I have talked repeatedly about putting the packaged on date on beer bottles and cans and anywhere else you can and Sixpoint from NY has gotten creative with the idea.
This is part of bigger recipe tweaks across their core line-up from Pils to IPA as well as a return to a more unfiltered style of beer. I will certainly be checking the latest iteration in appreciation of their commitment to transparency as well as to see what the new-ish beers taste like.
Hoarders
Whether you believe that South African hops are important or not will color your response to the “re-allocation” of hops from the non-traditional hop growing region.
In their SAB addition, ABInBev picked up an R&D hop operation and due to low yields (which also happened to Nelson Sauvin in New Zealand), they have made the decision to keep the hops in house for their South African brewery brand, Castle with the rest going to their “high end”.
Could the hops be better used if spread out to craft breweries? The answer is an obvious yes. Are they hops owned by SABInBev to parcel out as they wish? Again, very much yes. One more, just one more question. Are the optics really bad? Ummm, yeah.
The PR people at SABInBev must be on a year long sabbatical. Why they did not postpone the Wicked Weed sale until after the Funkatorium fest is beyond me. The “high end” and their new “partners” in crime seem bewildered each and every time that someone responds negatively.
Then to follow that up by not proactively spreading the news about the hop supply seems slow on the uptake as well. For a company that is mostly distribution focused with marketing not far behind, you would think they would master the press and social media.
We in the U.S. will lose a few special beers but we are not short of IPA’s, so maybe this is a long term good thing for style diversity. Not to mention, every time SABInBev goes full on Darth Sidious it riles the base of craft beer to action. Sometimes that is good energy to have.
Malt Genomes
You know the envelope is being pushed if Wired magazine is talking about the ingredients of beer. In both a fun and science filled article, there is much to learn about malt.
Read the article yourself, but my (3) take-aways were these….
“In 2012, when that initial barley genome paper came out, three-quarters of the worldwide barley crop went to animal feed. Today, 65 percent of the US barley crop is for malting—for eventual purchase by brewers. (About 2 percent goes to distillers…)”
That right there shows the economic power of having over 5K in craft breweries. Individually there might not be economies of scale but overall, wow!
“And, maybe most critically, it has to make better malt. “That basically goes down to what we call modification rates,” Hanning says. That’s modifying starch into sugar. His lab and people working with the American Malting Barley Association will grow up new varieties and measure soluble proteins, levels of beta-glucan, free amino nitrogen, enzymes … all qualities that determine how well a barley will turn into a beer.”
This tells me that the future might include consumers knowing malt varietals as much as their hop counterparts.
“Stein’s group also learned that huge chunks of genome have what he describes as a “reduced level of diversity.” Which is to say, no matter what strain of barley you’re looking at, big pieces of its genetics are the same as any other strain. No one knows why. “Has selection already brought into combination the best alleles for modern varieties?” Stein says. “Or is this just something that happened because people always selected the same, and there was a domestication bottleneck?” Whether domestication perfected or broke these regions, they’ll make excellent targets for improvement.”
This leads me to worry that without making some quick advancements in agricultural science that malt could be susceptible to a disease or bug unknown to us now.
and the Award [redacted]
I have to applaud the Brewers Association. They have walked the fine line of being a trade organization while also adding a bit of policing to their actions as well. This is all due to offensive beer labels. A problem that sits in the corner mostly but will occasionally flare up whenever a brewery in some weird bubble decides to use a name that most would find offensive, primarily aimed (99%) against women.
The plan is that a brewery can make and name a beer in an offensive way and they can enter it into competitions like the World Beer Cup and the Great American Beer Festival BUT if they win, the beer will not be announced from the stage (I assume an awkward pause will be the substitute) nor can the brewery market the win by using the name of the competition won.
Basically, a brewery can say it won a medal and that seems to be the extent of it. They will not be allowed to link the BA or the competition name with the beer. New will be required signing of licensing agreements with terms of use for using the BA name PRIOR to entering a competition.
And while adding this new code, they acknowledged that this action was not going to be easy to enforce. Bob Pease the CEO of the BA made it clear (through some unfortunate phrasing) that , “..it’s gonna be sticky. It’s going to be hard.”
I think this action will help. Either a brewery will change a name, hopefully forcing a burst of creativity, or they will not enter the beer in competition. It does not abridge their rights of free speech or get them blocked from joining or staying in the craft beer club. It basically starves the brewery of the attention that it probably desired. Each time a beer name is typed into a form for one of these two competitions the one doing the typing had better be doing so with this rule in mind.
Before anyone flies off the handle with this is America, this is PC bulls..t, everyone is too easily offended, remember who are Not-My-President is right now. This country could use a LOT more rules about denigrating speech than it currently has on the books.
Breweries need to craft great beer and great beer names.
0.0
There are beer categories still left to be filled. Gluten-free now has more (still not enough) options and the alcohol free section of the store shelf could use freshening which is where the new, and aptly named, Heineken 0.0 comes in.
This new beer would join an 0.0 line that already includes Amstel 0.0, as well as radler products including Soproni 0.0 Maxx Radler and Amstel 0.0% Radler outside the U.S. but would be the first global offering.
Currently the lowest available are the “light” Heineken at 3.3%. Will a craft brewer enter this market? Might be a opportunity here.
Closing South and North
Two breweries to the south and north of L.A. have called it quits. The combination of slowed growth with increasing competition is probably the wellspring of trouble for both Valiant of Orange County and Speakeasy from the Bay Area and it might foretell further closures ahead (or not).
