"Hyper Local", or, Certain Adjectives May be Exaggerated

     This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending Pemberfest, a "hyper-local grand tasting" at Pemberton Farms, a gourmet food shop and produce/garden center located juuust barely in Cambridge, MA, near Davis Square.  It was their second year doing it, and my second year going.  The event featured 17 local brewers pouring samples, and also featured 10% your purchases of any bottles from the breweries in attendance.  

     The whole thing is free, which is sort of a mixed bag.  It's nice to not have to pay any kind of cover, but with no deterrent for entrance, the place get overfilled very quickly, which leans to chaos, aggravation, and breweries running out of some or all of their beers within the first hour or two.  Knowing how wacky Massachusetts beer laws are (and you know, too, if you've been reading this blog), they may actually have to do this kind of thing for free lest it be construed that they are selling samples of beer.  Or maybe something having to do with a festival permit, or the fact that it's in a space doing other business... the possibilities are myriad, and although it's a slight bone of contention for me (I think if they can charge, they should, and have the opportunity to run a smoother fest), it's not the bone I want to chew on today.

     I've been to a few beer events that dubbed themselves "hyper" local without really giving much thought to what it means.  "Local" itself is a trendy term that people like to throw around and, cynic that I am, I tend to interpret it as someplace you can drive within a day that somehow justifies charging more for it... or maybe I'm confusing that second part with "organic" (take THAT, hippies!).   In terms of beer, at least around here, it seems to me that people use the word local to mean "in New England".  You're in Boston but shopping for some MO by Maine Beer Company?  No worries!  That's local!  So perhaps we can interpret "hyper" local as actually within the state.  That's still a fairly wide swath, but we do know it must be bigger than something like "beer from the greater Boston area", because... well, because then there couldn't have been 17 brewers in attendance.

     Anyway, because I love maps, I decided to map out where exactly the brewers in attendance at Pemberfest were from.  Just a fun little exercise where I could point out where the furthest "hyper" local brews were from.  But after a little digging, things got interesting.

View Hyper Local? in a larger map

If the embedded map above is acting wonky, click here.

     In green, we have the location of Pemberton Farms.  In blue, we have the breweries with, more or less, brick and mortar locations where the beer is made.  In yellow, we have contract brewers... divided into two types.

     One of the markers is for Paper City Brewing Company in Holyoke, MA, where Backlash Beer currently contracts out of.  There another for Mercury Brewing Company in Ipswich, MA, which several breweries in attendance contract out of.  According to this article, they currently contact with Clown Shoes, Somerville Brewing Company (Slumbrew), Battle Road Brewing, Notch Brewing Company and several others not at Pemberfest.  There are also two yellow markers for Slumbrew and for Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project.  Slumbrew has a test brewery in Somerville, MA, and they operate things "similar to gypsy breweries" where the head brewer works with a contracted location and is on premises for the making of the beer (and also provides the specialty ingredients, at least).  This is in contrast to the classic definition of contract brewer, where someone else is contracted to make the beer for the brewery.

     In the case of Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project, I've placed a marker in Westport, MA.  Honestly, I'm not 100% clear on where Pretty Things brews their beer, and there are two wrinkles to this.  Pretty Things is a tenant brewer.  This means they contract a location in which to brew beer but, rather than having it brewed for them or being on premises for QC and such, tenant brewers provide all of the labor for the brewing process.  In essence, they are a subdivision of gypsy brewer (which is a subdivision of contract brewer) where their contract is purely for the location and use of equipment.  Plus, their bottles say that their beer is made and bottle in Westport, but I can't find anything recent online to nail that down to an address.  It may well be at Buzzards Bay Brewing, but I found a slightly dated article that suggested that might not be the case.  So I'm just going to go with what the bottle says.  I know.  Bad blogger!  Lazy blogger!

     Finally, we get to the most interesting case of all.  Notch Brewing Company.  In researching this particular rabbit hole, I came upon this bit of news from just over a month ago: Notch is actually made in two locations, as they signed a contract with Two Roads Brewing in Stamford, CT to supplement their capacity at Mercury.  So that means that "hyper local" brew people drank on Saturday might have actually been from the shadow of... New York City!

     Also, note that if you Google "hyper local beer", one of the first things that comes up is something called "Hyper-Local Craft Brewfest", an annual BeerAdvocate event.  This one, you don't need to make a map and do additional research for to notice some of these attendees are definitely from out of state.  Naraganssett Beer Co is from Rhode Island, Peak Organic Brewing Company and Rising Tide Brewing Company are from Maine, and Smuttynose Brewing Co is from New Hampshire.  And that's without even getting in to the Mead and Cider makers in attendance.

    So, does "hyper" local just mean the same thing as "local".  Is it just thrown on because it sounds cool?  Consider that we've been talking a bit about contract brewers, and if you read most any beer blogs, you know what a quagmire that term became (at least for a heated while) recently.  There are many flavors of contract brewers that all, in one certain sense, denote the same concept.  Local, hyper local... even quantum local (which is surely next) just means "from the geographic region".  Probably.  Marketing is silly and beer contracts are sometimes confusing.

     In a final analysis, it's great to support your... let's go with the term "area" brewers.  Basing your love on geographic proximity?  Well, that's for you to decide but it seems silly to me.  The closest brewery to me isn't going to necessarily get a larger share of my beer-drinking business, but I will say it warrants some more consideration than a beer from, say, Ohio or Washington state.  Whether it's local or "hyper" or whatever silly adjective someone throws in front of a beer fest to make it sound slightly more edgy or memorable, the important thing is such events afford the opportunity to meet the people involved with your beer.  So many it's no so much about "local" as about "community", which I think sound much more warm and fuzzy.