Tag: firkin

Posted on

The Firkin for January 2014

header_firkin

There are times when I read other people’s blogs that I wish I had coined / turned a phrase as well.   It happened again, twice!  One of the usual suspects made me jealous.  Beervana, in a post about Goose Island and their line of sour beers said this, “Harmony and balance, far more than intensity, is what I value.”  Then one paragraph later, “Intensity is a marker of authenticity in the US.”

(You can read the full post HERE, and I suggest you do)

This is an issue that I think will become more important as craft beer reaches maturation and saturation points.  How does a brewery differentiate itself from others when all beers are turned up to 11?  How do beer drinkers value and judge beers after having their palate’s blown out by an extreme beer?

Recently, I have had a few pepper beers.  I am not equipped with a tongue that can withstand much (if any) Scoville units so I could not judge the merit of the peppers sourced but I could easily tell that what I was drinking on two occasions was nothing but heat mixed into water with some malt.  Balance was just not there.  Like having a meal where the salad was dosed in Sriacha, followed by jalapeno poppers and a main course covered in ghost peppers.  There was no counterpoint to the heat.

One was a hot pepper IPA but the hops were not to be found.  The other was aged in Bourbon barrels. (Which usually is the culprit when a beer is unbalanced.) But here again was not to be found by me as I reached to pour the offensive brew down the drain.  My first such drain pour in months.

The main trouble makers in my mind are hops and bourbon barrels, with strange ingredients a distant third. I know that I am not going to slow down the IPA, DIPA, BIPA, Imperial IPA train.  I ain’t jumping in front of that.  But I wish there were more purveyors of IPL’s or IPDopple or style mash-ups that would require a little more finesse.

The crazy thing is that well balanced hop bombs can be made.  Smooth and silky barrel aged beers can contain a multitude of flavors.  I have tasted those beers.  Lagunitas Sucks is a perfect example of a light but hoppy IPA.  I haven’t had the pleasure but Jack’s Abbey on the East Coast has a rep for making some great lagers with hops.  New Belgium had a peach beer aged in Leopold spirits barrels that contained a cornucopia of flavors.

But more often than not.  You get a big whiff of bourbon upon opening a bottle and then alcohol heat.  Any other flavor is subsumed into the bourbon.  Same with hops.  It is just a bracing bolt of bitter.  Hard to distinguish the different hop varietals when they are thrown with abandon into the kettle.

I hope 2014 and the years beyond will bring us more nuance and less intensity.  A broader spectrum of flavors and not a sledgehammer.

 

 

 

Posted on

The Firkin for August 2013

header_firkin
There are many items that the craft beer world has on its to-do list.

My rant today is about distribution. Or as sometimes happens, kegs sitting around.

Some breweries self-distribute which takes time. On the plus side, you are dealing with only your beers. So “you” are educating your customers on your beers. “You” know can store your beers in the best conditions. “You” know how fresh your beers are.” But that it is a lot of time that can be used in many other areas of brewing life. Some of which may be more important.

The seemingly natural progression seems to be distribute yourself until you are big enough to “sign” with a distributor. You invariably then sign with more and more distributors as your territory grows.

Finding that right someone who loves your beer as much as you do, seems to be the harder task. And this is the link of the chain that needs to strengthened, especially as more and more breweries start reaching that tipping point between driving the truck and working the hand cart yourself and having someone else do it. More distributors of different sizes and in different towns will be needed.

And when I say size, I am talking about a distributor to brewery ratio that isn’t skewed to the point where a business is repping such a big binder of beers that they can’t possibly sell all of them with the same vigor and they can’t Quality Control the living conditions for kegs and bottles (or cans).

Both of those issues will impede the growth of craft beer than anything Miller/Coors/Budweiser does primarily because it is hidden from sight. Say a new customer tries Brewery A’s beer at their taproom and really likes their Belgian Pale Ale. Next week they see it on tap but it tastes different. Next week, they don’t see the beer at all. A few weeks later they see a bottle of it and it tastes different there too. Mind you, it may not taste bad in the subsequent tastings but it has lost that extra zing.

