Category: Beer Industry

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

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Where are IPA’s headed?

Where will hops go next? That is a question I have had swirling in my mind since I saw the Facebook invite for the Mohawk Bend IPA Festival this weekend. There have been Session IPA trends, single-hop IPA trends and this year fruit IPA beers are big.
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Then I saw this Beervana piece (which itself was commenting on another piece from Willamette Week newspaper) and found myself wondering how these trends start and how they move around the country. Is it really from one area? Does a can of Heady Topper hopscotch from brewer to brewer until that beer becomes emulated from coast-to-coast or is it sales number that drive every last brewery to introduce a grapefruit IPA?

Adding another “Or” to the mix is the hop supply. I remember when there simply wasn’t enough Citra hops to meet the demand, and then to add another layer, Mosaic and other new and exotic hops showed up on the scene blunting a full-fledged Citra take-over.

How does a certain IPA sub-style grab the attention of both brewers and craft beer fans alike? Obviously it has to catch the zeitgeist of craft beer fans but my personal theory (without hard Nate Silver data to back it up) is that for a trend to take lasting hold it needs to have an unobtainable avatar of the style as well as well-regarded local and easily available options as well. Much like a hit movie, it needs to have lines for tickets but also be on enough screens for the curious who might walk away from the ticket window if the line is too long. But that rollout from whale to common needs to happen in a short window otherwise the momentum dies on the bine and the beer stays as Moby Dick and doesn’t enter the popular conversation which is on a different plane and only tenuously connected to blogs and industry chatter.

This is why Sour IPA’s haven’t taken flight nor have coffee IPA’s. Yet. They have been oddities or taproom specials but have not gone nationwide. They may have caught the fancy of the early and adventurous beer consumers but have not reached a critical mass of breweries and beers to push into mindsets and store shelves.

Which leaves me back at the start. Is there a new hop lurking and about to create a national stir? That is a wait and see game.

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How the Fruit Gets in the Beer

The Oregonian may be shrinking and then blinking out of existence but it does still have some people on staff and can get out information that is helpful to know.

Case in point, this article on the Oregon Fruit Co.  I knew them only from the cans on a shelf in the baking section and no more.

This, to me, is an oft overlooked part of the craft beer industry. How tangential businesses get a boost from it.  Now grapefruit IPAs won’t last forever but this company has seen a market to sell to
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Another brewery on Sunset?

A few posts back, I talked about Sunset Strip Brewing in the planning process, now there is a brewpub in the planning phase for Sunset Blvd. in Echo Park.

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Sage operates a mini-chain of restaurants in the Los Angeles area and is looking to expand their Echo Park corner into a brewpub.

Let’s see if this comes to fruition.

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Shelf Room

When it comes to beer shopping away from the friendly confines of a good, local bottle shop or brewery taproom there is a dark distribution underbelly to getting a craft beer onto a shelf so that you and I can see it and buy it.

This MSN article points out a new plan that looks like a new way to squeeze money from the makers of beer, wine and spirits. And it has all the major players (who generally don’t see eye to eye) aligned against the Kroger chain.

Right now, the less than ideal situation is that the stores ask for “captains” to analyze sales and shelf allocations. Those captains are usually Bud or Miller and the allocation is usually to the detriment of craft beer. Don’t believe. Check out a Ralphs or Vons. Not a lot of choice. Sunset Beer Co. has more variety in one cooler. The new even worse plan is to have a distributor do the analysis and charge those who want to be on shelves for the privilege of being part of that analysis. Effectively cutting out the small players who don’t have budgeted money to “buy their way” onto a shelf.

The fees are called “voluntary” but us consumers know that voluntary means temporarily voluntary until people stop grousing about it and they install it permanently.

The sad thing is that maybe if the chain grocery stores took a little responsibility for their own actions they could be nimble competitors who focus on local beers. They could hire their own damn analyst to cover 10-20-30 stores in a region and be able to buy new releases and rotate their stock. That ain’t happening right now. I don’t buy craft beer from a grocery store because it is usually old and dusty. And the only local nod about the stores are some haphazard art work with my town name near the door out.

The other sad thing is that it can be done. Whole Foods has selection and it is literally a block away from the local Ralphs Visit Portland and head to a New Seasons grocery store and they have growler fill stations. The beer is there, you just need an industrious person to stock it.
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Shop with BrewPublik

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Another beer service has entered the interwebs, Brewpublik (not to be confused with the excellent Brewpublic blog) has developed what they call a beergorithm to help you discover new beer.

Here is their spiel: “You tell us what you like, and then based on your personal preferences, we pick out beers that you are sure to love. Then those beers arrive at your door every month. It’s like a monthly beer Christmas. You never know what you are going to get, but each crate is delivered with your personal preferences in mind.”

