Category: Beer Industry

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

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4K

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4K. That is an amazing figure. Probably by the time that I finish typing this sentence, there will be more breweries in the United States than ever before. OK, that is hyperbole for sure but not by much. If the current trends bear out, there literally will be more breweries than at any time in our country’s history. Granted, we will never know for sure if 4,131 was the high water mark (Back in 1873!)

Now, each time an all-time high is reached the chorus of doomsayers start singing the dirge of over saturation, remember that craft is still not threatening the Industrial Beer Complex. They are running scared for sure and grasping at straws but there is still plenty of beer consumers that can be converted to craft. In addition and here I am cribbing from the Brewers Associations chief economist, Bart Watson, if there were 4,131 breweries in 1873 the per capita equivalent for 2015 would be 30,000 breweries. That is a huge number that would be over saturation.

I think the one-two punch of market share available to steal and the fact that per capita we could handle more leads to a more promising future than others think.

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Brewyard-A-Go-Go

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Thanks to boundary lines, the two closest breweries to my home in Glendale are actually in Los Angeles. Brewyard will be in Glendale near the edge of Burbank finally giving my adopted city a brewery for the first time since GlenCastle which was way, way in the past.

But first, the Brewyard folks need a little extra help to get set-up in their digs, which will include a vintage truck INSIDE the taproom.

Check out their Indie-Go-Go campaign and help out HERE.

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L.A. was Rained Upon

It took until September 15th for L.A. to get a good soaking rain. Here are the numbers…

Alhambra, downtown Los Angeles, Santa Monica and the Getty Center also received more than two inches of rain.
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The largest total in the area recorded was 2.64 inches of rainfall, according to the National Weather Service with UCLA’s campus a skosh behind, at 2.62 inches.

Why is it important?

The obvious answer is that rain is much needed for nature in a multitude of ways that even the most casual reader of the L.A. Times will have gleaned. Fires, agriculture, General Sherman the Tree all are affected in extreme ways.

My fear is that as much as we need it, if we don’t get sustained rainfall and instead get a little rain here and a little there then the conservation efforts will start to fade. Two months of positive water savings may be undone because people will start to think that everything is back to normal. Sometimes the fact that you have a gun to your head inspires some serious action. And serious water conservation is needed to not only get us past this drought that we are in but to prepare for the next drought that will come. Plus grant us room to add more breweries down the line.

It means that breweries old and new will need to invest in machinery that re-captures as much water as possible. It means becoming an early adopter of technology that taps into new “streams” of water like de-salination. It means becoming partners with the farms that provide the other ingredients that make up beer. Ingredients that need to be grown with the help of, you guessed it, H2O.

To take the conservation theme to an even further place, maybe it means that breweries brew in more water resourceful states, and not here. It seems radical to propose but barring tanker trucks filled with water driving into town, maybe it needs to be talked about.

Let’s hope that the Godzilla El Nino fills the clouds but prepare for future days too.

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Mediate on It

Beer names and the brands behind them are big business.  Even in the niche that is Craft Beer so it comes as no surprise that ancillary services pop-up to serve the business side of the equation.

One such assist comes from the Brewery Mediation Network.  Sounds kinda like a new age TV network but in actuality, they offer some unique help….

  • Strain between owner, brewer, staff and/or investor
  • Trademark disputes*
  • Co-worker tension and disagreements
  • Brewery-Distributor relations
  • Brewery-Neighbor relations
  • Private/Domestic disputes of brewery employees

I can see this type of service becoming more and more popular.

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Split Second Lag(unitas)

One moment Lagunitas Brewing is trumpeting their SoCal Azusa location and then as the ink dries on that deal, comes the news that Heineken will be a 50/50 partner with the outspoken and brash Tony Magee and his Petaluma based brewery.
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You could reasonably ask if these deals are coming more and more because people are now semi-used to them and the reaction isn’t as negative as when Goose Island changed hands.

But in my opinion, there are a crop of breweries that need access to cold, hard cash to grow. Adding more debt or going back into debt may not hold the appeal that it never did and with the big breweries seeing that their feeble attempts at “crafty-ness” were not flying, they are going after the next best thing.

You can read the brewery side of it HERE and then the more introspective and literature based version from Magee himself HERE.  I won’t add anything extra to either because the proof lies down the road.

