New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?
Showing posts with label craft beer growth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label craft beer growth. Show all posts
The new issue of Food & Dining Magazine is available for viewing online and currently is being delivered to hotels and racks. The quarterly magazine is entirely supported by advertising and arrives completely free to readers. Links are provided below.
My contribution is a survey of craft beer in 2019.
Craft Beer Nation wins because people like craft beer, but when we swipe our debit card for a case of Founders Solid Gold it’s just the final transaction of many required to take beer from origins in water, malt, hops and yeast to our waiting lips.
Another article of great interest to me is Susan Reigler's profile of Chad and Lauren Coulter, originators of the LouVino wine bar. Amid the never ending uncertainty surrounding New Albany's River City Winery, I look at the space and its adjoining former Preston Arts building and see LouVino (or something similar) written all over it.
Happy reading. When you patronize one of the magazine's advertisers, tell them you saw their advertisement in Food & Dining.
Fernando Martinez is one of the most prolific restaurateurs this city has ever known. With 15 restaurants to his credit, he and his team at Ole’ Restaurant Group are set to launch another volley.
Over the last decade, Jared Matthews has blossomed into a rising star as the managing partner in four restaurants and bars. Hold the press! Make that five.
Maybe you’ve never heard of the Neeleys, but they’ve been making whiskey for 11 generations and legally for one. Steve Akley recounts their bloody family history.
DINING GUIDE Our comprehensive listing of over 1,400 area restaurants, complete with reviews.
The first sentence in a Brewbound report from the recent Craft Brewers Conference strikes me as accurate. At some point, "slower growth and increased competition" simply had to become new norms. With 7,000 American breweries in existence and 2,500 more in the planning stages, it would seem the time is now. Obviously, preconceived notions on the part of beer sales strategists are the first to be mangled.
Slower growth and increased competition are the “new normal,” Brewers Association (BA) leaders hammered home on the second day of the trade group’s annual Craft Brewers Conference (CBC).
“This is not a blip,” BA chief economist Bart Watson said during Wednesday’s State of the Industry presentation. “This is the new normal.”
Watson and senior vice president of the professional brewing division Paul Gatza took a deeper dive into craft beer growth numbers released earlier this month. According to Watson, craft’s 4 percent volume growth — about 1 million barrels — last year was the lowest per brewer growth rate since the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“This is where the pain point really is,” he said. “That’s not a lot of growth and many companies built brands and business models that built in the idea that there would be more growth than this.”
Watson suggested that brewery owners look beyond craft’s existing 13 percent share of the market to capture the other 87 percent of non-craft consumers. If they don’t, the per brewer growth rate will continue to decline, he added.
“If we can get 1 million new craft drinkers to drink one pint a week, that’s 200,000 incremental barrels,” he added. “Five million new drinkers drinking just one pint a week of small and independent brewed beer is a million barrels.”
Future growth is likely to be sliced up even more thinly as an increasing number of breweries open up shop. Last year, 1,049 breweries opened and an estimated 2,500 breweries are in planning, Watson said.
“This is a trend that’s not going away,” he said. “It’s a reality that everyone should be prepared for.”
Nevertheless, the 219 brewery closures in 2018 were an all-time high, Watson said. However, the three percent closure rate is still “shockingly low,” even if the number of closures are expected to rise as the industry becomes more competitive and new breweries open.
Over the last three years, 3,194 new breweries have opened. Much of craft’s growth is coming from those breweries that opened between 2015 and 2018. Last year, those companies grew by a collective 872,000 barrels.
As for breweries that opened in 2014 or earlier, those companies grew by just 105,000 barrels, Watson said.
Microbreweries (breweries making fewer than 15,000 barrels) continued to be the fastest growing set of breweries, Watson said. Those companies increased production 16 percent last year, to more than 5.8 million barrels. Meanwhile, brewpubs have maintained steady growth, increasing production 13 percent, to 1.6 million barrels.
The BA’s newly created taproom brewery class (companies that sell more than 25 percent of their volume on-site and do not offer significant food service) grew 40.2 percent — to 809,000 barrels in 2018 — and represented 24 percent of total craft growth.
Growth was flat for regional breweries (companies producing more than 15,000 barrels) last year, as those companies produced more than 18.1 million barrels. Watson called 2018 the “slowest growth for distribution of craft in a long time,” which he attributed to retailers not expanding shelf space and bars and restaurants not adding tap handles.
According to Watson, established brewers need to think about building “flagships of today and tomorrow, not of yesterday” in an effort to meet consumer desires ...
The more breweries there are, the less sensible for them to try selling beer via the clogged three-tier distribution system, itself a concept mutating rapidly amid brewery self-distribution and tap room sales models.
In short, it quickly gets weird, because previously absent regulatory pushback begins emanating from the lobbies representing other alcohol sales venues.
In this article, a "craft beer store" franchise is beset with charges and countercharges. Is it a faulty franchise setup? Inept franchisee performance? Backlash against lesbian corporate ownership?
Maybe its the ongoing three-tier mutation itself. Recall that a century ago, blacksmithing no longer was a growth industry.
For nearly a decade, the Craft Beer Cellar in Belmont has been a beer lover’s paradise. Its founders, Suzanne Schalow and Kate Baker, placed a shrewd bet on craft beer just as it hit the mainstream and set about creating the country’s first national chain of specialty beer stores. They now boast 30 locations across the country.
“Our trinity,” Schalow said, is “amazing beer, hospitality, and education.”
But that early business acumen hasn’t translated into success for many of the franchise owners who were persuaded to buy into their brand. A number of franchisees say they raised money from friends and family, gave up a job, or sold a house to cover the costs of opening their own stores — only to now find themselves facing mounting financial pressures that may cause them to fail.
Aggravated relationships between the founders and some of their franchisees have boiled over into sharply worded e-mails and online screeds. The aggrieved franchisees accuse the owners of providing them with overly rosy financial projections, and of belittling them instead of offering guidance when the numbers didn’t pan out.
Last spring, the owners went so far as to sue 20 unnamed franchisees in US District Court for defamation for posting anonymous complaints on the website Glassdoor.
“The best advice I can give prospective franchise owners is to run,” said one of the postings, according to the federal court filing. “Most franchises are not profitable, and the majority wish they had never signed on.”
