The thought of keeping the recipe for Fried Ice Cream Stout or the Planters IPA-Nut beers might not seem like something that needs to be saved there are many brewery items that should be, this was brought up in a Facebook post by Mitch Steele from New Realm Brewing…
If you are a professional brewer, ask yourself: “will beer historians 100 years from now be able to look at your recipes and figure out what you were doing? Will your brew logs even be available to look at?” Important question that most brewers these days probably don’t even think about, but this is such a critical time in brewing history it would be a shame if records are lost forever because people don’t take steps to preserve them.
I would think that the local guilds would be the best place to hold that information. Granted most guilds are usually small operations with limited if any actual work (storage) space. But with the “cloud”, recipes could be housed (locked up of course for only that brewery to see) Photos of construction and before/after photos could be stored as well as other historical ephemera. It could be the work for an “intern” or college program. I have seen my own college, Linfield create a wine archive and maybe USC or UCLA could be interested in starting something similar or maybe ask Occidental or a smaller D2 or D3 school to become a partner.
What would an even better “get” would be to StoryCorps all of the breweries. Even past failed ones to get a full picture of the history of the rebirth of independent beer in Los Angeles.