Marketing New Beers

My decision to try a lot of new beers last week led me down a worthy line of thinking:

How do Eugene's breweries get the word out about new beer releases?

After some research, it turns out the answer is that often, they don't.

I looked at each Eugene brewery's website, Twitter, and Facebook page, trying to get a feel for what sort of information they're trying to present. Almost without exception, social media is used to promote local events or events at the brewery. Taking things a step further - at the breweries I visited this week, I asked the managers how new beers are promoted. The answers I got were variations on 'sometimes we'll post about it, but usually we just put it on and let people find out when they visit.' I was told to either come in or call to get the most up-to-date information.

I'll admit that I'm a bit confused by this. Beer is a brewery's raison d'etre - why wouldn't a brewery spend a little bit of time to get the word out about new beers? Why should I be the one having to do the work to learn what a brewery's up to? I find it especially vexing because this'd be such an easy thing to fix - just pour a pint, take a picture, and make a quick Twitter or Facebook post including the description.

I ask this as someone who's well-known as a novelty drinker - tell me a brewery's got an interesting new beer to try, and I'm there. That's not to say that I don't appreciate standards - I think Oakshire's Watershed is a fantastic IPA, for instance. But I would almost never visit Oakshire and get a Watershed - why would I? It's in every beer store and supermarket and tons of other bars in town. When I visit a brewery, I want to try something new, something I can't easily find elsewhere.

So it's a bit disheartening to find that the local breweries aren't marketing their new beers to people like me. Sure, Ninkasi'll have announcements for new beer lines on occasion, and Oakshire's been pretty reliable about releasing a new beer every week on Tuesday. But everyone else I talked to and looked at doesn't market their new beers effectively.