their favourite beer. A beer from Flying Monkeys at the Toronto Festival of Beer that tasted like Blue Raspberry. A White Stout from Blood Brothers. Cameron’s Rye Pale Ale. Nickel Brook Ceres Cucumber Lime Gose. Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye. Alpine Duet. Molson Golden. Coors Light Iced Tea. Scotch Irish Tzarina Katerina. Church Key Tobacco Road Holy Smoke.

When they speak about it, you can sense not just nostalgia, but a certain underlying grievance: They took away the thing I liked. Maybe they wouldn’t have if you had bought more of it, a skeptic might say. Maybe the impermanence of it highlights the foolishness of the entire subject. The beer you drink today will never exist again and so you must live in the moment to fully appreciate it. It can never be the same, just similar. There’s a regret for the passage of time, but also a sense that they’ve been cheated. You can’t push that desire button again.

So much of craft beer depends on novelty. Here’s a new IPA for this week to get them through the taproom door. Here’s a new hop variety. Doesn’t it taste like tangerine? Here’s a sour beer that reminds you of a childhood treat. Here’s a beer brewed with Maple Sap. What if it was a Peanut Butter Cookie? You’ve got to try it!

Consider though the longevity of an industry that depends on that trick. You’re constantly delighting and disappointing. Giving just to take away, bi-polar in generosity. There’s a reason people eventually return to lager styles in their beer drinking careers: Hedonic exhaustion.