How does a customer determine (if they even decide to) why the beer is less than it was. Different batch? Recipe being tweaked? Most people don’t know beans about how a craft beer gets to a tap at a bar. Even less know who the distributor for each brewery is. I can tell you who a few local breweries work with but past a handful I don’t and I write a blog about craft beer.

In my example, the cause of intermittent availability could be caused by how much was brewed but it could be that because it is part of a huge book of beers that it is getting missed and therefore not out to people who would put it on tap or stock it on shelves. It could taste different because there was a glut of it and some didn’t get put into a cold box in a timely manner (or at all). That dry hopped IPA may have waited at a distributor for a while before making it to a bar who then waited for a tap to become free to put it on.

Now the brewery shouldn’t have to track kegs. That is why they got a distributor! Bars shouldn’t have to be in charge of quality control. They are busy on the front lines educating customers. What can change is competition.

The more distributors there are, the better chance that your favorite brewery can find one that has the employee and cold box capacity to carefully handle their precious beer. It may be that a smaller house has better staff training and can move the product faster because of it. A bigger company may be able to spread the wealth to a wider clientele. Either way, the fear of losing clients will cause the underperforming distributors to up their game or pay the price.

The goal is to have the beer presented in its best light for each and every customer.

Posted on

The Firkin for July 2013

header_firkin

Before the micro-brew bust, oh those many (10+) years ago, new breweries were jumping onto the brewing bandwagon.  That didn’t turn out so well for them.  But despite the jump in number of breweries opened and opening recently, I don’t sense that same wild abandon and dollar chasing being mentioned when a new brewery sets up shop.

New beer accessories,that is a different story.  I am starting to feel like a judge on the Shark Tank TV show (minus Mark Cuban’s bajillion dollar bank account).  Cigars with hops. Social Media codes on the bottom of a glass.  Beer caddies for both your neck and your shower to make sure that beer is literally with you from the moment you wake up in the morning.  Oh and apps up the wazoo.

Maybe because the brewery route is too expensive and takes so long and the market is pretty saturated or other economic reasons are pushing business people in to the accessory realm.  But I for one, am over it.  Now far be it from me to dampen the entrepreneurial spirit but I am not going to open my bottle of Unionist Belgian ale from Eagle Rock Brewery with a bottle opener on the bottom of a flip flop, or a belt buckle or a ring or a hat.

And there is not enough time in the day to check into a beer or brewery on the myriad of apps out there.  No matter how social media savvy one is or how much I want to promote my favorite breweries or beers.  Unless your app/website is leagues better than Ratebeer or Untappd or adds something of extra or different value then I don’t have the mental bandwidth to use it.

I have posted on this very blog many of these novelty items.  I dare not do a search of the word “hopz” for fear of what I might find.

But in the end, I am a simple craft beer drinker.  A well made interesting beer and the proper glass is all I really need to enjoy my beer.  The company of fellow craft beer enthusiasts would be a bonus.  The bells and whistles and bottle openers that play college fight songs are all well and good but none of these items will make a bad beer better or a great beer greater.

I do have room for a randall though.

Posted on

The Firkin for May 2013

header_firkin

Beer Advocate magazine is always good to start me off on a beer industry tangent, and the latest issue is no exception.  In their opening salvo, they returned from the 2013 Craft Brewers Convention with three key notes and among them, they mentioned that, “We shouldn’t be celebrating fewer people drinking beer, even if it’s large brewers taking the hit”

With all due respect, I think that is hogwash.  And that is not simply because I am more bullish on the future of craft beer than the Doom & Gloom camp.  It’s because I believe that a consumer who leaves Bud or Miller or Coors or any watery beer on the bar is leaving low quality behind.  And in the end those people will be drawn back to craft beer if they haven’t been already.

