Hopnonymous

Sweet, unfermented barley stew. An explosion of foam. A sour funk when the beer is not a sour. Weak, watery, undercarbonated thinness. These are just a few of the faults you might encounter—repeatedly—when trying nonalcoholic beers. The category is booming, with new options debuting daily, a bright spot shining against the current, sagging reality that craft beer sales are in decline. But too many of these options aren’t actually good. Why does consistency prove so elusive in this increasingly popular category?

Secrecy might be the answer. The rise of N/A beer has been built on proprietary methods and brewers who keep their advances to themselves. It’s the polar opposite of how the rest of the craft beer industry has evolved over the past few decades.

Craft beer is an anomaly in terms of cooperation, compared to NA brewing.  It’s like when you don’t see one construction company inviting a competing firm’s engineers to come ‘collaborate’ on blueprints. Meanwhile, in craft beer, teamwork-based origin stories abound. I think of the story of Ken Grossman visiting Jack McAuliffe at New Albion Brewing Co. in ’78, then taking that method he saw and scaling it to start Sierra Nevada.

N/A beer brands have a reason to act more like a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company than a craft brewery. Entering the N/A beer arena requires a massive investment of money, education and resources. Athletic Brewing Co. has effectively launched the craft nonalcoholic beer category and remains its primary driver, and it was valued at $500 million in 2023. As of 2022, it had raised approximately $173.5 million in funding. That has fueled the creation of gold-standard N/A beer styles; perhaps unsurprisingly, Athletic is patenting its process.

Even if a brewery dished on its methods, they’re often not widely accessible, anyway. Many breweries who want to start making nonalcoholic beer don’t fully comprehend the undertaking it is, Anderson says. If you opt to use a dealcoholization process, the required equipment can cost millions of dollars. If you choose the biological path of arrested fermentation using standard yeast or limited fermentation using strains for nonalcoholic beer, there’s a steep learning curve to overcome in order to avoid faults. Additionally, most brewhouses aren’t equipped for the rigid food safety demands of N/A brewing, considering brewing standard beer involves the antimicrobial powers of alcohol. 

Finally, there’s the marketing piece of the puzzle. Craft beer wooed drinkers with its image of scrappy, independent creatives coming together to collaborate. Brewery tours and guided tastings built a culture of education as part of the drinking experience. So far, we haven’t seen that same interest in N/A beer.

Not only is the incentive then not there for N/A brewers to be transparent about their process, let alone shape it into some storytelling device, but the secrecy can even be its own selling point. There’s the perceived marketing value of methods being ‘proprietary,

N/A brewers want to protect their pricey findings and consumers seem fine with it—what’s the harm, right? But the lack of information-sharing stalls peer-fueled innovation, and the gravity of this goes beyond developing weird flavors. The food safety element of nonalcoholic brewing is crucial, and because even safety methods are unnecessarily safeguarded, the industry lacks agreed-upon practices.

Considering the reasons that nonalcoholic beer deliberately eschews craft beer’s clubhouse sharefest, it’s not likely that we’ll see N/A brewers start opening up anytime soon. It’s up to organizations, then, to gather information and conduct independent research, sharing that with N/A producers. As long as the knowledge comes from somewhere and is made accessible, nonalcoholic beer will eventually find its groove as a category where off-flavors are the exception, not the rule as they are now. 

You may not realize it but beer-industry damage is being caused by poor algorithms and bad programming. I'm taling mainly about you, Untappd.

Let's imagine a vegan walking into a restaurant and choosing a steak. Does the resultant 0.0–1.0 rating mean the steak is bad? No. Opinions that result from self-inflicted, foolish decisions lack credibility. Now, let's imagine a lover of homogeneous, bland beers who decides to order a lambic instead of a Heineken. Does the resultant 0.0–1.0 rating mean the lambic is bad? No. Opinions that result from self-inflicted, foolish decisions lack credibility.

So how do tools like Untappd deal with non-credible ratings? It seems they are not smart enough to recognize obvious drinker-deviations.

For fairness and accuracy, tools ought to ignore anomalous low and high ratings. But they do not. They include every rating outside Normal Distribution. And therein lies a flaw damaging the industry. And here's the important part for people who love beer. Businesses choosing which beers to stock or buy use both rating AND number of check-ins. So choosing to check-in beers with no rating makes it worse.

Beer lovers checking-in beers without a rating create an unintentional bias. Their balanced, fair, unbiased aims quicken the industry decline. They skew the balance between rating and check-in numbers, meaning non-credible ratings prevail. And that may be the big-beer brand plan. While artisanal breweries attract higher ratings, they cannot compete on check-in numbers. True 'craft beer' disappears, and big-beer brands fill the vacuum of their own creation. Clever stuff.

So, let's wake up, fans of authentic beer. Isn't it time to support rather than damage the industry we love? Let's stop using these tools "only as a record of what I drink". Either add a middle-rating every time by default, or use a pen and notebook – it is less harmful. Having said that, regardless of what you think of the various beer rating/review apps/sites like Beer Advocate, RateBeer, & the giant of them all, Untappd, are here to stay and for better or for worse are part of the craft beer landscape. 

I do use the ratings as a guide as to what new beers/breweries are out there.  It’s quite interesting that from what I’ve seen and read, that even breweries that get good ratings/reviews as a whole don’t like these rating apps, though they understand their importance to their business, which in a way, explains part of their dislike. That’s especially true when they realize there’s a cultural bias on the rating sites in particular Untappd which is the most used app internationally and by non-US raters/reviewers.

I’ve noticed that most Europeans will not be as “generous” in rating a beer than most Americans. By this I mean on a 5 point scale you will not see too many Europeans giving a beer a 4.0+ rating when compared to Americans. In general a beer with a 4.0+ rating is on the “exceptional end” especially when you are rated 4.1+.  As I look at Untappd ratings quite, I’ve noticed a general trend where you don’t see to many non-US breweries with an overall brewery score of 4.0+ with the exception of the top Belgian gueze/lambic breweries. These top international (primarily European) breweries that I am talking about are considered to be the Top 60-80 craft breweries in Europe and not many of them have 4.0+ Untappd ratings. Some in fact, by American standards, have a “pedestrian” 3.6 overall brewery rating.

For example, I know two people who really liked the double dry hopped beer with a 4.4 rating they sampled at a recent festival. They were in fact raving about They proceeded to tell me that they would give the beer a very good rating on Untappd. Thus, I was expecting at least a 4.0+ rating, but both of them scores the beer a 3.75.  I didn’t question why they rated it “just a 3.75”, but was honestly surprised as this is just above average by “American rating standards”. Similarly, looking at the other check ins of the other beers I they drank at this festival they similarly had a “downward trend” in ratings despite positive or even overly positive comments noted on the beers.

Now for some stats to support my theory.

Australia: only one brewery rated 4.0+ out of 605 breweries.  This translates to just 0.17% of breweries with an “exceptional” rating of 4.0+

Austria: highest rated brewery 3.8 out of 273 thus no breweries considered “exceptional” with a rating of 4.0+

Belgium: seven breweries rated 4.0+ out of 271 breweries in Belgium  Note, six of the seven breweries are gueze/lambic breweries with only Sint Sixtus Abdij/Westvleteren (4.42) the only non gueze/lambic brewery.  Not even the Trappist breweries from Chimay, Westmalle, or Orval are rated above 4.0 which does not make any sense. This translates to 2.6% of Belgian breweries with an “exceptional” rating.

Germany had one brewery rated 4.0+ out of 1500 breweries rating 

UK: only four breweries rated 4.0+ out of 2430

Now compare that to just a few examples of “exceptional” breweries with a 4.0+ rating in US states:

Arizona: seven out of 117 or 6.0%

California: 32 out of 841 or 3.8%

Colorado: 10 out of 396 or 2.5%  

Connecticut: nine out of 87 or 10.3%

Maryland: five out of 94 or 5.3%

Maine: six out of 119 or 5.0%   

Massachusetts: nine out of 155 or 5.8%  

Missouri: eight out of 112 or 7.1%   

New Hampshire: six out of 81 or 7.4%   

New Jersey: six out of 109 or 5.5%

New York: 25 out of 386 or 6.5%  

Beverage ratings & reviews have been around for over 40 years in print form, especially in the wine & spirits sector, so rating beer is nothing new or novel. However, the ubiquity of the internet and more importantly, the significant impact of social media in our daily lives has magnified both the speed and broader reach of these beer ratings/reviews from just a local or regional impact to a worldwide audience in mere minutes. Also, the relatively new phenomena of drinking beer as a “sport” where earning a badge or reaching a level has added to the “gamification” of drinking beer which taps our inherent need to compete with one another and out do one another.

The intent of my article is not to dissuade anyone from rating or checking in a beer, as millions of people world-wide enjoy these rating apps/sites, the community/camaraderie associated with them, and utility/functionality in using these apps, but to just be cognizant that a “3 just might not mean a 3” based on your perspective.

The general idea animating the American beer business for the past century has been: Brew things that people want to drink, then sell those things for money. There are nuances, of course — the three-tier system, economies of scale, the vagaries of national television advertising, and so forth — but those are a distraction from the general idea, and also boring. The point is: You can’t sell the American drinking public things they don’t want, not for long.

For the first decade and a half of this century, the American craft beer industry was on the right side of this equation. Underwhelmed by the offerings from increasingly corporatized and consolidated macro breweries like Anheuser-Busch, Miller, Coors, and the like, the first generation of craft brewers used quality ingredients to make full-flavored beers that were demonstrably better than the bland adjunct lagers Americans were then stuck with. Their denigration back then was reserved for the “fizzy yellow beer” that poured forth from faraway firms’ massive factories like any other commodity. It was a powerful message (so powerful, in fact, that sorta-insulting your customers actually did sorta-work, for a time), and in delivering it, craft brewers opened a lot of American drinkers’ minds and wallets to the glories of good beer made well.

But! But! But now it seems that the craft brewing industry got high on its own supply. Industry leaders and brewery owners (which was basically the same group of people, until workers began organizing and using social media to carve out influence of their own last decade) conflated mainstream drinkers’ thirst for new and novel things to drink with a shared revolutionary zeal. All of which was fine, until those mainstream drinkers, as they’re wont to do these days, lost interest in craft beer and went looking for things — hard seltzer, hard tea, spirits-based canned cocktails, whatever — that craft brewers did not make.

“Wait! Stop!” cried the craft brewers. “That stuff is corporate and corny and Not Craft™!” But the drinkers, tired of David-and-Goliath morality tales, increasingly homogenous aesthetics, and those B.O.L.A.s (Boring Old Lagers and Ales) they once loved, went anyway. Some craft breweries have followed, using their knowledge of brewing and branding to roll out unconventional new beer-esque potables — fruited kettle sours, pastry stouts, milkshake IPAs, and a river of flavored malt beverages — to stay in tune with changing tastes. The general idea! But others have clung dogmatically to styles and stories of craft beer that once dazzled, framing the newer, weirder, and sometimes-cornier concoctions, and the people who enjoy them, as an affront to, well, the craft.

At a time when the American drinking public has more alternatives than ever, I’m worried that the condescension the latter group has for their colleagues and customers is enough to make drinkers feel unwanted. Hence, his new, more insistent recommendations.  Now is a time when craft needs to collectively innovate more than it ever has. … If every brewery is taking shots at every other brewery, that’s a scorched earth battle. It’s not going to end well. And frankly, craft needs all the volume it can get right now.

There are many who disagree.  They believe that if you look at some of these beyond beer elixirs, it’s like a chemistry experiment chasing numbers. They just don’t align with the values that craft brewers set out to propagate when they started brewing beer, and many just don’t feel comfortable in that space.

No one is entirely sure how craft brewers will claw back all their lost volume, but it will be a real uphill battle for the nation’s roughly 9,500 craft breweries if they reject popular-but-unorthodox new styles in favor of “shifting the deck chairs around.” Dismissing smoothie seltzers or hard juices as anathema to the category isn’t a winning strategy when so many drinkers are starting their journeys there. It doesn’t mean a brewery that set out to make German-style lagers should abruptly pivot into pastry stouts; just that sneering at them probably isn’t going to convince people to drink more German-style lagers, and may scare them off entirely. Rather than an entry point, that’s an exit ramp — and Lord knows the category doesn’t need any more of those.

