{"id":5301,"date":"2012-11-21T02:16:41","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T13:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=5301"},"modified":"2012-11-22T22:54:21","modified_gmt":"2012-11-22T09:54:21","slug":"crafty-beggars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2012\/11\/21\/crafty-beggars\/","title":{"rendered":"Crafty Beggars"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Crafty<\/a>
Three Crafty Beggars<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is, apparently, Brandwank Monsoon Season. At least I won’t suffer for material.1<\/sup>\u00a0As was spotted by the eagle eye of Dominic (from Hashigo Zake) some months ago in the Trademark Registry<\/a>, “Crafty Beggars” is a new brand \/ imprint \/ stealth-fake-brewery2<\/sup> from one half of the local duopoly, Lion. And these days, if you’re talking about them<\/em>, you’re probably talking about\u00a0Emerson’s<\/em>,3<\/sup> not this<\/em> shit. I haven’t had my say about\u00a0that<\/em> bit of news, yet, it’s honestly been too vexing; I’m firmly in the middle on the issue, finding much of the positive\u00a0and<\/em> negative feedback to be Missing The Point. But more about that another time, inevitably. Suffice to say \u2014 for now \u2014 that if you, my dear hypothetical reader, still harboured hopes that Lion’s acquisition of Emerson’s was a sincere and honest investment in craft beer, this should give you pause.<\/p>\n

“Someone should make a craft beer you can actually drink”, the bottle’s text declares as the raison d’\u00eatre<\/em> of this new range. Nine un-named brewers, going “rogue” from a parent company which also goes un-named, apparently felt that way and set out to make these “crafty, but not too crafty” beers. It’s an act of staggering dickishness and pointless absurdity, a petty swipe at a corner of the industry that Lion a) pretend to also occupy, already, and b) just acquired two large chunks of. The necessary implication is that Mac’s, Little Creatures and Emerson’s are either “not craft” or “not drinkable”. I phoned Lion, to ask which of those two options was now their official stance, and was handed around a little bit but eventually put in touch with their “Brand Manager, Craft” \u2014 though I still haven’t been given an answer… If you were a\u00a0new<\/em> operation, that tagline would token near-pathological arrogance, but here it’s weirdly worse<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Crafty<\/a>
The Crafty Beggars bottle blurbs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Brandwank is one thing \u2014 a vile and detestable thing<\/a> \u2014 but this kind of internally-incoherent<\/em> brandwank is more annoying by an order of magnitude. How the fuck does no one in the company feel sufficient shame, when one business unit contradicts another, to pull the plug on a campaign like this? As I mentioned when deconstructing some nonsense from the\u00a0other<\/em> giant ultra-conglom in the local market, D.B.<\/a>, my favourite example was when Jim Beam was marketed with the slogan “If it ain’t Beam, it ain’t bourbon” and Maker’s Mark was touted\u00a0by the same company<\/em>\u00a0as “the World’s finest bourbon”.4<\/sup> It just seems so pathetic a trick, such a lazy failure of imagination, and it says nothing good<\/em> about what they must think of their customers; that kind of half-assed deception seems to require believing them to be stupid or (against all evidence) completely disinterested in where things\u00a0actually<\/em> come from.<\/p>\n

Last time I had some unkind things to say about a mega-brewery’s fake “little guy” offerings<\/a>, I drew some criticism for not trying the beer first. Which baffled the hell out of me, since I was explicitly commenting on the marketing<\/em>. Which is, you know, a separately-existing thing. But in the investigative spirit \u2014 which is very<\/em> close, it turns out, to the morbid curiosity that causes humans to rubberneck on traffic accidents \u2014 I grabbed one of each, and I’ve had them here at home tonight.5<\/sup>\u00a0And they’re meh \u2014\u00a0<\/em>which is me being as unjustifiably generous as it is me being abnormally monosyllabic.<\/p>\n

(Meanwhile \u2014 in the later spirit of “fuck it, I should empty the Naughty Corner of my fridge while I’m at this” \u2014 while I’m writing, I’m polishing off my remaining bottles of those “Resident” beers from Boundary Road \/ Independent. And I haven’t changed my mind. They are, just as they were, technically competent \u2014 vastly moreso than most of the “Boundary” beers<\/a> \u2014 and a recognisable echo of something that might’ve been a good idea before the cost-compromises involved in up-scaling a pilot batch bit hard, and before the beers were filtered to within an inch of their lives and probably robbed of much character. But they sure aren’t good<\/em>, they sure aren’t special<\/em>, and they sure as fuck weren’t worth the fuss, the wank and the insults to the local industry that they brought with them.)<\/p>\n

