Yankee Brew News Archive

Editorial: Brewers of New England, Unite!

Originally Published: 06/97

By: Kerry J. Byrne

Milk does the body good. Pork is the other white meat. I like eggs.

These things roll off my tongue like a Rain Man incantation because members of a particular food industry have pounded it through my skull for as long as I care to remember. They did so by putting aside whatever rivalries they might have. They did so by pooling individually limited resources. They did so for the good of all. They did so for survival. Call it communism for capitalists.

It is time that New England brewers do the same. Whether they realize it or not, and I imagine most do, New England craft brewers have many more similarities than differences. And with the growing number of brewpubs distributing, the lines between brewpub and brewery are increasingly blurry.

Yes, there are rivalries and heated competition among the nearly 100 breweries in New England vying for customers and market share. And yes there is he-said, she-said pettiness better suited to the Harper Valley PTA than businessmen and women whose livelihood is at stake.

But the problems New England brewers face are generally the same: quality control, ability to distribute, raising and sustaining capital and/or positive cash flow, ever-changing governmental rules, regulations and restrictions, and finding ways to stand out on crowded shelves not the least among them.

The enemies, too, are common: Large western craft breweries with their eyes on the New England market; megabrewers strong-arming distributors into unloading SKU numbers (i.e. dumping the beers of small brewers); and what appears to be the poor image of New England-produced beer beyond the six-state region.

New England brewers have to do together what most don't have the ability to do individually: Promote themselves heavily and aggressively and jointly defend their interests against these common enemies.

The Massachusetts Brewers Association took a step in the direction of the former at their March meeting. Members voted to pool their funds, develop a packaging emblem that will indicate their beers are produced by an MBA member, and jointly advertise that member breweries will serve beer at Harpoon's Brewstock X beer festival in June.

But they only took that step after debating the serious issues: How often they should meet, what color streamers to put up at the MBA ball and who should be homecoming queen. In others words, things meaningless or that should have been decided soon after the organization formed over a year ago.

But at least the step was taken. More steps cannot come fast enough. In little over a year, four Massachusetts breweries have ceased to exist and others are reported perilously close. This in a state that averaged about four openings per year over the last 10 and had no failures. You do the math.

Times have changed. To survive, local brewers may have to depend on each other. The question now: Should the Massachusetts Brewers Association steps be taken with breweries of the other New England states? Though Massachusetts has about half the New England population, it has a less than proportional number of breweries.

The breweries of Massachusetts would benefit from the added resources of the rest of the region's breweries. And vice-versa. The combined efforts should not just apply to public relations. New England brewers, for the most part, will all benefit or be hurt by particular pieces of legislation. Legal issues can also be addressed jointly. What New England brewers stand a chance against the mighty megabrewers' legions of lawyers? One. Two. Four maybe? Not many.

There's nothing wrong with a little regional P.R. And what about regional contests? In major national contests such as the Great American Beer Festival, New England brewers do themselves a disservice by not entering more regularly. But small operations don't always have the time or resources to join an event 2,000 miles away.

The result is that the list of the best beers in America has but a scant few New England names on it. When people look at the list their reaction is often: "Gee, there's not much good beer in New England. Not many breweries either." Neither is true.

Brewers in New England make some of the best beer in America. They should let people know.