Category: Beer Industry

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

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This + Craft Beer

L.A. is not Belgium (yet) but one thing that might be translatable from there to here is the combo.

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Check out this article with photos from PopUpCity right HERE. Why can’t we mix and match? Restaurants have been slow on the uptake.  Either grafting on beer to a menu (looking at the lazy people and Bourbon Steak in Glendale) or ignoring it all together. So how about Pet grooming and beer?  Pets get treated real well here in L.A. so why not combo with some craft beer?  Or follow the Wasbar example.  Maybe a combo coffee house in the morning, craft beer at night concept?

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Archive It

Here is something that I think each state’s brewing guild should look into. And, if course, it is something started in Oregon.

A Hops and Brewing archive. The Eugene Register-Guard has a nice synopsis HERE.

In this day of digital everything. All sorts of documents can be kept without the rent of an office building or much infrastructure at all. And for future book writers and researchers, it would be a storehouse to research ( for a small fee).

You can start with the books written by the founders of Sierra Nevada and Lagunitas.

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Ship that Beer – literally

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You see this typical shipping container.  But if you put your craft beer mind to it.  It could be a full working brewery.

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TheCzech firm Mobilní pivovary s.r.o. will sell you one of these for what I must assume is a lot of money.  But probably less than trying to build out a brewery in Los Angeles.  Now if they can put a tasting room into an adjacent container and a cellar for barrel aging in a third.  Then we are onto something.

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#CBC14 State of the Union

With the Craft Brewers Conference drawing the beer industry and fans to Denver, the Brewers Association also extended their reach via the old-fangled telephone to broadcast a state of the union as it were.

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After the call ended, I went through my notes and pulled what I thought was important out for craft beer going forward.  All opinions are mine own.

~ California is the top state for brewery openings and nationwide there were 413 new breweries in operation.

I am sure that is still sustainable but I think the next generation of breweries are going to have to look a lot harder at WHERE they open.  The rent cost is no longer the only factor or majority factor anymore.

~ The Brewers Association supports state guilds (which are now in all 50 states, thanks to the last to the party, Wyoming) but only if it doesn’t contravene the national goals.

This may lead to some uncomfortable, we are going to have to agree to disagree moments over issues like big box stores and what constitutes craft beer.

~ Breweries that use adjuncts in their flagship beers will be welcomed back into the fold

Frankly, I don’t know why that hasn’t happened earlier.  A small, community based brewery that uses all organic ingredients but has a corn or rice beer as their mainstay is not craft?  I am glad that law is out.

~ Export is a growing line item on the agenda.

The BA is playing matchmaker (their words) with those breweries that pony up cash to be part of the export program.  Hopefully they will not send over IPA’s because that may dim the view just like the hop aroma gets dimmed during travel.  I was surprised to see that Canada, Sweden, the UK, Australia and Japan are the top 5 destinations for our beer.

Next year, the conference will be in Portland.  I may attend next year to hear even more scuttlebutt.

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Durable Labels

Good looking and professional beer labels can be hard to do for those who brew at home.  Especially when there is spilling and sanitizing and the like.  Plus most prefer to spend their dollars on more equipment or boutique hops and not the art.

Enter: Garage Monk on the Etsy website.

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With a line of cool and colorful vinyl labels that can withstand a bit of punishment that a paper label would wilt from.  I like the multiplication X sign myself.

 

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Growing Ratings

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How is this for hard data? The Ratebeer website database now includes over 16,000 breweries with 2,600 added in 2013 alone.

They also have 300,000 users.  (Some of which obviously are inactive, others hyperactive) There are over 5.2 million user-submitted beer reviews. AND as of February 2014, reached its 250,000th beer in their list of beers. (again some inactive or seasonal).

How fast will it take to double that?

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The Beer Exchange

I am not a beer trader.  The arcane rules, the clique-ishness and beer snobs that seem to roam this land throw me off.  But, maybe a website dedicated to it will bring a more mainstream attitude to it.

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Enter the Beer Exchange… “This is the first web application dedicated to craft beer trading.  Quickly find trade partners, easily manage your trades, and build your reputation.”

 

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20 NEW breweries to Open in Denver!

If you have any doubt that the City of Los Angeles and all the cities surrounding said metropolis could use more breweries, then read THIS.

Denver is obviously a big beer town but one could say they have plenty of beer to go around.  But possibly doubling (almost) their brewery count in the span of a year?  That is crazy.

Next Great American Beer Festival that I go to, I will probably not even set foot into the convention center.  Too many other places to go to!

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“America’s Beer Renaissance: Consumer Choice and Variety in the U.S. Beer Market.”

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It must have been an easier job thirty years ago.  The craft beer retailer had so few choices to put on shelves and sell.  A few ESB’s from England, a bock or two from Germany and maybe something really unique from Belgium.  Now to be competitive you had better have at least one display (if not more) like the one above.  Because the craft beer consumer fueled by growing sophistication and trained to ask for better beers are now the driving force in beer.  And that is not just craft beer, but all of beer.

Growing up in Oregon, a state now known far and wide for choice was a different world from where I am now in Los Angeles.  My Trader Joe’s across the street carries Hangar 24, The Bruery and Firestone Walker alongside Full Sail and their in-house brands.  Even the major grocery chain, Ralphs carries the cans of Los Angeles brewed Golden Road for quick carry out.  Back in the day, you could pledge allegiance to Henry Weinhard or Olympia or just by some cheap stubbies from Buckhorn.  Beer shopping sure must have been easier than it is now where I have to make hard decisions about how much I can buy and how much will fit in my ‘fridge or cellar. It must seem to store clerks that I am the most indecisive shopper in the world.

So I have to give a tip of the hat to the hard working behind the scenes people who deal in SKU’s.  Heck, I didn’t even know about SKU’s before or what the acronym stands for and now I read about them in beer blogs instead of beer reviews!

Not to suck up but  there must be people working overtime at every stop of a beer’s journey from brewery to retailer.  Born on dates stamped on bottles.  New labels being approved and affixed in a rush.  Data and prices keyed into computers.  Barcodes scanned and inventory tallied. Delivery trucks rumbling down roads near and far.

All in the name of a bustling and growing craft beer market.  All so that I could check out with ease and take my craft beer bounty home to drink and enjoy.  Granted we are probably still trying to catch up from all the stagnation of previous years but the incredible leaps in variety is hard to keep up with.  Each visit to my favorite beer shoppes brings new discoveries.  Seasonals galore.  New breweries entering the market. A seemingly endless stream of new hops and IPA’s.  More beers than I could possibly choose from.  And that is a very good thing.

 

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*a writing assignment (with prizes attached) from the 2014 Beer Bloggers conference in San Diego and the National Beer Wholesalers Association

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Canning on the Move in SoCal

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Sierra Madre may be known as an “off the 210” town but now Greg Kinne and Mike Nalick, co-owners of Beer Monks Mobile Canning will be driving their truck to breweries in the Southland.

The “company delivers and operates equipment on-site to produce as much as 1,800 gallons of canned beer a day. The canning machine fits on a box truck and can go anywhere a truck can — and the machine is small enough to fit through a standard door.”

This is that helpful “bridge” service for breweries that don’t have the capital to invest into lines (either bottles or cans) and / or don’t have space for said lines in their brewery.  Kinne says “Our service allows us to deliver smaller quantities of cans and packaging materials — six packs and case trays — in a just-in-time fashion.”

Maybe Pacific Plate or Federal could do a test drive?