Magic Hat founder on the success of #9 and brewing beer that you don’t like
Maybe it is worth it to brew that boring beer in order to free up your options…
"At Magic Hat, our most popular beer was No. 9. I can say this with total certainty: There is not a person who worked at the brewery who would have chosen No. 9 as their favorite beer. I can go a step further: Eighty percent of the people wouldn’t even drink it, and they could have it for free. Yet customers loved it and it eventually became our flagship," he explained. The lesson isn’t to avoid experimentation, but to pick your battles. "That beer," said Newman, "gave us the ability to do everything we want to do."
via LA Times.
Breweries: Magic Hat Brewing
Kudos to them for creating an environment where they can do everything they want to do. I only wish they’d make better use of that freedom. Howl is the only Magic Hat product I thoroughly enjoy and I’ve tried a lot of Magic Hat. Knowing my luck, they’ll drop Howl from their lineup this winter.
I think that this goes without saying. LOTS of breweries have a flagship beer that’s not exactly bursting with excitement, but it sells to the masses and allows for an income stream to subsidize the radical brews that make me drool! Case in point… Fat Tire is THE reason we have LaFolie
Sorry, but this a Macro stance. A good craft brewer would never dare utter such garbage like that.
#9 is hardly their only boring beer. All of ’em are pretty generic tasting. I don’t even think of MH when I think of VT beer, let alone drink one.
I’ll always be thankful for #9 as my ‘gateway beer.’ It was the beginning of my college self realizing there was more to beer than Budweiser, Coors, Miller, and the various offerings from Plank Road Brewing (shout out to Red Dog). #9 helped me get to a place where I buy and enjoy Jolly Pumpkin, Lost Abbey, Avery, and other beers that I would have avoided way back when.
howl?!?! im more concerned about ravell!