The Brewery Trap

People love shiny new things. If they visit a taproom and see a new IPA with a bunch of scrumptious adjectives trailing along (passion fruit!, vanilla!, papaya!, orange blossom!, strawberry!), they’re goners. In order to sustain customer interest, breweries have to spin out dozens of new beers each year. Breweries are happy to oblige, in part because the dazzling variety of techniques, hop varieties, and hop products means literally endless possibilities.* And that’s before you throw in the possibilities of different yeasts—what about special thiol yeasts?!—malts, strengths, attenuations, opacities. The list goes on and on.

There’s a downside to all these possibilities, though. Every time you fiddle with a new variable, you introduce uncertainty. Nectaron and Mosaic sound awesome, but how well do they play together, really? Should the Nectaron go in the whirlpool and dry hopping, or just one of those? Or the other? American brewers have gotten really, really good at intuitively understanding these interactions. Given how many potential ways things could go sideways, they do a fantastic job of putting out clean, well-made beer even when they’re just guessing about how a particular ingredient will play with others. And of course, experimentation yields important insights. If breweries didn’t experiment, they wouldn’t be practicing the alchemy that leads to certain wonderful flavors. But in the main, a one-off beer usually tastes, well, off. The delicious-sounding description may be accurate to a point, but way too often I find myself behind an unfocused pint that is less than the sum of its adjectives.

This is where the “trap” comes in. If brewers are forever feeding the beast of novelty, they’re never getting to refine and improve these beers. One of the reasons some beers are truly great is because the beer goes through stages of refinement. If three breweries sat around for an afternoon throwing out ideas and then brewed up a single batch of beer, it is doubtful it will be great.. People might find the concept interesting, but most years the beer wouldn’t be. 

In areas that are heavily saturated with breweries I appreciate they must do whatever they can to stay relevant and sell their products. That includes trying to make something a little different, naming it different and describing it different and keeping up with the people that don’t want a flagship, but want to “Catch Them All” even if it is not a time tested recipe.  To put it another way, innovation is important to keep from going out of business.  It's the only way to satisfy the many customers who ask, "what's new?"  But where's the balance? Quantity vs. Quality. It’s a tough call for sure.

Everything is cyclical. At one time, breweries were laser-focused on flagships. Thanks to a variety of factors, including social media and Untappd, promiscuity and FOMO mark this era.  Enough! Now its time for a return to more focus and refinement and less novelty.

Think back to five years ago. What craft beer styles were driving attention and hype in an era before we had the faintest inkling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the craft beer industry’s slowdown, and the existential challenges faced by so many breweries today? What were drinkers chattering about and lining up for at festivals? What was seen as the state of the art?

My answer would be the following: Hazy, juicy IPAs, followed by cloyingly sweet pastry stouts, fruit-drenched sours, and the occasional respite of lager. A style like hazy IPA had already crossed the point of cultural saturation and increasingly ventured into cartoonish excess.

Meanwhile, as we begin 2024, what is now the main driver of hype and chatter in the craft beer world? Well, it’s … hazy, juicy IPAs, cloyingly sweet pastry stouts, fruit-drenched sours and the occasional respite of lager. On the most basic level, the craft beer landscape has simply felt trapped in stylistic stasis in recent years, a far cry from the previous era of new discovery and growth that was fueled in the 2000s and 2010s by a market in which it was so much easier to turn a profit. This stagnation has no doubt played some role in the migration of craft beer drinkers to other segments of the alcohol world, and I’m afraid I have no solution to offer up:

As recently as the mid-2010s, consumers enamored with the craft beer industry still likely felt as if the beer world was in a state of near-constant evolution and introduction of novelty. And in many respects, it was. India pale ale was undergoing transformation after transformation, splitting off down paths of greater and lesser strength, changing color and texture, while new hop varietals crept into the market and transformed the very idea of what “hoppy” flavors could be. Experimentation with wild ales, bacteria and barrel-aging was yielding unclassifiable new American styles in a veritable farmhouse revolution. And at the same time, historic European styles were still being widely introduced into the U.S. market for the first time, making a beer like gose seem like a genuine revelation to drinkers in the mid-2010s. d, how can you convince them otherwise?

There’s no doubt that the slowing of the craft beer industry’s growth fed into what has become this creative stagnation. Prodded on by the combination of widespread slowing growth and the constant openings of new breweries that blithely ignored that slowing growth for the last half decade, seemingly determined as they were to cannibalize any given market’s available revenue, the go-to move became to embrace whatever styles were seen as the safest bets. That meant a greater reliance on what was selling well in the late 2010s, which was hazy IPA, pastry stout and fruited sours. Combined with the expectation instilled in the consumer that every week should bring new taproom releases, the result for so many breweries has become a constant assembly line of virtually indistinguishable “new” releases in these styles on a weekly basis for the last five years. Is it any wonder that a portion of the drinkers finally tire of this model and begin to migrate elsewhere, to categories such as wine, spirits and cocktails?

This isn’t to say there hasn’t been some effort on the fringes by breweries to broaden the beer landscape in recent years. The ongoing craft lager boom has for several years been the best thing about the modern beer world, helping at times to offset the increasing loss of other styles that are rarely being brewed. There are still specialists out there, breweries that are fortunate enough to have built reliable audiences making styles such as saison, wild ales or Belgian abbey ales. But all too often, even the supposed new developments in the modern beer scene are failing to capture the imagination of drinkers, registering as a ceaseless parade of fanciful, meme-ready flavors inspired by the likes of candy bars or junk food.

Drinkers may even realize it, but they’ve been questing for something new. They’re looking for flavors and experiences outside the increasingly narrow band of what craft beer has come to represent in recent years, and if they can’t find those new experiences in the form of beer, they’ll find them in wine, spirits or beyond.  The disillusioned beer fan isn’t looking to seltzer; rather, seltzer is statistically being considered part of the industry’s same creative malaise and downturn. When we talk about beer’s malaise/economic stagnation seltzer is inherently included.

Creatively speaking, craft beer now finds itself at the lowest point it’s occupied in several decades, but I’m not ready to give up on it. Not all breweries are afflicted by the kind of creative malaise/economic necessity.  I go out of my way to support those breweries whenever possible. But I can’t deny it’s becoming increasingly hard to find those places, as I’ve watched even breweries I once admired slowly ditch their core identities in the last decade in favor of a slow-drip of saccharine IPA and pastry stout. I can understand why they’ve done it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to see.

A majority of US companies fail in their first decade (51%), and only 12% make it to their 25th year. It seems every industry has its own rhythm, and breweries seem to beat the general odds, at least in the earlier years, more often than other companies. But one thing no brewery can do is stay cool forever. That has been the case since the dawn of the craft era, even before the frenzy surrounding novelty. Indeed, it appears to be true of breweries going back centuries.

Everyone loves a new brewery. Plop a new one down the street today, and I’m the first in line tomorrow. In the industry it’s called the Novelty Curve.  That’s the easy part.  In those whirlwind, profitable days it’s easy for a brewery to forget that being able to develop loyalty is most import in survival and that’s the tough part.

Breweries have different business models, and they age at different rates. Roughly speaking, however, successful breweries go through something like this:

·   Honeymoon period. The period when people come with open minds to see what’s shaking.

·   Cool phase [a day and many comments later, perhaps “buzz phase” would be a better name here]. It takes some time for a brewery to get buzz, but following that honeymoon phase, successful breweries often enjoy the best periods of their lives. Whether they’re a niche brewery doing open-fermentation lagers, a buzz brewery doing IPAs and pastry stouts, or a slick place with great branding and a cool hang, for a period of time, they seem like shiny new paragons of whatever it is people associate with them.

·   Established phase. Once a brewery has figured things out, good ones enjoy an established phase where people think of them as being reliably awesome. They maybe don’t have the most buzz anymore, but they have loyalty and respect. Growth seems automatic and effortless.

·   Awkward phase. I don’t know a single elder brewery that hasn’t gone through an awkward phase, though they can look very different. Some breweries may suffer declining quality or a lack of the kind of invention that marked earlier stages. Maybe they don’t even shift what they’re doing much, but their relevance slides and they don’t seem to have an answer. It happens to super cool little breweries and big breweries alike. No brewery can age without hitting a wall eventually.

·   Death, sale, or revival. Breweries can weather the awkward phase, but it’s a dangerous point. Some breweries illustrate how to do this well: Sierra Nevada and New Belgium jump out. Others, like Ommegang and—well, Weyerbacher—haven’t or didn’t figure it out.

There’s no set timeline for these phases. Slow-burn breweries may not get to the cool phase for a while. Some breweries figure out ways to extend their establishment phase.  It doesn’t stop, either. Old European breweries constantly cycle through different phases. They even may return to the cool phase—Cantillon was barely hanging on when beer nerds discovered them in the mid-aughts and turned them into an international darling, to cite one example. Leadership, quality, trends, and reinvention all play a role.

Now many of the breweries are facing the final phase – revive or die.  The simple fact is that after a decade-plus of unprecedented growth, the craft beer industry is starting to experience declines that are, well, sobering. Over 2023 craft beer sales numbers declined by 2% according to the Brewers Association—the first time the industry saw a decline other than in 2020 since these stats have been tracked.

In one way, the reasons for craft beer’s diminishing sales are complex and range from still-lingering pandemic disruptions to an intense growth rate in recent years that was never sustainable, and from general inflation to lifestyle trends around healthier living. But in another sense, the reason for the rough patch craft beer has encountered is simple.

“The number one reason why people say they're drinking less craft [beer] isn't because they're watching their waistline or watching their wallet, it's because they are drinking more of some other type of beverage alcohol,” said Bart Watson, chief economist for the Brewers Association.  He added that alcohol types are “the primary competitor that craft has to think about.”

The challenge for craft breweries is how exactly to do that, as the movement away from beer extends beyond just craft beer. In 2023, consumers in the U.S. spent more money on spirits than they did on beer for the first time. A recent Gallup poll found that beer was still hanging on as the most-consumed alcoholic beverage with 37% of respondents saying they drink beer most often compared to just 31% for liquor and 29% for wine. However, the number of beer drinkers is down considerably from high points during the 1990s and 2000s when close to half of respondents said beer was their preferred drink.

One way to reverse this trend might be to reignite interest in draft beer, as beer served on-tap inherently offers a more unique, can’t-be-missed experience for consumers. The problem for the craft beer industry is that draft beer is also not exactly hopping these days as many distributors have deemphasized it.

All of which should be a warning to breweries: inaction brings a bleak future. 

Beer on tap, when done right, has a cleaner, smoother, fresher taste than its bottled or canned counterparts. However, the quality of draft beer can depend heavily on which bars you frequent, because dirty lines carrying the beer between the keg and the tap can ruin even the best brews. You’ve likely experienced this beer gone wrong: It tastes flat, acidic, and otherwise unpleasant. And dirty beer systems don’t just put the beer at risk, but the customer’s health, too.

With limited storage space, an overabundance of taps, and poor bar design, most bars are a tangled mess of lengthly beer lines. And these lines don’t just serve as a conduit for the beer as it’s being poured—it holds the beer long after that, too. Your beer literally sits there in the tubes, sometimes for hours. Some lines are long enough to have a capacity of three or four pints, and if the beer isn’t being sold fast enough, it remains stagnant. This results in less than perfect draft beer, and bacteria can start to grow inside the tubes.

Most beer drinkers are likely to detect an unkempt beer line, even if they don’t know that’s why their beer tastes off. Dirty lines do in fact spoil a beer’s flavor, and it’s a huge problem. A 2022 study titled “Microbial Communities in Retail Draft Beers and the Biofilms They Produce” had this to say: "We found that retail draft line contamination is rampant and that routine line cleaning methods are insufficient to efficiently suppress beer spoilage. Thus, many customers unknowingly consume spoiled versions of the beers they consume." This study identified the bacteria and yeast that were resident in retail draft beer samples and also investigated their abilities to colonize tubing material as members of biofilm communities.

Spoiled beer is the result of bacteria, and it can creates a more acidic and vinegar-like taste. If you’ve ever said to yourself, “Boy, this beer tastes like piss,” there’s a reason for that, and it’s dirty beer lines. Unless, of course, that beer is supposed to taste like garbage.

Aroma can also be diluted by dirty lines as well. Beer should smell good; whether it’s malty, hoppy, smoky, or nutty, there should be a pleasant fragrance emanating from your draft beer. If it’s completely gone, well, you might want to find a new watering hole.

Contaminated beer lines build up bacteria, which have the potential to lead to diarrhea, headaches, and nausea. Though getting sick from bad beer isn’t all that common, it’s frustratingly simple to prevent bad beer in the first place.

