Tag: beer industry

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Back to Life

Jeff Alworth always posts interesting and thought provoking beer content at Beervana Blog and this piece HERE, is no exception.  Using the premise of what other breweries could use a Chobani like savior to bring them back to life.

His picks are more centered in Europe and are much deeper cuts so I propose three additional choices….

One – Bert Grants – this was a Spokane, Washington based pioneer in the early craft beer movement.  With the titular Scotsman as the branding lead.  They made quite a few Americanized British Ales and were decidedly on the malty side of the spectrum.

Two – Thirsty Bear Brewing – this San Francisco based brewery and restaurant was on the organic bandwagon and Spanish tapas too.  Maybe too niche to last too long but I would love to see a beer and serious food pairing space.

Three – Eagle Rock Brewery – this recently closed Los Angeles brewery led the way in L.A. but despite heroic efforts, could not find a winning combination of beers.  Bigger bucks could bring back the opening year line-up and maybe find a better location as well.

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Choppy Waters

I am going to request that you read this POST first from the Beervana blog.

Now that you have sailed back and are pondering the state of craft beer in 2023, I would like to add my three cents about this, which is that there will always be three levels of customer, be it for phones or beer or anything else being sold.

You have the people that are firmly not into it, the vast tentative middle and then the diehards. Reductive, yes, but you see it in politics (it too is something sold) most glaringly and scarily. A battle for the undecideds.

That middle block though will NEVER be completely won over. They float with the tides of trends. Be it generational trends away from their parents drink of choice or to what is the next IT beverage. And you can invariably tell when that trend has jumped the shark when your SABInBev or MillerCoors starts heavily marketing a new product and ALSO when they discontinue a product.

Using the invest / divest model, you see a heavy influx into RTDs with Boston Beer making canned malt (not whiskey) cocktails for Jim Beam while Platform Beer and other breweries bought by SABInBev are being dismantled.

The bigger companies chase after trends that the tentative consumers are following. They will almost always be late to get on board the boat.

So what should craft beer do? They can chase as well by making hard seltzers or hard slushies or pastry stouts. They can try to look younger than their years to be cool to the undecideds. Because of the ability to quickly pivot to their customers needs they can be faster than the big conglomerates that have to focus group the heck out of a new idea.

But that is still chasing a customer that will not, in all likelihood, become a convert to the cause. I think a brewery needs to find its identity and then provide that reliably and with high quality while tossing in surprises here and there. If you make great IPA, then be the hop zone for people.

That middle group will eventually come back after they go around the horn of other drinks.

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How I Was – How Am I Doing

I have been off Twitter for two plus years at this point, so some things I catch second-hand. Like this question that I saw on the Appellation Beer website.

That is a thinker. All those years ago when I first started in beer, there was a growing number of choices available but it was limited and forcibly local. You had to travel to find the beer two towns over. Now, well, you can sit at home and scroll across a world of beer and a few days later you get a box in the mail.

I believe that beer would seem as much a dark forest as wine does to me now. I would not know where to start and because of that, might not drink as widely as I do, which is saying something considering the preponderance of IPAs I sip.

I would also see it as part of day to day life where before it was way more of a revolutionary cause. The battle has been mostly fought and I would also say mostly won. Even the crappiest bar or smallest grocery store has craft beer inside.

But since I cannot un-live my beer life, it is all guessing but fun guessing.

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Aftermath – Part 6

Will delivery be normal after the virus has passed? Will to-go orders and curbside pick-up remain an option?

I would say that both will eventually phase out. In-state delivery is just too costly not to mention bad for an environment healing from lack of cars on the road. Plus, with travel opened up, visiting breweries will more than like return if the stir crazy mood of Americans is any indication.

Curbside though might hang on longer as fear and worry slowly dissipate. Eventually though, the keg trade will reclaim its position and there will be less cans and bottles to pick-up and run with.

Where it may linger a bit more is in the delivery apps. They are either going to struggle with being profitable or struggle to pay a workforce that will increasingly call for more money and alcohol might be a big ticket item that could be used to pay back investors and contractors.

The taproom experience is clearly something people want so that means back to the sidelines for delivery.

