Category: Beer Industry

my occasional rants and raves about what is going on in the industry.

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GABF Awards 2019

The votes have been tallied for 2019 and you can click HERE to see the winners from the Great American Beer Festival. Let’s rundown the Los Angeles medal view….

First though, let’s say upfront that only 2,295 breweries entered. California has 1,000+ breweries so this competition, though by far the biggest really only covers a percentage of beer in the US. Think of it as a snapshot in time.

Also, there are some weird categories. IPL is mixed with malt liquor. And some categories are only filled by 30 beers in total. And what makes a beer fit the “Emerging IPA” category?

On to LA, Claremont ring up gold for Station 101. Ambitious Ales bronze for their Friends-ian Central Perk coffee beer. King’s Brewing out in Rancho Cucamonga bagged two medals. Perennial favorites Beachwood and Firestone Walker each won but not as much as years past. Arrow Lodge and Ogopogo represented for Jungalo Juice and Boeman Witbier. Bluebird Brasserie won bronze for their excellent Stay Golden Belgian Ale. Gamecraft of Laguna Beach gave me another reason to finally visit with a medal in the coffee stout category.

What really made my day was Highland Park winning gold for Timbo Pils. Such a great beer. Also Evan and Brian at Green Cheek had a day with Gold for their Australian for Pale Ale and then a silver for Radiant Beauty in the ultra-competitive American IPA category. Well deserved.

What exemplifies the GABF awards are the apply moments and I leave for you with the one where Breakside Brewing of Portland was on stage, getting the glamour shot with Charlie Papazian when their name was announced as gold medal winner for another category. Brewer Ben Edmonds could not contain himself. He jumped up, bent over and was “in” the moment. That is what this whole revolution is about.

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Your Beer, at the Door

After a, shall we say, interesting exchange between myself and UPS in regards to a beer delivery, it was serendipitous to see an article about shipping beer on Facebook. The vibrant and off-putting trading market sprung up as a response to a lack of shipment options from favored breweries.

This piece from Joe Stange has a lot of nuggets of interest about the convoluted process of beer shipments and how it is not a priority but may become one if say national retailers like BevMo and Total Wine were to push for it.

The tidbit that caught my eye was this, “… Congresswoman Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, introduced a bill (HR 2517) in May that would allow the U.S. Postal Service to ship alcoholic beverages to legal adults, wherever state laws allow it.”

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RIP – Barley Forge

There is a brewery casualty coming from Costa Mesa and it is the five-year old Barley Forge. There were signs in the tea leaves. They recently had a “work walk-out” which garnered a little press, and there was a Facebook post from the founder talking about returning to full-time work at a law firm but from responses to the news, it seems like many claim that the tap room was full and that the closure is based purely on the rent being raised to a non-workable level probably due to the fancy mixed use shopping area across the street that the landlord thinks he can get a piece of.

More than likely, it is a combination of all of the above. Anytime someone goes back to a day job means that something went wrong. If you were a fan, best to buy what you can while you still can.

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Raise the Cup

The CA Beer Summit added a competition component this year and L.A. gained a few awards, Angel City leading the pack but newcomer Tarantula Hill won a pair of medals as well. There is a bit of competition weariness out there though. There are over 1,000 breweries in the state but only just under 300 entered. Maybe as it grows, more will enter but it was really cool to see that a bock won the Best of Show.

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CCBA 2019 – Recap & Photos

Now that the California Craft Beer Summit is complete, here are some photos from the State of the Beer State…

Start with two CA brewing legends, Vinnie – Russian River and Ken – Sierra Nevada
The Tiki-fied LA County Brewers Guild booth.
Food & Beer Pairing # 1
Food & Beer Pairing # 2
Crooked Lane, the winner of the California Cup this year.
One of my favorite breweries pouring at the Summit Festival this year.
Me gazing at all the beer.
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CCBA 2019 – Day 2 – Recap

Here is the Day 2 update from the California Craft Beer Summit…

It started with a blindfold on for Sightless Tasting led by Dr. Toby Wexler from SensPoint Design who showed emphatically that though we are primarily (85%) a visual creature that you should still use and hone that other 15% too. We were passes three separate containers with blends inside and were asked to describe what we smelled. Grapefruit, mango, turmeric passed by, cedar passes by as did coconut and chocolate. Then, we all carefully reached in out to taste four beers. I guessed one right and was just as sure on another that I was wrong on. Probably the best seminar of the two days.

