Our Big Survey — your questions answered
Why we’re not in your supermarket yet, why we’re not on your pub’s taps, and why an alcohol-free sour is so much harder to brew than it looks.
Hello, I’m Rob, founder of Big Drop. Thanks to all of you who recently responded to our Big Survey.
We sent out a short survey to our mailing list subscribers and on our social media channels to ask what we’re doing well, what we’re doing badly and what we could improve. The (hundreds and hundreds of) results are in, and a couple of things popped up more than a few times.
“Can you please get Big Drop stocked in my local?”
When we started Big Drop back in 2016, I was completely naive about the challenges involved in getting our beer into people’s hands — I had absolutely no experience of the beer industry. And with the benefit of hindsight, if I’d have known how difficult it was going to be, I might not have started. Which is why ignorance is sometimes a blessing.
At the time, I held the simple notion that I would walk into a pub, ask the manager to compare their mass-produced alcohol-free lager with a Big Drop pale ale — and boom! The scales would fall from their eyes and Big Drop would immediately be stocked in their fridge. Job done. Next pub. Onwards!
As it turns out, it’s not quite as easy as that.
I won’t bore you with the complexities of buying teams, range reviews, retros, discounts, supply chain logistics and any number of things I’m still not sure I fully understand.
But the headline is this: whatever they might say to the contrary, most places — and I include pubs, supermarkets, beer shops and anywhere else which might think about listing a beer brand — will not stock a product unless they are pretty sure someone is going to buy it.
Which gives rise to the wonderful chicken-and-egg scenario: how do you convince a beer buyer that people will buy your beer if there isn’t anywhere for people to buy the beer in the first place?
It’s difficult
We’ve worked really (really) hard to make sure that if a pub, shop, restaurant, bar or club wants to stock Big Drop then we can get it to them. This was also a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Another story, for another day.
And of course, our sales team also work really (really) hard going around as many places as they can sampling Big Drop, talking to people who work in these places selling our own brand.
But our biggest brand ambassadors are you. The easiest, quickest and most simple way for you to get Big Drop in the place you want to buy it from is to ask them to stock it. If a place knows that you will buy Big Drop, then it will sell it to you.
It gets a bit more complicated if the place you want to sell Big Drop is a pub which, although you may consider it your “local”, is actually owned by a massive pubco with 500 sites across the country. If it is truly an independent then it will be a lot easier — just tell them to contact us. If it is one pub in 500, the chances are that there is one person, somewhere, in that company who is in charge of deciding whether their 500 pubs (including yours) can sell Big Drop. But if you ask the landlord to pass the request up the chain, they may well do so.
The same goes for supermarkets. We can, and do, talk to beer buyers about listing Big Drop. We talk to them all the time. We show them our new beers, we tell them how great we are and we tell them (nicely) that we think they should put us on their shelves so that you can find us more easily. But unless they know you’re going to buy Big Drop, they won’t.
“Can you please get on draught in my pub?”
This is the big one.
In theory: yes. We have the beer in kegs and we can (probably) get it to your pub.
But the same applies as to the first point — the chances are that your pub is one of a group of many, whether dozens or hundreds, and the person in charge of whether your landlord or landlady can put us on tap is likely someone in an office in a different town.
So the same strategy applies. Find out who owns your pub, ask all the same people, jump up and down about wanting to buy lovely pints of Big Drop and see what happens.
Please don’t stop asking. We don’t.
“I’d love you to do a [insert style of beer here]”
The first beer we made was a stout because I’m a stout drinker and I couldn’t find an alcohol-free one. The next beer was a pale ale because the bottle shops told me that’s what would sell and was the most popular style.
But we need to know what you want to drink. Turns out what you’re gasping for, above all else, is wheat beer, porter and fruit-infused beers.
A brief note about sours and fruit infusions, because this is the part people find most surprising. Of all the beers we have tried, tested and sometimes released, our sour has been by far and away the most difficult to produce.
The reason for that is simple. Alcoholic sour beer is produced using a particular strain of bacteria called lactobacillus. Lactobacillus is what’s responsible for creating the sour flavour. However, it is also a monstrously aggressive little b*gger, and converts sugar to alcohol like it’s going out of fashion.
One of the ways Big Drop manages to produce beer of 0.5% ABV without halting the fermentation or artificially extracting the alcohol is to use a “lazy” yeast which is a bit rubbish at converting sugar to alcohol. If you add lactobacillus to our brews, our ABV would go through the roof. And it wouldn’t be a Big Drop.
For that reason, our sour beers are never going to be as sour as traditionally fermented sours. That’s just one of those things.
A similar issue arises with fruit infusions. What does fruit have lots of? Sugar. What does sugar turn into when fermented? That’s right. So if we stick a load of raspberries or grapefruit into our brews, the ABV goes up with it.
Fruit essences are one way round it, but the recipe becomes much more complicated — essences are very concentrated. What we always want to do is innovate, and as it turns out, we’ve gotten pretty good at alcohol-free.
Finally
Thank you for the kind words amongst the, almost universally constructive, criticism. I think we’re doing something right, but we can do it better, and it’s gratifying to hear from you that by and large you think we’re doing it right too.
It’s an epic journey and we’re glad you’re on it with us.
Onward!
Rob