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Beer books have to have something that they cannot get from a quick Google search, and the The Guide to Craft Beer from the Brewers Association looks to do that by adding a tasting log and including a food and beer section as well as helping “readers explore style preferences, traditional and modern brewing ingredients” as well. What I think separates this from a reference book fate is the pocket size and the focus on community. I will check it out and report back.
So the annual revision of “styles” is out from the Brewers Association and this year I have a couple of questions…
Rotbier? Breslau-Style and Dark Schoeps? Those are some really deep cuts. Maybe it is just housekeeping but I do not think that beer geeks were clamoring for obscure European wheat beers to be consolidated. And speaking of the obscure, Rotbier? Yes, that is the second time I have put a question mark on it. I cannot think of any beers available in that style to me here in SoCal. And I don’t think it is something you can readily pick-up in any beer store around the country. Is it the next new thing? Is it hazy?
The Twitter Machine will probably make hay with the Ice Lager removal for days but it and its brethren the malt liquor were really out of favor with the sometimes pop-up of ironic releases. I would be more concerned that there were not MORE consolidations and removals.
What will the effect be on the GABF awards? Minimal. I don’t see a rush to enter into those (4) new styles since the hazy strong will probably steal entries from the other two hazy categories, Gueuze might grow in later years but has too few current practitioners in the US. IPL’s like regular lagers are the Houston Rockets of the beer world, threatening to take over but then don’t and complains about it afterwards.
Now where is my DDH Rotbier?
Let’s break this into (2) parts….
The two numbers that most people are going to obsess over are the big 4% and the 7% (Slightly more hidden) but since Bart Watson and the Brewers Association put a number at the top of the graphic, I wanted to focus on the .1 2016 to 2017 was .5% share of the market and 2017 to 2018 was .6% If you are looking for a silver lining then that is the big one. In a down market for beer overall, craft is still picking up share of mind.
The number that I find most important are the opens vs closes in this section of the graphic. We need to follow this number and see when column A dips below 1K and when Column B goes up and over the 500 mark. I won’t guess at what is the perfect number of breweries for the US but if pressed, I would say around 7K seems good with some churn still going on.
One of the geekier, deep cuts for #independent beer world is the annual release heralding the recipients of Brewers Association 2019 Research and Service Grants Program. For 2019, 17 grants totaling $509,058 were awarded to researchers and organizations across the country to scientifically advance the key ingredients in beer.
I went through the list and the items that caught my eye in the world of barley and hops were the following:
Evaluating a Multi-State Breeding Project to Produce Local Malting Barley for the Craft Brewing Industry at the University of Minnesota seems the most important of the group since hyper local is such a key part of craft beer.
Then there are two barley projects that share the same term that I had to Google to understand: The Continuing Quest for Flavor: From the Oregon Promise to the Romp of Otters at Oregon State University and Metabolomics and Genomics Analysis of the ‘Romp of Otters’ Barley Flavor Project at Colorado State University. I now know what a two or more otters are called and I wish more groups were called Romps.
On the hop front, Development of Thiols and Thiol Precursors in Different Hop Varieties During Hop Harvest and their Impact on Beer Flavour conducted by Nyseos, Barth-Haas Group could yield new insights on flavors in the next big IPA style.
I have already posted about the PAIRED® event that is coming to Downtown LA this October but the ticket pre-sale has just begun and I do not want you to miss out on this major “collaboration between award-winning chefs and small and independent craft brewers from around the country.”
Brewers Association executive chef Adam Dulye will be there, which is an educational treat in itself but you will get to meet the brewers and chefs from all over too. How about the 2018 James Beard Award winner Alex Seidel from Mercantile Dining and Provision in Denver. Let’s double that with the 2017 James Beard Award winner Kevin Nashan from Sidney Street Café in St. Louis. Chefs from Texas, Virginia, DC, Colorado, Tennessee, Wyoming and more will be bringing their regions cuisine to us.
L.A. is represented by Kyle Johnson from Bourbon Steak LA in Glendale, Bruce Kalman from Union and Michael Fiorelli from Love & Salt in Manhattan Beach.
Here are the details:
Thursday, October 18 and Friday, October 19, 2018 – 7:00 – 10:00 p.m. PDT
Los Angeles Center Studios – 1201 West 5th Street
General Admission tickets ($85) include:
· Entrance at 7:00 p.m. PDT
· Commemorative tasting glass
· Unlimited craft beer and small-plate pairings from 7:00 – 10:00 p.m.
