Tag Archives: Dead Frog Brewery

Boston Pizza Owner Invests in Dead Frog

CBC’s television series The Big Decision featured Aldergrove’s own Dead Frog Brewery in yesterday’s episode.  The Big Decision is a recently created business oriented reality series where successful business people assess the investment potential of a struggling company (can they turn things around?).  If you missed the show yesterday you can view the episode on-line here.

Apparently Dead Frog Brewery has been struggling financially and was in need of an estimated $500,000 to expand brewery capacity and properly grow their business.  Jim Treliving, a successful Canadian businessman, saw potential in Dead Frog and decided the brewery was an investment worthy of his time and money.

Jim’s intent with Dead Frog is quite clear according to yesterday’s episode- grow the business and sell to a major.  This is a relatively common exit strategy in the business world, but will this corporate vision be good news for British Columbia’s craft beer scene?

Dead Frog has never been at the forefront of the local craft beer movement.  Instead of targeting beer geeks (and also passionate product evangelists) with hoppy IPA’s and other bold creations, Dead Frog has focused on light beer with their pepper lime lager and mandarin orange amber ale.  Dead Frog does offer a number of beer fanatic friendly drinks in 650 ml bottles, but the quality and consistency of these offerings have always been lacking and appear to be an afterthought.

Bud Light Lime is a very successful product, but Bud Light Lime drinkers do not drink craft beer.  Dead Frog is offering a product that competes directly with Bud Light Lime.  Budweiser can produce a light lime flavoured lager at a much lower cost than Dead Frog and they can also properly support their products with international distribution and a multi-million dollar marketing budget.  Dead Frog may offer a better quality and more natural product, but Dead Frog has never really had a chance.  I hope Jim sees this and makes a change.  Make great beer that beer drinker’s drink – simple.

The craft beer market segment has been growing for quite some time.  Big beer companies know this and want in on the action.  These industry giants lack the entrepreneurial spirit and passion for beer that only a craft brewery has.  Macro brewers like to invest in (or buyout) successful craft breweries to help increase sales and possibly add some much needed passion into a stale industry.

Jim’s strategy is to turn Dead Frog into a successful business – can’t argue with this strategy.  Dead Frog will need to post impressive numbers year over year (double digit growth) in order to attract attention from a major brewer.  Dead Frog needs to sell more beer.

Do craft beer drinkers buy light lime lager?  Not really.  I believe Dead Frog has no choice but to take a step back  and realign their product strategy with market demands.  Doing so will give Dead Frog the best chance at success.

The more successful craft breweries British Columbia can support the better, but in order to survive breweries must offer a world class product.

Cheers,

Erik

The Great Pig Roast

The summer has recently drawn to a close and we are now welcoming the season of autumn.  While pondering for quite some time over the best way to toast the summer goodnight and welcome in the chilly fall season, yes I actually ponder, I received a timely call from a good friend.  After talking for a while it soon became apparent that the purpose of this call had a much higher level of significance than mere idle chit-chat – he was planning a pig roast.   I can think of not better way of bidding summer farewell than feasting on a pig, slowly roasted over an open flame.

The more I thought about it, the more appropriate an early-fall pig roast became.  A roasted pig, even a young suckling pig, is far more food than a crowd of less than 50 hungry eaters can consume, and I don’t know of anyone who has a house sized appropriate to house such a gathering.  The late September air is just warm enough for a sizable crowd of 60 people to gather around a large fire without any great level of discomfort due to cold.

The end of September also means apple season is in full swing, and with an apple tree in my backyard heavily burdened with fresh apples, we made a massive apple crumble.  Roasted pork, followed by a sweet apple crumble – a match made in heaven.  Cabbage is also in season and we all know perfectly well that pork and coleslaw are very good friends.  Yes, this event was made to be.

Of course any gathering of such a significant magnitude requires beer.  Trying to go follow the seasonal and local theme that this event was creating for itself, I decided to pick up to two 19L kegs from Langley’s own Dead Frog Brewery. When I went to pick up the two kegs on a Friday afternoon, I found what I presumed to be Dead Frog’s management team sitting in the board room, drinking quality beer.  As was expected, the beer was fantastic, although a bit foamy, and was enjoyed by many

So we bid summer farewell and welcomed in the fall with delicious feast of roasted pork – a definite contender for top five moments of 2009.

Cheers,

Erik

Who wants a clear bottle anyway?

Fresh Hops

Sleeman Breweries, Canada’s third largest brewer, is suing Langley, BC based, Dead Frog Brewing over their use of a clear bottle. This brings me to the question, who wants a clear bottle anyway? Clear bottles, and green bottles, are not a good choice when it comes to bottling beer.  Believe it or not, many people assume that Heineken, packaged in green bottles, is supposed to taste “skunky”. Nothing we consume should taste “skunky”, especially not beer.

Like most food, beer is affected by light (UV exposure) and oxygen.  Any regular glass bottle will eliminate the oxygen problem, but not the light problem. The hops in beer are extremely sensitive to UV light, and when exposed to most light sources a compound from the hops will make the beer taste and smell like it lost a fight with a skunk. A proper beer bottle should be brown or opaque; a brown bottle will filter out most of the UV light that causes beer to go bad.

I understand that in order to sell more beer, marketers are coming up with new creative ways to package beer to make it look sexier. But rule number one of marketing is to make sure you have a good product to sell. Good products need less marketing support and sell themselves. Packing in a clear bottle is taking a good product and turning it into a bad product – why do that?

I hope that both brewers realize the error of their ways and switch to a more appropriate bottle.

Erik