The most common bacteria to infect beer lines are Pediococcus and Lactobacillus, but also Obesumbacterium, Pectinatus, and Zymomonas. When lines aren’t clean, mold and mildew collect, turning them brown or black and encouraging growth. Plus, most beer lines are made of vinyl tubes, and because these tubes don’t have a perfectly smooth interior surface, bacteria can cling and accumulate easily. Diacetyl, a chemical found in beer which gives it its aroma, also has a tendency to accrue in beer lines rife with Pediococcus and Lactobacillus, creating a slick, slimy texture within the tubes.

Admittedly, this isn’t the main bacterial issue in bars, Most important is clean glassware above all. Here’s a tip to know if your pint glass is contaminated: “If you ever go to a bar and get a beer, you should not see any bubbles on the side of the glass. That means there’s some sort of contaminant on there. The yeast latches on to that food or that contaminant, creating the bubbles.

More bars should be cleaning their beer lines, and more bars should be embarrassed that they don’t. Sure, it’s a pain in the rear end, requiring a lot of disassembling, soaking, flushing, cleaning, and reassembling. Kegworks and the Brewers Association both recommend cleaning beer lines at least every two weeks; others believe it should be done weekly. Regardless, for the sake of draft beer enjoyers everywhere, it needs to get done.

Draught beers are unpasteurized and therefore is the best way to enjoy a beer as the brewmaster intended it.  If you do receive a beer poured from a dirty line, send it back. If this happens repeatedly, report that bar/restaurant to the beer distributor who will assuredly take care of it one way or the other.

The craft brewing industry is souring on beer festivals — and it's leading to an existential crisis.

The once ubiquitous and popular, major festivals nationwide are vanishing from the calendar this year amid tightening economic conditions and fatigue among fans. Others that remain are not selling out in minutes and drawing dozens of breweries and thousands of fans, as they did in the industry's pre-pandemic heydays.

It matters because festivals are showcases of craft beer's boom and key marketing opportunities for breweries, but their decline is the latest sign of trouble represented the industry's first static production year in memory other than COVID-plagued 2020.

Two premier festivals that draw the nation's best brewers, Breckenridge Big Beers and the WeldWerks Invitational, decided not to host the big price-tag events this year after seeing waning interest and rising costs for similar events nationwide. Earlier this year, the Oregon Brewers Festival — which started in 1988 and became one of the nation's largest — canceled its 2023 event and hit an indefinite pause amid falling attendance and tightening finances for breweries.

Case in point, the largest festival in the nation at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver did have an instant sell out as it often did in the past. In 2022, the festival shrunk in size, cutting tickets by 20,000 and hosting 300 fewer breweries. This year, the crowd was slightly smaller even with the $95 ticket prices being the same as last year.

GABF organizers have tried to stem the tide by making several changes in this year’s festival.  First, the GABF is allowing breweries on the floor to pour one beverage that is not beer, such as seltzer, kombucha, cider or mead. The change lifts a long-standing moratorium. Is that a sign of desperation?  Additionally, gluten-free and non-alcoholic beverage sections also are being added to appeal to a more health-conscious crowd though they are a tiny minority of those in attendance. Grasping at straws?

It seems clear that prior to 2020, the beer fest scene had become saturated and overrun by bad players in it just for the money, which was starting to create fatigue amongst attendees and brewers and turning many off from doing beer fests all together. Then the pandemic essentially shutdown all events, which pushed a bunch of people and venues out of work. Virtual fests did well for a bit but after about a year or so attendees and brewers got tired of those too. Everyone just wanted to get back to normal life.

And once everyone decided it was time to get back to normal life, we started to see some organizers assume that they could just do what they did in the before times. Nope. Most brewers now have less resources to play with, the cost of everything has gone up, and many consumers are being financially crushed. Charging $80 a ticket at a local festival is far too common.  Who could get any value from a price that high?

Should we mourn the loss of these mega-fests? Personally, I prefer small local beer festivals which are run by groups of passionate individuals who champion local beers. These warehouse style festivals lack the intimate feel that so many microbreweries rely on for their daily trade.

Overall, it seems to depend on who runs it. Every year, I’ve been going to a festival that is run by a distributor. The price has gone up nearly every year, while the quality has gone down. Paying more for less is not going to make it in today’s marketplace.

Sadly, at most of the stations at most of the current fests, the distributor will have their own people pouring.  Most know little or nothing about craft beer, including what they’re pouring.  The best stations were the ones that were run by the people affiliated with their breweries, in some cases the brewers themselves.  In short, too many festivals are more of a marketing exercise than an actual opportunity to sample beer.

Add it all up and there is no mystery in why we are seeing the decline and perhaps the demise of beer festivals. 

In recent years, canned and bottled beverages of every stripe have proliferated. Canned cocktails, hard seltzers, ciders, nonalcoholic beers, CBD drinks, and hop waters share shelf space with traditional beer. It can be hard to keep up. Changing consumer preferences, the high costs of doing business, and competitive pressure mean that the beer industry is not the retail big dog it once was. Beer once held a hefty lead in the market over other alcoholic drinks. Not anymore. Overall, the market shrank by 4 percent in volume last year, continuing a downward trend that began around 2015, and we’re now in the midst of one of the worst years so far since beer’s decline began.

Part of the reason for the contraction in beer-volume sales is that people are diversifying their alcohol consumption, adding drinks such as spirits to the rotation. Whereas beer prices have roughly tracked with inflation over the past 20 years, liquor has gotten relatively cheaper. For more than a decade, spirits have been gaining market share. Demographic shifts also tell part of the story: The American population is older than ever before. As Boomers age into retirement and Millennials enter their 40s, they are reaching for different drinks for different types of occasions. A retiree might enjoy an expensive bottle of wine with dinner, and a Millennial might mix cocktails for a birthday celebration.

The next generation is not waiting in the wings to replace them. Young people are just drinking less beer, and many seem to be buying less alcohol, in general. Those who are drinking have a panoply of options to choose from. No longer are college kids just guzzling Natty Light and slapping bags of Franzia. Now young people are turning 21 and entering a market filled with relatively affordable seltzers, canned cocktails, and ciders—not to mention nonalcoholic beverages. 

For those who do still drink beer, preferences are shifting in how much beer they want to buy and what kind. People are drinking less beer, but they are drinking higher-priced beer as some mass-produced beers have gotten more expensive, and pricier craft beer now occupies more of the market. Premium light beers have been losing market share for years.

Then, this spring, light beer got an unwelcome turn in the spotlight when a campaign to against Bud Light picked up steam. Consumers boycotted the beer after Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer, posted a promotional video for the brand on Instagram. That led to the unthinkabl, after 20 years as America’s best-selling beer, Bud Light was surpassed by Modelo. The real truth however is that was not totally unexpected—iit was a question of when, not if Modelo would reach the top, according to industry experts though the backlash accelerated the trend. For years, Modelo had been on track to surpass Bud Light as consumers began gravitating toward more expensive, imported beers.

The beverage sector will likely keep changing—or at least keep trying to change—to meet the moment. For many alcohol brands, that could look like adding seltzers and other canned delicacies to the mix. Anheuser-Busch now owns seltzer, canned-cocktail, and hard-tea brands. And in 2020, Molson Coors Brewing Company undertook a telling rebrand: It’s now called Molson Coors Beverage Company.

 Is the hand writing on the wall for the beginning of the end of the craft beer juggernaut? Yes seems to be the answer.

I sometimes trade beers.  No not in person, but by shipping them.  As It’s nearing the end of summer trading time will soon start in earnest. I’ve traded all over  North America and it’s a fun thing to do (at least a few times).  One of the problems in doing that is package delivery companies and USPS will not ship alcohol.  Now before you ask, I simply pack it well and tell them it is anything but alcohol.

That brings me to breweries.  Just 11 states and the District of Columbia legally permit breweries to ship their liquid wares directly to consumers. Just eleven states is, to put it mildly,  not a lot, especially not when you consider that 47 plus D.C. allow for Direct To Consumers (DTC) wine sales in some form.  How’s that for being disrespectful to beer?

The federal government has long considered certain “injurious articles” to be “nonmailable,” and that blacklist explicitly includes “all spirituous, vinous, malted, fermented, or other intoxicating liquors of any kind.” So even if you live in one of the few places that allows for DTC beer shipping, breweries must use FedEx, United Parcel Service (UPS), or another private logistics firm to deliver your order.

Frankly, I think this restriction is dumb. It’s outdated, unfair, and downright un-American. So I was pleased when a group of bipartisan federal lawmakers reached across the aisle with an attempt to revise this rule during the current Congressional session. The bill, known as the USPS Shipping Equity Act or H.R. 3721, is sponsored by Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) and Dan Newhouse (R-WA), and has a whole bunch of cosponsors in the House of Representatives. The bill is critical in leveling the playing field and increasing consumer and manufacturer choice while bringing in millions of dollars in revenue for the USPS. It’s win for all concerned.  That all sounds good, but here’s the thing: Various Congressmen, -women, and -persons have been trying to update this law for a while, without success. Just because H.R. 3721 is on the docket doesn’t mean it’ll go anywhere. 

When Prohibition ended, concern over alcohol suppliers’ vertical integration of the market — wherein they owned the brewery, the trucks, and the bars, known as jargon “tied houses” — created demand for a legal framework that would make that impossible. Thus, states were empowered to implement these three tiers as they saw fit, and they did, creating an idiosyncratic and at times idiotic patchwork of regulation across this (nominally federated) land. Fifth states, 50 ways of governing alcohol commerce. The feds, for their part, resigned themselves to limited administrative functions — label approvals, food safety guidelines, etc. — related to the hard drink trade. They also prolonged the pre-Prohibition kibosh on trafficking the stuff through one of the most awesome logistics engines in the known world: the Postal Service.

It’s been over 100 years since Prohibition began, and nearly 90 since its repeal. Mail-order catalogs have given way to the rise of e-commerce. And yet the prohibition on shipping booze by mail remains, hamstringing contemporary breweries that would like to mail their customers beer, and those customers who would like to buy beer by mail, like so many other goods. But in states where DTC beer sales are permitted, they must route their business through third-party carriers, enriching private shareholders and putting themselves at the whims of corporate coverage decisions far more capricious than the USPS’s “universal service obligations” to deliver mail regardless of profitability. Not only are breweries in the other 39 states not generating any of those sweet, sweet dollars to fund the commonweal (more on that in a moment), but they must go through traditional distributors to sell beer thanks to the three-tier system. (Mostly, in most places; there are a lot of little state-by-state quirks that I don’t care to litigate here.)

There’s your unfair part. Americans can buy all sorts of sh*t online, from cars to sex toys, but not beer. The passage of H.R. 3721 wouldn’t magically enable breweries to spin up e-commerce divisions that allow them to bypass the other two tiers and sell directly to their customers, but it would be a step in that direction. It’s a more fair direction!

Opponents of measures to loosen rules about DTC shipping often raise the concern that underage drinkers would more easily be able to get ahold of beer if they could order it online and take delivery by mail. Do we really think teenagers en masse are going to start ordering $28 4-packs of double dry-hopped IPAs from out-of-state hazecanneries weeks in advance of homecoming? Honestly?  Besides,  according to the bill, the purchaser has “to present a government-issued photo identification at the time of delivery.”

Will this be the year our dear lawmakers finally lift the moratorium on mailing “spirituous, vinous, malted, fermented, or other intoxicating liquors”? It remains to be seen so if you think a change must be made then contact your Congressperson and Senator now!

The face of the beer bottle may soon change under a petition filed by several consumer advocacy groups with the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). In response to the petition, is considering some controversial changes to the labels on beverage alcohol containers sold in the United States. Offered by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and the National Consumers League (NCL), the petition covers issues ranging from ingredient lists, alcohol information, and a new government caution. Far from presenting the typical united front against the proposed changes, the beverage alcohol industry is divided in their approach to the petition. I"m not.  Its time to change the law - NOW!

he petitioners asked the TTB to require beverage alcohol labels to include the product's alcohol content, the serving size of the container, the amount of alcohol and calories per serving, list of ingredients (including additives), the number of standard drinks per container, and a governmental opinion as to moderate drinking for men and women.  he petitioners argue that providing consumers with this additional information will help them make more informed choices about their consumption of alcohol and help those who are allergic to some ingredients and additives. The petitioners also cited, without providing a source, that such new labeling would help reduce consumer confusion over the different types of beverage alcohol and the amounts of alcohol in each product.

