Tag: firkin opinion

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The Firkin for March 2025

Is your social media feed beer driven or activity driven? It is a question that I want to pose to as many brewery media folk as possible. I know that my lens is introverted and geeky and that a new beer with a new hop or a heritage barley will get me into a taproom more than cornhole but I feel like the pendulum has swung a little too far away from the actual liquid.

This is of course also coming from someone who recently posted about thinking outside the box when it comes to activities and who also posted about a book extolling community at taprooms.

Themed nights are an effort to get butts in seats and buying beer from a crowd who is not buying currently. Economics are at play here. A new beer release is probably not going to bring out a line of beer buyers willing to pay a premium as much as a casual drinker who knows not of Dynaboost and Fonio.

But, the casual / weekend drinker is more fickle than a beer geek and losing sight of that in a rush to a cater to a crowd who are not tied to your beer but by karaoke is harder work in my opinion.

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Lay off the Hype

Last month, Vinepair posted a piece about overhyped beers. Even though I detected a sarcastic comment and one that did not take introverts into account, on the whole, it got me to thinking about what is a style that give me the cringes.

Non-alcoholic is certainly one that I share and for the most part milkshake IPAs tend to be just a bunch of lactose that steamrolls any hop note, the one style that I wish was pulled back though is the light lager.

If your brewery already has a lager or (hopefully) more, there is really no need to have a second runnings lager. If people are that calorie conscious, they are splitting hairs.

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The Firkin for February 2025

Beer is highly dependent on agriculture. But agriculture is tied to beer as well and nowhere is that seen as much as with hops.

Dave Infante from Vinepair recently delved into that connection with his rhetorical flourishes HERE but I want to add my two cents as well.

What struck me was that hop production was only down 16% in 2024. I expected much more than that. It does take a while to reduce, it is a big boat to steer after all, but it has been three down trending years already so I thought the number would be in the low 20’s.

My question is how will craft breweries rebound? Will it be with a hard thud onto a plateau? Or will there be some bounce to it as new breweries seize on opportunities of used equipment or turnkey operations.

If it is the latter, I hope that farmers prepare for the former so that they can re-calibrate acreage from a position of too little rather than oversupply. That may sound odd but brewers can steer to lower hop usage styles better than hop growers can control hop growth.

Whatever happens, this is more economic uncertainty and business does not handle that very well so there is probably more shifting ahead.

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The Firkin for January 2025

Just before leaving office, the Surgeon General of the United States, following the lead of officials in Europe has suggested that an additional warning of cancer risk be added to alcohol products.

You can read up on the main points HERE but I have three questions that I would like additional information on…

  • is this for ALL alcohol? are grapes better than malt or apples better than toasted oak? are the botanicals in gin OK?
  • what is the math on amounts? is 16oz of 5.5% beer better than a cocktail with 45abv spirit?
  • what is the research (if any) on people who drink but do not get cancer. we have all heard about the old lady who drank scotch every week for forty years and lived to be 100. what is different about those folks.

This is all bearing in mind that science is ongoing, what seemed obvious now might be much murkier ten years from now.

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The Firkin for December 2024

I am not inclined to doom and dread when it comes to the New Year. Perhaps because the bar of past years is not the highest of hurdles.

But I do feel mighty trepidatious about our breweries in Los Angeles and this country overall. Zooming out, it is clear that most voting Americans have no idea of the deleterious effects of tariffs and how they are best used in tiny, targeted doses. It is also clear that the ultra religious right cannot stay in church and rather enjoy pushing their twisted morality onto anyone and alcohol is one of their targets.

On a local scale, breweries here are closing or are in trouble. Will that balance out naturally with the remaining breweries getting the dollars? Perhaps. And I do think that turnkey breweries and cheaper kit may lead to a new set of exciting beer but that may not come to fruition until 2026. Until then, we may be looking at a lot of light lagers as draws since slushies and seltzers are fading fast.

The one thing that I will be tracking in 2025 are beer prices. I routinely purchase mixed 4-packs and I used to be able to get them at the $20 mark but in the last half of the year it has been more $24 to $25 and I am looking at barrel-aged beer prices with a sharp eye and substitute a hoppy pils for them. And I don’t even look at big bottles.

However this year turns out, I hope you all have a great beer year and I urge you to visit local and also travel to beer. It might make a difference.