I will grant that some people are leaving for health reasons or for wine or spirits but if 10 people stop buying BMC, I think some of them are becoming craft beer consumers.  Until a study of buying habits is done (which I would like to see), I won’t hazard a guess as to the percentages but craft beer must be winning some of those people. But let’s say 3 out of the 10 become “crafty”.  That means a net gain of 3.  Craft beer hasn’t lost, it has gained.

Now you can argue that for future growth, we will need the other 7 people too but the big multi-nationals won’t lose their gigantic market share overnight.  They may very well be shedding a trickle of market share each year well into when my nephews are having kids.  And none of them are even teenagers yet.

And since when has B-M-C been truly considered representative of beer?   I thought craft beer is the true representation.  I stopped eating at McDonald’s and Burger King because my concept of what makes a “burger” has changed.  And as craft beer matures into a well-known industry that same change of perception will happen to more and more people who will call B-M-C beer because that is what it technically is; but when they say beer, they will mean “craft”.  Much like when I say “burger”, I mean In-n-Out.

Craft and Industrial beers are not twins who can feel when the other is hurt.  They are distant cousins at best and if one loses steam or their reputation, the other will not be tied to their fates.  And I am not gloating over the B-M-C losing ground.  I would prefer that they make better beer and if they continue to refuse to do that, at least distribute better beer.

There are much thornier discussion to be having in the craft beer world.  Taxation, green initiatives and others should be occupying our time.

Posted on

The Firkin for April 2013

header_firkin

Enjoying the gamut of craft beer on a budget. It can be difficult simply because of the wealth of choices. LA is behind the craft curve and I could still easily drop many Franklins (or should I say Dead Presidents) trying to choose between new beers from Cambridge Brewing or barrel aged offerings from Cismontane. And that is not counting just trying to have beer on hand in the ‘fridge.

But you can get by even with less. First off, find places that sell singles or mixed six packs. Trader Joes being one and Sunset Beer Co another here in Los Angeles. That way you can taste a rainbow of styles instead of just one. And if you want to compound the interest, get a friend to get six other beers. Now you have 12 new beers.

When you head to your local beer bar order the sampler trays. At first glance it is more expensive than one pint but you will get a wide variety (usually four to five beers) and it is usually the same per ounce price if you want to do all that math stuff.

The third piece of advice is to not over drink. It is better to have one beer and really enjoy it than to have three or four in one night. More than likely the last one will be a blur and you will have not gotten the most of your money.

Ask for samples. Ask for half-pints.  Don’t be afraid of the bar staff. Most places encourage experimentation and will not turn down a customer.  But be responsible and buy something plus tip well.  Otherwise you many not get the same treatment the next time that you land on the barstool.

Don’t let high prices scare you off. A Firestone-Walker Anniversary beer or Parabola is well worth it. If you can’t find a bottle, follow your favorite brewery on the interwebs to find special events where the possibility of getting a taster for less money may happen.

Lastly happy hour is your friend. Use it.

Posted on

The Firkin for March 2013

header_firkin

Beer is not wine. Seems simple enough to fathom. But for some folks, they have to be yoked together. Like some mismatched Odd Couple. Hence the reaction in the craft beer community to this article in the NY Times.

Here is the deal. Wine is great. So is beer. I like my spirits too.  But for the love of God don’t compare the three. I don’t care if you are a brewer talking to a journalist or a journalist talking to us in the craft beer community.  True, they are all alcoholic beverages but they have vastly different histories, vastly different present creative and economic situations and their trajectories will see all three in (you guessed it) different places in the future.

Beer simply cannot be the new wine or the old wine. Just because a brewery bottles in fancy big bottles does not mean they are “wine-ifying” themselves. It probably means that it was the most cost effective or it looks good on a store shelf. Hell, maybe it means a shorter bottling day.

Just because some beers are aged and cellared does not mean that a beer geek who has a spreadsheet of all his beer meticulously organized is copying a wine geek who does the same thing. People love to collect.  Hence an entire show on hoarding.

And just because a beer costs as much (or more) as a wine in some instances does not mean that beer is trying to supplant wine as the tipple of choice.  It probably means that the ingredients were costly and it took time to make. 