The TTB is considering several proposals that will specifically affect brewers. For products, such as wheat beers, where the name of the beer itself clearly identifies the allergen, the TTB is deciding whether a separate warning should also be required. The agency is also considering whether to require the inclusion of fining agents, including isinglass (a protein from the swim bladders of fish), which are either filtered out of the final product or are not a primary ingredient. Just why are some brewers against this information that will help in making a buying decision for many people?  What are they afraid of?  Well, for allergens, brewers say  they are concerned that they may be required to undertake expensive package redesigns to alert consumers to ingredients, such as finings, that bear no chance of harming them.  Huh?  Breweries are constantly changing labels already with new designs and pictures.

The TTB is now again exploring whether it should allow or require producers to include certain nutritional information on labels, similar to the 'Nutrition Facts' information boxes found on most consumer food items. The new rules could provide for the inclusion of serving sizes, calorie, carbohydrate, protein, and fat levels, and the number of ounces of alcohol in each bottle. The proposed changes would bring alcohol labeling more in line with that of the food and beverage products regulated separately by the FDA.  Many brewers have opposed this basic right of a consumer to know what is in a product.

By far the most controversial and inherently political element of the petition is the request that labels contain detailed information about alcohol levels, serving sizes, and recommended amounts of consumption. While the petition's proposed label would include relatively innocuous "alcohol facts" and statements, such as the beverage's alcohol by volume and the amount of alcohol in terms of fluid ounces, it also includes an icon relating the number of standard drinks per container and the U.S. Dietary Guidelines advice on moderate drinking for men and women. This is yet another change brewers are lobbying against.

he controversy over the 'Alcohol Facts' label centers around the concept of the 'standard drink,' a somewhat variable measure of calculating the pure beverage alcohol level of each product. Usually expressed in terms of beer, wine, and spirits, the concept is often used abroad on labels to represent a drink's alcohol level. Industry disagreement finds its origins in the protean nature of the concept. The definition of a standard drink varies significantly from nation to nation, ranging from a low of 10 milliliters of alcohol in the United Kingdom (where a five-percent a.b.v pint would register as 2.84 standard drinks) to a high of 25 milliliters in Japan (where the same pint would average just over 1 standard drink).

Currently, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, a “serving” is defined as 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, and 1.5 ounces of 80-proof distilled spirits. Beer and wine industry representatives deny that their products have a standard drink equivalent to spirits-based beverages.  Their reasons for this position are not hare to figure out.  If serving sizes aren’t on a label people will tend to drink more, increasing the brewers profit.

he TTB is expected to decide on whether to undertake the formal rulemaking process sometime later this year. In the interim, brewers are weighing the financial impacts of the proposed labeling regulations. According to the Brewers Association, which conducted an informal survey of its members, label redesigns and new equipment purchases could cost small brewers more than $100 million. No one outside the group can figure out how they arrived at that number. 

Its al a smokescreen.  Change the law to further protect consumers.

Most beer enthusiasts would agree that it tastes better on tap than in cans or bottles. Between the relative freshness and the real-time carbonation that’s applied as it’s poured, tap beer has a special energy that beer from a can or a bottle inherently lacks. But while the beer on tap might taste better, many of us can’t help wonder how clean the whole system really is at some establishments—and what possible hazardous (or just plain gross) contaminants a tap might be funneling into our glass. After all, we can’t see inside the tap from our seats, so is there any way for us to know for sure?Here’s what you really need to know about the whole tap-beer system and how to tell if your beer is incredibly dirty or actually clean. 

The cleanliness of tap beer depends on more than the tap it flows from. It’s affected by the entire draft system that pumps the beer from keg to spigot, including the cleanliness of the cellar floor that the keg sits on and the beer lines run along. The lines have connection points where bacteria and mold from the cellar floor can enter the system.

The two parts of the beer system that build up residue the fastest are the floors of the cellar and the couplers, or the pieces that join the air and beer lines to the keg. These...tend to get overlooked by bar managers and owners. So in reality, the cleanliness of the actual tap might be the least of your worries.

Many different types of residue can build up in an uncleaned draft system, and all that residue can show up in your beer. If beer lines and taps aren’t cleaned regularly, they may dispense beer contaminated with yeast, mold, bacteria, and mineral deposits. Some of these, like the mineral deposits, may actually manifest as visible particles floating in your pint glass. Others, like the bacteria or yeast, are completely invisible. 

While the FDA may have strong guidelines for cleaning equipment like soft serve machines, they are suspiciously vague on the subject of beer-line cleaning.  According to the FDA Food code bars are required to clean beer lines “'at a frequency necessary to preclude an accumulation of soil or mold,'”  This nebulous recommendation leaves the field wide open for bars and restaurants to clean as often or as little as they want. The latter is more likely.

The Brewer’s Association is more specific, recommending that all beer lines be cleaned at least every two weeks. But the Brewer’s Association is not an enforcement agency, so in practical terms, this is nothing more than a strong suggestion. So just to be clear, there’s very little actual enforcement at work to ensure that someone is actually cleaning the beer lines regularly. No wonder people are nervous! 

While sitting at the bar, you couldn’t possibly inspect the whole beer system for contamination, but that doesn’t mean you can't tell if there's a problem. Beer from a dirty line will taste flat even though it was just poured and have uncharacteristic musty or funky smells.

If the line is dirty enough, the built-up residue may even start flaking off into your beer and you’ll see “little bits floating in your beer after it's just been pulled. That happens only in extreme cases, but even if the lines haven’t quite reached that point, you’ll still be able to tell by the flavor and lack of carbonation. In other words, even if you can’t see it, you'll know when you taste it.  

And when that happens cross that bar off your list never to return.

Craft beer remains an expensive endeavor. As in any industry, smaller businesses can’t compete with larger companies on pricing. In beer, the independent breweries that come close—such as Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. and Boston Beer Co.,—rely on economies of scale, enormous product turnover, and placements in mainstream retail. Still, they don’t approach the price points of, say, Budweiser, or Miller Lite. With or without favorable contracts, hops remain enormously expensive (even more so if you’re looking for more covetable and sought-after varieties), and specialty malts and ingredients like high-quality fruit add to the cost. 

Craft beer was never intended to compete on price, though. Instead, the sector’s reputation for quality and creativity has been used to justify its higher price tags to consumers. The key is convincing new drinkers that their experience is going to be good enough to merit the few extra bucks—a problem that is becoming more apparent.

Craft beer’s sales, production volumes, and market share have fallen last year and continues to move in that direction this year.  As many drinkers’ purse strings inflation, craft beer urgently needs to make the case—to wider audiences, communities, and cultures than it has historically spoken to—that the enjoyment it offers is worth the sticker price.

 Little of the work to convert potential drinkers takes place on neutral ground for the uninitiated. Relying on niche shops or bars as industry evangelists means struggling to reach those who are unfamiliar with such spaces. Put it this way: If you’re trying to convince me that mountain biking should be for me, and you’re expecting me to step into a bike shop to be convinced, it’s likely not going to happen. How, then, can craft beer more actively pursue new avenues, and cater to new demographics?

For that value proposition to truly work, the beer has to be good. That it often isn’t is one of the industry’s most trenchant problems. A great deal of the pitch that craft beer makes to the public is in opposition to macro beer. If you have to define your product by what it isn’t, you don’t have a product. Local beer doesn’t taste better if the beer isn’t good. There’s nothing craft about beer that’s inconsistent, and on occasion, undrinkable. The fact is that too many small breweries fail to prioritize quality-assurance processes, lab testing, sensory training, and other educational practices for their staff.

The fact that so much of the marketing is based around IBUs and throwing stupid things into mash tuns makes craft beer look like an unprofessional side project for a bunch of trust-funded dudes. But craft beer as an industry has decided that these are the things it has to do to survive. Things under-attenuated beers, and ones that are little more than mango nectar with some alcohol in it doesn’t scream ‘craftsmanship.’

It's time stop the burgeoning mediocrity in craft beer.  With over 9,700 craft breweries in the country it’s no surprise that many are alike in producing beers that are mind numbingly similar and simply not that good.  For craft to continue to grow the product must too.

Paper Straws & ABC Laws  

by Ty Webb

Only in New Jersey can there be a group of less than 150 companies in one industry that can't seem to get on the same page.

We are less than 60 days out from New Jersey brewery license renewals and there hasn't been a single thing that has changed since the ABC dropped this bombshell before 4th of July weekend (knowing the Legislature would be out of session).

It's time to give a little closer look into why we are where we are. In my opinion, it appears to be a mix of inaction coupled with too many competing interests causing said inaction.

The easy response is, "that's just Jersey" -- but if you go under the surface a little deeper, there's probably a few things that could have been done. As a consumer, why not address a few observations.

It's my opinion "Tier 1" breweries do not have the concerns like the majority of other breweries in the state, so they were not going to throw their weight around and try to overturn the state which could potentially compromise other future opportunities. They don't care if you could have a guitar player, trivia night or do anything remotely fun on premises. They "succeeded" based on their beer, which eventually lead to a significant distribution pipeline statewide. Let's not forget there were VERY few breweries 10 years ago. That was a huge plus too.

I don't have a formal definition of "Tier 1," but you can reasonably assume they've been around for a decade or more, They are significantly large, distribute across the state, and just so happen not to have events. Keep that in mind. A few smaller breweries may fall into this category based on popularity, or behind the scenes, political clout. Keep that in mind as well.

The remaining breweries you could classify in two or three groups, but it really doesn't matter. I think it's obvious that at the lower end of the spectrum, you have brand new start ups that are just trying to get by, are still painting walls, and trying to get some foot traffic in the door. So if you remove "Tier 1" and the latter, you have what seems to be the majority of NJ breweries. Let's not try to dissect 150 breweries into 17 different categories. That would be way too Jersey.

You have to wonder why only one brewery in the entire state decided to sue the ABC. Why? Is it because no one had the money to fund a legal defense fund? Not sure. Is it because smaller breweries were waiting for the bigger folks to step up and they didn't? Quite possibly.

Let's revisit what has happened since July 1, 2022, and let's see if any these "reactive" decisions had any effect on moving the needle.

There was a nice petition that was signed by upwards of 15,000+ people, and that went nowhere. Then came the meme wars, which were quite funny, but were as useful as a paper straw.

Then we saw article after article with quotes from state representatives on both sides of the aisle saying how this needs to be changed that needs to be changed. And then nothing happened.

There were a few hearings, there were a few mentions, there were some ridiculously soft articles were bar owners parroted statements to the effect of "we don't want breweries to be bars." Of course, no journalist anywhere had the ability to add to that statement by explaining all the different things that breweries can't do right now, or at least throw in a counterpoint. I guess we know who backed those articles.

Governor Murphy was asked if he could change the restrictions and his response was a whopping "I can't." Again, if only we had a single journalist with the ability to ask a follow-up question like "why?"

We clicked on links that were eventually going to some of our elected officials with a pre-filled paragraph about how we're all craft beer drinkers and we believe this is unfair. Paper straw, part 2.

Then, in typical New Jersey politician fashion, Governor Murphy decided that the arcane liquor license system needs to be overhauled. Let's completely ignore the fact that breweries are getting crippled based on regulations that were never open for comments and which are completely arbitrary. No. Murphy NOW wants to tackle something which has never been able to be regulated properly before, while the clock ticks.

It was a great sleight of hand, but it only takes a few hands of street 3 Card Monte to figure it out.

Let's move away from the breweries and talk about the fact there's not enough liquor licenses. Sure. As if those holding liquor licenses are ever going to allow more liquor licenses to dilute their governmentally backed investment. What a joke, but it dropped at the right time enough to change the conversation topic.

"Squirrel!!"

If you've had a chance to read the briefs in the DOTF lawsuit, you'd get to see the ABC arguing out of both side of their mouth. It's quite humorous, but the scary part is nothing is going to change before 7/1/23. I wish I was wrong.

And as we are a year plus into the first "drop" of those regulations, I think we've only begun to see the sketch of the ABC. With the summer coming up, this is exactly the opportunity to kick out the knees of the breweries a second time even earlier than last year. They were hit on 4th of July. They were hit on Labor Day. They were hit at Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's. Now, hit them before Memorial Day.

If there were some Legislative movement in December or January, the bar and restaurant lobby would be a little more concerned, but now they know they have nothing to worry about because come July 1, those politicians will be on their fishing boats on the Navesink or vacationing in Nantucket without a single concern for New Jersey breweries. And the blame game will repeat itself.

Does brewery leadership now need to come from the middle? Who is that person or who are those people? Who best represents the actual interests of the New Jersey brewing industry as currently situated?

Is it a stretch to say those with the largest pull chose not to ruffle the ABC's feathers? Seems like it to me.

As a consumer, it blows me away when I sit in tasting rooms and hear that patrons have no idea what's going on in the state. So how can breweries better educate those who walk in their doors?