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The Firkin for November 2024

A tariff is a tax imposed by one government on either imports or exports of goods (or both).  It is a revenue source for a government and import duties can also be a form of regulation of foreign trade that taxes foreign products to encourage or safeguard domestic industry. Protective tariffs are among the most widely used tools of protectionism along with import and export quotas.

Why did I just give a simplified definition of a tariff? Because many people who voted did not understand the meaning of that word and its ramifications on food and drinks. And in the coming years, this is going to really hurt the buying power of an American dollar.

American craft beer buyers already know the upward rise of cans or draft beer. My experience has been that $8.00 is probably as low as I can expect to see a price to be. Tariffs will push that up higher.

If your favorite brewery buys malt from Germany or wants a New Zealand hop varietal or wants to make an avocado ale using Mexican fruit, well, depending on the whim and senility of the dodo in charge, those ingredients may be more costly or far more costly.

And if you believe that this tariffs will bolster industry in America well, Mr X himself has the ear (as of today) of the dodo and thief and has proven to be very anti-union and anti-paying a fair wage and extremely anti-40 hour weeks. So you may not have enough money or time to enjoy a craft beer.

This country is heading for another depression and that is going to be another broadside to a beer industry already hit hard.

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The Firkin for October 2024

It is easy nowadays to summon a car to deliver you to a brewery or from one brewery to another. You also will find running clubs associated with a brewery. And if you really want to take your life in your hands, you can bike. I hate to run but even I would take that over bicycling.

My choice A is walking and whilst in Denver, I was able to saunter from a brewery, to another and then another. The next day, I walked around a lake from one corner to another to visit two breweries. I miss being able to do that in Los Angeles as there are relatively few neighborhoods where multiple breweries exist.

Torrance on Del Amo is one. Arts District in DTLA is a second. Both have their charms and drawbacks. And maybe if economic times improve or a new gust of brewery wind hits the sails we will be able to create more walkable beer paths.

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The Firkin for September 2024

Gonna go very trivial here. But it is a bee in my bonnet. In my internet beer wanderings, I see videos and photos where beer is spilled, intentionally.

I know that there is only so much new beer content when making beer content is very much second, third or fourth place behind making craft beer but whenever I see spilled beer, I think that the beer could be given as a taster to a new customer or an old customer.

Then another part of me just moves to who has to clean up that mess because beer is sticky as hell. What cleaners are they using? I just start thinking of anything other than the beer.

Instead of the pranks and hijinks, this beer fan would like more about the brewery and the beers.

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The Firkin for August 2024

The slushie machine era must be nearing an end because I see those swirling machines at pretty much every brewery taproom that I visit.

And that gets me to thinking about two things:

A. the slushie machine salesman is getting big checks

B. when are breweries going to stop chasing after trends and get back to being a trend?

I don’t mean to throw too much shade with point B but I do feel that the more hard seltzers and slushies one puts on offer is a lost opportunity to do something innovative in the beer space. Each alternative drink sold cements a customers relationship, not to beer or your brewery, but to sugary, bubbly treats.

Much like coffee shops that sell iced diabetes bombs that contain zero coffee, a brewery that is just selling hard slurpees are stealing from their core brand. I can understand that a group of people may acquiesce to going to a brewery if there are more options but it starts to look like the brewery isn’t the destination. Much like the group of friends who end up at an Olive Garden because it is the least offensive choice.

Time to sell the slushie machine or at least make a fresh hop slushie.

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The Firkin for July 2024

I love imagining what my perfect beer bar would be and so to counteract the existential dread in the air, let’s dream for a while instead.

First, there would be inside and outside seating with the outside being a calm garden center zen zone. Inside would be a mix of bar seating and booths because I like comfortable seating. There would be no TVs. I think it pulls focus from the beers and sports bars do a better job of it anyway.

There would be a total of 12 taps. I think that is manageable in both keeping social media and your own bad menu updated. And that churn would keep coming back to see the new beers.

In regards to the beers, six would be from a guest brewery for the month ( stolen from Function PDX ). That leaves me to have two lighter beers, to IPAs and two stouts. Depending on the guest brewery, the local taps might switch to lighter beers heavy for example.

There would be a little bit of food but nothing fussy or hard to make. Chips and salsa. Cheese plates. Little plates that can be high quality. Outside food would be encouraged as well so that instead of spending time booking food trucks, that time could be spent on beer selections.

I would also have a few single cans in a fridge to-go as well. A curated selection of beers that I find fun.

There is my current idea.