\"Crafty<\/a>
The Crafty Beggars, lined up<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Skepticism is just\u00a0mandatory<\/em> when three styles of beer appear in a range at precisely the same ABV, especially when that’s an usually-low number. All three “Crafty” beers are 4.0%, which should \u2014 given the vagaries of local excise tax rules \u2014 raise the suspicion that they’re aiming at a price point, rather than a flavour. I\u00a0love<\/em> sessionable beer with an inappropriate passion<\/a>, but I do ask that the lower strength exist for reasons more to do with the brewer’s designs and the drinker’s plans for their evening, rather than it being dictated by a formula in some arcane spreadsheet. And so, speaking (as I parenthetically was) of the “Resident” beers,\u00a0these<\/em> seem to be targeting\u00a0those<\/em>, given that Boundary Road placed theirs at a looks-like-a-loss-leader price and proceeded to carve themselves out a sizable chunk of the sales statistics. It looks<\/em> like Lion have conjured something to claw that back, perhaps after seeing sales of their Mac’s range take a hit. But then why make a drive-by implication that their\u00a0other<\/em> “craft” offerings are “undrinkable”? Who the fuck knows? (Also \u2014 as an addendum to the “Meanwhile”, above \u2014 I’m changing my mind. For their relative lack of flavour and character, these “Resident” beers are camped out on the border of being\u00a0intolerably<\/em> bitter.)<\/p>\n

The “Crafty” pilsner, ‘Good as Gold’, was worryingly pale and anemic-looking; close to that Budweiser-esque piss-yellow<\/a> you’d only call “straw gold” if you were being paid wodges of cash to do so. It put me in mind of my ‘Chosen One’ tasting session<\/a> \u2014 but, mercifully, of the non-candidate dummy options like NZ Pure. And if\u00a0that<\/em> memory comes as a relief, we’re in dark times indeed. It didn’t stink of faults, sure \u2014 none of these beers did \u2014 but it just had a limp tinned-apple-flavoured-baby-food nose that definitely wasn’t appealing and sure as hell<\/em> didn’t convey “pilsner”. ‘Wheat As’ was reassuringly hazy, given how often macro brewers wimp out and apply their ultra-fine nano-scale filters to seemingly\u00a0everything<\/em>, and did present some appropriate spice-and-citrus-peel notes. But Belgian-derived witbier-ish stuff hasn’t ever been my thing, so I don’t feel entirely qualified to rule it in or out. Given the two-and-some-bucks-a-bottle price point<\/a> these seem to be landing at, it’s at least possible that this one<\/em> represents a bargain \u2014 a deal with the inveterate shitbags in the Devil’s marketing division, perhaps, but all the same a bargain. And then the disappointingly un-punny \/ seemingly un-referential ‘Pale and Interesting’6<\/sup> commits a devastating act of metaphor shear<\/a>\u00a0by pouring like Speight’s and making you realise that these\u00a0are<\/em> Speight’s 330ml bottles.7<\/sup> It’s billed as a “smoother take” on a pale ale, which is always a worrying thing to hear from a mega-brewery, and presents as so watered- and dumbed-down that it \u2014 just like its inexcusably-bland cousin from the duopoly’s other half, Monteith’s IPA8<\/sup> \u2014 smells like an empty glass that used to have beer in it, rather than a vessel which currently\u00a0does<\/em>. The “tinned fruit” aspect of the nose from the pilsner returned, only this time it was reminiscent of peaches \u2014 and even then only if they’d been unceremoniously disposed-of into a cardboard box.<\/p>\n

In summary, these aren’t\u00a0good<\/em>. They aren’t fuck-awful, hurl-them-at-your-enemies\u00a0bad<\/em>, either \u2014 but that’s hardly worth praising, is it? Given the pitch, this horrible “craft but drinkable” bullshit they’re swaddled in, they’re an abject failure. They are neither recognisably craft, nor particularly drinkable. Basically every single member of the already-extant Mac’s range \u2014 with the possible exception of the new Shady Pale Ale, about which I hear plenty of\u00a0terrible<\/em> things \u2014 is head-and-shoulders better than these, and well worth the extra dollar.<\/p>\n

