Igår provade Cantillon ett nytt grepp för att sprida sin syrliga och eftertraktade öl. De la helt enkelt ut ett trepack bestående av Cantillon 50N – 4E, Cantillon Lou Pepe Gueuze och Cantillon Fou Foune på sin webbshop för att sondera terrängen.

  
En halvtimme senare var alla 150 trepack slut och detta trots att servern kraschat ett flertal gånger. De hade säkerligen kunnat sälja det fyrdubbla men som sagt var detta ett test. Bryggeriet har utlovat att vi får se detta fler gånger inom en snar framtid. De ska bara boosta servern först…

Anledningen till denna nya väg för att nå sina kunder beskriver bryggeriet på följande sätt:

Dear friends, 

A phrase written in white chalk on a barrel summarizes our production philosophy: “Le temps ne respecte pas ce qui se fait sans lui.”, literally translated as: ‘”Time does not respect what is made without it.” Indeed, the production of traditional Lambic takes time, a lot of time!

  
Depending on the type of beer that is produced, up to two or three years are necessary to finalize the product. This long storage process, in wooden cask and in bottle, requires an enormous surface area for the aging of our beers. Our current 3000m² storage rooms allow us a yearly production of approx. 2800hl of beer. We are not able to produce more without changing the storage period and therefore the quality of our products. 

For several years now, our small production has been insufficient to meet the strong demand due to the success of our beers. This results in an increasingly entrepreneurial parallel market. This demand focuses on small productions, which are mandatorily sold in restricted quantities so that as many clients as possible can purchase these products. 

In order to avoid these rules and purchase a maximum of bottles, some buyers do not hesitate to solicit strangers on the street and offer them money in exchange for our bottles.

This led to the arrival of a multitude of customers who know nothing about our beers and even less about Lambic. They come to purchase a few bottles of beer whose names they cannot read on the piece of paper that the reseller gave them.

The problem is not specific to Cantillon; our wholesalers and beer shops are victims of trafficking too. 

We understand very well the frustration of Cantillon enthusiasts who are prepared to buy on parallel markets if need be and are willing to pay much more for bottles that are sometimes improperly stored or packed.

Therefore, in order to solve this problem, we have decided to sell part of our small productions online. The purpose is not to initiate an online commercialization of our whole production. It is therefore useless to ask us for other beers than those we selected.

Jag förstår frustrationen i att sälja en öl för en spottstyver för att se samma öl två dagar senare till det tiodubbla priset och om Zwanzekvällen samt den här typen av försäljning gynnar detta och framförallt bryggeriet ser jag inga hinder till detta. Hoppas bara jag hinner med nästa gång…

Tack för uppmärksamheten/

Jens Skrubbe