The Glassdoor lawsuit was dismissed, and in December, after a second attempt in court to stop franchisees from criticizing them online, Schalow and Baker, who are married, asked members of the Massachusetts Brewers Guild to contribute to a GoFundMe campaign to raise a $125,000 legal fund. Their request implied that some of their detractors were motivated by homophobia ...
Then the passage that strikes me as most relevant.
“Bottle shops may be somewhat a victim of craft’s broader success,” said Bart Watson, chief economist of the Brewers Association.
Grocery stores now carry pallets of craft brews, and brewery taprooms are siphoning off bottle sales.
“Taprooms are changing the beer industry in an enormous way right now,” Schalow said. “Between breweries and taprooms, how does a store survive?”
At times it gets even weirder.
I'd missed the following controversy at Schlafly (thanks, J), but as usual Bryan Roth has it covered. It seems that the guy from the venture capital company that bought controlling interest in Schlafly melted down, went rogue and began distributing a paper newsletter maligning fellow brewers.
Old school paper, but new school slimy.
I'm told that original owner Tom Schlafly is putting together a package of investment to regain control of the brewery. He's a classy man and I wish him well.
In keeping with the theme of preceding thoughts, perhaps the major factor in the Schlafly episode is stress: more expense, less volume.
So, why is this happening now? Things have not been good for Schlalfy, which had declines in barrel production of 13% in both 2016 and 2017, according to estimates by the Brewers Association. After reaching a high of 60,000 barrels three years ago, it was down to 45,000 last year. In fact, 2018 will be a third straight year of declines in IRI-tracked off-premise sales for the brewery. Through Nov. 25, Schlalfy had sold only 73% of the volume it moved in all of 2017.
Brewing always was a business. For a few years, we pretended it wasn't. This column wouldn't be called BEER WITH A SOCIALIST if not for the author's classic disclaimer: "I'm a reluctant capitalist at best."
It's not a bad thing to wake up one morning and find yourself older, with something approximating perspective, and harboring far less pure adrenalin. More power and good luck to those of you still in the trenches, but I've no regrets for pole-vaulting out of them.
In a surprise announcement late Friday, The Saint Louis Brewery—the parent company that produces the Schlafly line of beers—issued a public apology to fellow St. Louis business 4 Hands Brewing. The apology was released in a press release that also revealed a former Schlafly executive made secretive attempts to sabotage the reputation of 4 Hands.
While not confirmed as the specific source of a print newsletter called Brew IQ in the Lou, James Pendegraft resigned as CEO on Wednesday, two days before the apology was issued. In a statement to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the company confirmed Pendegraft’s departure, but offered no additional information. In its public apology, Saint Louis Brewery wrote that the executive responsible had resigned, but didn’t name the person.
The anonymous newsletter was mailed to an unknown number of bars and restaurants and also included “deceptive online postings and a phone survey to local bars and restaurants in the first half of the year,” according to the statement.
In a column that has been identified by media outlets as specifically meant to call out 4 Hands, an anonymous Brew IQ writer tries to connect the brewery to the Me Too movement in a derogatory way, claiming with no evidence that “a certain large brewery’s dilemma of how to reposition itself continues to grow” because “[n]aming your brewery after a sex act provided at a massage parlor no longer feels as good.” It also claims that a beer made by the then-mystery company, now recognized as 4 Hands, was named “after the lube needed for such a service.”
“Leave glamorizing a pimp's wad of dollars to The Deuce,” the column reads, referencing the hit HBO series. “Maybe it was all that gin? The ladies are becoming woke and are starting to ask questions. We'd like to give them a hand, but think the four are proving to be too many.”
These kinds of innuendos are not new to the beer industry, but still present an unfortunate side that is continuously being addressed by the Brewers Association and private companies alike.
“We were embarrassed to learn of these actions and sincerely apologize to 4 Hands Brewing Company,” Tom Schlafly, chairman of Saint Louis Brewery, said in a statement. “Such actions are inconsistent with the core values on which we were founded and which have defined Schlafly for 27 years. The craft brewing industry in St. Louis was built by a closely-knit group of breweries that mutually respect one another. There’s no question that 4 Hands has earned its reputation for community involvement, civic pride, corporate responsibility, and inclusiveness” ...
14 years and 13,727 posts into this writing experiment, I've long since given up trying to remember what I wrote and when I wrote it. Often I'll get a brilliant idea about a topic, start writing, then become overwhelmed with deja vu. Upon closer examination, it will be revealed that I certainly have "been there" before, perhaps ten years ago, often using an eerily similar pattern of words.
Earlier today I referenced a craft beer commentary.
The rest of the day something indefinable kept nagging at me. It wasn't until 9:00 p.m. that my YouTube feed disgorged the link (above) about the new Twilight Zone series, which in turn prompted me to search NA Confidential for the article about Rod Serling that I seem to have remembered writing.
I found it, and my leitmotif was "narcissism," or the very word that kept occurring to me as I read the Pokemonification screed. Consequently, I've been plunged into one of my familiar moods of contemplation with regard to then versus now.
Obviously the world was a very different place for me in April of 2013. Trench warfare at NABC Bank Street Brewhouse was ongoing, and in retrospect the craft beer world outside our besieged perimeter was a confusing and fog-shrouded landscape.
Re-reading my words almost six years later, I stand by them. What I didn't know at the time was my eventual decision to deal myself out of the war and sidestep the narcissism (the Pokemonification?), resolving to navigate a course backward to the egg -- to hop off the tilt-w-whirl and find a quiet, clean, well-lighted spot to contemplate the universe with a mug of Pilsner Urquell or Fuller's London Pride.
As John Lennon sang, "I just had to let it go."
In 2016, I kept repeating to people that comebacks are impossible unless you go away -- and I did just that. While I was away, metaphorically, there was enough time and space to rediscover who I really am, as opposed to the role I was expected to play in an off-Broadway production of Craft Beer Nation. It was a role I'd become weary of performing, because my beer-related interests (along with numerous other topics having little to do with beer) were elsewhere.
Every now and then we must shed our skins and evolve into the next iteration. The process can be gratifying and painful in equal measure, and my only complaint is that in the overall scheme of things for me, time is running short. How many reinventions are left?
