Category: Beer Industry

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

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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.

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Squid Ink

Some in the beer snob camp have a moral aversion to contract brewing. I do not find it as odious because I understand that there may be people of brewing skill who do not have access to the funding needed to become a fully operational craft brewery. And call it the Trader Joe’s effect but I don’t mind private label brands. To me, the beer comes first. The only downside that I have trouble with is that many of the “brands” don’t disclose the full nature either out of fear that beer fans will consider it not “crafty” enough or because Marketing 101 tells them not to. OK, the other downside is that the current contract brewers seem a bit below average.
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Enter Octopi Brewing who are positioning themselves as “a one-stop shop for new beer brands, established breweries and hospitality chains.” They not only have new German brewing equipment but they also will assist in brand development too. You get brewers and designers.

If this and BrewHub in Florida take off, maybe a California version won’t be far behind.

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Frogtowns and Silver Lakes

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There was a rush of brewery openings at the end of 2015, and now thanks to my source at Food GPS, I have two more on the radar that we might see in 2016 or later depending on how the City of Los Angeles moves paperwork through the system.

Silver Lake Beer is one of the new ones which hopefully will have parking. FrogTown Brewing will try to work through the system in a neighborhood that is a little anti-brewery right now.

Right now the information on the ground is a little sparse but as they develop, I will post the updated information.

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Beer to Whiskey in Petaluma

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Looks like another brewery is into the spirits world as (new to me) Stillwater Spirits has just released it’s third iteration of Moylan’s American Whisky, (no “e”).

It is actually two whiskies:

1. 117.4 proof Double-Barrel Cask Strength Single-Malt Whisky.

2. 86 proof American Single-Malt Whisky.

Here is the description from the brewery/distillery: “Moylan’s Double-Barrel Cask Strength Single-Malt Whisky is aged for at least 4 years in new and used American White Oak barrels and finished in French Oak and Orange Brandy barrels which helps to coax out the rich, sweet luscious character of this amazing whisky. The American Single-Malt Whisky is the same blend of 5 different barrels from our collection of whisky casks. The resulting whiskies have been described as “just simply works of art.”

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Trends for 2016

What to look for in 2016…according to the Beer Search Party crystal pint glass / reading the hop leaves. (BTW: This is the positive post. You can read the negative side HERE.)

1. Nitro packaging
People scoffed at the Guinness Nitro IPA last year but with Left Hand and now Breckenridge leading a Colorado charge of nitro cans plus the national presence of Samuel Adams in the niche will push this packaging option to more people. I know that I love to compare and contrast and to be able to do that with the same beer and different dispense style and NOT have to travel to a bar will be tempting.

2. More than just grapefruit
There has been a bevy of grapefruit IPA’s hitting the market. But they will be trailing the curve. Ballast Point is already moving to the next iteration of fruited IPA and by the end of the year you can expect a veritable edible arrangement of breweries in this sub-style.

3. Beer and desserts
The bloom is off the beer pairing dinner rose and in its place is the more economical and still fun dessert with beer pairing. Ice cream and girl scout cookies as well as Halloween candy get the most press but expect a wider array of sweets next to pint glasses this year.

4. Gin and tequila barrels
Bourbon and Whiskey have long ruled supreme in the world of barrel aging and parity will not happen this year but the amount of Gin barrel-aged beers and/or Tequila barrel-aged will increase and be seen more frequently. Also look for lesser known spirits to pop-up on taps as well.

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Adding Anything Else? part 2

With the the fervor of a Christmas shopper in a combined Black Friday / Cyber Monday / Super Saturday addled craze, SABInBevMiller picked up three new breweries for its “High End” (for them) division. None of the lost tribe of breweries would cause a gnashing of teeth at the loss to the HE . No pick-ups that are more important than what evil the mega-industrial conglomerate could unleash in distribution and ingredient bulk buying.

In fact the important bit is that a pattern might finally be emerging out of their spending spree.

Of the seven American breweries, I would say that 10 Barrel (due to their brewing staff) and Goose Island (due to Bourbon County Stout and their sour program) could be considered top tier. The rest, especially with Dick Cantwell’s departure from Elysian, would be considered fair to a bit above average by your average beer geek. And other than clustering on the West Coast, that factor in their dating profile seems to be the dominant shared trait.

These willing victims are certainly High End for Budweiser but not for their respective states brewing scenes by any stretch. Even the two that I consider the cream of the crop Goose and 10 Barrel might be ranked in the bottom five of a top ten list for their state, Heck, I like Goose Island beers and I would rank them behind Revolution and Half Acre just in the City of Chicago alone.

It appears that the Belgian/Brazilian overlords are targeting the breweries that are big enough on quantity without being too high on the quality part of the equation. Maybe that makes the gulf between craft and light lagerland less a chasm for those selling. I think that the High End will evenutally be populated with those operations that can be understood by Bud marketers. A nano brewer operation or a brewery that doesn’t package in bottles and cans just are too far afield for SABInBevMiller to grasp.

In the long term though, I do not think that even the average craft brewery will be understood and effectively sold and marketed. The cost of buying barrels for Goose Island or financing second locations will eat into profits and will be ripe for cost cutting. There will be some economies of scale but not nearly in the dollar amounts that will be desired.

Just like the ill-fated dive into phantom craft brands that fizzled, this “High End” will eventually fade and the breweries spun off or closed (which won’t necessarily be a bad thing). There are obviously enough soon-to-be breweries to fill the gap. The bench talent is deep for craft beer.

The easier prediction to make is that more breweries will be bought in 2016.

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Off to Idaho?

If someone told me that a California brewery was building a second out-of-state brewery, I would say, “Where in North Carolina?”

But the state in question is Idaho and it is San Diego based Mother Earth Brew Co. that is planning a brewery and tasting room in Nampa, ID, outside of Boise, for later in 2016.

The new brewery will allow Mother Earth to drastically increase the amount of barrels produced per year plus it will give them closer access to both the Pacific NW and the Midwest.
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