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my humble and correct opinion
Publicizing a secret menu is a bit of a strange thing to type but when I saw a recent Instagram post from New Belgium Brewing, I wondered how many other places have beers that are a mixed concoction of two or three other beers.
And the follow up question, how best to talk it up? Just for serious regulars? For club members? Just on Wednesdays? For whomever asks?
I wish I was more in the know on this fun idea.
Before I dive into my quick thoughts for the end of the month, I would like to give a quick R.I.P. to Mumford Brewing in DTLA as they close after 7+ years. I visited when they first opened and thought the beers were only OK, but then a subsequent visit showed a fast growth. It taught me that some places need time to gel. From there on out Mumford was a solid winner especially with their hazy IPAs. Buy those few cans out in the wild still if you can.
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Bourbon Pursuit and Breaking Bourbon have noticed that bourbon and spirits tend to run the opposite of craft beer. Big brands dominate. Making it hard for craft distilleries to get air where in beer bigger seems to default to worse or boooring.
As we head to a new year, both good beer and good bourbon will need to learn from the other. Heritage breweries will need to figure out how ubiquitous brands like Jim Beam or Maker’s Mark can remain popular even though they are much larger than little distilleries.
Craft distilleries need to ponder how chasing new trends works for small breweries and how they harness that energy to stay on the tips of tongues and front of minds.
And what I think might be more important is how do bourbon and beer combine past the simple fill a bourbon barrel with an imperial stout.
Shmaltz Brewing Company, the jokey and punny Jewish craft beer brand seemed to be done when founder Jeremy Cowan moved to other projects after 25 years.
He’Brew: The Chosen Beer is now owned by Jesse Epstein, a 26-year-old Reform rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College. Epstein started home brewing during the pandemic and saw an opportunity to reinvigorate religion which is struggling with attendance.
I saw a great quote from Epstein, “What about our Jewish values can be used to inform our food practices?” he asks. “How, through beer, can we embrace the values of welcoming in the stranger, freeing the captive, opening the eyes of the blind?” A refreshing thought when religion seems quicker to divide and discriminate.
It will probably be a slow build but hopefully Epstein can accomplish it.
Before Christmas, Bart Watson, the economics guru for the Brewers Association talked about craft beer in 2022 as well as a dip into what he thinks maybe in store for 2023.
Here are some of the numbers nuggets from his talk….
It looks like some tough sledding next year but as the world clicks closer to normal, more opportunities might show themselves.
There has been moving and shaking in the Los Angeles beer world as the clock runs out on 2022.
First was news that the original owners of Yorkshire Square Brewing in Torrance were leaving and that the brewery is in the hands of the Copley Family who are also involved with Project Barley.
Then the day after Christmas brought the news that King Harbor Brewing was closing up shop in its three locations after eight years in business.
Will there be a dip on top of three years of pivoting? The economic situation doesn’t look great for cost of goods plus a labor market that requires more pay with higher turnover. It is enough to make one look long and hard at opening and operating a brewery. And I do expect more new in Q1 of 2023.
Obviously, not a rosy picture but I was never under the impression that each and every Los Angeles brewery was going to last forever. Change is the only constant and maybe turnkey breweries or brewing equipment for sale or rents coming down as landlords choose lower rent over pie in the sky valuations will create a new surge next year or in 2024.
A little on the hush-hush news as we head into Christmas. I have learned that Eagle Rock Brewery will be taking over the freeway adjacent Empire Tavern spot in Burbank.
I will follow up with a first visit report.
Breweries will sometimes tout their water quality but it appears that Foster’s Lager really likes the H2O, read HERE.
Now adding water is not inherently bad. Bourbon and other spirits have calculations to make to reach certain proof points.
But what I will call the Foster’s Two-Step of lowering ABV while also raising prices is pushing it. It may not seem a shock that they are doing it but the reasoning behind is a bit more complicated than corporations are greedy bastards.
Companies will raise prices for two big reasons. One is cost to make the beer. If it is rising, as it has been, they will cover costs which is only natural. The un-natural bit is that many companies see those rising costs or inflation or a bad mood on a Tuesday as cover to raise prices.
As long as a PR VP can lay the blame elsewhere, a company can add a nickel or dime to the price which gives cover to others to do the same.
Now, if companies paid fairly this would be moot. If Foster’s had a quality or taste profile that makes watering down integral, this would be moot.
In the end, what Foster’s and others will find is that they are antagonizing customers while also putting their prices closer to those of craft beer. And that is not the two-step they want.
I will let the video do the heavy educational lifting today…
Both Stone Brewing and Oskar Blues have gone back to their back catalog of beers and re-released beers that had not been on tap or cans for a while. And while the nostalgic part of me thinks that is a fun idea, I do wonder if the constant stream of new releases from breweries over the last few years will make this idea a non-starter when the hip breweries get to the same age as Stone and Oskar.
Because, you have to build a following for a beer. You can’t really do that if there were two new beers the previous week and another on the next week. It is the same long-term issue I have with pre-season seasonals that are off shelves before the season is over. You disconnect the beer from the time of the year that you are celebrating.
This is not an Old Man Yelling at Clouds post, if a brewery chooses a new, new, even more new path, that is absolutely fine. But that path means that you are bound to lose some nostalgia as well as a chance to have a flagship beer. You will create a new mindset in the customer who will open the door expecting a new beer on tap or in 4-packs.
Maybe the pendulum will swing back to core beers.
I have been slowly piling up gifts for Christmas 2022 but if you are a last minute shopper or have people to shop for across the country, you might want to consider sending a brewery gift card.
MacLeods here in LA is the most recent casualty but I have read closure posts on other beer blogs as well.
Who knows what 2023 will hold but many breweries are still struggling with post-pandemic and then inflation and are still digging out and could use a little extra. So where you can, purchase spend some Xmas money on future beer.