Keep your battles offline.

Do not use social media to wage a war against another brewery. I don’t care how pissed off you are at them. I don’t care how many laws you think they broke. I don’t care if they flat out stole your branding, your beer name, or your recipe—DO NOT post about it online.

And why not? Besides getting an ego boost from your adoring fans, nothing good can come from public wars between companies. You are guaranteed to lose existing fans as well as lose any potential fans who are first exposed to your brand in this fashion. And at the end of the day, it’s not fair for you to put your fans and followers in this position. You do not have the right to ask your fans to fight your battles. Hire a lawyer. It’s their freaking job to fight your battles—NOT mine.

Keep the fight between your lawyers—NOT your fans.

The Law of Attraction states that like attracts like. Whatever vibrations we radiate attract more of the same. Negative energy only attracts more negative energy. The more negative energy you put on social media, the more you will get. And trust me, you do not want your brand to be viewed as one that emits and attracts negative energy.

Not to mention, breweries putting out negative energy only makes the craft beer industry look bad as a whole. You might think that the battle is solely between you and the other guy, but it’s not. You just brought the entire craft beer community into the lime light. Your actions reflect negatively upon our entire industry—not just your two brands. You make craft beer look immature and childish. You make it look like we can’t get along with each other. You are destroying the collaborative, harmonious and united image that we have worked so hard to project.

Social media is an extremely powerful tool. And with great power, comes great responsibility. And trust me, I’ve learned this the very, very hard way. Breweries and beer fans, please heed my advice:

Don’t use social media as a weapon.

If you need justice, then by all means go and get it. But do it in a courtroom, NOT on Facebook and Twitter. Besides, I’m pretty sure that the judge making the final ruling over the case won’t be swayed by internet petitions or “how many followers and fans” you got to post on your behalf.

I did NOT ask to be put in the middle of this battle. None of us did. Sure, I might have opinions on what is right and wrong in this situation, but I reserve the right to stay out of the fight. Don’t make me chose sides. And don’t make me fight your battles.

Because I refuse to get involved, I’m intentionally leaving the details of this particular “War of the Roses” out of this post. If you wish to learn more about the brewery vs. brewery conflict I’m referring to, you can read the House of Lancaster arguments here and the House of York arguments here.

And you can guarantee that a case study will be made of this incident, highlighting it as the quintessential example of what not to do on social media, at the 2014 Craft Brewers Conference.

After witnessing the exciting 2010 World Beer Cup Awards Ceremony, I was curious to know how many medal each state took home. Inspired by the “Olympic Medal Count” idea, NBC keep a running toll of each country’s medals, I decided to go back through the list of awards and break them down into states (I have country totals as well, but for the purpose of this post I am limiting the awards to the states).

Essentially, I was curious to see if craft beer was, in fact, regionalized in this country. Surprisingly, almost every state one a medal of some sort. However, some states definitely dominated the awards ceremony over others.

Here are the results:

THE UNITED STATES MEDAL COUNT

FIRST PLACE STATE

With 34 medals total, more than double any other state, California takes the cake. Truth be told, California is a very large state and has a lot of breweries. However, it is not necessarily over-saturated. I credit the overwhelming abundance for shelf space and market share as the major driver behind California’s dominance and proven excellence in the craft beer industry. As a brewer, you can’t get survive in this state if you don’t excel.

SECOND PLACE STATES

Each with 13 medals total, the following states

• Illinois
• Colorado
• Washington
• Oregon

THIRD PLACE STATE

Boasting 11 medals total, Michigan just barely scraping at the heels of the second place states listed above.

FOURTH PLACE STATE

Racking in 8 medals, Indiana comes in at number four.

FIFTH PLACE STATES

Tying for fifth at seven medals a piece are Virginia and Missouri.

SIXTH PLACE STATES

Oddly, with six medals each, the following states arrive in sixth place:

• Delaware
• Wisconsin
• Maryland

SEVENTH PLACE STATE

Five medals earned Nevada seventh place.

EIGHTH PLACE STATES

Four medals earned the following states the rank of eighth:

• New Mexico
• Pennsylvania
• Arizona
• New York

NINETH PLACE STATES

With 3 medals a piece, ninth place gets split in the following six states:

• North Carolina
• Tennessee
• Wyoming
• Massachusetts
• Alaska
• Utah

TENTH PLACE STATES

The states that made it home with two medals include:

• Maine
• Vermont
• Kansas
• Texas

THE HONORABLE MENTIONS

The following states did not leave the ceremony empty handed, but were lucky enough to score one medal:

• Ohio
• Minnesota
• Oklahoma
• Nebraska
• Kentucky
• Georgia

Overall, 33 of the 50 states received at least one medal in the 2010 World Beer Cup. Regionally, the WEST COAST dominated the medal ceremony, followed by the MIDWEST, WEST, and the EAST COAST.

Now when it comes to gold, silver, and bronze. I will let someone else with more time and patience to come up with some sort of matrix to figure out that equation.

PS: Feel free to correct me. I did this count at like 2 in the morning, very sleepy eyed.

Congratulations to all of this year’s medal winners!

Cheers!