Just the same, these past few tumultuous years have been worth it, all the births and deaths, ups and downs, and agonies balancing ecstasies. Most importantly, being involved with Pints&union has helped me understand that my life experience is still useful.
I'm not exactly fashionable, but I don't care. At the age of 58, I can show up with mismatched socks and not give a damn. Apart from a sliver of new music, popular culture utterly eludes me. The historic preservationists can deal with their buildings, and I'll embrace beer and beer-related culture. The re-educational "legacies" mission has only just begun.
Narcissism still annoys me, as it did Rod Serling. He's been gone for a very long time. I hope to stick around a while longer. Here's the column from April, 2013.
Heavens, what a photo.
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ON THE AVENUES: You gaze at your own reflection, all right.
“The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in; becoming narcissistic.”
-- attributed to Rod Serling (1924-1975)
Science fiction isn’t my forte, but no matter. Even if I seldom indulge, it is evident to me that the genre has its strengths, among them the ability to harness the otherwise far-fetched to the greater cause of allegorical relevance.
Consider, if you will, Rod Serling’s scripts for the Twilight Zone television series, many of which remain fresh and thought-provoking a half-century after their inception.
Serling’s personal mission, one that he pursued with considerable skill, was to befuddle white-bread network censors by disguising progressive commentaries as seemingly harmless manifestations of the macabre – tales regarded as inhabiting the science fiction canon, with commensurate camouflage.
As Serling pithily observed, “Things which couldn't be said by a Republican or Democrat could be said by a Martian."
To which I’d add: Things which couldn’t be said by a Republican or Democrat or a Martian might be said by craft beer, but not if we insist on a narcissistic self-absorption.
---
Lately I’ve been thinking about Serling’s admonition to reject narcissism. A talented man possessing strong viewpoints and pronounced beliefs, he came of age as a writer in the 1950s, precisely at a time when the mass hysterics and delusions of McCarthyism rendered the intellectual climate quite dangerous for those with contrarian viewpoints. It may well have been a nadir for progressivism, even by America’s remarkably low standard in such matters.
And yet, Serling possessed the innate strength of character – a sheer, contrarian stubbornness – to find a way of speaking his mind during a time when the presumed ideal of “free” speech was being honored primarily in the breach. He found a way, because to him, narcissism wasn’t a career option. I couldn’t agree more.
As others did at the time, Serling might have chosen to withhold his talent and wait for the inevitable thaw, perhaps opting for self-exile in an entirely different professional venue. Rather, he resisted drawing back and inward, and continued challenging viewers by painting the corners of the plate with nuance.
What if Serling had shrugged and gone strictly commercial, eschewing the artful for the straightforward, indulging the low common denominator all around him, and giving television audiences more by-the-numbers entertainment? Then as now, safety is easily rationalized, and in the mainstream, there’s a greater probability that the paychecks won’t stop coming.
I’m not judging others, merely noting that for whatever reason, Serling elected not to follow the easiest path. He persevered. The message got out, converts were made along the way, and these many decades later, we’re still able to learn from his experience.
---
My chosen profession is craft beer, and I’m no happier seeing it corrupted by shoe-gazing narcissism than Rod Serling -- in his world, during his heyday, and according to the parameters of his calling.
Craft beer means many things to many people, and that’s as it should be. Speaking for myself, it’s a hobby that eventually grew into an occasional paycheck; it tastes great even though it’s often more filling; it is a wonderful device for promoting the life of the local pub; and it’s the final, best hope for sustaining local pub culture.
But to me, precisely because I’m not narcissistic, there is more to craft beer than just those attributes. Naturally, self-interest as a business owner brings with it certain promotional necessities and instances of self-aggrandizement, but these are not to be confused with staring at one’s reflection in a pond filled with Barrel Aged Black Kolsch while reaching for the Kleenex ... and not because one needs to blow his nose.
Beer, as writ large, may very well be a commodity suitable for the Financial Times, but craft beer specifically also is a symbol, an analogy – a metaphor. Craft beer’s very founding principle is active and points outward, not passive and shrinking toward the inside. It is expansive in the market sense, but more importantly, in profits from the larger sense of community consciousness.
Craft beer is revolutionary, the overt rejection of an established order commonly known as mass market beer, which profits by accumulating capital for the express purpose of thwarting competition in purely Mafioso capitalistic fashion, and substitutes slavish conformity for the broad panoply of life’s possibilities.
When craft beer lapses narcissistic, and whenever the circle geeking starts, we as a presumed culture of appreciation are only providing the multinational mockrobrewing hegemonists with head space to mislead the larger segment of the market, which we haven’t yet reached. The established order we first rebelled against hasn’t gone away. It’s fighting back, and the best way to confront the Goebbelsian lies it deploys is to break away from our narcissism, stop looking in the mirror, and engage those folks standing just beyond the tent flap.
That’s because many of them want to come inside. Let’s give them a reason to do so.
I can’t be sure that Rod Serling would have appreciated craft beer, but I believe he would quickly see the merit in purging narcissism from the culture of craft beer appreciation. It’s repellant, even to those of us who already get it.
Yesterday, amid 14 consecutive hours of joyous Kentucky Derby downpour, I started rummaging through my collection of posters, photos and bric-a-brac suitable for hanging.
This one, called "Brewpubs and Craft Breweries," is a poster that dates from 1992.
It came from the publishers of On Tap: The Guide to U.S. Brewpubs (1991) and The On Tap Companion (1992 update), both by Steve Johnson.
The FOSSILS homebrewing club began in 1990, and the Public House in 1992. One way we kept up with the advent of new breweries was zymurgy, the homebrewing magazine, which came in the mail (huh?) and had bi-monthly listings of openings and closings.
I'm not sure if there were further editions of Johnson's guide. In 1994, author Michael "Beer Hunter" Jackson visited Louisville (and Rich O's) in preparation to write a book about the new generation of American breweries. He subsequently abandoned the project, because the pace of change was so relentless that his information became obsolete faster than he could revise it.
By then, the instantaneously updatable internet was coming into our lives -- and the rest is Untappd, or some similar wasted exercise in missing the soul of beerdrinking.
Back to the old-school, tactile poster, focusing on the heartland:
It's mind-boggling to recall the time when there was only one brewery in Indiana (Broad Ripple Brewpub), one in Kentucky (Oldenberg), and one in Tennessee (Bohannon's/Market Street).
