The Twelve Levels of Hopstar Awareness: Achieving Beer Nirvana

We’ve had a number of requests to determine is something, or someone is Hopstar worthy. Rather than make snap judgments, we’ve decided to publish the Twelve Levels of Hopstar Awareness, the goal of which is to achieve Beer Nirvana and allow you to determine yourself.

When one contemplates and becomes self aware, one can only then recognize the need for Hopstardom. From there (Level Three), a Hopstar can achieve any other level in any order, with two exceptions.

To achieve Level 11, a Hopstar must be nominated and voted in by the existing members of the Circle of Trust.  The Charter Circle will be selected by Flat12 and members of the Group of Five.

The Circle’s members will view the Level 12 nominees deeds and determine, in their own infinite wisdom, if these deeds (activities and achievements associated with the other ten levels of Hopstar Self Awareness) are Hopstar Karma-like.  If they are, the Circle is extended.

With Level 12, a Hopstar must first master all eleven levels and is be chosen by Flat12 to enter Beer Nirvana.  This is the only level that Flat12 has any direct control over.  There is a reason for this.  In Level 12, members are charged with an awesome responsibility-which only a handful of you now know but is associated with Craft Beer Social Responsibility and Paying It Forward…all of which is tied to Hopstar Karma and is not marketing or just plain fun stuff.  It can and will actually change people’s lives.  We will announce what this is soon and you will be pleased.

Twelve Levels of Hopstardom – achieving an ever-higher-oneness with flavorful craft beer and the good people of Flat12.

1.     Hopstar Contemplation

You’re aware of Hopstardom. You’re thinking: ‘Is it right for me? Is this who I am? I see macrobrews everywhere I go…what does it all mean? Is Hopstardom a key to unlocking flavorful beer? Is that lint in my navel?’

2.     Hopstar Self-Awareness

There’s something eating at you now. Maybe it’s that friend you’ve seen glumly nursing a can of macro-brew light. Where’s the enjoyment? Something stirs – you realize it’s time your friend was introduced to a better beer – and you’re just the one to do it.

3.    Becoming a Hopstar

Give the pledge: “I do hereby declare, from this day forward, I will faithfully carry out the duties of Hopstardom. I will introduce my friends to flavorful beer, provide honest feedback to Flat12, and offer all Hopstars my wholehearted support as an ambassador-at-large for Flat12 Bierwerks and the Hopstar Nation.” You may now kiss the foamy head.

4.    Hopstar Event Participation and Craft Ambassador

You’ve hopped on the Flat12 train. No longer content to just follow the brand, you’ve hit that recognition point –there’s opportunity in socializing with other Hopstars and opening the door for new Hopstars. It’s a social thing. Craft beer is something meant to be shared and Hopstardom sets the table.

5.    Hopstar Activity Leadership

You’ve established yourself within the Hopstar community, either through the insights you share online or the efforts made at Hopstar events or informally with other Hopstars. Is there a new specialty beer being tapped? Or a seasonal unveiling? Not only are you on that like white on rice, you’re putting the word out and marshaling your network to share in the good time, descending on the event with all your favorite peeps in tow, where all enjoy the fruits of your brilliance and insight. You are now approaching uncharted territory in Hopstardom.

6.    Craft Beer Subject Matter Expert

You’ve earned your Masters in Craft Beer. How? Well, it’s a lifelong pursuit. Brewery tours. Hosting tastings, a beer fridge that resembles a retail cooler. Lurking around online craft beer chat sites. Attending Cicerone* classes. Acting as a judge in a competition. Writing about beer in print. You believe in flavorful beer and we believe in you!

* Looking up what the heck a Cicerone is is the first step in expertdom.

7.    Generating a Cult Following

It may come on without warning. You’re getting quoted back to yourself. T-shirts with your image appear on the streets. People retweet you – in droves. People show up at the events you’re hosting and assume you’re on the Flat12 payroll. In fact, you can’t convince them otherwise. because you are just too dang much in the know! Amongst Hopstars, you have established yourself as one to watch. All bow down.

8.    Spousal Conversion

For months your spouse has wondered what you’re doing, talking about craft beer all the time;. “Flat12 this. Barley and hops, that…” Friends and neighbors have tried to keep a safe distance knowing that a marriage hangs in the balance. And then, like a perfect storm, it hits. You’re in this together. Flat12 has taken its rightful place in the family – a shared love. Cheers to shared good taste!

