what's your best selling beer style?

[Brew Chef]

Our brewpub makes many styles of ale. Our best seller (like most brewpubs) is our "lightest" style...a cream/blonde hybrid ale we just call "blonde ale". It's pretty sturdy though, english 2-row, honey malt, biscuit, willamette and goldings, english ale yeast (medium attenuation), 1050 OG, 1018 FG. It's got lots of body from residual sweetness, supporting specialty malts, and relatively low carbonation. We persuade our customers to think it's our "light" beer, even though it's not light at all. Side by side Fat Tire, it's almost it's clone but a bit lighter in color. We don't drink this beer much ourselves, and we don't love to brew it. We're pretty much hop heads over here and have an affair with pacific-northwest style APA's and IPA's. Our customers however gravitate towards the blonde, making it our best seller.

We're planning to build a production brewery, and we need to start thinking about what three beers to produce and market. We are certain we are going to brew our APA and IPA...also big sellers at the brewpub. These beers are highly dry-hopped and west coast-inspired. THe third beer is up for discussion. It could be a stout, brown, amber, or our blonde. What we WANT to brew and drink may be very different from what SELLS. The third beer should probably show some range and be a little more mainstream and malt forward. THere is big demand for IPA and APA on the east coast since there aren't many examples being brewed over here...at least with that pacific-northwest citrus hop ring to them. I hope our APA becomes our flagship but the market will tell.

WHat's your best selling beer? Out of three or more styles, which one does your market demand and what style can you recommend to us to consider adding to the lineup?

Tim Adams
Owner/Brewer
Cave Mountain Brewing Co.
Windham NY

[MJMurphy]

I am not on the sales side so I may be running counter to good advice, but why pick just one? Two differing styles could allow you to appeal to different customers. The blond can be the accessible beer that allows customers to familiarize themselves with your brand.

We had many customers who began by trying our Pale Ale and American Wheat Ale. Over time, they felt comfortable trying our other styles of beer that were perhaps somehwat afield of their normal beer tastes, but they tried them at our restaurant. Now they are solid stout or APA fans.

Our top beer brand is an English-style Pale Ale. In recent years, however, our fastest growing beer has been an American Pale Ale (6% with lots of American hops).

When we first opened in 1991, our focus was to produce solid representations of classic styles. One of our founders spent a number of years working for a large British brewer, so Continental styles were our starting point. Over the years we have expanded our catalogue to include a variety of other beers including Belgian ales, heavily-hopped American Ales, bottled-conditioned and oak-aged beers.

Perhaps, instead of trying to pick the one beer you want to focus on, decide what kind of brewery you want be. Then decide what kind of beers that brewery would make.