Valiant seemed to fall due to specific business model choices whereas Speakeasy just fell behind the zeitgeist. Both though, I believe were OK as long as the nationwide sales numbers were growing in double digits. When that trended downward, the music stopped and the pair found themselves without a chair. And if more chairs are removed, more might call it quits.
We must remember though, that this all new territory for craft beer. The U.S. has never had this many breweries before. California, alone, has more than 800! Even foreigners like Guinness, BrewDog and Mikkeller have facilities or plans for them stateside. The Global beer sellers have gobbled up breweries across the nation and are loss leader spending like crazy. A brewery starting in 2015 versus one starting today would face radically different business climates.
My guess is that there is more turbulence ahead. Which makes your beer dollar a very potent vote, use it.
Crave-less
There is a really dark side to beer. It is alcohol and can be abused. There are costs. Just like there are costs to eating poorly or smoking.
And considering that in a nationwide survey by the National Institutes of Health that 28% of adults in the U.S. consider themselves heavy drinkers is a worrying sign to heed.
Yet, most heavy drinkers don’t get the help they need.
If there is a silver lining to the Opioid problem in America is that medicines used to treat that addiction can help dull the craving in alcohol as well.
This article on NPR lays out the case for naltrexone.
In short, “…the drug seems to curb the euphoric and sedative effects of opiates in the brain. Alcohol is known to activate some of the same receptors in the brain that opioids do, and studies find that by tempering the pleasure from alcohol, naltrexone can help people drink less.”
“It blunts the effects of alcohol,” says Koob. “People [who use naltrexone] will say they have a drink, and it’s not doing much for them.” You aren’t repulsed by alcohol and you can still drink, it just decreases the effect of it on the body. In essence water gives you the same effects.
Now, I don’t know if it dulls the taste of beer or makes certain flavors less intense but if this can help moderate drinking (in addition to counseling, of course), then it would be worth it.
Fined, Not Dandy
Cheating is usually not spectacular. It is usually nicked at the edges. Slowly rolling through a stop sign in a quiet neighborhood and not speeding through a red light on a busy boulevard.
But you can get dinged by the authorities for either. Especially if you keep going back to the well. Which is what happened here in SoCal recently as Anheuser-Busch, LLC wholesalers settled a case for $400K (plus all the lawyering they had to pay for). In addition, Straub Distributing Company who distributes AB products in Orange County settled for $10K
They and numerous retailers were flagged for “Unfair Business Practices”. The distributors for paying for items and the retailers for accepting said items for either no cost or only partial cost.
The investigation started back in 2015 by the ABC’s Trade Enforcement Unit and resulted in one of the “largest penalty fines imposed in the history of ABC…” They will also have to install training programs for employees and anyone who has been to one of those, know what a time suck they can be as well as costly.
An additional fun fact is that, “In exchange for suspension of $200,000 of the fine, Anheuser-Busch, LLC agreed to extend the conditions of discipline to all Anheuser-Busch, LLC wholesalers in the state.” Why AB would want the $200K and make the disciplinary action statewide? Pre-empting further legal action? They need whatever amount of that $200K to pay the lawyers?
All I know is that this company is better at skirting rules and avoiding punishment. Much better than beer making for sure.
Developing Beer
It is still dreadfully hard to find just the right space for a brewery. Enough space, decent rent costs and not in a neighborhood that is too scary or off the Waze grid.
But there are developers out there who are searching for tenants of the craft beer variety. Case in point, this possibility off the Gold Line in Monrovia…
The original home of Monrovia Lumber and Hardware is in the planning stage of “building into an artisan food, wine, and beer village known as, “The Lumberyard at Myrtle Avenue.” Most neighborhoods and cities in Los Angeles have sprouted condos left and right and Monrovia is no different with 1000+ units that would be in walking distance.
There will be “27,000 square feet of entitled brewery, wine, and food space.” This will also include courtyard space as well. And it has the backing of the city who have re-zoned the area around the Metro stop.
Check out more HERE.
…or this proposed bay side concession in Long Beach…
Down in craft beer mecca, Long Beach the Mayor is proposing revamping beach concession stands that could also include craft beer. Smog City has already been lured to Bixby Knolls. Would another brewery want to open a satellite taproom near the waves?
Now if Glendale could set-up some beer establishments in the 900 (slightly exaggerated) condos in Downtown Glendale.
PDXit
My faith in politics and politicians was never that strong. And with the last election, my faith in the American electorate sunk to historic lows as well so I have been avoiding as much Trump talk as I can because it seems futile to not only struggle against Washington DC but the 306 Electoral College votes as well.
Throwing craft beer into the mix seems like a plan that could turn out bad. Seems too partisan for actual nuanced discussion.
But others are taking a different tack and not surprisingly Keep Portland Weird has taken a stand with….
The stated mission of Beer Party PDX is to “Organize members of the PDX beer community to effectively protect and promote basic civil rights, including voter access, freedom of speech, and equal rights.”
Members of the craft beer community have already stood up against one of the many questionable cabinet secretary choices (Scott Pruitt for the EPA) so this may be the start of more organizations that have both beer and what I would call common decency in common.
I think breweries do need to stand for agenda items like clean water and small business help and local issues like potholes on the road outside your establishment. Protecting people who are your customers seem like a smart play to me as well. Whether people will agree or boycott when you take a stand on action items that don’t have direct links to beer or the beer business is another thing though. Along with the attacks on journalism there is an even stronger, “stay in your lane” brew beer not dissent camp in the U.S. now.
But with Trump approval ratings cratering fast, going Anti sooner, rather than later, could be the smart business now (if you are located in liberal country) and later (when more disturbing leaks are revealed).