As of April, 2018, the statistics are 137, 52 and 82, respectively. In America as a whole, the number of breweries has surpassed 6,000. For Kevin Gibson's most recent news in LEO Weekly about a few of the ones located in Louisville Metro, go here.
To conclude, a few of the beer-related posters unearthed yesterday. It has become apparent to me that taken together, I have enough posters, photos, coasters, labels and travel memorabilia to plaster the walls of the Pentagon.
A personal beer history museum with a nice beer bar inside? It's a pleasant thought; maybe some day down the road.
History is endlessly fascinating for a variety of reasons, among them the uncanny way that what goes around, comes around. In today, out tomorrow -- and destined to return when conditions change and the dialectic of trendiness (or purely efficient reasoning) ordains.
This whole craft brewing revolution began very locally. You trundled down the street with a metaphorical pitcher, had it filled with beer, and hoped to make it back home without drinking it all -- or, the way it was done back in pre-Prohibition times.
Then these many new breweries began packaging, which required a learning curve and the advent of reasonably priced equipment, which in turn created a bubble of sorts when approximately 3,000 brewery start-ups nationwide entered the world of wholesale beer distribution at the same time, even as satanic entities like AB-InBev acted decisively to grab as much shelf space as they could via the charming institution of Trojan Zombie Afterlife brewing (Goose Island, Elysian, etc).
Now we've traveled full circle to the imperative of a rock-solid taproom model -- on-premise, or own-premise -- which is persuasively documented by Maine brewery owner Peter Bissell in this instructive article at Good Beer Hunting.
As an aside, here's an interesting source of information called Seek A Brew: "Use the menu at the top of the map to highlight which states a brewery distributes to. Click on a state to show a list of breweries that distribute there."
... In most sectors of business, there exists a collective assumption that everyone operating in that industry must have the same, or at least very similar, goals. This form of illusory correlation is easy to understand. In an era of laptop entrepreneurship, commercial brewing still has all the trappings of red-blooded classical American Capitalism—tangible assets, investors, bank loans, supply chains, and distribution networks. As such, there’s overwhelming acceptance and enthusiasm behind the “growth is good” and “more is better” capitalistic war cries resonating in the beer world with every announcement of a major expansion, distribution into a new state, or corporate acquisition.
And growth is good. As we have all heard hundreds of times at this point, “craft” beer consumption still represents a small percentage of total beer consumption worldwide. There is, indeed, still lots of potential for the industry to grow in volume. But what happens when the long tail gets infinitely long? What happens when the rate of new breweries and increased capacity at existing breweries is far outpacing even the most optimistic estimates of “new” craft beer drinkers? What happens when there are 7,000 breweries in the country? How can you plan for growth in this environment?
In this arena of unprecedented saturation, we must come to accept that “growth” will mean different things for different people. Producing more beer doesn’t necessarily mean a better situation for your company. Indeed, we’ve never in history had so many communities be able to tout their neighborhood breweries as producers of world-class products. For many of us, producing more beer is not just a question of tank and floor space, hop contracts, and brewery staffing, but of where else could this beer go that people will buy it? In the last few years, I’ve watched as numerous brands—respected, even legendary, in their home areas—enter the Southern Maine market only to see permanent, gigantic pyramids of their products sit on the floor of Whole Foods in perpetuity. Indeed, it seems that regions known for great beer attract out-of-market brands looking to expand—but demand for these beers wanes in lieu of local options.
So then, how do you make the right decisions regarding growth, when it's very clearly a fluid, subjective concept in the totally splintered beer market of 2018? For Bissell Brothers, and for many breweries in the Northeast and elsewhere, the answer was, and is, the taproom. The taproom! The on-premise experience. Putting the taproom first and building the rest of your business around an own-premise model gives a brewery unprecedented control, insight, and flexibility—all crucial tools when navigating this exciting and complicated time in the beer business ...
I had a lunch meeting on Friday, and the three of us met at the recently re-refashioned Bank Street Brewhouse for some Taco Steve treats and NABC libations.
Now cast irrevocably as a member of the "former owner" camp, it still feels a bit weird for me to return as a civilian. This said, everything was fine. Taco Steve is impeccable, and the four beer samples all were solid.
Not everyone will agree, but I like what Josh Hill has done with Elector, fattening the malt and to my palate, rebooting a throwback closer to the way it tasted back in 2002 when Michael and Joey first accidentally invented it.
As a side note: Tuesday, March 13 is the ninth anniversary of BSB's opening day in 2009. Today's segue has concluded, and we turn to the latest from the NABC alumni contingent.
Jared Williamson is no slouch. The Indiana native got turned on to brewing while working at New Albanian Brewing Company in New Albany, Indiana in 2005. “One day they finally taught me how to use the keg washer, and the rest is history,” he told STL Beer Bulletin. At NABC, he learned everything from brewing to marketing to distribution to tax and TTB.
As lead brewer at Schlafly, where he’s worked since 2011, Williamson manages operations at both the Taproom and Bottleworks locations. His innovative brews include Schlafly’s Single Malt Scottish Ale, painstakingly blended and aged in Scotch casks, and The Variant, an imperial stout-based beer aged in port barrels. Somehow he also found time to pose for Schlafly’s 2016 Beard Calendar. (Williamson shared an umbrella with fellow brewer and co-Mister April, Charles Stockstrom.)
We caught up with Williamson to learn what he thinks about IPA fads, and how his life motto might just be “drink it fresh.”
Rock on, Jared.
Back here in Louisville, it may finally be time to roll out the barrels of lager. I persist in thinking that a firmly hopped, youthful lager with a trendy sheen of haze would do well in these parts. BSB probably has some tank space ...
... Well-crafted lagers in Louisville have been making a comeback, coming full circle since the dawn of Prohibition. Goodwood Brewing was on the fore of this slowly-moving trend when it brought Louisville Lager to the market a couple of years ago. It was a more flavorful version of the stuff you would normally buy from a vendor at a ballgame.
Recently, in casual conversation, I mentioned the growing lager prevalence in craft beer, to which a friend said, “It’s the year of the lager.”
Goodwood's Louisville Lager is a delicious local example, as is Kyle's Bavarian-style Helles at Mile Wide. This might be an appropriate juncture to tout (yet again) the excellent lagers being brewed at Daredevil in Indianapolis, which will be staging another Indy Lagerfest in May.