9.    Hopstar Higher Awareness Activation (i.e. winning a contest)

You’ve won an impossibly difficult Flat12 contest. It’s on. Your Hopstar credentials are there for all to see. Top of the hops heap, you’ve reached that higher level of awareness. Awareness, that you are a Hopstar and you’re willing to display it for some free swag. As long as it’s something good, like shirts, hats, coasters or free barware, y’know. Of course, the real value of Level 9 is being able to pick contest prizes and of course create new diabolical contests, causing the brains of non-Hopstars to melt into mint jelly.

10.    Hopstardom PhD status. (Honorary Doctorate of Hopstardom)

Like Alex Trebek, you know the pronunciation of every obscure beer term. Like a budding young doctoral candidate, you’ve sat at your computer and expounded on craft beer in volumes that could easily equate to a PhD dissertation. You note and footnote. You research. It’s clear that you are serious about Hopstardom. This honorary doctorate offers kick-ass Flat12 VIP (aka Premium and Customized) swag in the place of heraldic medieval dress or floppy hats with tassels along with access to Flat12’s version of the Faculty Lounge. OK?

11.     Hopstar Inner Circle (aka: “The Circle of Trust”)

You have passed through the levels of Hopstardom with blinding speed. With a level of pomp and circumstance that befits the occasion, your beautiful visage will now grace the Flat12 Bierwerks Hopstar Wall of Fame. Never again shall someone pass the men’s room without knowing your name. Please don’t cry at the induction ceremony, it dilutes the beer.

12.    Attaining Hopstar Nirvana

This is your lifetime achievement award. You’ve gone so far above and beyond with Flat12, there is little more we can do to express our undying gratitude other than to etch it in stone, or brick in this case. Hopstardom writ large! At least one or two notches above having your star on Mann’s Theater Walk of Fame.

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Your city needs more art!

It’s true of every city, right? Indianapolis – you have a great opportunity here.
Vote for Big Car! We’ll track progress.

Thanks to Hopstar @ColinVaughan for passing this along.

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Early smack-down! Adventures in Hopstardom starts strong!

Well, it’s clear that Hopstars are all a bunch of over-achievers.  It was only Friday when, while at Moto GP, Sean and I were hanging out in one of the suites with a Hopstar (whose suite is oh-so-sweet) and he had an idea.

Do a contest.  But do a contest built for 8 year olds and do it for adults.  Include beer.  Here’s the premise.  There is a project that a lot of schools do called Flat Stanley.  I blogged about how it works here:  Adventures in Hostardom.

Anyway, it’s a contest that runs until we open.  We are collecting all the images and when the new Flat12 site launches in about a week or so, all of the images will be up there for YOU to vote on.  YOU determine the winner in a very Digg-like way.  Also, Hopstars will be selecting the Grand Prize and 12 runners-up prizes for categories the Hopstars deem worthy.

We don’t have any control over this!  You do and the Hopstars do!

So here are the rules for Adventures in Hopstardom 2010:

What you CAN do:

1.  Take a picture or a movie of yourself or someone else holding a Hopstar sticker or the Hopstar sticker in an interesting, unique place or far away place.

2. Send it in to us at contests@flat12.me and put in the subject line: Adventures in Hopstardom or tweet it out using Twitpic using the hashtags #flat12 and #hopstarkarma.

3.  If you email it to us, tell us a little about who’s in it, where it is, etc.  If there is some weird story attached to it (like getting David Letterman to hold one in an elevator), tell the story.

4.  Vote on yours or somebody else’s that’s worthy.  Retweet the ones you think deserve your influence.

Oh, style points ARE awarded!  Don’t be boring.  That’s for people who drink mass-produced crap.

What you can’t do:

1.  Break the law getting the picture

2.  Vandalize or deface someone else’s property

3.  Leave the sticker somewhere where the owner wouldn’t like it or appreciate its presence (like the bumper of a State Trooper’s car…unless you are the State Trooper who drives the car).

If you need a sticker or two, direct message us with your name and address at @flat12bierwerks on Twitter.  We’ll send ‘em via USPS to you immediately.

The contest will officially start next weekend, when we launch the new site and have the ability to let people vote and comment on images.  It will end the day of the Flat12 Launch Party.  We don’t know when exactly that is yet, but think end of October.  So you have some time.

So leverage your friends in Moscow, Russia or Hell, Michigan for that matter!

Here are some early contest entries to get your creative juices flowing!


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Fun, huh?