To believe that the craft beer industry is merely trying to mimic the wine industry means, in essence, that you want brewers to restrict themselves. Restrict themselves to what worked with wine.  Maybe they should also copy the industrial beer complex too.  Perhaps they should all make 12oz cans of an adjunct corn lager? 

I know that is an exaggeration but I firmly believe that we shouldn’t put blinders on the craft brewers of the world. Give them free reign. If they want to have vintners help pick a beer blend, do it.  If they want to bottle strictly in jereboams then fine.  Some experiments may not work. But others might.

And in the end the wallet will speak the loudest. If a beer is too expensive or in too large a container or flat out too weird, it won’t make the journey from store shelf to cash register.  In the end, the beer inside is 100% more important than the packaging outside or the pricing on the bar code.

Just like you wouldn’t put a red wine into a dimpled British bitter glass why do we insist on pouring craft beer into the wine world?

Posted on

The Firkin for January 2013

header_firkin
We start off 2013 with a thorny question. The Beer Festival idiots. I was spurred to write about this after reading a blog post on the Heretic Brewing website, which you can read HERE

The above post can’t really be argued with. There are many festivals (including the grand-daddy of them, GABF) that have a major component of people who just want to get hammered. Blotto. Whatever you want to call it. There is one beer fest in the L.A. area that I will not attend again because that percentage is so high and the beer knowledge so low that I fear that people will start keeling over from alcohol poisoning.

Now, I do not know if that is OK from the standpoint of the event organizer or not. But I do know that it is an atmosphere not conducive to learning about beer and it sure as hell doesn’t make it any fun at all for the brewer or brewery staff who man the booth and have to put up with it.

The only way to stop that behavior is to charge more for tickets ($45 at least, $90 for GABF) and to have a cap of 10 beer tickets max. I know that this means that I will pay more and get less but I will gain a lot of elbow room and I will feel safer getting home because the drunkards will be elsewhere. And hopefully, if the cost is higher then some of that extra money can go to reimburse the brewers (who usually don’t get paid) or send more to the charity that usually is part and parcel to a festival. Throw in a couple rare beers or a food ticket and if the breweries are good then the people (who love “tasting” beer) will flood through the doors.

And I think that there will be side benefits as well. Brewers will probably start to return to their place inside the booth and the grumpy beer snob folk who only want their beer served by the person who brewed it and absolutely no one else will be sated. Two sets of people happier right there! Smaller crowds mean less parking and security and bathroom needs as well. It means the lines will be smaller and the decibel volume will be less so you can talk without screaming.

It’s paradoxical but I would go to many more events if I knew that I didn’t have to put up with the louts and asshats who should stay home drinking bathtub gin instead of being out in public.

Posted on

The Firkin for September 2012


Pete Brown author of the upcoming Shakespeare’s Local amongst other great beer books posed the question, “How Many Beer Bloggers Does it Take to Screw in a Lightbulb?” It was good for some laughs. My favorite one-liner was “Is it an artisan produced bulb, or mass produced yellow fizz of light?”

Despite the fact that tongue was firmly in cheek for many responses it got me to pondering why beer blogging has a less than stellar reputation. I know that blogging in general is considered less noble pursuit and more navel gazing. But why is everyone who blogs about beer painted with the same brush of disdain?

Granted, since I blog about beer and have gone to two of three beer blogger conventions and am part of the Los Angeles blogger group makes me a little touchy on the subject because I am being stereotyped along with everyone else. I have the mentality of a newspaper that publishes something slightly anti-Republican and gets slapped with the “lamestream” media tag.

Part of the problem lies with people who think that beer snobs and beer bloggers are one in the same. Whereas in my interactions with bloggers most are of the geeky Comic-Con variety and not the beer whale hunting, non pilsner drinking up turned nose stripe. So that is an issue that beer bloggers are going to have to tackle in the future. How to tell the origin story of beer bloggers and show that we are a fun lot to have a beer with.

