Bigger and friendlier?

This week I was thinking a lot about two stories that came up in the news. It got me wondering whether there might be an emerging "normal" trajectory for brash new startup breweries. Likely I'm full of it, but bear with me.

The first story was the news that local favorite Surly Brewing is planning and hoping to expand...a lot. Since starting up five years ago, they have grown quite a lot, and frankly part of their early marketing plan seemed to be to create huge word of mouth with big, brash, aggressive beers but rely on the scarcity of their supply to make them seem even rarer and more desirable.

The big, brask, aggressive part is easy to see -- call yourself "Surly Brewing" and label your beers things like "Furious" (their ridiculously hopped IPA)* or "Bender" (sort of a big porterish beer, my favorite of the lineup). While I don't know if scarcity was part of the plan or just a happy accident, it worked for them. They've had huge year-on-year growth, and a big expansion already, but the market is apparently nowhere near saturated with Surly beers.

So now comes the news that Surly is planning a new, $20m expansion which would include an entirely new brewery.  Along with this, Surly is lobbying the Minnesota legislature for a legal change that would allow them to open a pub and restaurant in the complex, which they envision as a sort of destination spot along the lines of New Belgium or Stone I think.

The other story comes from the UK, where punk-rock themed brewing bad boys Brew Dog released a super-insanely high alcohol beer, clearly to compete with Utopias in the just-coz-we-can category. (It's 32% and they call it "Tactical Nuclear Penguin".)** But British beer blogger Mark Dredge this week also had a nice writeup about going up to Scotland and hanging out at the Brew Dog-run pub.  ("Aberdeen is not as crap as I expected it to be") he begins.

But the story quickly runs to two points. Point one: despite the adolescent-with-attitude posturing that is clearly central to Brew Dog's brand image, the pub was nice. Not a punk rock hovel but "edgy" in the way that high-end hair salons are "edgy."  And clearly a departure from the dim, dingy and depressing spots that make up most of Aberdeen's pubs, apparently.

Point two: their signature IPA (named "Punk" no less) has been reformulated.  It was one of the beers Dredge championed before, but it now is slightly lower in alcohol, a touch sweeter, and definitely more approachable and quaffable.  Dredge is impressed.

So there you have it.  Two breweries that started up with great success and widespread acclaim, both trading on their edgy, brash attitude, outsider status, and focus on "extreme" beers.  Both, in a matter of a relatively short time, becoming quite successful -- so much so that they are no longer really outsider beers but breweries catering to a relatively large and increasingly mainstream audience even as they do the occasional stunt beer.

Where exactly is the tipping point?  And is it that the breweries have changed their attitude and approach or have the extreme brewers just dragged the mainstream over toward themselves?  I don't know.  But I will say that it's interesting to watch the bad boy brewers who start out screaming NO COMPROMISES start to mature into ... what? Semi-responsible semi-adults?

Notes:
* Surly refuses to call it simply a double IPA, as apparently that doesn't cover it.  Nor have they seemed open to calling it a "triple"  or something like that.  Perhaps in deference to them we could call it a trans-dimensional IPA?  Or is that too restrictive?
** Clearly, Surly is not alone when it comes to bombast.