Thursday night Flat12 threw a party at Binkley’s. It was the first annual Hopstar Meetup n’ Tweetup. Frankly it was the first annual anything.

As the evening approached, Twitter got more and more lively. And, I got more and more nervous. After all, we expected newly minted Hopstars from across Indianapolis to show up.

“And do what?” I asked myself. Yeah, we had an agenda, plans, swag, food and even a killer DJ and master home brewer @indybrewchef (aka Jason Lee). “It’ll be fine.” I told myself.

But what if nobody shows? After all, there was a Sun King tapping starting at the same time! What if, what if, what if…

In the end, I had a meeting at Orchard School before the event, so the what if’s faded away into Kindergarden and 5th grade imperatives.

By 6, had I gotten there and Jason was set up (with a console that looks like a 777 cockpit by the way). Shortly after, Chris Waugh @imthecw rolled in. He’s the ‘Whose Mr. X’ contest winner and was the self-imposed master of Flat12 swag that night.

A few minutes later, Jake Koeneman, @ibrewtoo rolls in from a 3+ hour drive staring in downtown Chicago. He’s followed by Tamre Mullins, @girlspintout and others the Flat12 team has gotten to know and now considers friends such as @colinvaughan and @peterock317 (who was wickedly under the weather but drug himself up to attend!)

We got to meet a number of new friends too, people in large part we only knew by their twitter handles. All wonderful people.

We also met a number of newly minted Hopstars and friends from outside of Indy. We had two Chicago people, one from Cincy, another from Kentucky and two from Lafayette. Anybody that drove more than an hour to attend gets major #hopstarkarma points!

The evening rocked. People got to know our brewer Rob and ask questions. “Where did the name come from?” “Why Hopstars?”, “Where’s the brewery?”, “How many beers?”, “What’s the layout and process?”

We were supposed to wrap it up by 8:30 but the last Hopstar left around 11:30. Although Flat12 wasn’t on tap or available, people understood that until the permits are issued and everything is in place, we simply weren’t allowed. Everyone understood the importance of following the rules, which we greatly appreciated. In the end, we did buy great craft beers for all the Hopstars and the family and friends they had in tow.

Oh, we did give away a few more launch party shirts too! If you want one, find a Hopstar and ask for the password. Either email it to hopstar@flat12.me or DM @flat12bierwerks with it. The shirt is your ticket into Flat12′s BIG debut party this fall.

Here’s a video of the fun, as well as a few images of the party. Thought you’d like to see.

Hopstar Meetup n\’ Tweetup

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Flat12: Adventures in Hopstardom

A couple of years ago, in third grade, my son’s class, like thousands of other classes around the country did a Flat Stanley experiment. If your not familiar with Flat Stanley, Google it and you’ll find plenty of info.

The premise and story is simple. A flat boy mails himself everywhere and has cool adventures. In my son’s class, here’s how it went down:

Make a Flat Stanley body, put your picture on the face and send it somewhere cool or far away. Like this. Now Parker’s (my son) Flat Stanley went to the Middle East with my brother in law’s brother in law (its allowed, still family, sort of). Matt, his wife and some friends took Flat Stanley to some pretty cool places. Matt is a Navy Seal who now carries the Football (nuclear launch codes) for President Obama. Yeah, that’s cool! His wife flew SeaHawks (Navy Blackhawks, yeah, that’s cool too). Here’s my son’s Flat Stanley and his (part) of his adventures to the Middle East:

Sooo, here’s the deal. I’ve included a couple of examples of what we have in mind.

1. Ask us for a Flat 12 or a Hopstar sticker at hopstar@flat12.me. We’ll mail you some.

2. Take it with you somewhere interesting, cool or far away.

3. Take a picture, like this:

Or a video like this:

In either case, if you shoot us your video link or picture, we’ll post it and it’ll get voted on. The winner gets something good. Typical Hopstar quality high end swag!

We are calling it Flat12 Adventures.  So be creative.  Have fun.  It’s not how far you go, it’s where you go!  If down state is interesting, that’s cool and may win.  So, show us where you go and what you do.  Here.  There. Everywhere.  And do it in Hopstar Style!

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Thank you Hopstars

http://animoto.com/play/Zbq6lurjWTsDpU0CWrNgBw

The link above, in case you haven’t seen it, is a little slide show from  our event last night.

Thank you! To all of you who attended our first Hopstar Meetup n’ Tweetup, we can’t thank you enough for showing us your interest in craft beer and Flat12. We hope you enjoyed the evening and will look back (soon, blowing the foam off your Flat12 brew) and say, “Hey, I was there!”