Another part of the puzzle is an inherited problem from doing blogs. They are not a business. They are a passion. And usually a one person passion at that. Imagine writing a newspaper article or magazine piece without any editorial assistance. Of course errors are going to happen. There are probably enough grammatical issues on my blog alone to raise E.B. White from the dead and then put him back in his coffin. Until there is a HuffPost of craft beer, this will remain. Again, we bloggers need to either ‘fess up to our literary shortcomings or sell it as what makes our blog a personal and honest stop on the ale trail.

The one thing that I think will really break the logjam is that if a really wide variety of people start, continue or change the focus of their blogs to topics dear to their heart. Be it beer cocktails, women and beer, beer in out of way spots in the U.S., sports and beer or writing just about Belgian beers. This will break the mold and force readers and commenters to re-think what a beer blog is supposed to be.

Even if nothing changed, there are a wide variety of beer blogs out there today that need to be critiqued on a blog by blog basis and not just rejected out of hand. You wouldn’t review a movie you hadn’t seen and the same applies to craft beer blogs.

Posted on

The Firkin for August 2012


Earlier this month tickets went on sale for this year’s edition of the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). It did not go 100% well, to put it mildly. Many people did not get tickets and scalping seems to have become more prevalent. Now that the furor and anger has been vented and died down, it is time to figure out how to make this ticketing for GABF work better. This will mean that all sides of the equation learn to accept and compromise and make changes accordingly. Not something that Americans are really known for but here goes….

1. Festival Organizers – You need to manage expectations and get your story across. I know that sounds political but you need to play offense and defense in the world of PR. That is how you win games. You can’t play one and forget the other. You need to let the entire craft beer world know that tickets are becoming a more and more valuable commodity with each passing year and that despite best efforts (and you better be making a best effort) there is only so much space that you can cram beer lovers into and have an enjoyable festival. This needs to be talked about ALL YEAR LONG.

Then if something goes wrong make a good faith effort to fix it and let people know that you are trying. Staying silent only allows for the weirdo conspiracy theories to race around the internet unchecked like a Higgs-Bosun in Switzerland. Most people who go to GABF simply do not understand the logistical complexity of running this event. The world needs to know how many man (and woman) hours it takes to make GABF a reality. Let them know what you do well and what you are trying to fix.

Next, you have to change the month tickets are sold or accept that people will buy plane tickets and secure hotel accommodations before tickets go on sale and you have to provide easy access to options for those people who cannot get into the festival. The first step would be two or three page PDF of everything else craft beer related you can do in Denver that weekend, which is A LOT. Some customers are too thick or too lazy to do research. Provide it and they might not fire off an angry Facebook post. Don’t leave it to me or other Facebook posters to tell people to go to Denver anyway. You have the reach and knowledge of the area to promote craft beer culture in Denver, Fort Collins and Boulder to all those without festival tickets. Use that opportunity. Don’t just say “Sorry” and leave it at that.

DO NOT SIDE WITH TICKETMASTER either by not saying anything or being positive about them. No one in America likes Ticketmaster. They may have to be used for such big events because no one else has the bandwidth to handle such large ticket sales but you need to tell the craft beer geeks that you are grudgingly using them. Ticketmaster doesn’t care what anyone says or they would have changed their onerous pricing and become a better corporate citizen by now. Seriously, they will not pass up the opportunity to gouge more fees. You can feel free to call them every name in the book. I would say (again, all year long) that “unfortunately Ticketmaster is the only company that can provide ticketing services for such a large gathering and as you can see with what happened in 2012 they screwed up and will probably screw up again in 2013. But we have no viable option, imagine a smaller company (even with the best intentions) trying to handle this load if Ticketmaster can’t”

Now that everyone is venting at Ticketmaster you need to use that consumer voice and wring some changes from Ticketmaster and sites like E-Bay and StubHub where these tickets can be tracked. The best way is to do what airlines do. No transfer of tickets. You have to put down the name(s) of those attending and make changing that name too difficult either mechanically or financially to stop people from doing it. Keep the (4) ticket maximum and match ID’s to tickets at the door. The amount of people who will be pissed off about this will be smaller than the ones who can’t get tickets because of scalpers.