Road trip, anyone? I really want to attend this one. Back here in the Ville, Business First recently asked and answered a question.
Adam Watson, one of the owners of Against the Grain Brewery, has seen a steady number of competitors start brewing beer in Louisville since his East Main Street facility opened in 2011. And he welcomes all new brewers to town — with one caveat.
“The only new breweries that I fear are ones that make bad beer,” he said with a laugh.
Weaver's article is lengthy and well researched, and the conclusion? More of them.
Bart Watson, chief economist for the national Brewers Association, said that when craft breweries first started opening in other states, laws in Kentucky and Louisville made it harder for breweries to open here, and then to operate and scale up — like zoning classifications that didn’t account for breweries. That’s likely what caused Louisville and the rest of the state to fall behind the curve.
But now with those laws changing to better accommodate the industry, Louisville is catching up and there’s far more space for the industry to run wild here than say, in Colorado, which has more than 330 breweries.
California ranks first in number of breweries, with 623 in 2016. Kentucky ranked 35th out of the 50 states in 2016, with 34 breweries in the state.
“It’s been a market that’s lagged behind others, but Louisville has a lot of untapped potential and it’s starting to sort of catch up and meet that potential,” Watson said. “I think the reason that you’re seeing such tremendous growth in Louisville is that it’s a little behind other cities so there’s a little more run room.”
With new age local "craft" beer running amok, all the more reason to slow down and cherish the classic stylistic yardsticks of the past.
After two consecutive years of single-digit sales declines, Sierra Nevada Brewing is refocusing its efforts on selling its flagship Pale Ale while also telling its story to consumers.
Speaking to Brewbound, Sierra Nevada chief commercial officer Joe Whitney said the company’s sales were down more than 7 percent last year following declines of more than 6 percent in 2016 ...
Is any of this sounding familiar?
Whitney added that some on-premise wounds have come as decades-old Pale Ale draft placements were swapped out for special release offerings that only lasted until the kegs ran dry. And once they did, competing breweries could more easily commandeer the draft lines.
“[When] you see some of our distributors switch out Pale Ale for a special beer that they think is really exciting, that only stays on tap for a month, it’s like, ‘Wow, you gave up a 20-year-old handle in an account for a feature for the month, and then we lost a 20-year-old account? How can you do that?’” he said. “I think there’s so much emphasis on new that it’s kind of gotten irrational.”
So this year, Sierra Nevada is scaling back its focus on innovation in an effort to refocus on Pale Ale, which accounts for half of the company’s volume, Whitney said. In the process, the company hopes to win back some of those surrendered tap handles and re-engage with consumers on “a deeper, louder level.”
That's right; it's the crazed former brewery owner's (me) basic theory for Pints & Union, and while Sierra Nevada Pale Ale probably won't be among the permanent taps, it should be pouring from a tap somewhere downtown, all of the time.
Who wants to speak some retro truth? It'd taste mighty good with fish. Just saying.
In closing, an example of classicist beer writing that places narcissistic beer selfie culture in the reeking dumpster with the fish bones, where it belongs. It's a two-decade-old barleywine -- and as a bonus, some fine Belgian-style eating.
I know, I know: nothing for years. The blog is dead, long live Twitter.
But you know? Some things deserve more space.
And this...is BIG.
No, literally, look at the label. I was digging in my Beer Fridge today, looking for two bottles of proper beer to make carbonades Flamandes (more on that later) on this disappointing snow day, when I found two bottles of Brimstone Big, a Maryland-brewed barleywine from the 1990s that we cherished back in the day. The brewed date on the label: October 1998.
It's late notice, but if you're out and about today between 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m., drop by Donum Dei Brewery (3211 Grant Line Road in New Albany) for Chili Cookoff to Benefit Apron, Inc.
Let's begin with a gratifying round of self-aggrandizement.
In the early ’90s, Roger Baylor transformed (NABC Pizzeria Public House) into a craft-beer mecca, long before craft beer was a big thing around here. And since then, it’s been the spot to try all sorts of styles and brands.
Ironically, the release of Sara's article was concurrent with RateBeer's annual list of very best places in America to have a beer, in which the Pizzeria & Public House yet again was named as Indiana's best brewpub (with Keg Liquors Clarksville capturing another "best bottle shop" citation).
Sara's pub crawl also took her to Jack's, Brooklyn and The Butcher and Hugh E. Bir Cafe. Taken as a whole, her wanderings testify to a rich diversity of drinking options in New Albany, and in spite of my own personal trials and travails, I have to admit I'm proud to have played my role in it -- and look forward to doing so again.
Our Lady of Perpetual Hops Location: 3815 Paoli Pike, Floyds Knobs
Anticipated opening: Late spring
Introduction: We first heard of this new Southern Indiana brewery earlier this month, and it's already well on its way to capturing our attention.
The brewery will be located on a 10-acre property near the Valley View Golf Club, where four co-owners plan to eventually build an entertainment campus complete with a taproom, restaurant, sand volleyball courts, outdoor deck and beer garden.
The entire campus isn't expected to be finished until spring 2019. But this year, the company plans to open a small taproom and brewery in an existing building at the site.
CEO Robert Pappas, a chemist who owns Essential Oil University, said Our Lady's beers will be unique for the area.
With help from an experienced brewer, the team has created beers that incorporate essential oils to act as a sort of aromatherapy, Pappas said.
Upon further reflection, I recall discussing a similar idea with Rob (a longtime pub customer) in 2012 or thereabouts; at the time, he was looking at a farm in Starlight near the Huber winery and distillery. The brewer at OLPH is Kyle Richmer, and I'm enthused that the Knobs will be getting in on the game.
For the record, here is the entire list.
Falls City Brewing Co., 901 E. Liberty St., NuLu
Bluegrass Brewing Co., South Fourth Street and Broadway
Wild Hops Brewery, 1001 Logan St.
Our Lady of Perpetual Hops, 3815 Paoli Pike, Floyds Knobs
False Idol Independent Brewers, 1025 Barret Ave.
Against the Grain, 719 Lynn St.
Goodwood Brewing Company, Vine Street
As a closer, ignore the author's lapse (these days my beloved Pilsner Urquell is owned by Asahi of Japan, not the MillerCoors leviathan) and feel good about how far beer has come in the States.