You create a taste profile with five beers that you love and then choose the size of package you desire and then you have it delivered to your door.

They liken it to Pandora and not Amazon or Netflix. The interface was a snap to use. It didn’t take more than 5 minutes to create a profile and jump to the ordering stage. I didn’t place an order since it is for Raleigh and Durham for now (though they plan expansion) but maybe franchisees will pick it up and run with it.

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Victory Southern

Check your Craft Beer Acquisition bingo cards. If you have Southern Tier and Victory teaming up, you might be a winner.
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The first big business transaction of 2016 is thankfully straightforward and shouldn’t cause too much waves amongst the craft beer fans. Basically Artisanal Brewing Ventures (ABV) is now the parent company to the two East Coast breweries both with extensive brewing behind them. Southern Tier with 14+ and Victory with 20+.

The brewing operations will remain independent but where the combined strength will come is “in collaborative sales and marketing efforts to strengthen, support and expand its distributor and retail partnerships. Victory and Southern Tier brands will become increasingly available to loyal and new consumers across their combined markets as a direct result of this union.”

Both companies have pretty large distribution footprints but we in SoCal may be the beneficiaries because we get only Victory now but some Southern Tier may end up hitching rides to our favorite beer shoppes. The other benefit is that these two are off the table for the big sword swallowers and ABV is now an option for those who have been approached.

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Experiments in Whiskey

Craft beer isn’t the only alcoholic beverage that is breaking rules left and right. This quick slide show showcases some real cool whiskey experiments. Who is influencing who can be debated but the fact that Buffalo Trace has a Single Oak Project that looks to understand how the wood of each barrel imparts different flavors is really exciting to see.

Because, you know brewers will be getting their hands on the barrels eventually.
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Hoppy 2016

The new hops are coming, the new hops are coming…..

IPA’s will only grow more powerful as the latest crop of hops hit the market in larger quantities. Check out the great post from Jeff Alworth about it HERE.

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I am growing to be less of a fan of the slightly lame names being used but of the group cited in the post, these hops and their flavor profiles held the most attraction to me….

Caliente – peach/nectarine and plum
TNT – green and sweet fruit
Pekko – mint and citrus
Enigma – Red Currant and Pinot Gris
Lemonaughty – lemonade and cantalope

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Extra El Segundo

Next month, the Equipped Brewer will be running a post I penned about labels. For that piece, I asked a couple people about label choices and art. One of which was the ever gracious Tom Kelly at El Segundo Brewing.

Even though I asked only a couple specific questions, I still had some leftover material that I think is cool to know. So instead of wasting it, here is some bonus content……

2. How do you incorporate a larger than life (literally) figure like Steve Austin into a beer label?

Well… our first thought was – Put his face on it! He quickly shot that down. Steve is really in the business of sort of re-branding himself with the Broken Skull image, which is also the name of his ranch outside of Austin. On the first iteration of the label we had a silouttte of Texas around the UPC but that was shot down by TTB (Alcohol and Tobacco Trade and Tax Bureau) because it was confusing as to the origin of the product. We tried to stay true to his image, but keep it somewhere within our brand family. If you look at the label, you’ll see its our same die cut, and our logo is up top, but the colors are like a dusty Texas road.

3. How hard is it to come up with a new label?

Sometimes, their easy. For us at least. They are always a lot of work on the designer. Sometimes they take quite a bit of working out. We have a good working relationship with our designer Joe Natoli over at Boiling Point and he has a lot of patience for us, as we make changes etc. Citra – easy.. cool title font, and a hop. Hammerland and Grand Hill – bit more difficult, a lot of back and forth.

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To Your Door

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Just when I thought that growlers were on the way out, what with crowlers and other keg-esque alternatives multiplying on Kickstarter, out comes a business tacking against the curve with a growler delivery service.

Hopsy, based in the Berkeley area , will deliver fresh filled growlers from the tap room to your doorstep.

The new company has a stable of 10 breweries currently with names like Moylan’s and Magnolia on the list of NorCal breweries to choose from. You (beer fans in the Bay Area) will pay a premium plus delivery for the privilege but that is the cost of sitting in your jim-jams and not moving your butt.

Hopsy promises temperature-controlled protection for your precious cargo and a three-hour delivery window. But don’t expect same day delivery. Currently they are serving one market and it is on a pre-order basis. If you want a beer for the weekend, best order by Tuesday.

They have fifteen other cities on their future list for expansion though I doubt L.A. with its long distances will be tackled until all the kinks are worked out in smaller more delivery oriented cities first.

Delivery is a super tough game to be in with wild costs so I don’t know how the numbers crunch out but maybe it is the start of a new gig economy idea. Uber for Growlers. Grubers. The logo can be a picture of Alan Rickman or Nakatomi Tower.