But wait, what? Back to the pilsner, “Good as Gold”. That’s the name of a beer from the Coromandel Brewing Company<\/a>, isn’t it?\u00a0Here we go again, it seems, with the brandwank-engines of the Big Two churning in the absence of a connection to the Almighty Google<\/a>. I called the design agency responsible<\/a> for the “Crafty Beggars” work,9<\/sup> and their Director told me that the beer names were their creation \u2014 but Lion obviously have final sign-off on these things, and\u00a0someone<\/em> should’ve known \/ should’ve checked \/ should’ve given five seconds’ thought to the possibility that someone might’ve found the same reference fitting. But no, here’s one of the Big Boys, charging around making bullshit claims left and right with no consideration of how it affects a) their other products, or b) anyone else’s.<\/p>\n

This<\/em> is why I can’t be optimistic about something like Lion’s acquisition of Emerson’s. These huge, sprawling, many-branded companies \u2014 like D.B., Lion and Independent \u2014 are shot-through with the wrong thinking, the wrong incentives, too many bad-habit-ed Suits, perverse internal competition, and are the kind of hydra-headed monsters with which it constantly proves impossible to reason. They<\/em>, at the meta \/ corporate level, are the “rogues” in this business, and not in the lovable-and-rakish sense; these are\u00a0proper<\/em> loose cannons, capable of any damn wreckage, accidental or otherwise.<\/p>\n

\"Diary<\/a>
Diary II entry #248, Crafty Beggars<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Verbatim:<\/strong> Crafty Beggars Range \u2014 ‘Good as Gold’, ‘Wheat As’, + ‘Pale and Interesting’ 20\/11\/12 @ home. This is Lion, pulling an epic dick move. Design blogs are all over it, but I just don’t get it. Naff as. All 4%, 330ml \u2014 in a Speight’s bottle, in fact. 1) Shockingly pale and clear \u2014 and the name was taken, guys… Reminds me of the Chosen One tasting. A can of tinned apple baby food. 2) Actually hazy! Proper adjunct flavours. Not my style, so hard to judge. 3) Looks like Speight’s. Same non-aroma as Monteith’s. Cardboard box, into which tinned pears were dumped.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Crafty<\/a>
Crafty beggars bottlecaps<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Monteith's<\/a>
Monteith’s IPA tap badge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Monteith's<\/a>
Monteith’s IPA itself<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n

