In the before times during L.A. Beer Week, there was always a panel discussion, So You Want to Be a Brewer?. Tomm Carroll would moderate with brewers who had just gotten started or still wet from beer foam behind the ears.
I don’t have statistics on it but many a brewery owner attended these discussions. Henry Nguyen from Monkish Brewing being one of them.
But even panels have to pivot, so this year the theme was the cheery, upbeat pandemic.
Whenever there is a discussion, I start looking for golden nuggets of wisdom or weird but true stories and there were plenty last night. Covid created weird circumstances, such as….
Macleod – had 12 kegs of green beer ready for St. Patrick’s Day since they had sold out too quickly the previous year, took months to sell
Paperback – had focused their investment on their taproom but had to pivot to new canned beers each week. Basically doing things backwards from their plans.
Lawless – had bad timing strike the, as they were two weeks from their CUP when it hit. Postponed their journey to opening by six – nine months
Strand – the closure casualty of the group was another timing victim, they were in the midst of trying to get three other breweries in an alternating prop agreement to use their Torrance facility when lockdown hit
Overall though, the tone was one of gratefulness to the brewing community and the customers. It sounded very much like the extra positive times when craft beer was really growing. Lawless and Paperback were happy to have been going through the process close together and both leaned into knowledge from MacLeod so despite all the trials and tribulations, they got through together.