What does, “Hey, I was there” mean? Everything. Our brand is about the passion of the people who will drink it – and it was on full display last night. They truly want to own it, shape it and participate, willing to gather with others who want to do the same, even on a night that falls before we’ve become licensed to brew and distribute.

Great questions for Rob, enthusiastic and sincere interest in the breweries’ progress, and so much good conversation there wasn’t time to take every bit of it in. We could not be happier that so many of you were willing to throw yourself into it and spend your time with us.

We had a blast – enjoyed meeting such a fantastic group of people, interested in craft beer and invested in seeing us succeed and bring a great product to market.

PS We’ll say it again, but can’t say it enough – Thanks w proper shout-outs to: Binkley’s for a great venue, Jason Lee (@IndyBrewChef) for laying down the perfect musical backdrop for the night, Chris Waugh (imthecw) for jumping into the fray and handling the mic and Tamre (girlspintout), Colin Vaughan and Peter Brown for their continued Hopstardom. (My bride)Kelly Weaver for love, support (and design work!). And Ken and Dot Reinstrom for expert handling of the Flat12 giveaway swag. IBrewtoo (that’s Jake Koeneman) and several others for putting serious miles on their vehicles to join us. Nate Lake – we missed you! All – Thanks!

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RE: A very ugly duckling

The brewery is gutted and ready for construction. Man, it’s ugly now but a whole lot less ugly that before the demo! Pretty soon, it’ll begin looking better and by October you won’t recognize it. It’ll be quite a swan. Thought you’d enjoy some ‘before’ pics for us to talk about over a beer soon!

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Hopstardom begins…via snail mail!

@nickline was kind enough to take a few minutes and snap a photo of his mail today. While this was Flat12′s first outbound customer support effort, we recognize it is a only a small gesture. The kindness, support and encouragement we are receiving from our Hopstars and friends is humbling and exciting. There is a LOT more to come!

Now…WHO IS LOOKING FORWARD TO A LAUNCH PARTY!?

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Craft beer is not beige

I am sharing two things with you tonight. One is a comment that doesn’t surprise me but does concern me. Someone in ‘the industry’ gave us some indirect feedback. When seeing the Flat12 tap mockup, we heard they said it was cool and sleek but didn’t look ‘craft’. So my question is, what does Craft look like? Is there a preconceived notion of what Craft is or should be? Should Craft fit into some segmented matrix? Or, should it be an exploration in diversity and self expression? We believe Craft is a purely social experience and that experience is all the better with options and diversity.

I am old enough to remember the early days of snowboarding and mountain biking (I had my first snowboard in 1991 and did my first mountain bike race in 1989). By the early 90′s marketers saw the potential dollars in these spaces and tried desperately to capitalize on it. There were a lot of ‘posers’. Quickly, these sports found their own personalities. Sure, commercialization occurred but it was more organic (the marketers failed to be able to tap in and allow it to become something for the masses to well, mass consume. The same, I think is happening with Craft beer. When I hear, ‘It doesn’t look like craft’. I don’t take it as a slam, I take it as a compliment. We are doing the right thing and on the right track. Craft is craft. It shouldn’t be something a VP of marketing who lives in a cube fits into a spreadsheet.

What do you think?  Do we or should we fit into somebody’s box?  If the Flat12 brand is owned by the Hopstars, does it really matter what corporate beer thinks?

No.

Here’s one other thing while I am at it.  I ran across this video a while back, and while it’s in jest, it pretty much underscores my point of view.  It’s fun to watch too.  So, enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dckoq5AowPQ

Posted in Hopstars, Opinions and musings | 2 Comments

Decisions, decisions, decisions

Friday was crunch day in making the final big decisions about the brewery’s layout. Like all things in life, we got to the two yard line and called an audible (a little preseason Colts lingo…) and changed up about 1/3 of our planned layout to better production flow, support the increase in initial capacity, larger cooler and the bottling equipment (yep, Flat12 beer is going to be bottled in lovely amber bottles for six pack and cases on site!)

Thanks to the Binkley’s staff for allowing us to use Binkley’s as the Flat12 conference room on a pretty regular occasion.

Next week the construction starts, the first Hopstar event is happening, Hopstars will start to receive Flat12 swag in the mail and Launch Shirts will begin to be passed out. Wa-hoo!

And..as always a special shout out to all the Charter Hopstars who’ve expressed their support and chipped in to help.

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