Category: Opinion

my humble and correct opinion

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The Firkin for March 2025

Is your social media feed beer driven or activity driven? It is a question that I want to pose to as many brewery media folk as possible. I know that my lens is introverted and geeky and that a new beer with a new hop or a heritage barley will get me into a taproom more than cornhole but I feel like the pendulum has swung a little too far away from the actual liquid.

This is of course also coming from someone who recently posted about thinking outside the box when it comes to activities and who also posted about a book extolling community at taprooms.

Themed nights are an effort to get butts in seats and buying beer from a crowd who is not buying currently. Economics are at play here. A new beer release is probably not going to bring out a line of beer buyers willing to pay a premium as much as a casual drinker who knows not of Dynaboost and Fonio.

But, the casual / weekend drinker is more fickle than a beer geek and losing sight of that in a rush to a cater to a crowd who are not tied to your beer but by karaoke is harder work in my opinion.

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Peel the Label – Extra Inclusion

In this time of major uncertainty, thoughts run to how to get people to the taproom. For a brewery, a pint over the bar is the best profit margin you can get especially with looming aluminum price increases.

There are trivia nights, painting nights, comedy nights, food trucks and all manner of events to get people into breweries.

But there are other deeper cuts that could be tried as well. I am not a fan of babies / toddlers / young’ins but I am probably in a minority so what can you do to bring parents in and create an environment that they want to return to. Perhaps a new parents meet-up where you cut the price on N/A drinks so when parent can imbibe. Or how about creating a quiet night for parents with autistic children who may feel that a taproom is too loud for an outing.

You can have nights for local sports teams but how about going deeper and having a women’s March Madness day to bring in a crowd that is truly growing. How about a book exchange to see if you can get introverts, like me, down to get even more reading material.

Or you can just program what every other brewery is doing.

Peel the Label is an infrequent series with no photos or links. Just opinion.

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Hop Off

Well, all you FAFOs out there.  President Musk is going after craft beer starting with USDA hop researchers in the Pacific NorthWest.  Some people seem to think that government jobs are too costly and in the short run, yeah, they fucking are because this isn’t a short term game.  We don’t shut down lighthouses because they only help some boats.  We don’t cut funding to air traffic control, oh wait, apparently this is something this backwards country does.

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Entering the Hall

The 2025 Craft Beer Hall of Fame Inductees for the first class have been announced and it is a solid start to build upon…

* Fritz Maytag – Anchor Steam

* Michael Jackson – beer writer

* Charlie Papazian – home brewer and GABF founder

* Ken Grossman – Sierra Nevada

* Jim Koch – Boston Beer

* Fred Eckhardt – beer writer

* Bert Grant – Grants Les

* Charles and Rose Ann Finkel – beer importers

* Jack McAuliffe, Suzy Stern and Jane Zimmerman – New Albion

I am hoping that the second round will dig a little deeper into the agricultural side and also the publican side as well.

You can view the replay of the ceremony HERE

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Lay off the Hype

Last month, Vinepair posted a piece about overhyped beers. Even though I detected a sarcastic comment and one that did not take introverts into account, on the whole, it got me to thinking about what is a style that give me the cringes.

Non-alcoholic is certainly one that I share and for the most part milkshake IPAs tend to be just a bunch of lactose that steamrolls any hop note, the one style that I wish was pulled back though is the light lager.

If your brewery already has a lager or (hopefully) more, there is really no need to have a second runnings lager. If people are that calorie conscious, they are splitting hairs.

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The Firkin for February 2025

Beer is highly dependent on agriculture. But agriculture is tied to beer as well and nowhere is that seen as much as with hops.

Dave Infante from Vinepair recently delved into that connection with his rhetorical flourishes HERE but I want to add my two cents as well.

What struck me was that hop production was only down 16% in 2024. I expected much more than that. It does take a while to reduce, it is a big boat to steer after all, but it has been three down trending years already so I thought the number would be in the low 20’s.

My question is how will craft breweries rebound? Will it be with a hard thud onto a plateau? Or will there be some bounce to it as new breweries seize on opportunities of used equipment or turnkey operations.

If it is the latter, I hope that farmers prepare for the former so that they can re-calibrate acreage from a position of too little rather than oversupply. That may sound odd but brewers can steer to lower hop usage styles better than hop growers can control hop growth.

Whatever happens, this is more economic uncertainty and business does not handle that very well so there is probably more shifting ahead.

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A Toast

Eagle eyed readers of the blog will know that I am not a big fan of baseball. But if I do watch it is minor league because they seem more fun.

And here is a prime example…

…The Reading, Pennsylvania franchise will change over to the Reading Prost for a few games next year. I can see beer fans buying the hat for sure.

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Your Own Personal Tariff

Even though the initial round of tariffs have been postponed (with aluminum on the way) maybe in part because Canada banned American made spirits from their state-run liquor stores, I wanted to send out a blanket message to anyone who works in distilleries in Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee who voted Elon for President that they nearly voted themselves out of a job.

Tariffs, as I have mentioned a few hundred times before work best as a protective layer for a young and growing homegrown industry that may be more expensive to start but could grow and become competitive and then not need the tariff protection. It is pretty basic economics. Unfortunately pretty basic economics seem beyond the grasp of too large a group of Americans.

The point of this post is not to say I Told You So. This post is for us few nice Americans who are siding with our neighbors to thr north and south. How do we push the needle to sanity? Below are some small actions you can take to help….

  • Buy Local + – the plus sign is the important part. Make sure that the local you are buying from is not a pro tariff, anti DEI, money above people brewery and if they pass that simple niceness test, then buy from them as directly as possible.
  • Do not buy – craft beer from places like Target who backed away loudly from DEI measures. liquor from big multi-nationals especially if they are from a state that Nazi Musk won. Basically be a mini-Canada.
  • Start buying from progressive or minority run business – use this time to discover new breweries, distilleries, cider spots. I have a whiskey from a female run distillery named Home Base and gin from another female run distillery, Freeland Spirits.
  • Buy from Canada and Mexico – no better middle finger than spending your money on goods from those two countries who are being shat on for no good reason.
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Hobbits in Santa Monica

Merry and Pippen.  Sorry, let me start again.  Billy & Dom and their travel / food program, Eat the World stopped off in Santa Monica and went through the brewing process of the Westside (not Middle Earth) brewery.

Santa Monica Brew Works is in the California section aka episode three but the series is not yet streaming here in the U.S. but keep checking for when it does.

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Not Tickled by Pickled

I was in a fancy cafe and market recently (looking at you Joan’s on 3rd) perusing the rather desultory craft beer choices and the biggest inventory was a pickle beer.  I almost belted out, “stop with the pickles” in the middle of the store. And the dill doesn’t stop with beer, it has invaded spirits as well.

To backtrack a bit, I do not mind savory elements in a beer nor do I hate on experimentation but can it be explained why there are so many pickle beers?  It reminds me of the pepper beer kick way back in the early days where spicy beers were the rage.  Those beers are not around anymore and the peppers are going into hot sauces with horrifying and painful names and I feel that pickle beers are set for the same fate of being a forgotten footnote in craft beer history.

Perhaps this is the zenith of pickle popularity, I have not heard much Pickleball talk either.