Beers made special for retailers become real draws in own right (12-2-2005)
Down the Hatch
Published: December 2, 2005
Last Modified: March 9, 2007 at 12:38 AM
A brewery's first customer is often a retailer -- the bar, store, restaurant or other venue that agrees to sell the beer. From a creative standpoint, these collaborations between breweries and retailers can shine.
Consider the results when Humpy's Great Alaskan Alehouse got together with Midnight Sun Brewing Co. That coupling has resulted in two highly regarded beers. Back in the late 1990s, the two businesses collaborated to birth a Humpy's house beer, and Sockeye Red IPA has spawned beyond anyone's dreams.
"The Sockeye went like crazy," said Gabe Fletcher, head brewer at Midnight Sun. "So we said, 'Oh, we've got to make a beer just for Humpy's,' but then the CoHoHo got popular too."
Now Midnight Sun brews and bottles the Sockeye all year long while also making its seasonal warmer, CoHoHo Imperial IPA, from September to February.
Lots of bars want house beers, said Barb Miller, marketing wizard at Midnight Sun.
"But the bar needs to be able to sell several kegs a week to make it worth it for all of us. If it's a draft beer, the issues to consider are keg turnaround, cooler storage, batch size. If it's also to be bottled, there are label design costs, label approval by various government entities, packaging design and printing costs."
Midnight Sun prides itself on beers and wants to keep its names on every tap handle and bottle, so when the brewery made a deal with the Denali Salmon Bake last year it made sure that the restaurant sold T-shirts with Midnight Sun's logo on one side and Baked Blonde Ale's on the other.
This kolsch-style beer is poured at several Anchorage bars and restaurants, including Southside Bistro, the Whaler, the Sheraton Anchorage Hotel, Humpy's and Cafe Amsterdam.
"It's becoming a hugely popular beer for us," said Fletcher, who designed the beer with Southside Bistro in mind. "I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes our popular draft beer next year."
The brewery will probably bottle the beer under a different name down the road too. (Don't you think "Mosquito Kolsch" would be a good name for a beer and a fabulous concept for a beer label? If so, send a message to barb@wildales.com and put "Hey, Mosquito Kolsch would be a bomber name for a wild ale!" in the subject heading.)
You can even find draft winter ale born from yet another coupling -- between Midnight Sun and AK Soul productions, a music presenter/promoter with a Web site loaded with forums, local music news and more. The move secures for the brewery an enviable tap handle at Chilkoot Charlie's -- a "very strong-selling, new local outlet for us," Miller said.
AK Soul Winter Ale looks as dark as porter, tastes as quenching as IPA and has the snap of spiced winter ale. It could turn into more than a one-venue deal. Most of Midnight Sun's other house beers turned into mainstay bottled beers within a few years -- Sockeye Red, CoHoHo and Arctic Rhino Chocolate Porter, a bronze medal winner at the Great American Beer Festival this year that got its start at Organic Oasis.
Clearly Fletcher uses collaborative beers as a means of experimenting with flavors and brewing something new.
Other breweries collaborate too. Glacier Brewhouse makes Denali Red for Princess Lodges, tapping into the summer tourist crowd and even outselling Alaskan Amber in a lot of places, said Kevin Burton, head brewer for Glacier.
The Brewhouse also distributes beer to venues that turn it into a house beer: Glacier's porter becomes Haute Quarter Porter at the Haute Quarter Grill; the IPA becomes Pioneer IPA at the Pioneer Bar; the Imperial blonde becomes Ice Axe Ale at the West Rib in Talkeetna.
The Moose's Tooth has done a couple of tie-in beers for the Chugach and Oceans festivals but generally avoids collaborations.
"We've got enough going on in-house," said head brewer Clarke Pelz, "and we're proud enough of our beers to keep our name attached to them. Plus we don't have the excess capacity to do that."
Though much bigger, Alaskan Brewing Co. puts limits on what it does. The Juneau brewery makes Juneau Jazz & Classics Ale and Alaskan Folk Festivale every year, along with several other event beers such as Boogie Bitter, which won a gold medal at this year's Great American Beer Festival.
"We do it for fun, to support local events, as well as to give us a chance to test new recipes or bring back old favorites," marketing director Kristi Monroe said.
Still, the brewery limits the number of these beers.
"I have a suspicion that the smaller breweries find it easier to do these, as they are geared more for it than our larger brew house is," said head brewer Curtis Holmes.
Once the event ends, so does the beer's marketing punch. Tap handles are few and far between, at least in the busy bars, and few want to pull a beer to make room for a specialty beer from an old event, Holmes said.
• Daily News reporter Dawnell Smith can be reached at dsmith@adn.com.
Drink up
Find AK Soul Winter Ale at Chilkoot Charlie's and Humpy's Great Alaskan Alehouse through most of the winter.
Also, check out the alehouse's exotic step-sister, SubZero, which just started a Friday night Belgian beer dinner special last week. Word is that the chef will put out a beer-food pairing for $30 more or less, depending on the rare delights from the chef's right cortex and the Humpy's cellar.