Judging by the crowd and amount of questions afterward, the Kviek (ca-Veek) seminar from Omega Yeast was an attraction. We learned the origin of the yeast, how a blogger just went from Norwegian Farmhouse to Farmhouse to collect the strains that made up this truly home brew yeast which is still being dissected to find its properties. Apparently, it is a cross of a wild yeast and a commercial one. Much of the science flew past me at light speed but speed is one of the attributes of the yeast as it does it’s job very fast.

From there it was back to the Expo to do circuits of the beer and the food with a mid-afternoon stop for a talk on cannabis led by Lori Ajax, the chief of the California Bureau of Cannabis Control. She talked about the process in which marijuana can be state legal to sell. If you have a love of filling out forms and constant oversight, then you would be well suited to either or all of the cultivating, distributing or retail channels.

With that the second day was done. Next up, the Festival.

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CCBA 2019 – Day 1 – Recap

Long Beach – Day 1 of the California Craft Beer Summit, here is what I learned about beer and the Golden State…

The day started with a “Pioneer” presentation, a look back at 1989 when the precursor group to the CCBA started. It was a slick presentation with a drawer- full of anecdotes about what it was like in the early days. John Martin of Drakes, Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada, Chris Cramer of Karl Strauss and Tom McCormick of the CCBA were interviewed by another legend in Vinnie Cilurzo. There were secret payoffs, equipment sales from jail and lenient inspectors involved.

Next up was the “numbers” presentation. Bart Watson, the statistics maven for the Brewers Association showed the industry numbers and the contradictory story that they were telling us. The sky isn’t falling. It’s just that the competition is more than it has ever been and that taking a peek into how the post millennial generation is buying might just be a smart thing to do. He also touched on seltzer (including the entrance of Bud Light seltzer) and how closings are still incredibly low for such a mature market. As always, Watson was engaging and funny and made me wish my economics teachers were this much fun.

The expo hall was open by now but I wanted to take in another seminar and one labeled Beer Trends struck my fancy. It ended up being a discussion of four beer styles with a California example poured of Pilsner, kolsch, saison and a sour. It was good info but currently none of those beers are trending unless you count Italian pilsners.

Then it was time to taste some beers and see all the gadgets and gaskets on the trade floor. There were also tap talks and chef demos which got swallowed up in the general hall noise. That leads to a pro tip. Sit up front. That way you hear what is being said and you are first for samples. The best section, for me, was another food and beer pairing area. Time slots of a couple hours allowed for people to wander up when hungry to get a Pale ale with tacos, or Oud Bruin with ice cream. Quick and delicious.

Day 2 news coming tomorrow.

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New Hoppiness

There are two more new hops in the pipeline (aka pre-commercialization stage) following in the footsteps of Sabro and Strata are HBC 586 and 638.

HBC 586 is a “bright, fruit-forward hop”.

HBC 638 is “complex and versatile. …with tropical fruit flavors”.

You might see some beers that mention in the marketing material those two numbers and then we will have to translate that to their trade names if they become popular and have enough acreage to be in larger runs of beers.

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CA-1K

If it weren’t for the 1000 number in the middle, you could spend some time counting all the orange dots on the map to get to 1000.

Isn’t that crazy? Think about it. At one point it was a handful scratching out an existence on used dairy equipment and now you can find spots where you can walk from brewery to brewery or try to set a low Lyft fare record.

Of course with that number comes re-calibration. And that is for everyone in the independent California beer eco-system. Customers have incredible choice and need to wield it with care. Media needs to stop focusing on their influence and start working on enlightening. Breweries need to keep raising the quality and creative bar higher and those who move the beer need to do so fast, cold and in control.

The inevitable refrain of bubble may arise because some like singing that particular song but I think that it is more of a constant search for the right size of the industry. We had too many years of way under and no one really knows where the sweet spot is so maybe we should enjoy this time of plenty if it is indeed over that spot.

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Scanners

Are you ready to be scanned when you enter a taproom?  Is speedee ordering worth it? I have read articles where license plates can be scanned to speed drive-thru ordering and now there is a new company that will take camera technology and add it to a bar to film customers as they enter so that the bartenders know who was in line first.

The company is DataSparQ and they began bar testing in London in June with more tests trials to come.  More than facial data will be compiled as the company is selling how to track busy and slack times amidst other data points.

Seems just a skosh intrusive to me.  Enough of my personal data is being stored in server farms enough as it is.  I would rather come back to a bar at a less busy time rather than having my face be my ticket like I am at a busy deli. Serving # 90 now, the gentlemen with greying hair is next.