Category: Beer Industry

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

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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.

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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.