Maybe it's time to start boycotting certain bars. The problem is no one wants to stick their neck out if a potential future distribution line would be severed from doing so.

I hate to make this bold prediction, but if you thought last year was bad, this is going to be a horrific summer for New Jersey breweries. Once the "stakeholders" knew they were out of the clear from any real Legislative action, it's time for them to turn the screws even more. I'm quite certain the Appellate Division won't render a decision until after 7/1. Bank on it.

In case you were wondering, a paper straw does not function as a screw removal tool. 

The three-tier system refers to how the product is procured. The manufacturer is forced to sell to a wholesaler (distributor)  who sells the products to the retailer, who then sells them to the public. Distributors have built local fiefdoms and dynastic fortunes on the premise that they must broker alcohol sales in the bureaucratic badlands between supplier and retailer, lest society crumble into a pre-Prohibition hellscape of tied houses and toxic hooch. They enjoy favorable franchise laws and the advantages of incumbency (considerable, in such a capital-intensive line of work as refrigerated logistics.) They spend lavishly on lobbying at both the federal and state level to preserve that privilege, further corrupting our flailing governments as they launder economic capital into political power. If I sound unsympathetic to the notion that some middle tier players may suffer a bit you're right.

Tthe fact of the matter is that some distributors have long since morphed from sovereign agents to sinecured middlemen — or the type of oligopolistic heavyweights they were meant to preempt. Those firms’ self-serving behavior has an outsized impact on regulators’ overall perception of the middle tier, and there’s a lot of it to go around. Upstream and well prior to the arrival of the latest moral-panic-inducing FMB, entrenched distributors have run schemes aplenty to enrich themselves at the expense of the rule of law and the beer budget of the American drinking public.

The preferred graft is “pay-to-play” — wholesalers making payments in-kind or (gasp!) in cash under the table to retailers in exchange for taplines, shelf space, and other preferential treatment over competitors. This payola gambit is an “open secret” in the beverage-alcohol industry the way Kim Kardashian’s sex tape is an “open secret” in her career — widely available, slightly salacious, and more of a feature than a bug. Retailers, comfortably beyond the purview of the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) and mostly unbothered by understaffed state enforcement bodies, are typically the recipients of this largesse. Sometimes they solicit it, sometimes they demand it, sometimes they’re just glad to accept it, all of which makes them bad in ways that exceed the scope of this column. So for now, let’s just focus on the beer distributors doing the paying.

According to a 2020 TTB report, of the 39 cases the agency resolved over the previous two years, a majority involved distributors. Its February 2022 report on competitiveness in the U.S. beverage-alcohol industry dedicated sections to both pay-to-play schemes and the controversial practice of “category management,” another popular avenue for kickbacks. The agency also flagged concerns over consolidation in the middle tier, as big wholesalers like Southern Glazer’s and Reyes Beer Division (the country’s seventh-largest privately held company) buy up smaller, independent operations and use the added market power to undercut the rest.

I don’t think the middle tier, for all its warts, ought to be completely disbanded, either. Good beer distributors serve legitimate logistical and financial functions to both sides of a healthy market. But when state legislators and regulators look for someone to chokeslam — figuratively speaking, of course — over the beer industry’s “shitcannery,” I hope they don’t overlook the middle tier. People usually do.

Bottles have all but disappeared in a sea of aluminum, and even the most adjunct-packed beer, pushing 12 % ABV, now comes in 16 ounces. Blame (or thank?) beers like The Alchemist’s Heady Topper. For decades, craft breweries stuck to bottles as a way to buck consumers’ associations between cans and the cheap macro beers they grew up in opposition to. But, as co-founder John Kimmich told a Vermont newspaper, when The Alchemist was bulking up production in 2011, he chose to can his brews in an effort to strike pretension from craft beer. LIke some of the other breweries who were breaking from 12- and 22-ounce bottles at the time, it was also about efficiency and the desire to give craft beer its own look. How it came to dominate craft beer from there is simple: Because sought-after beers appeared in 16-ounce cans, 16-ounce cans became inextricably linked with craft beer in all of its “better than macro lager” glory. 

But is that a good thing? Were brewers so focused on differentiating craft beer that they overlooked all the reasons a 12-ounce can is superior? After all, there’s a reason the 12-ouncer had become the ubiquitous vessel pre-craft revolution. It’s a more approachable serving size, making it easier to throw back light beers or indulge in a heavier, stronger beer without instantly feeling full or hungover the next day. It’s wallet-friendlier, considering 12-ounce cans often come in six-packs and 16-ounce cans in four-packs—72 ounces versus 64 ounces. And, crucially, it promises a better drinking experience from first to last sip.  The bottom line is often a 16-ounce just takes too long to drink and it warms, depletes carbonation and loses balance.

Still, 16 ounce cans have better costs for breweries, provide the opportunity to get beers into entertainment and sports venues (which usually don’t want smaller cans) and bigger cans mean bigger canvases for the brewery’s label art. 

 For the average beer drinker, the pros of the 12-ounce can often make the choice seem exasperatingly simple. But for breweries, it’s more complicated. Sixteen-ounce four-packs provide a better margin to brewers and thus more flexibility on recipe cost since you need 8 less ounces, two less cans, and get to sell six units to a case,. And while 12-ounce cans are capable of attracting more mainstream drinkers, craft consumers are accustomed to the higher price tags on four-packs of 16-ouncers. 

Many beer drinkers want lower-ABV, easy-drinking lagers in taller cans, and heavier, higher-ABV IPAs and stouts in smaller cans.  For example, Lawson’s Finest Liquids in Vermont weighs ABV and style here. Two of its beers, clocking in at 10 percent ABV, go in 12-ounce cans to moderate alcohol consumption, The sub-5 percent ABV Scrag Mountain Pils, however, comes in both 12 ounces and 16, because traditionally, a light pilsner is packaged in 12-ounce cans so you can drink more than one at a time more easily.

 Aamid the craft beer industry’s current crush of competition, high supply costs and changing consumer preferences, many breweries are looking to get a value option on shelves. A current swell of nostalgia, reminiscent of PBR’s hipsterfication a decade ago, makes this an ideal time to attract drinkers with branding and packaging (like 15-packs) inspired by regional lagers of generations past.

Other formats even smaller than 12 ounces have begun to spring up sporadically, from the practicality of Evil Twin’s boozy barrel-aged stouts in 8-ounce cans to Hopewell Brewing’s popular Lil Buddy, a 4.2 percent lager canned as an 8-ouncer.

The four-pack’s cost benefits for breweries, aluminum can shortages (making it tough for breweries to order different sizes) and the fact that not every brewery has the ability to flex sizes on their canning lines will continue to ensure that 16 ounces is the norm. But that’s a shame, because the humble 12-ounce can is the true platonic ideal for a beer serving size—a way to enjoy more beers, in more styles, without a warm blech of the last few sips.  

The whole IBU measure is grossly misused and if you walk into a pub/brewery that is advertising an 85 - 100+ IBU beer, you can be pretty certain they are full of it. Yes, there is a small chance they are for real, but unless they are using hop extracts to brew their beer, it's all baloney. 

This seems to be a pretty bold claim to make. After all, who am I to tell them they are presenting ‘alternate facts’ about their beer, given that I have never been to their fine establishment, nor tasted their fine octuple IPAs? Nobody, really. Except that I know a thing or two about chemistry and where the IBU measurement comes from. 

So, what is an IBU? Well, it’s an acronym for International Bittering Unit. It’s a measure of the concentration of bittering compounds that are found in beer. One IBU is equivalent to 1 milligram of bittering compounds per liter of beer. So, where do these bittering compounds come from? Hops, of course. But, here’s the sticky part. Hops don’t actually have the compounds that make beer bitter. They only have the precursors (building blocks) of those. For those in the homebrew scene, you already know this. This is why you put in hops and boil them for 45-60 minutes when making your lovingly crafted homebrew. The heat in the boil kettle converts the precursor molecules into the bitterness producing compounds over time. The compounds known as ‘alpha acids’ are converted into ‘iso-alpha acids.

Names, complicated pictures, and scientific mumbo-jumbo aside, the concentration of iso-alpha acids is directly related to the bitterness of a beer. The more hops you put in a beer, the more alpha acids there are. The more alpha acids you start with, the more iso-alpha acids you can produce. The more iso-alpha acids, the more bitter the beer and the bigger IBU number you get to put on that chalkboard over the taps.

But, here’s where the rub comes. Most brewers estimate their bitterness based on the amount of hops they put in, ASSUMING that all the alpha acids get converted to iso-alpha acids. For regular beers, this is a pretty good assumption. But, for big, hop heavy, would-be IBU kings, that assumption comes crashing down faster than a backyard jenga game played by drunk hipsters.

Two things kill this association: solubility and degradation. 

First up, solubility. Solubility is the measure of how much of any chemical you can add to a specific volume of solvent. Here, the ‘solvent’ is our beer. (Technically, it’s the wort before fermentation, but let’s not get picky.)  It turns out alpha acids are really poorly soluble. So, I don’t care how many hops you throw in your beer, you will only dissolve a certain amount of alpha acids in it. If that is limited, then the amount you can make into the bitter iso-alpha acids is also limited. Guess what? That limit is well below the amount it takes to get to 100 IBU.  But, wait! Doesn’t that mean that we could only produce beers with 6-10 IBU? No, as it turns out. If that were true, IPAs would be only a dream. Thank goodness that’s not the case! 

While we can only have a few milligrams of alpha acids per liter, once we heat them and convert them to iso-alpha acids, then we can extract more alpha acids from our hops. Thankfully for us, the iso-alpha acid solubility limit is WAY higher than 6-10 milligrams per liter. 

Now the story depends on the chemistry phenomenon known as kinetics. Kinetics tells you how fast a reaction goes and how fast you can produce a chemical you want – or one you don’t want. So here, we have a race going on. We are dissolving alpha acids and they are being made into iso-alpha acids. That’s good! Our IPA is becoming more bitter. But, as soon as we make iso-alpha acids, the heat that is part of our brewing process also starts breaking the iso-alpha acids apart into things that are not bitter any more. That’s bad. Our IPA is becoming less IPA-like.

At the end of the day, we essentially have two competing reactions. One that makes bitter compounds and one that removes them. The interesting thing is that each of those reactions goes faster as more of the chemical involved is present. So, add more hops and you have more alpha acids and you make more iso-alpha acids, you make them faster, and your beer gets more bitter. Yay! IPA here we come! 

So, next time you wander into your favorite pub and they are advertising an 100+ IBU beer, rest assured that it will still be a hop bomb. However, don’t think that the 110 IBU beer is any different than the 100 IBU or 90 IBU beer either. They all are at the limit of what a brewer can do and they will all effectively be the same level of bitterness. You may perceive the bitterness differently, though, based on  other factors like the malt level, salt concentration, age and whatnot. That’s another topic for another day, though. 

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Based on an article by Will Deutschman  

Did you ever notice that there are a number of recurrences or repeating themes within our lives?  A new friend, for example, might look and sound almost exactly like an old friend, even though you are certain, or nearly so, that they are in fact different people. Settings and locations can appear to repeat, especially in the unoriginal design of many modern bars and taprooms. No matter how carefully you try to live your life, it’s common to find yourself in personal or professional situations that resemble previous scenarios, as if the tapestry of our time on Earth is composed of just a few clearly recurring patterns. In my own life, I’ve noticed that I have frequently had almost the exact same conversation with different brewers, in different countries and in different years. It usually starts when I ask, “Why do you brew so many beers?”

Brewing loads of different beers is not a very original proposition, of course. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard folks from breweries—generally new breweries—say things like, “We pride ourselves on brewing a huge variety of styles,” or even, “We’ve never brewed the same beer twice,” which makes you want to ask, then, if any of them were good. (If the answer is yes, why not brew them again? If the answer is no, you are probably due for a career change.) High numbers are common almost everywhere. 

As far as I can tell, most of the greatest breweries didn’t achieve success by brewing hundreds of new styles. The biggest names in brewing history—Guinness, Pilsner Urquell, Bass, even brands like Heineken and Carlsberg—got there largely on the back of a single beer or type of beer, rather than the near-infinite variety of a new style every week. Even Sierra Nevada, hardly a tradition-bound brand, achieved much of its success because of its best-selling Pale Ale. 

The question the brewer asked in return was simple: But why shouldn’t we brew a new style every week?

Unlike most of my conversations, I didn’t have a well-rehearsed response ready. It took me a few months of reflection to realize why I don’t like even hearing about breweries that are putting out 130 or even just 50 new beers in a year, to say nothing of writing about them. It’s because I think they are wasting resources, including perhaps the most important resource of all.