Now, all we need to do is make sense of where we've been. I have a feeling this is something that will be occupying much of my time in the near future.
Corporate goliaths are taking over the U.S. economy, yet small breweries are thriving. Why?
But what explains the nature of the craft-beer boom? From several interviews with economists and beer-industry experts, I’ve gathered that there appear to be two big reasons—a straightforward cause and a more complex and interesting history.
The Vintage Fire Museum gig was nicely attended, but visitors started tapering away around 3:30 p.m., so there was time for me to pack up the taps and check out the new Flat12 Bierwerks location nearby on Riverside Drive for its opening day.
I didn't bother taking photos while there, and so the one above is borrowed from the Flat12 Facebook page, where you can see other views of the taproom and festivities. Chad Sprigler and family have done a fine job on the taproom space, which includes a deck and a majestic view of the river. There'll be light snacks on an appetizer/flatbread theme, but it's meant to be a taproom, not an eatery.
Yesterday's crowd was big and fun, and I had time to drink a couple beers and shoot the breeze with Rob Caputo, my comrade on the board of the Brewers of Indiana Guild. As I joked with Rob: He gets a state-of-the-art biking and pedestrian bridge to Louisville. Bank Street Brewhouse? We get an outmoded one-way street and some old, rotting jack-o-lanterns.
Facing the now abandoned Democratic HQ, appropriately.
Suffice to say, it's going to be great fun having Flat12 in Jeffersonville. Now that the taproom is up and running, Flat12's brewery buildout will be next on the completion list.
Red Yeti finally is brewing for on-site consumption a few blocks from Flat12 on Spring Street, and Donum Dei off Grant Line Road in New Albany is due any minute. Then there's the as-yet amorphous Wrecker Brewing project on Market Street near my house. In far less than a year, the Sunny Side could go from NABC's two breweries to six, perhaps more.
Come inside for the craft beer, tolerate typically archaic Prohibition-era blue laws and decry interference from the multinational monopolists ... but stay for the section below detailing what South Florida government is doing to lure breweries to the area.
And then there's us. We're all here because we're not all there.
... South Florida’s beer drinkers aren’t the only ones who seem to be rooting for craft breweries to succeed. Local governments also have been welcoming breweries with open arms and checkbooks.
Oakland Park, seeking to build up its downtown Culinary Arts District, sent a community-development employee to a high-end beer festival in Washington, D.C., with instructions to find a brewery to lure to the city, according to Linn. The staffer happened to run in to Ryan Sentz, who founded Funky Buddha in 2007 as a Boca Raton hookah bar that he eventually turned into a brewpub.
“The city didn’t even know about us, but we were looking for a location at that time, and we liked the Fort Lauderdale area’s central proximity to Miami and Palm Beach, so it worked,” Linn said.
Oakland Park spent $400,000 on a community plaza that doubles as Funky Buddha’s front patio and occasional band stage, he added.
Brignoni and his father, Luis C. Brignoni, opened Wynwood Brewing in October with the help of a $420,000 government loan. The seven-year, interest-free loan, which requires no payments for the first two years, came from funds from the federal government’s Community Development Block Grants but is administered by the city.
The Brignonis and their investors contributed another $900,000 to get the brewery running ...
My comments are included in an instructive LEO Weekly piece by free-lancer Kevin Gibson. For further background, keep tabs on my weekly column at LouisvilleBeer.com
… Roger Baylor, owner of New Albanian Brewing Company, has been in the business of craft beer for quite a few years; his business model with Rich O’s Public House and Sportstime Pizza hinged on it from the word “go” when those side-by-side concepts launched in 1990. Later, he was the first one in town to eliminate sales of corporate beers like Bud Light. New Albanian as a craft brewing entity was founded in 2002.
“Saturation point depends on the capacity of the new breweries, their level of debt service and what size territory they need to get by,” Baylor explains. “What happens when everyone decides to play the game the same way?”
I've no idea who Noah Davis is, but he manages to touch just about all the relevant bases in this excellent analysis of the current state of the craft beer market. It's an article I've been trying to write for a long time, and he's to be congratulated.
While NABC has had steady beer production growth the past few years, market fissures have been obvious for quite some time, paralleling Davis's central points.
The most rabid beer enthusiasts, whose "latest and greatest" collective viewpoint as a sort of priestly caste are disproportionate to the market share they support, which is small, are not inclined to be loyal to beer brands of any sort, and when they are loyal, they gravitate toward rare and esoteric beers from outside their own region.
Meanwhile, competition based on price point alone is impossible, whether it's Budweiser for two dollars a bottle, or Sierra a buck cheaper than anything a brewery NABC's size can afford to sell and still make any money at all.
Yes, there is a big middle ground of brand loyalists, and these are the folks (thank you) who drink our beer at the point of origin, in our own two on-premise establishments. With beer geeks and price-conscious shoppers out of reach, our bricks and mortar operations become ever more important to us.
I find all this challenging, but also encouraging. If a shakedown is coming and the market is pushing breweries our size into local and regional corners, that's a paradigm with which we're equiped to compete. We have strengths for such combat -- our own outlets, an existing customer base, great products and wonderful staff. There is no single beer sales rep working for a brewery located 1,000 miles away who can inform and please customers like the collective weight of NABC's 70+ employees.
If it means some redefining and reinvention in terms of plans and operations, that's also good. In fact, they've been underway for a while, and hopefully will begin hitting critical mass as the new year dawns. There are many things in the past we'd do differently if given the chance, but the most important point is where we are today, and where we're going tomorrow.
We had a nice chat about craft beer in the context of economic development. Now, as the story below clearly outlines, there is no economic development in craft beer owing to the government shutdown ... which Todd Young endorses.
No histrionics are necessary, because I'm guessing that lots of others reading this can spot a disconnect the size of the Grand Canyon.
What isn't clear is whether Rep. Young can. Seems to me that my business is being held hostage in order to further GOP political aims ... and it doesn't look much like economic development at all.
US federal shutdown closes agency responsible for alcohol licensing
Craft brewers on the frontline facing financial disaster
Small businesses and start-ups put on hold indefinitely
One brewer claims shutdown will cost him $8,000 a month
... Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association, which represents more than 1,900 US breweries, said: ‘One could think of this shutdown as basically stopping business indefinitely for anyone who didn't have certain paperwork in place back in mid-August.’
