Malt Advocate Magazine Slipping??

[chazwicke]

As a long time subscriber to Malt Advocate Magazine it is very disappointing to me to see the magazine devote itself almost entirely to whiskey / whisky and move farther and farther away from coverage of beer. I wish that they would bring back a balance of coverage. I recently got my renewal notice and am considering not renewing. Anyone else notice this distressing change from what was formerly the best of the best beer magazines? After all, they are wasting the talants and knowledge of a pillar of the beer community - Lew Bryson. Come on Mr. Hansel get back to your roots!

[steveh]

I have to say, I never picked up that magazine because I thought all it ever covered was whiskey/whisky. Or in a majority percentage, anyway.

S.

[chazwicke]

Nope it started out as a beer magazine but has gone progressively towards whiskey. Primarily Scotch which is a noble drink. But I subscribed and read it for the beer articles and they are all but gone. Stephen Beaumont still writes for them. And Lew Bryson's articles were always great. I see he has a new book out on New York Breweries and if it is as good as his PA book then it will be a must read. (Lew, if you read this, I am sorry to complain but after all my old handle on Prodigy was "Beer Crank").

[threecb]

I always considered it a Whiskey magazine too...hmmmm.

I agree with your praise of Lew...he definitely has a passion for beer and I visit his website
almost daily looking for updates. His site also has some stuff dedicated to spirits...the man loves his bourbon...

[Lew Bryson]

Hey, thanks, guys...I'm blushing!
Malt Advocate has indeed become almost entirely whisk(e)y oriented; about the only beer left is Beaumont and the Buyer's Guide, and a few ads. I'm not necessarily happy about that, but I understand and appreciate what happened. MA has always been a small magazine, a family business for John Hansell. When the shakeout hit in the mid/late 1990s, microbrewing ad revenue dried up significantly. A lot of beer mags went under.

We had a foot in whisky, and it saved us. As breweries continued to freeze ad budgets at low levels (and move away from ads in beer mags), we moved to more whisky editorial. Eventually it became a feedback loop: when we tried to get beer ads, we were told we were a whisky magazine, and why would they want to advertise in a whisky magazine? (The funny thing is...brewers remain one of our biggest category of subscribers.) And the whisky companies kept buying more and more full-page, color ads.

It was economics, pure and simple. MA, as a MAGAZINE, was much more appreciated by the whisk(e)y world than by the beer world, because for a few years we were the only game in town. Even now we are one of two magazines, each with distinctive editorial voices and looks. But that's what happened.

We still love beer, and are still passionate about it. But we couldn't make a living at it, and we have all hung our hats on that (John especially; his entire family income is based on MA). That's what happened, sad but true.

Cheers,

Lew Bryson

[chazwicke]

Ah now it all makes sense! Thanks for the skinny, Lew. I am still saddend though. Malt Advocate was absolutely the most intellegent and informed beer magazine out there. I guess that is the same thing that happened to Barleycorn. That just leaves Jim Dorche's papers, American Brewer, Celebrater, Ale Street News and All About Beer. All of them are good but not as good as MA once was with regard to beer. Thanks again and how about providing the link to your website?

[threecb]

Yeah, Lew -- what chazwicke said!

Thanks for the info and continuing to feed us the info.

Chaz, here's the link to his site, so Lew doesn't have to sink
to the depths of shameless self-promotion;)

www.lewbryson.com (http://www.lewbryson.com)

Good info and updates about both the PA and NY books there...

[Lew Bryson]

Thanks, guys. I like to think my greatest contribution to Malt Advocate has been to set its voice as unafraid to cover details, and to never talk down to the readers. We've maintained that as we've moved to whisk(e)y, to the point where some people recently told me that they'd thought MA was a trade publication; they didn't think consumers would get what we were writing about or be interested in it. Little do they know!

Lew Bryson