Lastly, yell at StubHub and E-Bay for selling scalper prices. Do it a lot and then do it more. Call them worse things than I saw being directed towards you on your Facebook page. Join the rabble in calling for their heads. Then bar scalpers from the convention center. That may cost money in security but if you toss one scalper out and one person sees it then you have re-established your street cred.

2. The Festival Goer. First and foremost, you have to realize that craft beer is huge. And adjust accordingly. Stop talking about the “good old days” when you just happened to walk in to the convention center and talked with Sam Calagione and Garret Oliver and Tomme Arthur for an hour over Wesvletern 12 and had your choice of whatever beer you wanted with no lines at all. Now get in the time machine and come back to the present day. Things are different now. Should I say it again? There is limited space and more and more craft beer drinkers. The trend each year has been faster sell out times. You may not be able to attend every year.

Secondly, do not buy from the scalpers. I see the protests on the interwebs but you know most of the scalped tickets will probably sell. If the scalpers have to take a loss, they won’t scalp. You think that craft beer consumers would understand this concept by now what with Black Tuesday and Kate the Great and other Dark Lord being problems every year. But apparently the lesson those uber rare beers has taught hasn’t taken hold. Oh, and you need to protest StubHub and E-Bay too.

Lastly, don’t behave like asshats once in the festival. Cut the yelling if someone drops a glass. You should learn something from the fact that plastic glasses are the norm. You are telling the organizers how to treat you. And then you get angry when they treat you bad. How about showing the organizers of GABF that you are a classy, craft beer loving crowd that doesn’t take to service fees and giant corporations and not some obscenity spewing yokel who should have a sippy cup and a bib. I am not saying that you shouldn’t have fun but if the great beer isn’t fun enough, then why are you in Denver? You can get hammered for a much smaller amount of money. Buy a case of Natty Light and go crazy at home.

These suggestions may be harsh but I think it is high time some tweaks and major changes are made to keep this great festival going strong in the future.

Posted on

The Firkin for April 2012


Today is all about change. BIG CHANGE. Starting tomorrow Friday, I will not be in the “real working world”. I will not have a “day job” to provide me with beer (and other) money. It is a roll of the financial dice. There is no net or bungee cord attached to my ankle to prevent a large and clattering crash.

But I have been inspired by countless people in the craft beer world who have risked so much more. Investing in thousands of dollars in equipment, in the hope that one day they can work full time in a brewery. Because it is what they want to do. They weren’t born to be bankers or administrative assistants. And neither am I.

I talk a lot of a skill set usually when discussing why the Portland Trailblazers haven’t played well this year. We all have one and our jobs either utilize them or not. I can make a laundry list of beer related jobs that I cannot do but more importantly I have realized in conversations with beer people that my skill set lies in talking about craft beer but also listening to people talk about it. And both are very important and very connected.

There is a bounty of information out there that needs to get to people who can use it. There is also a load of information that needs to get to people to “turn” them to the craft beer side. But you can’t just throw the interwebs at a newbie and expect them to be helped. It needs to be filtered and tailored.

Conversely, there are many consumers out there with questions, concerns and issues that need to be heard out. I have heard the term Chief Listening Officer bandied about and I like it. Facebook, Twitter and Untapped and full craft beer bars all show that people really want to communicate, no matter the conduit for doing so. And many breweries and bars do an admirable job with the limited time allotted to that effort.

That is where I come in. I want to be the person that gets butts into bar seats and then gives them the outlet to talk about their experience. And not just the jaded beer dude, but everyone. Grandparents, wives and whoever else is under represented as craft beer consumers. That is how I will make my contribution to better beer scene in Los Angeles and beyond.

I have been doing that through this blog but I also want to do it for bars and breweries. Show me your websites, Social Media and outreach and I can give you ideas on how to improve it. Set me loose in your bar or tap room and I can find other ways to make the beer experience better for all.

All I will ask for in return is for a little money to keep me going. Fair trade?