Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
my occasional rants and raves about what is going on in the industry.
Tarantula Hill Brewing is making a big leap to the San Diego area, San Marcos specifically as the Thousand Oaks based brewery will utilize the space once used by the Draft Republic restaurant. This news was first broken by Brandon Hernandez at SD Beer News.
Will an outer rim of L.A. brewery fly in San Diego County?
Back in the day, craft beer had brands that were contract brewed. Breweries, especially ones in expensive real estate markets (like Los Angeles) or without the capital for buying mash tuns and fermenters would either provide a recipe or brew alongside workers at a brewery usually far away from their physical location.
Now, those breweries were looked down upon a bit (even by younger, less knowledgable me) as having less skin in the game but as is seen in the bourbon world, contract brands are not seen as less than currently and maybe that might translate into craft beer.
Now there are always pros and cons as is demonstrated in this Vinepair piece about contract distilling. The biggest one for me is the lack of disclosure. You can contract brew an excellent beer but many are just middle of the road. And it is only fair to a consumer that they can easily see that a beer is contract brewed. That way I can find out that Contract Brewery A is only average while Contract Brewery Q is quite good.
And I think that if there were more contract brewing facilities that made it easier to actually have the brewer make the beer on essentially rented equipment close to where they sell to lessen shipping and environmental costs, it could increase quality.
Incubators would be a good model or co-branded taprooms and bars. San Diego has had some luck with the former and Los Angeles has seen shared taprooms in the past and currently with Eagle Rock and Party Beer. They can be effective ways to begin a brewery within financial constraints.
All roads that can lead to a successful brewery should be explored.
I have not seen a Brewers Guild with a podcast but The San Diego guild has just started The Capital of Craft. It is “a podcast that focuses solely on the San Diego beer industry.”
According to the podcast description it is “Curated for industry professionals, we will cover topics specific to our city and provide relevant conversations with guests from all walks.”
I have listened to episode 1 about distribution and though it may be a bit deep in the weeds but craft beer fans should be aware of what happens to get local beer to you. Learning about shipping rates alone is an interesting facet of the beer business.
I will be following to see what guests and topics come next.
I am not a deliver me my stuff person. Especially when you hear all sorts of stories about gig workers being exploited and the companies like Amazon and Uber making money hand over fist but it doesn’t seem to trickle down.
Which leads me to the Uber which announced that they were shitcanning Drizly, techincally labeled as an “alcohol e-commerce deliver platform. Uber bought them three years ago and is just now deciding that all orders should just come through their app.
Will this affect craft beer? A bit. Your bigger players like New Belgium and Sierra Nevada might lose some trade but those who are ordering booze online will migrate to Uber and do it there. And you weren’t really finding local beer on it so it will be the same as before for them.
What it probably means longer term is that alcohol delivery, which should be a higher margin business, looks to be another delivery business casualty because it doesn’t make sense financially when you factor in infrastructure and potentially slows down in-store sales.
Well, the big industrial marketing brewers are at it again. Spending time on advertising over ingredients.
Coors Light has had its iconic (?) Silver Bullet Train for as long as I can remember but now they are harnessing some Hollywood CGI so that lucky (?) fans can see their face in the ad during the Super Bowl. They will also get $500 and swag.
The downside is that the actual commercial during the game will be played at normal speed which means no one can see the faces. You have to go to their website or god forbid the Coors YouTube channel to see a slow motion version where you might be able to catch your face if you don’t blink.
There is always lots of beer chatter about a new hop varietal even when given an unappetizing name like Anchovy but less attention to yeast unless it is Thiol Boosted.
But premiere Yeast Lab, White Labs has found a new and rare yeast….
…strange to have a yeast from rare cacao. Hope to find a beer with it.
When word came that famed Oregon brewer John Harris (Dechutes, Full Sail) was selling his brewery to Great Frontier Holdings, Ecliptic and that most of the beers would be brewed elsewhere, it was a blow as Ecliptic anchored the bottom of trendy Mississippi Avenue in North East Portland.
But news dropped earlier this month (about the same time that we learned that Bagby Beer Co was making way for Green Cheek) that…..
“…Von Ebert Brewing announced it is moving into the formerly Ecliptic Brewing facility on N. Cook Street in Portland, which allows the brewery to expand production and distribution from 4,000 barrels per year to as much as 20,000 barrels per year.”
And, “John Harris is a beer institution who helped put Oregon on the map. By taking over the N. Cook. Street space, Von Ebert will be able to continue the legacy of brewing Oregon’s world-class craft beer.”
The best part of the news comes from Harris, who says, “Von Ebert Brewing makes awesome beers and I look forward to working with them to continue to produce small batch Ecliptic beers on the same equipment.”
The transition to Von Ebert Brewing should have the N. Cook Street taproom reopened this spring.
Yakima Chief Hops is launching a new program named FWD, to drill down on both on data and the brewing community.
Here are a couple of snippets from the press release, “Participating brewers will be granted access to the newest, not-yet-commercialized HBC varieties and products in Yakima Chief Hop’s innovation pipeline. Application registration is open for breweries interested in trialing cutting-edge hop products and promising experimental hop varieties. In its inaugural year, FWD will be welcoming a limited number of enthusiastic participants. Through brewing trials, questionnaires, conversation and sensory analysis, brewers will have the opportunity to guide these products through their final stage of development, assuring YCH is working on the most useful and exciting products in the industry.”
“The ultimate goal of FWD is to have a circular, growing community of brewers working with Yakima Chief Hops to identify and curate the products that keep beer moving forward.”
More information can be found at HopFWD.com .
King Harbor Returns?
Everyone follows a social media account which enjoys being cryptic instead of letting the info just rip. Earlier this month the King Harbor Brewing account posted…..
…with no other hints or clues. So, I waited to see if some real news would pop up and last week it became soft official that Trusted Gut Brewing from Long Beach had taken over the space, spruced it up a bit and were pouring beer and kombucha at the main brewing location on 182nd. I have not tasted their beers nor even seen them in my neck of the beer shopping woods and I have to assume from the name that kombucha would be their lead with beer and seltzer a lesser focus.
A post worth a 1,000 words….
