Friday, March 28, 2008

Article in the OWH

Had a reader let me know of an article on Nebraska Brewing Company in the Omaha World Herald.

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=2620&u_sid=10293571

A pretty well written review but I would be interested to hear from Paul if the Wit is modeled after Blue Moon or is that the only Wit style beer the reviewer has a reference for? I am guessing the later, truly unfortunate that the Wit style has been relegated to have the benchmark be Blue Moon. I guess I am not fond of Blue Moon, too much coriander, give me a Hoegaarden any day, probably the beer that should be used as a comparison for Wits. The only problem with that is that it doesn't have the distribution or marketing machine of Coors behind it so we are going to have to settle with describing Witbiers to non-beer geeks as "something like Blue Moon." Heck, I have done it with my homebrewed version of a Wit when explaining to my parents what to expect.

Anyway, this article is more of a foodie article but still a good read.

4 comments:

Paul said...

I'm with ya Nate.

Unfortunately, she fails to make a distinction between beer style and beer brand. We can say that it was clearly a Belgian Wit but as brewers - I'm not really certain that any of us set out to create a clone. This is simply our interpretation and expression of the style. At least this is one of our beers that tends to fall into a style category. I think it's going to be interesting when we start displaying our beers that cause us all to sit back and ponder when it comes to classification.

I think this also underscores the work we've still got ahead of us when it comes to beer education. We did connect at the basic consumer level however - she enjoyed the beer and did tend to place it above Blue Moon! So we got that going for us.

Education with a smile - I love the guys that absolutely rave about a beer and then compare it to something in the universe of beer but really a tad off.

The one that I loved the most was the guy that was yelling quite loudly by the bar - "I LOVE this beer!!! This is exactly like Fat Tire - it's awesome!"

And he was holding up a German Hefeweizen...

Nate B. said...

This is EXACTLY the response I expected and appreciate Paul. Thanks, as always, for taking the time to clarify your stance and at the same time appreciate where we need to go. Thanks.

I always thought fat tire was a german hefe, but no one believes me.

nickspies said...

Well, it looks like the beer got the best review from her.

Paul: I hope they give you some time before they review the food again...maybe you can clarify the Blue Moon issue then...or maybe you want to wait until after the review.

WoW Killa said...

Funny. Does anyone else feel that flat tire is their least favorite nbb beer? I do. It's like the ground the barley too much or something, too roasted maybe. I don't know, but 1554 and Abbey kick some butt. ~ Stash Zyka