A woman who answered the phone on October 2 at TTB’s headquarters in Washington abruptly hung up on Associated Press after explaining the government was shutdown. Assistant Administrator Cheri Mitchell did not respond to telephone or email messages.
Currently there are 63 breweries in the state of Indiana, with numerous other being planned, including Red Yeti and Point Blank in Corydon. When every hamlet in the state is no more than a day's bike ride from a brewery, Hoosierdom will have arrived. But would be remain red, or turn blue? Is there a correlation? Inquiring minds want to know, but not until after we've had a few liters.
... Paul (Ronau) said the idea for opening a brew pub started while the couple still lived in California.
An information technology employee with UPS, he said he has been a home brewer for some time and decided that he wanted to turn pro. But the prospects of opening the restaurant while the couple was living in California were not feasible.
Brandi, who said she had been working in restaurants in California, said the couple could not overcome the hurdles of launching a startup on the west coast. The Salem native decided it would be a better fit if they came back to Southern Indiana to try and launch their business.
Paul explained that the plan was, initially, to locate near Avon.
Their real estate agent, Mike Kopp, vice president of commercial sales with ReMax First, pointed them to downtown Jeffersonville.
ON THE AVENUES: You gaze at your own reflection, all right.
A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.
“The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in; becoming narcissistic.”
-- attributed to Rod Serling (1924-1975)
Science fiction isn’t my forte, but no matter. Even if I seldom indulge, it is evident to me that the genre has its strengths, among them the ability to harness the otherwise far-fetched to the greater cause of allegorical relevance.
Consider, if you will, Rod Serling’s scripts for the Twilight Zone television series, many of which remain fresh and thought-provoking a half-century after their inception.
Serling’s personal mission, one that he pursued with considerable skill, was to befuddle white-bread network censors by disguising progressive commentaries as seemingly harmless manifestations of the macabre – tales regarded as inhabiting the science fiction canon, with commensurate camouflage.
As Serling pithily observed, “Things which couldn't be said by a Republican or Democrat could be said by a Martian."
To which I’d add: Things which couldn’t be said by a Republican or Democrat or a Martian might be said by craft beer, but not if we insist on a narcissistic self-absorption.
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Lately I’ve been thinking about Serling’s admonition to reject narcissism. A talented man possessing strong viewpoints and pronounced beliefs, he came of age as a writer in the 1950s, precisely at a time when the mass hysterics and delusions of McCarthyism rendered the intellectual climate quite dangerous for those with contrarian viewpoints. It may well have been a nadir for progressivism, even by America’s remarkably low standard in such matters.
And yet, Serling possessed the innate strength of character – a sheer, contrarian stubbornness – to find a way of speaking his mind during a time when the presumed ideal of “free” speech was being honored primarily in the breach. He found a way, because to him, narcissism wasn’t a career option. I couldn’t agree more.
As others did at the time, Serling might have chosen to withhold his talent and wait for the inevitable thaw, perhaps opting for self-exile in an entirely different professional venue. Rather, he resisted drawing back and inward, and continued challenging viewers by painting the corners of the plate with nuance.
What if Serling had shrugged and gone strictly commercial, eschewing the artful for the straightforward, indulging the low common denominator all around him, and giving television audiences more by-the-numbers entertainment? Then as now, safety is easily rationalized, and in the mainstream, there’s a greater probability that the paychecks won’t stop coming.
I’m not judging others, merely noting that for whatever reason, Serling elected not to follow the easiest path. He persevered. The message got out, converts were made along the way, and these many decades later, we’re still able to learn from his experience.
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My chosen profession is craft beer, and I’m no happier seeing it corrupted by shoe-gazing narcissism than Rod Serling -- in his world, during his heyday, and according to the parameters of his calling.
Craft beer means many things to many people, and that’s as it should be. Speaking for myself, it’s a hobby that eventually grew into an occasional paycheck; it tastes great even though it’s often more filling; it is a wonderful device for promoting the life of the local pub; and it’s the final, best hope for sustaining local pub culture.
But to me, precisely because I’m not narcissistic, there is more to craft beer than just those attributes. Naturally, self-interest as a business owner brings with it certain promotional necessities and instances of self-aggrandizement, but these are not to be confused with staring at one’s reflection in a pond filled with Barrel Aged Black Kolsch while reaching for the Kleenex ... and not because one needs to blow his nose.
Beer, as writ large, may very well be a commodity suitable for the Financial Times, but craft beer specifically also is a symbol, an analogy – a metaphor. Craft beer’s very founding principle is active and points outward, not passive and shrinking toward the inside. It is expansive in the market sense, but more importantly, in profits from the larger sense of community consciousness.
Craft beer is revolutionary, the overt rejection of an established order commonly known as mass market beer, which profits by accumulating capital for the express purpose of thwarting competition in purely Mafioso capitalistic fashion, and substitutes slavish conformity for the broad panoply of life’s possibilities.
When craft beer lapses narcissistic, and whenever the circle geeking starts, we as a presumed culture of appreciation are only providing the multinational mockrobrewing hegemonists with head space to mislead the larger segment of the market, which we haven’t yet reached. The established order we first rebelled against hasn’t gone away. It’s fighting back, and the best way to confront the Goebbelsian lies it deploys is to break away from our narcissism, stop looking in the mirror, and engage those folks standing just beyond the tent flap.
That’s because many of them want to come inside. Let’s give them a reason to do so.
I can’t be sure that Rod Serling would have appreciated craft beer, but I believe he would quickly see the merit in purging narcissism from the culture of craft beer appreciation. It’s repellant, even to those of us who already get it.
“Art can never take the place of social action … but its task remains forever the same: to change consciousness.”
– Amos Vogel, from “Film as a Subversive Art”
When will craft beer finally change the consciousness of the American beer-drinking mainstream?”
I’m tempted to answer one question with another:
Should mainstream consciousness ever be the desired outcome for craft beer?
But let’s play it straight. Some might say that craft beer consciousness already has arrived. Craft beer’s availability is wider than ever before, and statistically, most Americans live within close proximity to a craft brewer, even if the average measurement is skewed by Michigan as compared to the Deep South.