I don’t mean hops, although modern craft brewers certainly have bumped up against the law of diminishing returns in terms of hopping rates. I don’t mean water, either, although water conservation should be a major concern for all of us at this point. What I’m thinking of is a nearly impossible-to-renew resource for most of human civilization: our attention.

Just like anyone who makes anything, every brewery is, at some level, asking for attention: attention from consumers; from vendors, distributors, and other business partners; from society; even from lowly journalists and critics. Attention is one of the many forms of exchange that take place between a brewery and its public. Although there are more obvious examples—like paying cash for a four-pack or sampling a beer and then leaving a rating on Untappd—the very first transaction between a maker with goods for sale and any potential audience is one of attention. This payment of attention is not for nothing: In the end, it is supposed to be worth it for the customer. There is, after all, a finite amount of attention anyone is capable of giving. 

My personal problem with breweries that make 50 or more new beers each year is that they seem to be asking for more attention than they deserve—they are asking for more than their fair share. If attention really is a limited resource, this is not very different from a brewery that takes more than its fair share of water or hops.  

the next time brewers ask me why they shouldn’t brew 50 or 100 new beers per year, I’ll have my pat, well-rehearsed answer at the ready: I’ll tell them it’s a waste of consumers’ time and attention. I’ll try to convince them that they should be brewing the best beers they can make, not the most beers they can make. I’ll argue that drinkers who are turned off by one gimmicky beer of the week might never return. 

The KISS principle is worth something after all: keep it simple, stupid.

This year has been a mediocre one for beer sales. But amidst the gloom, non-alcoholic (NA) beer has emerged as a niche that’s actually growing—albeit from a very small base of 0.4% of chain retail beer volume three years ago to 0.6% in 2022. Whether it’s retailers expanding their NA selections or mainstream media headlines about an NA beer boom, the message is clear: If breweries get NA beers on shelves now, there’s success to be had in a growing category, especially as we enter Dry January.  

But there’s a hitch. 

• A lack of ethanol in non-alcoholic beer means it’s harder to shelf stabilize than standard beer because it lacks alcohol’s antimicrobial properties.

• What makes this a particular challenge is there’s little consensus among beer makers on how to make these beers shelf-stable for long periods of time without forming off-flavors from microorganisms.   

• With no single agreed-upon process to ensure a shelf-stable product, brewers have taken varied approaches to prevent refermentation or spoilage in their cans—with mixed results.

Additionally, many NA breweries claim their production and quality assurance methods are “proprietary” and won’t share details publicly. So, while NA beer makers continue to tout the category as the next big thing, a minority of brands both large and small have encountered quality issues that have spoiled their beer and—in at least one instance—led to discontinuation of a brand.

These issues have not made drinkers sick so far, but who knows what will happen in the future. But quality problems—and contested advice on how to solve them—potentially hinder the overall growth of a category that is still fighting for mainstream acceptance and more consumer buy-in. And if people do get sick it could be the end of the category.

As non-alcoholic beer has grown rapidly, there’s plenty of interest from stores to get more brands on shelves and into shopping carts. But a lack of procedural consensus about how producers should stabilize their beers has created speed bumps.  For example, Durango, Colorado’s Bootstrap Brewing discontinued its two NA beers,, late this summer after less than two years in the market.

Even Deschutes Brewery, the eleventh-largest Brewers Association (BA)-defined craft brewery in the U.S., admits it experienced “some quality control issues over the summer” related to latent carbon dioxide levels in its NA Black Butte Porter. Deschutes isolated and destroyed the affected beer remaining at the brewery or packages sold through its direct-to-consumer program. In addition to the contract brewing partner it was already using for those beers that were recalled 

In the highest-profile recent example of NA beer quality issues, Diageo recalled Guinness 0.0 in the U.K. in November 2020 after announcing it had found “a microbiological contamination which may make some cans of Guinness 0.0 unsafe to consume." It took the company six months to relaunch the product.

Beer, even the kind with alcohol, isn’t always refrigerated through its journey from brewery to drinkers’ homes. It can be stored warm at distributors’ warehouses, retail stores, and in consumers’ pantries for months. The snag for non-alcoholic beer in particular is that ambient temperatures can hasten the proliferation of yeast or bacteria—without any alcohol to impede their growth—leading to off flavors and maybe more.

The Brewers Association says it was aware of “anecdotal accounts of biological activity” in cans of non-alcoholic beer at retail this summer, but declined to say which breweries were affected. According to Chuck Skypeck, the BA’s technical brewing projects manager, the activity led to a visual change as cans bulged. Contaminant bacteria or residual brewer’s yeast continuing to create carbon dioxide could cause this bulging and create varied, unwanted smells and tastes. Residual fermentation could also potentially cause a higher-than-labeled ABV. This is similar to what happens when sugars in fruit puree interact with living yeast, and in the past, the BA has suggested voluntary market withdrawals or recalls. 

Pasteurization is considered the most effective method for eliminating unwanted microbes in beverages and is widely used across many drink categories, including beer. At the most basic level, pasteurization briefly heats liquid to a temperature high enough to kill yeast and bacteria, ensuring longer shelf life and consistent taste. Milk, orange juice, and many beers sold in grocery stores are all pasteurized for this reason. 

Some leading NA beer producers, including Athletic Brewing Company and Ceria Brewing Company, say pasteurization is the only reliable method to ensure a totally shelf-stable, non-alcoholic beer. In particular, they tout tunnel pasteurization, which pasteurizes the liquid and its packaging. It’s the most effective solution, but a tunnel pasteurizer is also expensive, at a cost of close to $1 million. Many non-alcoholic beer producers rely on contract packagers (called co-packers) rather than packaging their own liquid; those co-packers may or may not employ tunnel pasteurization, with many more on the not side.

Some critics of pasteurization say the process zaps flavorful compounds from beer and results in a product with less taste. Others say the biggest NA beer manufacturers champion tunnel pasteurization as a gatekeeping measure to keep smaller producers with less funding out of the game.  

even Louis Pasteur fought to pasteurize beer as far back as 1871. In the last decade, Goose Island Beer Company and Deschutes both had to publicly explain their decisions to pasteurize barrel-aged Stouts to prevent infections. And for years, Anchor Brewing has had to defend its practice of pasteurizing beers, 

Even its critics can admit that what pasteurization has going for it is its virtual guarantee of shelf stability. Other processes can be effective, but they’re more variable—and tend to be kept close to the vest. This creates a scenario in which non-alcoholic beer makers give assurances that their processes are just as effective as pasteurization, but also cite “proprietary methods” as a reason for not divulging full details.

It leaves drinkers largely in the dark about how their NA beer is made.

New non-alcoholic beer brands have done more to drive consumer interest and retailer attention in the category than anything else: It’s relatively new NA brands that have greatly influenced sales, including NA beers from Athletic, Heineken 0.0, Budweiser Zero, and Lagunitas IPNA. Having a variety of NA beer choices with better flavor than what came before is the hook for the entire category’s growth. Quality concerns would hobble these efforts at a critical inflection point for NA beer.  

As for we consumers, we just don't want to get sick.

"Unpopular Opinions About the State of NJ Craft Beer”

By now, you've read enough articles about the ABC regulatory chokehold.

You've seen enough memes. You've seen enough FB links to send pre-filled messages to your local representatives, State senators and Governor Murphy. You've seen resolutions passed in certain towns voicing their displeasure about these new conditions. You've seen politicians take photo ops at breweries. Some have beer in their glasses, while some don't. You've heard them talk about how they believe this is “unfair.” Lots of great sound bites and quotes have been captured since July. We’ve even seen a brewery collaboration begin.

It's mid-November. Is any of this helping?

To start, these restrictions were dropped a few days before July 4th weekend, knowing that the Legislature was out of session. The liquor lobby was playing dirty from the start. Yet, you didn't hear a single politician opposing these regulations call out that tactic. It was calculated silence.  

All of the above reactions to the "new" restrictions sounds to me like wishful thinking that won't facilitate any change. Sure, it looks good on paper. If you think there's going to be drastic changes helping breweries by the time you light your Menorah or wait for Santa's fat ass to come down the chimney, I've got news for you. It's not happening. The sad part is hearing about local breweries bashing other local breweries now. That's business cannibalism at its best, and it’s all part of the “plan.”

We've seen an appeal by 1 brewery out of 140. Kudos to them. I'm more curious to know how we got here, and it's probably worth stating the first unpopular opinion that New Jersey breweries are clearly fractured in their interests. It pains me to say that.

As an outside observer, I can only surmise that if you have 140 breweries, two guilds and a number of breweries that are not members of either, there's clearly something going on.

Time for some more unpopular opinions.

When you have a chance, think about some of the largest breweries in the state, then go back to their social media pages and see if you can find any discussion/criticism of the ABC's ruling in late June. I'll wait.

Interesting right? It's not just limited to the big boys either. There's a handful of small to midsize, quite "popular" breweries that went dead silent as well. Was it because their social media page wasn't working for the last five months? Is it because some established breweries are hoping other breweries fail because they never anticipated this kind of growth? Maybe. Maybe not. Just think about it for a hot second before you drop $20 on that next 4 pack - unless that doesn't matter.  

It's obvious there was a collective of industry folks who were having discussions with the ABC during the initial regulatory framework in 2019 and in some fashion, in 2022. Exactly who all of those folks are remains a mystery to me. Maybe the appeal will bring this to light. Maybe someone will obtain documents from the ABC that reveal those communications and finally identifies what exactly was going with whom and when (prepositions be damned!).

How is it possible that 140 companies in the same industry can't get on the same page? We already know 6000 bars and restaurants have an impressively strong lobby system protecting our arcane liquor laws. After all, where else can you purchase something and never lose money on it, despite market fluctuations? And when times get rough, they can bust kneecaps at will to make sure that investment never loses value. If a brewery goes under, you think a bar cares?

The short answer is that there's too many breweries of varying sizes and vintages. Thus, their interests are not “aligned.” I hope that’s the best answer why they can't come together now.  I'm sure there's no "small bar lobby" or "big bar lobby." 

Mind you, this is not a completely "us versus them" situation, as there are several pro craft bars in the state, and I'm not pointing my finger at them. There are also fantastic establishments that are BYOB who have no issue in this fight either. Support them. However, they are the minority in this situation. So let’s say it’s 99% v. 1%. For you math nerds, 140/6140 = .0228013.

As someone who loves drinking local craft beer, I often wonder how this all happened. Did breweries and guilds forget that politicians need money to get things done? Covid was probably a good time to throw a few hundos their way. It would seem to me the liquor lobby war chest has been and was built well over the last few years while the breweries assumed Covid would make them all hold hands. (Insert photo of crocodile lying low below the water)

More unpopular opinions on the status of live events.

Did some breweries need goat yoga five days a week? Were they warned about things they were doing and ignored those warnings? Maybe. I'm not going to impugn an entire group of breweries, but clearly someone pissed off someone. I'm certain some of this is more specific to the local level, where bar XYZ and its distributor buddies were upset that people flocked to a tasting room to drink beer that isn't sold at their own bar. I guess that's called "NJ bar logic." It seems to work very well lately.  

I have zero love for the handful of bar owners who are behind this movement. The ones that don't even carry craft, or if they do, pretend they carry it in faux form. The ones that have their tap lines run and protected by distributors. The ones that get a ton of free trips, TVs,  surfboards, jerseys and other stuff from those distributors and breweries while the ABC sticks their head in the sand.

Hey ABC, if you're going to stick your head in the sand, at least enjoy a nice macro made Mexican lager and take home the free T-shirt and koozie. Viva La ABC!

Bars, how about changing your business model for once? Then again, why bother when you have the ABC backing you for your bad business decisions using political baseball bats -- or are they macro tap handles?

The biggest joke of all is hearing bar owners quoted in recent articles saying how they don't want breweries to be restaurants. Of course, no soundbite would be complete without the paraphrased quote "we paid for this expensive liquor license so therefore, we should be able to do what we want and others can't." (I would love to see the NJLBA media response kit).

Those statements are hilarious, but where is the follow up? Breweries can't serve wine, liquor or anyone else's beer, right? Breweries can't serve food, right? Breweries must fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment, right? Breweries can only have two TVs, right?

Who asks the tough question anymore? Certainly not the distilleries and wineries. They are cruising on Easy Street right now munching on their truffle popcorn as this all unfolds. 

I'm not sure why breweries are still trying to play nice in the sandbox. There's a missing piece. As an outsider, I can't figure out what it is.

