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By Root 1107 0

told by a very successful Coca-Cola ad manager, “If you stick with this for ten years, with a little luck you’ll become an overnight success.” Big-beer businesspeople are really only interested in trying to establish models based upon apparent success in order to apply those models to their own future growth for growth’s sake. They have never figured out that there is no model to be built, except for the ones of individual persistence, dedication and enthusiasm for beer quality and diversity. True and successful microbrewers have always put quality, diversity and the people who will enjoy their beer first on their list of priorities. Sales are essential for a brewery, but selling beer for the simple sake of selling beer usually dooms a dispassionate brewer. I’ve seen this happen over and over again.

Psychographic Resonations

The Magic Hat Brewing Company

WHILE SOME BREWERIES don’t like to paint themselves into a corner nor put themselves into a box, there is at least one brewery that you might say presents themselves as the box. But they’ll let you determine what’s inside. As if reaching into a magic hat, you’ll take out surprises, delights and joys with every plunge, every adventure, every indulgence and every pleasure. “We believe that the people who enjoy our beer don’t really need to be told ‘what’s in the box,’” explains Alan Newman, the full-bearded, energetic founder of the Magic Hat Brewing Company.

“So who is the poet, the artist, the contrarian, the joker, the gamesman at Magic Hat?” I ask Alan after taking a step inside their virtual address at www.magichat.net. Without any hesitation whatsoever, Alan shoots back, “I am!”

Taking a cruise with the brews of Magic Hat, one is taken on a journey, swirling, turning, breaking out, double-taking and becoming entranced. “You get to choose the level of involvement you have with Magic Hat. It could be the messages under our bottle caps, the beer, the label, a pilgrimage to the magic brewery, the website, our community,” explains Alan, the grand wizard.

“The fact that we are in Burlington, Vermont, is really not that relevant to Magic Hat. The community we want to embrace and reach out to is not geographic, it’s a psychographic community we are trying to resonate with,” Alan continues, knowing exactly what direction he is taking the beers that seem to be mystically brewed at the Magic Hat Brewery. “We are not Burlington. We are not northern Vermont. We are not about New England.”

He explains that in a sense they and the people who enjoy Magic Hat beer are night people, grown adults; of the stars and the moon. Magic Hat beers are an adult beverage for an adult community. Like the Nike “swoosh,” Magic Hat has its little crescent moon embedded in a bursting magical eight-pointed star.

Alan Newman, founder of Magic Hat

The original Magic Hat head brewer, Bob Johnson, was a talented homebrewer. Alan was looking for something new to develop. Bob was a friend, and it took only a few sips of his homebrew to evoke the excited question, “What the hell is this?” Alan was not a passionate beer enthusiast. “I drank beer,” he admits, “but I never really got into the tastes of microbrewery beers…until I noticed the beers Bob was brewing at his kitchen sink.” One magic taste led to another, and soon thereafter, in 1994, Alan founded the brewery. Beer drinkers recognized the magic, and their appreciation for the “elixirs” has continued to grow.

Now head brewer and brewmaster Todd Haire is brewing up elixirs at Magic Hat. Todd, too, got his start in homebrewing. Originally from Texas, he eventually migrated to Vermont. How did he learn? I asked. “I learned by making mistakes. I love to teach people, because I never had the opportunity to really have a mentor or be taught. Teaching people about brewing is one of the great joys I have with this job.”

Todd loves his job. “We have an open palette to experiment,” he says. “We’re encouraged to be as creative as possible with what resources they have available.”

I often ask brewmasters that if they had a moment to relax with a