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BSP Mid-Year Predictions

Time to unleash my prognostication skills on to the back half of the beer calendar year 2019 and unlike all the experts that predicted Kawhi would be a Laker, I will gladly own up to any faulty predictions.  Without ado, here are my five Nostradamus takes.

1. A new and non juicy/NE/hazy will make its bow before the year is out

2. “hard” seltzer will decline significantly in both Twitter mentions and sales

3. Openings will be eclipsed by closings by a thin margin

4. 8oz cans will start to make inroads in packaging

5. an intellectual property lawsuit will go to court

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The Firkin for February 2019

When lactose started showing up in beers, I wasn’t aghast. It is just another ingredient in the brewing cupboard.

When labels started showing up on cans that mimicked cereal, candy and other sugary treats, I was more wondering about the lack of creativity in the designs.

But this morning, I broke. I saw a conceptual design for a bar that had swings. Like a playground. As I typed on Facebook, “We are at peak kid-ification.” Or as Yorkshire Square Brewmaster, Andy Black said….

The American palate has certainly shifted to massive sugar levels. (As well as massive caffeine and spice levels) which is part of this surging trend but the marketing push hearkens to a certain nostalgia which makes for a formidable selling duo. As we saw, Make America Great Again as stupid and un-factual as it is, worked on many Americans.

But to me, this pastry/milkshake/cereal thing is a bit of a devolution. More chasing taste buds than creating new styles. I am not going to be so brazen as to tell a brewery what to sell but I feel like tossing in gummy bears or Trix is not about creating a balanced multi-dimensional beer and I have trouble believing (unless proven otherwise) that a brewing team would kick back at the end of the day drinking one of these diabetes bombs.

And to add kid zones to places where you drink? That is just weird. We can be young and old at once, we hold multitudes as the (butchered by me) saying goes, but let’s not forget what age we really are. Adding a swing to a bar may seem whimsical but in reality, its someone falling off and hurting themselves after a couple beers.

Finally, let’s take stock when countermeasures such as Flagship February start popping up. Because those are course corrections to prevailing winds.

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Wheelin’ & Dealin’

Activity comes in bunches it seems. After a few quiet weeks, acquisitions came roaring back into the beer world.

Those who don’t believe in coincidence might think that the news was timed to hide under all the Make America Sick Again healthcare debate.

Lets recap:
1. Brooklyn Brewery enters into a sales “platform” with Funkwerks and 21st Amendment

2. Shorts Brewing sells 19.99% to Lagunitas

3. Coronado acquires fellow San Diegan, Monkey Paw Brewing.

4. An un-named SoCal brewery put itself up for sale

Call this a response to having the highest number of breweries in operation ever. For events 1 & 2, it also shows the creative ways that people are staying Brewers Association street legal while growing bigger.

Thanks to a soft Twitter ban and some judicious unfollowing of the Debbie Downers that seem to populate the Tweet-isphere, I haven’t seen much vitriol towards the these moves. Mostly because they avoid the Scarlet A of Anheuser-Busch. Which shows me that some people see what a stain that is on a company and are opting to avoid it.

But if I can get a supply, even limited of Short’s beers in L.A., it is a development that I welcome.

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Resignation

When breweries get sold, it raises red flags. But in the short term, those changes (though galvanic) don’t really affect day-to-day operations. You will still be getting Sculpin and it’s various variants even though Constellation bought them.

What does impact craft beer levels is on a more micro-level. Much like the Mayor of your city being more impactful than the President on your daily life.

In Los Angeles there have been a pair of resignations/moves that are important to understand. Brewer/Cellarman Tim McDonnel from Highland Park will be departing as will Noble Ale Works CEO Brian Rauso. Two totally different positions that are sometimes lost in the adoration (well-deserved) of brewmasters Bob Kunz and Evan Price.

Beer, unless it is some garage project of limited resources and supply, is a group project. That’s why brewers seem to move in entourages. Those are the people cleaning the kettles and slapping labels on cans and manning(wo-manning) the bar.

This post is partially to say thanks to those like Brian and Time but also to let you fans know that it takes a village to brew a beer. Thank all the villagers.