1:<\/strong> Not that I ever do<\/em>, of course, grotesquely-far behind in my notes as I am. But after we’re done here, we’re going to have to have words with the newly-appeared “Hancock & Co.” brand. Sheesh.<\/span>
\n2:<\/strong> They’re not proud enough to say “a new beer from Lion” or “brewed by Lion”, but also not subtle enough to give the brand its own street address or 0800 number. That middle ground makes no sense.<\/span>
\n3:<\/strong> Note for aliens \/ cave-dwellers \/ normal people: Lion recently purchased local craft beer legends Emerson’s. The jury is well-and-truly out on whether or not this is a Good Thing.<\/span>
\n4:<\/strong> Funnily enough, they also didn’t get back to me when I contacted the parent company and asked them to pick which (if either) was true.<\/span>
\n5:<\/strong> As often happens, I’m behind in the Diary<\/em> in the additional<\/em> sense of having lots of scraps of paper lying around with notes as-yet-untranscribed into the actual physical book itself. Tonight’s notes were therefore written up, as is common, on the back of a coaster (and photographed<\/em> for ‘proof’, rather than scanned). Now I almost feel I owe the boys from ParrotDog an apology for soiling their merchandise so.<\/span>
\n6:<\/strong> ‘Pale to the Chief’? ‘Pale and Hearty’? Surely there was scope for something<\/em>. It’s just a bit of a drop off a \u00a0thematic cliff after the other two.<\/span>
\n7:<\/strong> Maybe they have a whole bunch spare now they’ve started selling Speight’s in “Imperial Pint” bottles, which are inadvisably labelled as such. Local laws which prohibit the use of non-metric measurements might be obsolete and stupid \u2014 and indeed they are<\/em> \u2014 but they are still on the books.<\/span>
\n8:<\/strong> Just look at the blurb on the tap badge. That should win an award for unjustified overstatement.<\/span>
\n9:<\/strong> A very early Alarm Stage on the Brandwank Detector is triggered if, as here, a Google search for a new beer \/ brewery \/ brand returns oodles of write-ups of the design work before you can find anyone talking about the actual product<\/em>. And I know this is largely a matter of unimpeachable aesthetics, but I just don’t see what the praise is about. This design is hugely boring. It’s the spending-money-to-look-poor nonsense of a thousand intolerable Trustafarian<\/a> fuckheads. Yawn. The same agency’s work on Steinlager Purea<\/sup> is, I’d say, vastly superior in every way.<\/span>
\n\u2014 a:<\/strong> Though that<\/em> product’s pitch also falls foul of this same “Crafty Beggars” problem, in that it implies worrying things about the other products from the company, just like Monteith’s Single Source did<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is, apparently, Brandwank Monsoon Season. At least I won’t suffer for material.1\u00a0As was spotted by the eagle eye of Dominic (from Hashigo Zake) some months ago in the Trademark Registry, “Crafty Beggars” is a new brand \/ imprint \/ stealth-fake-brewery2 from one half of the local duopoly, Lion. And these days, if you’re talking … Continue reading Crafty Beggars<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[36,6,14,9,12,50,10],"class_list":["post-5301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary","category-blahblah","tag-brandwank","tag-pages","tag-nz","tag-lager","tag-pale-ale","tag-tasted-november-2012","tag-wheat"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6151,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2013\/11\/23\/everything-in-its-right-place\/","url_meta":{"origin":5301,"position":0},"title":"Everything in Its Right Place","author":"Phil","date":"November 23, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"In this, as in all things, context is king. Perfect circumstances can rescue the naffest of beers \u2014 and mismatchings of time and\/or place could equally ruin the most otherwise-charming. Today, Wellingtonians were rightly beside themselves with the sheer loveliness of the weather out there, seizing upon this as the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Rambles and rants"","block_context":{"text":"Rambles and rants","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/blahblah\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Crafty Beggars 'Wheat As', in context","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Crafty-Beggars-Wheat-As-in-context-240x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7154,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2014\/04\/25\/monteiths-american-pale-ale\/","url_meta":{"origin":5301,"position":1},"title":"Monteith’s “American Pale Ale”","author":"Phil","date":"April 25, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Over the decade I've been taking handwritten notes of my beer-drinking experiences, I have inevitably developed an idiosyncratic Style Guide.1\u00a0Broadly \u2014 though there are exceptions early on as the pattern developed, and sporadically throughout as I either forgot my own practice or thought of\u00a0some now-lost rationalisation for a variance in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Monteith's \"American Pale Ale\" (My house, 18 March 2014)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Monteiths-American-Pale-Ale.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Monteiths-American-Pale-Ale.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Monteiths-American-Pale-Ale.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5609,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2013\/06\/02\/made-to-match\/","url_meta":{"origin":5301,"position":2},"title":"‘Made to Match’","author":"Phil","date":"June 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"So, it looks like Lion \u2014 one half of the local brewing duopoly, and ultimately a subsidiary of Kirin* \u2014 is taking out a series of infomercials on TVNZ. Product placement so thick it amounts to entire blocks of 'programming' was probably the invention of home improvement shows and hardware\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mediawatch"","block_context":{"text":"Mediawatch","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/interesting-finds\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"'Made to Match' landing page","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Landing-page-1900-212x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1397,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2009\/03\/23\/moa-st-joseph\/","url_meta":{"origin":5301,"position":3},"title":"Moa ‘St. Joseph’","author":"Phil","date":"March 23, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Moa brewery in Blenheim is the work of Josh Scott, son of winemaker Allan Scott. And it really does have a significant \"wanky side-project of spoilt rich kid\" air about the whole thing. The beers are particularly expensive, nobbishly marketed -- and unforgivably naff all too often. I suppose when\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Moa 'St. Joseph'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Moa-St-Joseph-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1864,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/02\/28\/moa-%e2%80%98five-hop-winter-ale%e2%80%99\/","url_meta":{"origin":5301,"position":4},"title":"Moa \u2018Five Hop Winter Ale\u2019","author":"Phil","date":"February 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I've railed about it before, but Moa's appalling brandwank annoys me sufficiently that it still buzzes in my brain as I enjoy something like this, one of their actually-rather-lovely offerings. Praise first, praise first; stifle the rant for a moment. \u20185 Hop\u2019 is a delicious E.S.B., richly flavoured and deftly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Moa '5 Hop'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Moa-5-Hop-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2145,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/03\/24\/budweiser\/","url_meta":{"origin":5301,"position":5},"title":"Budweiser","author":"Phil","date":"March 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Poorly-justified trademark nonsense and brandwank that flies in the face of the plain meaning of words are rather topical at the moment -- for the avoidance of doubt or subtlety, I'm looking at you, D.B. and Moa -- and so it is the perfect time to finally enter into my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Budweiser","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Budweiser-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5301"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5343,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301\/revisions\/5343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}