Part One – If you trusted the owner and the brewer before and they do not change, then you should remain optimistic but watchful.  If I won a cash haul tomorrow, I wouldn’t change overnight.  I might change but I would hope that I would remain the somewhat snarky fellow that I am.  Keep the same thought for a company ’cause the Supreme Court says they are people like you and me

Part Two – As I have instructed before, now is the time to try Lagunitas beers and jot down your flavor thoughts. Then do so again in 3 and 6 months time. If those thoughts are similar, then worries were overblown. If it is drastically different, then tell the world. Just don’t go about moaning right now.
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HBC-438 the Homebrewing Hop

New hop varieties take years to go from thoughts and plans to being in common usage by brewers.

One that has been bubbling around and got the attention of Stan Hieronymus is HBC-438. It was seen and taste by home brewers back at their 2015 gathering under but might now be poised to take the next step to sainthood.

Here are the pertinent facts around the hop from the Hieronymus piece:

“Profits from sales to homebrewers will go to Ales for ALS.

Its mother is native American (neomexicanus). It is a bastard (father unknown).

In a raw state, it smells of both tropical and stone fruits. It is pleasantly herbal, a bit spicy, and I’m pretty sure that when used badly it will produce beers that can be described as catty (as in “smells like a litter box”).

There are a few homebrewers walking around with it now, because they attended the “Brewing With Experimental Hops – A New Hop Variety Just For Homebrewers” presentation last month at the National Homebrewers Conference in San Diego.”

Years from now, this might be the hip new hop.

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Reverse barrel aging

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Triple distilled and once stouted.  It is past time for the tide to turn and have whiskey see what their spirit tastes like when introduced to the stout barrel of craft beer.  (In this case from Franciscan Wells in Cork).  The barrels went from Jameson to Franciscan and then back and thus was born Caskmates.

Now I am more of a lighter whiskey, less smokey type of person but even I would snag a bottle of this if I saw it.

 

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The Logsdon Shuffle

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Looks like another sale is rockin’ the beer world.  Logsdon and their crazy good farmhouse ales like Peche N Brett has agreed to sell a significant stake in his brewery to three new partners.

I first saw this over at the New School Beer Blog which has all the details and spoke with the players in the drama which will include the departure of brewer Charles Porter who was a founding partner and brewmaster of the company.

My usual response holds true here.  It is time to re-judge the beer now, in a few months and in a year to chart the progress.  That is where the proof of whether a sale has done good or harm can be found.  Not in petty quick judgements.

If it comes as consolation, the namesake Logsdon will be doing quality control and there is no lack of brewing candidates out there who can take over the kettles and maybe push the beer into new and unforeseen directions.

Plus, as I read on The Full Pint, they were approached by ABInBev and found it to be non-workable.  So the hysteria could have been worse.

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New (Old) Milwaukee

They lost me at “innovation”. Pabst Brewing Company thinks they get craft cred by re-establishing a brewery where it used to be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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Now that the site has been revitalized with office buildings, apartments and a hotel, they feel they can put in a small brewery and tasting room capable of producing around 2,000 barrels a year.

Now I do like that Pabst may re-introduce pre-prohibition brands like Old Tankard Ale and Andecker, plus the emphasis on “inspired by recipes from the Pabst archives,” is admirable. But I am having a hard time reconciling that idea with what they currently do which is PBR, Schlitz and Old Milwaukee. None of which are lighting up the world with “innovation”. Add in that these are the same folks who just bought into “Not Your Father’s Root Beer” and things get sketchier still.

Maybe I will be proven wrong but count me in the pessimistic camp on this new brewery.

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Business Tutorial – Lagunitas

Tony  Magee from Lagunitas Brewing is pretty darn outspoken.  Be it in book form (So You Want to Start a Brewery?) or in Twitter form.

Now he has a place inbetween those vastly different letter counts with a LagunitasT Tumblr site.

With the heady title of Fermenting Ideas of Order, you get a peek into the thoughts of the Petaluma, Chicago and future Azusa locations of Lagunitas.

Will you agree with everything?  I don’t.  I found the whole IPA design trademark a bit off-putting but all I have to do is read the first sentence of the first blog post to see that I will probably agree with him more than not.

“The Future will not be like the past.”

Keep that zen koan in mind as craft beer grows.  And book mark that Tumblr site too.