For example, the biggest issue you read on social media or brewery articles are the complaints about the limitation on events. So, why not march into Trenton and try to pass a bill or seek help for an emergency application specific to relaxing events for the rest of 2022 while other things are worked out? Why are you trying to swallow the whole hamburger in one bite? (You can’t serve hamburgers, so let me pivot to large hard pretzel instead)

Overall, it would seem there’s no other issue as important as this one in the short term as year end holidays near. Again, it doesn't make sense. Then again, it makes total sense if the big boys who have pull could care less about events because they don't have them don't want to rock the boat, while the 90% of remaining breweries sit back and suffer. That's a juicy thought. I can't be the sole owner of that thought.

There are at least three or four different factions within 140 as I see it, and they might not even know it yet. I guess that's why stuff isn't getting done as fast as it should. Prove me wrong NJ breweries. Please. 

At this point, maybe the Easter bunny will bring us something positive in its Legislative basket next year. However, based on what I see so far, you're likely to get it from the Headless Horseman next Halloween, when 15-20 breweries have already closed. After all, that's the intent of this. I’m just not sure if that’s the intent of folks from both sides of the fence, or just one.  

It’s an alienating experience, walking into a too-perfect taproom with oversized Connect 4 and Jenga sets, and quippy LED signs that say stuff like “Good For What Ales You” and “Lager? I Barely Know Her!”, and it seems to happen more and more these days. Partly, that’s because there are over 9,000 breweries in this country, which means everybody is walking into more taprooms generally. So what if many of them share a certain beer-focused banality? 

Until recently, that was my policy. “Live and let live,” I’d tell myself as I drained a pedestrian pilsner at XYZ Beer Co.’s taproom, the bathroom of which was plastered with posters for brewery yoga and fun runs. “I’m sure they’re working on it,” I’d mutter, coughing up another $9 to Acme Alewerks in hopes that the beer I selected from the hand-lettered chalkboard menu was more potable than the last. I’ve muscled through more Mason jars of mediocre malt juice, more Libbey can-glasses of lousy liquid, than I care to admit. I used to just make a note never to return and move on without comment. The old newspaper adage holds that “dog bites man” isn’t news, and in the U.S., neither is a well-appointed taproom that pours crappy beer.

After more than a few bad experiences I thought about why I picked those places.  Then it hit  me-  it’s because of Instagram.  It’s now the de facto channel for breweries to pitch their wares, but needless to say you can’t taste beer through a phone’s screen. Crowdsourced beer rating sites are chaotic and unreliable. There are only a few proper beer critics in the entire country, and craft brewing’s localized nature makes it impossible for any one of them to rule authoritatively on more than a sliver of the beers they produce. 

That’s not to say all craft breweries are hacks using curated, copycat decor and slick merch to pass off bad beer. Places are aware they can kind of coast on looking good on Instagram, the more modern iterations of Instagram traps knowingly prioritize that over their actual product or service.  Back in 2017, Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster and industry giant Garrett Oliver criticized hazy IPAs as “the first beer style based around Instagram culture and based around social media” because the style photographed so well and required so little technical knowledge to brew. Now, it’s not just beers that are designed to play well on Instagram, but the breweries they come from, too.

Those designs take different forms. The elements that stick out to me are furniture, glassware, and structural materials. I also see flat-out branding as a leading indicator. The more noticeable trend is that taprooms are far more branded than they used to be. Prominent logos or logo walls are things I see a lot more than I used to, and they’re not there to remind you where you are: they’re there to remind your social media followers where you were.”

That’s not sinister on its face, of course. Breweries are businesses first and foremost, and after two-plus pandemic years, boosting higher-margin, on-premise sales is more important than ever. If some well-placed spray-paint stencils or wing walls (or whatever) elicit the user-generated content that gets more drinkers through the taproom doors, fine with me. But when breweries focus on their aesthetics at the expense of dialing in their portfolio, they become places people go to post for clout, rather than drink for leisure — and the posts lure more posters, beer quality be damned.

Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” – Mark Twain

For most craft beer industry workers, this couldn’t ring more true. The idea of turning a homebrewing hobby or a passion for craft beer into a flourishing career seems like a dream scenario. The way other people’s eyes light up when someone mentions they work in craft beer is priceless. Feeling like you have a job that others outside of the industry can only wildly dream about makes beer folks feel as though they have something really special, but are things really that great, or is the beer labor force being gaslit by the false pretense of job satisfaction, security and just plain fun? As the industry matures and evolves, being one of the “cool kids” in the beer industry isn’t all backslaps and beer shots, it’s become more about workers’ rights, workplace safety, and earning a living wage.

So let’s get into some numbers. 23% of the Beverage Manufacturing industry is in production, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics with an annual mean wage of $23.19 per hour or $48,220 per year (May 2021). The Brewers Association’s most recent salary benchmarketing study from 2020 clocks production staff at an average of $50,875 per year before taxes, bonuses, profit sharing, etc.  Assuming that most production folks fall into a 25% tax rate, your take-home would probably be around $38,000. The most recent data from the US Department of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey shows that the average expenses for a single person total $38,266 per year. So if you’re working on the production side of craft beer and you’re only accountable for your own living expenses, you’ve been working at a financial deficit. And if you have a household of more than just yourself, like a partner, spouse, or children, the deficit is even worse. The cost of living is also magnified depending on which part of the US you reside in, with the living expenses surging in regions like the Northeast and the West Coast.

Then there’s the dreaded “I” word – inflation, which has skyrocketed in 2022, meaning that you’re pocketing the same amount of money as the past few years, but you’re spending more on goods and services. We’re only halfway through 2022 and inflation has already outpaced last year’s rate. To put inflation rates into perspective, average rates usually hover around 2%, but in 2022 the US average rate has already hit over 8%.

n addition to wage woes, beer industry workers are also facing an uphill battle with workplace conditions. Hospitality workers were pushed to their absolute limits during 2020-21 which is still an issue today. Not only were customers difficult to serve, but long hours, lack of benefits, health mandates, virus restrictions, and low wages proved to be more than most could bear and resulted in most exiting the industry as additions to the “Great Resignation” movement. The lack of workers willing to bear the brunt of customer service has led to reduced operating hours, short-staffed teams, and even complete business closures.  

Mental health is also on the docket and is slowly being addressed in the beer industry. The entire US labor force had a huge wake-up call in 2021, realizing that workers were not okay in remote or restricted working environments, and the craft beer industry was no exception. Lack of child care was driving parents and guardians to the brink of anxiety and depression. And demand from executives for higher output and longer hours was leaving a trail of collateral damage that contributed to massive shifts in career choices or people exiting industries altogether to move into companies that valued their human side more than their personal sacrifices towards work-life balance. And while progress is slow, you can see this progression within the beer industry with the rise of flex work hours, child care assistance, housing assistance, Employee Assistance Programs, PTO for mental health days, and advocacy groups like the Infinite Ingredient.

Change is hard and slow. Organizational change is even more difficult for most industries as a whole. There is still a lot of work to be done, but there are notable changes that should be acknowledged even if just for the simple fact that hope drives change. Think about it this way, if the 1990s were like the kindergarten stage of the overall craft beer industry journey, full of wide-eyed enthusiasm and experiential learning moments, the 2020s are proving to be like middle school – full of angst, infinite possibilities, and pivotal decision-making that will determine the long-term future of the industry. We will have to wait to see if the cool kids can mature enough to make equitable and mutually beneficial decisions that will carry this industry beyond the awkward stage, but many are hopefully optimistic. 

Based on an article by Julie Rhodes 

The beer industry is a microcosm of American culture as a whole: Just as turbulent forces shake up the outlook on social, economic and environmental issues, the forces of change in the world of beer are outpacing the traditional way of doing business. It’s time for the industry to listen.

The well-worn practices no longer serve today’s craft beverage business environment. This is evident in the pressures present at each stage of the value chain — from sourcing materials to pull-through on shelves. Products that used to fit nicely into a few clean boxes — beer, wine and spirits — are now a melting pot of everything, for everyone, all at once.

Until recently, beverage alcohol was a three-headed landscape with each liquid distinctly delineated. As the craft movement took hold, beer drinkers became more sophisticated and demanding. Trends changed rapidly, but categories clearly remained: beer, wine and spirits.

Today, it seems everything under the sun is going into drinks (such as caffeine, cannabis and functional additives) and coming out of drinks (in the case of non-alcoholic beer, wine and spirits). Furthermore, any beverage that has historically been offered in a non-alcoholic context now has a presence in the beverage alcohol landscape: seltzer water, coffee, tea and lemonade. Simultaneously, occasions are blending. Spirits are now available in ready-to-drink (RTD) cans and show up in traditional beer environments, like the backyard barbeque. On the same note, wine-based cocktails are occasioned the same as beer.

All this means changes in the industry have to occur from without and within. Consumer demands pull producers to evolve in certain ways, while business pressures push them to innovate.

The U.S. has outgrown the system on which it was built. The rules and regulations of our forefathers no longer serve the constituents, and the systems seem outdated. As a parallel to the beverage alcohol industry, the three-tier system creates boundaries that are too restrictive for today’s business environment.

The consumer wants things immediately, wants them customized and wants them delivered to their home. Many consumers already use Amazon, Uber Eats or Drizly on a regular basis. It is natural that this consumer preference shift extends to all purchases, but current liquor laws prevent the same market access.

Either the regulatory environment will have to be relaxed and open the direct-to-consumer (DTC) market, or the retail tier will be forced to bridge the gap and expand options for DTC sales that are three-tier compliant. A handful of services are meeting this need now, and this service must continue to evolve and mature.

The beer industry is desperate for innovation. Key pressures are pushing the industry to new territory: external consumer demand for new and different choices, natural resources and supply chain challenges and changing consumer delivery preferences.  With the proliferation of choices, outdated governing structure and changing consumer demand, the beer industry must move forward.

Even though the costs of doing business are going up, some companies are thriving. Not the small ones, heavens no. Like rank-and-file American consumers, the lower on the economic totem pole a business is, the more it’s likely to be on the receiving end of a slap from the invisible hand. But the big ones? Like, the Fortune 100 types, the companies with multinational operations, diversified brand portfolios, and phalanxes of MBAs that eat, sleep, and breathe shareholder return? Well, that’s another story. “​​These really big firms have pricing power. Huge companies that have been allowed to gobble up the small guys for decades, they’ve gotten bigger. And now in this moment of uncertainty, they’re exerting their size” by raising prices.

Of course they’re raising their prices, you reply. Haven’t you heard about all the inflation? Yes, and: Many corporations across the country are taking price increases in excess of inflation’s impacts. In other words, costs are going up, but profit margins are soaring higher. To some, this is “greedflation”; to others, it’s just the market doing what the market does. Either way, it’s happening. “

As for how much of those profits can be traced back to price hikes: The Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, put that figure at around 54 percent. In other words, most of the extra money Americans are spending on “inflation” isn’t offsetting costs — it’s enriching corporate leaders in the forms of performance bonuses, stock buybacks, and the like. Or put another way: They can make money off your assumption that their products cost you more because they cost them more — even if they don’t.

From mattresses and body wash, coffee and poultry, price hikes on goods and services across the American economy fueled record-breaking profits. Was your extra beer money you spent because of price hikes doing the same?

In real life, beer prices vary by market, package size, segment, and other factors. But when we zoom out to a national level and look at volumes in the industry-standard unit of case equivalents (known as CEs, and clocking in at 288 ounces of beer), we can get a feel for what Americans have been paying for suds lately. One answer is clear: “more.” Earlier this month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ released its most recent edition of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is basically a snapshot of the way price points are changing for various items across the economy.  every beer segment.  It showed that this year has seen price increases in the off-premise channel, where the vast majority of both volume and dollar sales occur. For the most recent period ending the average CE price across all segments had increased $1.39 per case, to $27.94.)

Based on all that, and how macrobrewing head honchos have been framing their firms’ performance lately, I figured that rapid price growth has been boosting profitability throughout the pandemic and in the post pandemic.  After all, a review of recent earnings for the four largest publicly traded brewers in the country (Anheuser-Busch InBev, Molson Coors, Constellation Brands, and Heineken) and corresponding coverage suggests Big Beer is determined to continue to raise prices.

That doesn’t bode well for craft brewers. It’s a general rule of thumb in beer that size matters: The bigger the firm, the more efficient it can be, the more money it can make per case, and so on. If the biggest companies in the U.S. beer business aren’t capturing much margin during an unprecedented period of inflation, you can be pretty sure that the over 9,000 craft breweries across the country are having a tougher go at it. Price increases on everything from malt and fruit to carbon dioxide pose huge challenges for craft breweries, none of which they’re able to hedge against as effectively as macros. And while an ABI or a Molson Coors might have to cajole its partners to push price hikes through the three-tier system, they’re not at risk of actually getting sidelined. (How could they be? The two firms produce as much as 70 percent of beer Americans drink.) 