Slowly, even this imbalance is changing, and craft beer consciousness is penetrating all geographical areas of the country.
ON THE AVENUES: Hoosiers have the ideal brew waiting.
A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.
In the book “Indiana Breweries,” published in 2010, John Holl and Nate Schweber describe craft breweries in our Hoosier homeland. It’s a worthy effort and a fine read, and yet only two years later, their comprehensive work has very nearly become obsolete. Breweries in the state have proliferated from 37 in 2010 to 53 or more today, with at least 18 on the way and others in the planning stages. But John’s and Nate’s book has something that promises to stand the test of time: A foreward penned by yours truly. Obviously it is self-serving and egotistical to point to reprint it here, so I believe I'll do just that.
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In a world driven by cutting edge technologies, I’ve managed to retain certain Luddite proclivities even while conceding ground to my iPhone and laptop.
When I get home after a long day of professional beer drinking, I empty my pockets of small change, smudged Sharpie and trusty cigar cutter. Customarily there are various scrawlings on little paper scraps, magazine subscription cards, package store sales receipts and crusty, beer-soaked coasters.
On a groggy, grumpy weekday morning some months back, a cursory examination of one of these reminders revealed this unintelligibility: “Jahnenollbeerbk.”
After a two espressos and some appropriate reflection, the translation finally took shape amid the haze. Yes, of course; that pleasant fellow from New Jersey, at the pub, asking me questions about the brewery as the empty pints snaked down the bar’s surface like so many glass dominoes waiting to fall and break my liver.
John Holl … right, and the book he was writing – with some guy named Nate. Check.
Wait: A book about Indiana beer. Imagine that!
Hailing from Indiana, otherwise known as the Hoosier State, means living as a stereotype. We’re supposed to be basketball-loving, soybean-growing, corn-shucking, devotees of the Indianapolis 500, inhabiting flat ground somewhere in the vicinity of Illinois, drinking oceans of ice-cold, low-calorie, light golden lager after putting up hay, or downing boilermakers before shifts at doomed rust belt factories, all of which are both true and false, just like all stereotypes.
Hoosiers may not fully understand the meaning of the word “Hoosier,” but one element of our Indiana experience appears to be stealth, at least as it pertains to beer and brewing. Almost unnoticed, three dozen breweries (and more on the way) have settled into their joyous daily routines in Indiana communities large and small, from Indianapolis to Nashville, and from Ft. Wayne to Aurora.
It didn’t seem possible two decades ago, when we’d lash steamer trunks to our hand-cranked, Indiana-made Studebaker and make the long muddy drive from New Albany, through waist-deep potholes and past extensive herds of free-range bison, all the way to Indianapolis, the state capital, eager to experience real beer at Broad Ripple Brewing Company.
It was the state’s very first brewpub, and members of the Brewers of Indiana Guild annually honor John Hill’s birthday by thanking him for his admirable prescience, not to mention patience.
We didn’t call it craft beer in those ancient times. We simply called it good beer, and I believe I knew the name, rank and serial number of every person in the state who shared my preference for it.
At times it was a lonely existence, just me and a few of my closest friends, like Fidel and Che camped in the Sierra Maestra mountains, sifting through the flotsam and jetsam of mass-produced, carbonated alco-pop in search of the stray hop, all the while watching the yokels flee in terror at the mere sight of “the dark stuff.”
Twenty years later, we’re still a minority, but good beer – craft beer – is accepted and available in Indiana as never before. In this book, John and Nate tell you where to find the Hoosier breweries and to drink the beer they brew, and also other prime locations to find craft and just plain good beer from America and all over the world. Never again will you be obliged to grudgingly accept the paltry selections at that familiar chain restaurant’s bar.
Instead, like the authors themselves, you’ll be meeting the regulars at the Heorot in Muncie, or drinking world-renowned ale at the Three Floyds taproom (Munster), or while in Evansville, choosing the perfect beer to accompany pizza at Turoni’s. John and Nate cannot magically render you into the most interesting man (or woman) in the world. However, they provide complete instructions on how to drink the most interesting beer in Indiana, thus lessening America’s dependence on foreign Dos Equis, and immeasurably enhancing the pleasure when the Colts once again defeat the Patriots.
This Hoosier journey in pursuit of better beer is noteworthy because it simultaneously validates Indiana’s historic and cultural 19th-century virtues – think of John Wooden, the late, iconic basketball legend who grew up in Martinsville – while pointing the way forward to 21st-century goals like artisanal integrity, local sourcing and environmental sustainability. Most small brewers were going back to the future, green and local, before the buzzwords started trending.
Just ask Clay Robinson, Sun King’s advocate of recyclable cans, or Jeff Mease, organic farmer, water buffalo rancher and owner of Bloomington Brewing Company, or the pioneering Abstons, who are building trellises and growing hops in the hilly Knobs that rise above the Ohio River in Floyd County.
My favorite single aspect of being in the brewing business in Indiana, and by extension, the reason why the brewing business is the best business in America, is that all of us are like family.
Greg Emig brewed for John Hill at Broad Ripple Brewing, and then moved on to found Lafayette Brewing Company. Chris Johnson brewed for Greg, and now is the owner/brewer at People’s Brewing. Ted Miller also brewed for John before leaving to sell and install brewing systems worldwide. Ted returned to Indianapolis to open Brugge Brasserie, and today Kevin Matalucci, Ted’s high school classmate, is two blocks away from Brugge up the Monon Trail, brewing beer for John at Broad Ripple Brewing, as he has done since Ted left.
Indiana craft brewing is community, not competitive. We cooperate, not connive. It’s family. On those mercifully rare occasions when a brewery goes out of business, we lament and console the survivors, while advising and assisting the next wave. It’s a tall order, but we’re working together to put Indiana-brewed beer in the hands of the many Hoosiers who’ve yet to experience it.
In this book, John Holl and Nate Schweber do more than document the Indiana beer and brewing scene. They convey an overall sense of our brewing community and its ethos. John and Nate came to our places, drank our pints (samples just don’t tell the tale), walked the walk, stumbled the stumble, and deciphered the cryptic notes next morning while searching for Advil in a hotel room on the wrong side of the Interstate.
Read, enjoy and start planning your trip to Indiana. We Hoosiers have the ideal brew waiting, whatever your taste.
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