· Event program with room for tasting notes
VIP Admission tickets (limited availability) ($200) include:
· Early entrance at 6:30 p.m. PDT
· Commemorative tasting glass
· Unlimited craft beer and small-plate pairings from 6:30 – 10:00 p.m.
· Event program with room for tasting notes
· VIP lounge with seating overlooking the event area
· Special beer tastings
· Special Meet & Greet with brewers
· Exclusive credentials and gifts
Head to the Paired LA website for tickets.
In what could be filed under belated, the Brewers Association has hired Dr. J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham to be the first diversity ambassador.
Per the press release, “Jackson-Beckham, an assistant professor of communication studies at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia, will work closely with the BA’s Diversity Committee, which was established during last year’s Craft Brewers Conference in Washington, D.C.”
Jackson-Beckham has written a book about this very topic: Untapped: Exploring the Cultural Dimensions of Craft Beer which should help her as she travels the country talking to member breweries and brewers guilds. Another plus is that she is an avid homebrewer as well.
I will certainly be on the look-out for her work and I hope to be in attendance when she next speaks in Los Angeles. Hopefully this will herald a change that will be beneficial long term.
You can read more HERE.
When it comes to pairing beer and food, the Brewers Association has an ace in the hole with Chef Adam Dulye.
And Los Angeles will benefit from his expertise and some mighty good beer when they finally West Coast their PAIRED® event on October 18 & 19, 2018.
“PAIRED is the ultimate collaboration between celebrated chefs and small and independent craft brewers from around the country.” The fact that you might find some great beer that you normally don’t see should excite you.
Here are more of the details: “A cadre of 42 small and independent craft brewers will be selected via lottery to participate and partner with 21 chefs to create two delectable dishes paired with two special beers.” Chefs will be coming from Colorado, Pennsylvania, Washington DC and Missouri.
PAIRED L.A. will take place at Los Angeles Center Studios. Tickets are $85 for general admission. A limited number of VIP tickets will be sold for each night for $200. The VIP experience includes early entrance, VIP Lounge (with seating) overlooking the event area, specialty beer tastings not found in the main event, meet & greets with brewers, exclusive credentials and gift, and more.
The 2017 sales and volume data has been released by The Brewers Association (BA) and most people are going to probably see one number the 5% rise in volume and start to get nervous or gloom and doomy.
I won’t be shooting rainbows myself but that volume number and the retail dollar value growth of 8% are closer to what we will see going forward. There was a tremendous lack of small breweries even in 2013. Now that void created by consolidation has been filled to a great extent. There is still room for new breweries but the heady days of double digit growth is now part of #independent beer history and perhaps future.
That 5% looks even better when compared to the overall -1% in the total beer market. The other “good” number is that the closing rate of breweries was 2.6%. My hunch is that that number will grow in next year’s report if the Green Flash situation is any indicator. We may be getting closer to finding our number of breweries equilibrium. Once that magic point is found, decisions can be made from a point of firmer ground. If you know that there are X amount of breweries, then questions from how much hops are needed to how to distribute can be answered with more certainty. Remember that business hates unpredictability.
You can check out the handy infographic for the marquee statistics.
Yesterday, The Brewers Association released the figures of the Top 50 U.S. Craft Brewing Companies. (They also released the Top 50 overall, but I ain’t interested in that).
Let’s tease some of the numbers out from a California perspective:
~ Biggest in CA is Sierra Nevada at # 3
~ There are four “collectives” at 5, 6, 9 and 14
~ There are 9 California breweries on the list + Firestone Walker as part of the Duvel Moortgat Group. Most are in the 35-50 range.
Overall, there are no “Wow!” surprises on the list. Those breweries that contract for others are high as expected. If you are looking for anomalies, New Glarus at # 16 might be considered bigger than thought before. What does “pop” is when you look at the list on a map…
Those blanks spots really stand out. The population of those “blanks” is part of the reason that say neither Dakota has a pin in it. State laws play a bigger part though in populous states such as Texas and Florida.
Kudos to the association for releasing so much information.
The #independent beer community is more than just the people making beer it is also the farmers that grow the raw ingredients which is why it is so important that the Brewers Association is granting, well, grants as part of their Research and Service Grants Program. The program is “designed to further the development of a healthy and sustainable raw materials supply chain.”
17 grants with an attached $432,658 were awarded this year with 12 going to malt and 5 to hops. I selected 2 that I think will be important in the years to come….
Breeding for Barley Contributions to Beer Flavor
· Partner: Oregon State University
· Principal: Pat Hayes
Hop-Derived Dextrin-Reducing Enzymes from Dry-Hopping
· Partner: Oregon State University
· Researcher: Thomas Shellhammer