Most craft breweries, which often find themselves jockeying for attention in portfolios and space in coolers, have far less leverage. Try to force through a price hike on your IPA, and your distributors and retailers could simply bench you for more competitively priced alternatives from other breweries. Even if it gets through, your newly marked-up IPA may be too rich for customers’ blood — and unlike Big Beer, if your drinkers trade down for a similar style from a cheaper brand, it probably isn’t going to be yours. Not to mention that there’s not even a whole lot of upward price action to take on a $19 4-pack. Craft beer customers are elastic, but they’re got limits. If prices soar segment-wide, those drinkers may see it as a reason to buy more of the wine or liquor they already enjoy in its place. Prices of both are falling faster in real dollars than beer.

I really worry about the extent to which inflation is disproportionately harming smaller firms who aren’t able to absorb rising costs and don’t have as much room to move on price. Some of the big guys may be able to snuff out even more of the small guys during this moment. 

To put it another way: Inflation is coming for your craft beer.

"ABC = Always Bar Cronyism"

By Ty Webb

Hope you all had a wonderful July 4th. Not everyone did.

The NJ ABC shoved a large apple pie into the mouths of every NJ brewery before whisking away for the weekend. (I envision Fat Tony, the Monopoly Guy and the bartender from Tapper in one room all laughing at NJ breweries, but whatever visualization works best for you). Their timing was impeccable -- let's hamstring and stress folks out before a MAJOR holiday.

Here's a great article on the ruling when it first broke, well written by Rebecca King:

https://www.northjersey.com/story/entertainment/dining/2022/06/30/nj-beer-microbreweries-event-limits-kick-in-on-july-1/65365789007/

To summarize, the items that had been previously laid out but relaxed via a prior "Special Ruling" have now been enforced into any new brewery license and those breweries that renew annually as of 7/1.

First question. Is this constitutional? I asked the various guilds and breweries that preliminary question. As I see it, you are now truly aligned on this front.

If you recall the prior ruling, indicated that the ABC took input from interested "stakeholders." I believe the term "stakeholders" was intended to mean "bar owners who were frustrated with the success of New Jersey's burgeoning craft brewing industry."

I envision several of these bar owners still waving their fists at the clouds like Grandpa Simpson, wondering why their business model from 1987 hasn't yielded more success.

Kids eat free? Stop it.

The select bars with lobby power still smell like stale beer and Pine Sol. But hey, that old wood paneling must have some real political juice seeped in the veneer.

In summary, here is what is now a condition of any license:

-A limit of 25 on-site activities per year, 52 private parties per year and attend 12 off premises events per year

And the stuff you can't do (as if you're stealing lunch money from children):

-Sell coffee

-Collaborate with a food truck 
-Sell specialty cocktails using malt alcohol-Offer a free drink to any guest - Offer discounts 

-Use a third party promoter

-Broadcast a "championship" game

-Require tours to be done again, unless the tour is logged.

Side note: I find it hilarious that the ABC permitting system is called POSSE. Posse defined: a body of men, typically armed, summoned by a sheriff to enforce the law.

(I'm wondering if these tour logs can be shared across the state in the form of a much larger global petition to overturn the regulations. That's for someone in the industry to decide. Just my 2 cents. Use what you have).

It's almost like all that crap on the back of a concert ticket that says by agreeing to buy this ticket for an over inflated price, you agree to all the fine print.

Or do you??

It's not worth getting flustered over who might have been warned, who ignored warnings and who should've followed things a little better. It doesn't matter now because the entire class has detention after school. So I'm curious what the solution is.

The courtesy of writing your elected official is a nice idea on paper, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

My belief is that this is a watershed moment that is going to create an "us versus them" mentality than the state anticipated.

It should come as no surprise that this occurred, but what's most troubling and scary is that no consideration or input was considered from ANY brewery. For this to happen while some businesses are still trying to crawl back from Covid just shows how New Jersey is run.

It doesn't matter if you've been open for 10 months or 10 years. The same conditions apply to every licensee who applies for a new license or renew their license. Ponder that. 

You don't have to live in New Jersey for very long to realize what happens politically in this state. It's bad enough that we're in the lower five states in the country for archaic beer laws.

So what can you do?

First, you can continue to support breweries in your area by purchasing their beers at their source. Don't be fooled. The same distributors next to your craft beer in the store and on tap are in the front and back pockets of the ABC.

Ever look at who are major donors of the NJLBA?

Second, you can support restaurant and local pizzerias that are currently BYOB. I'm not the smartest man, but I would venture to say that those particular establishments were not involved in this sweeping change. Those who wanted to purchase inflated liquor licenses and use that justification to squash an entire industry are the ones you should be thinking about. Not the local pizzeria.

Third, boycott peacefully and silently. If there's one thing but I've learned over the last three years, it's that a collective group of like-minded people can make a difference without the need of any assistance of politicians and local officials. It would be my suggestion to begin silently boycotting the bars and restaurants who are most vocal against breweries and to convince your friends and family to do the same. Go underground. 

The irony is that when you peel back the curtain and see who was barking the loudest, those are typically the bars that wouldn't have good craft on tap if it was handed to them for free. (However, it's possible the macro light beer was sold to that bar for less than cost, but the ABC won't take that issue on). Nah. Nothing to see here. Move on. 

The funny part of this is that illegal conduct occurs every day in this industry, but the ABC turn s a blind eye to it. The ABC would rather kick out the chair legs of an already fragile industry. 

My beer glass is half empty because I have zero confidence in any elected official stepping up to the plate. So the NJ craft industry just took an undesired five steps backwards based on these recent amendments.

For now, I'll be sitting at my local brewery with a box of pizza from my favorite pizzeria watching the Mets from my phone.

Some of the most powerful retail sales practices for alcohol are getting a closer look from federal regulators, with the potential to upend decades of precedent that shape the way beer, wine, and liquor appear on store shelves. Chief among the sales practices under scrutiny are what’s known as category management and shelf schematics. These are strategies by which an alcohol wholesaler or manufacturer provides a retailer with "guidance"—often in the form of visual plans—on how to stock, display, price, and promote products within a certain alcohol category, such as beer or wine. 

Greater scrutiny—or outright repeal—of category management would be a sea change to the U.S. alcohol landscape. Reducing or repealing category-management practices has the potential to shift sales in the combined $250 billion wine, beer, and spirits market in the U.S. in ways that may not be entirely predictable. Changes to these practices could also mean a physical difference in the beer, wine, and spirits selections that U.S. shoppers see on shelves at large chain stores like groceries, BevMos, Total Wines, and Walmarts.  The bottom line is that category management is an aspect of alcohol sales hidden in plain sight. It’s an area of competitive concern that, if changed, could alter the way shoppers literally see their options. 

Here's how it works in favor of the big brewers -

• A wholesaler or beer company (generally one of the country’s largest) provides a retailer with suggested shelf layouts that show where specific brands should be stocked and how they should be priced and promoted. 

• Category management became widespread in the early 1990s and has been legal since 1995. Shelf schematics and category management also occur in other consumer packaged goods, from frozen food to beauty products. What’s different about alcohol, however, is that suppliers and wholesalers cannot pay for shelf placements as other categories of products are allowed to. 

• In the course of about 30 years, these strategies have collectively become a powerful tool that many small alcohol makers and wholesalers feel excludes their products to the benefit of the industry’s largest players. 

• Small companies now realize that such strategies are an example of the “tied house” practices that the three-tier system of alcohol sales was designed to prevent. “Tied house” refers to a producer or wholesaler persuading a retailer to purchase its brands at the expense of others, a common practice pre-Prohibition.

The Beer Institute (BI), which represents the country’s largest beer companies of course defended the practice by stating that the number of small breweries today is evidence that the current system of beer distribution and sales (including category management) works for breweries of all sizes. 

That’s not what happens in the real world. Often times, shelf schematics are often adopted whole cloth by a retailer, favoring some brands at the expense of others. This has become a centerpiece of retailer merchandising.  The work of laying out a retailer’s shelves for them is obviously a thing of value, when given by a beer company or wholesaler to a store owner. As such the TTB could then consider it as an illegal act known as “inducement,” which is defined as when a company provides items or services of value—like suggestions of how to set a store shelf—that encourage a retailer to buy their products and exclude others.

Furthermore category managers are always from the industry’s largest companies. Anheuser-Busch InBev, for example, has an entire program—called IGNITE—that unifies and promotes its category managers with the goal of “help[ing] consumers navigate the [grocery] aisle.” Companies including Molson Coors Beverage Company, Constellation Brands, Boston Beer Company, and Diageo also employ category managers or captains. 

To the best of my knowledge, no small supplier or wholesaler acts as a category captain for a retail chain.

Category management isn’t a detriment at all to small producers says an InBev spokesperson. He claimed that without category management, retailers would rely exclusively on scan data about what products sell now, meaning they’d be less likely to roll the dice on new or smaller brands. They’d also likely reevaluate their offerings less frequently; more chain retail stores currently “reset” their selections twice per year, in the spring and fall. Less frequent resets and fewer new products would result in “homogenized stores.”   

Let's just say that ,at best, that view is a distortion of reality.

The World Beer Cup awards just came out for 2022, an exciting moment for brewers and beer geeks. But the buzz this year is not so much about the medals that were awarded, but about the ones that were not. It may be hard to believe but In Category 68: Belgian-style witbier, with 102 entries in the category, only one medal, the bronze, was awarded; no silver, no gold. What?!?

The concern – no, let’s be honest, the anger among brewers about this is exacerbated by the fact that the bronze went to Allagash White, a beer generally recognized as an exemplar of the style, often used as a touchstone for the category.  When the Brewers Association’s Chris Swersey, made the announcement that “Neither silver nor gold awards were awarded in this category,” you can hear people booing. Along with shouts of “That’s bullshit!” and “WTF?” out on the floor.  I joined in shouting all three.

Brewers spend a fair amount on entries: the beers, the time to fill out entries, packing and shipping, and the entry fees. And then to have the judges say, ‘Sorry, only one in a hundred of these beers even meets the standards for the lowest grade medal, see ya next year’? Why wouldn’t you be pissed? I sure the hell was.

Here’s how it happens. To begin with, all the judging at the competitions is done blind. There are no hints, no ‘whoops’ moments, and there are no exceptions. The stewards pour all the beers in another room and deliver them, with only an identifying number. Brewers are asked not to judge categories where they’ve entered beers. So there’s an almost-nil chance of some kind of trickery…and if there were, all the judges at the table would have to be in on it. No way.

It is much more relevant to the matter at hand that the judging, at least in the GABF and WBC, has written guidelines. There are fairly detailed descriptions and parameters for each category (and sub-category, there are pages and pages of this stuff), and what the judges are looking for are beers that fit those descriptions.

A round of judging often starts with a quick whip-round of the table just to be sure everyone’s literally on the same page, and understands the style guidelines. Given new categories and regional differences in brewing styles, and because judges at national and international competitions may come from around the world, this is important. That’s how judging begins.

But it’s at the conclusion that the judging guidelines come into play. According to the rules, only the three entries that are quaveringly close to perfect will get medals. But if none of the beers match up to the style in a sure enough manner, no gold, or any other medal, is awarded.

The confusion and anger when medals aren’t awarded stems from the purpose of these competitions not being clear. What does the “Awards Philosophy” say? The very first words are “The World Beer Cup recognizes brewing excellence.” So awarding a medal to a beer that wasn’t excellent, but still came in second, misses the point as agreed to by the Brewers Association, which runs the competition.

What the hell is the point, then? Despite what brewers understandably believe, it’s not to hand out medals. That’s some of it, but the main point of these competitions is to improve brewing overall, like motor sports are supposed to do for cars.

Noble goal, but…we still have Allagash White getting a bronze medal and no other beer doing better, in a category that’s represents 30 years or more of American craft brewing experience. Hell, Rob Tod has been making Allagash since 1995, you’d think he’d get it right enough to win a gold by now! And you’d be right; Allagash White has won three golds in World Beer Cup competitions, and three more in the GABF. What happened here?

Truthfully: no one seems to know. For example, packaging and freshness have been issues since the first beer competitions. Fresher beers have a clear edge, but how do you compensate for that? Or maybe it was the judging. Individual judging panels vary every year. People with different ideas about the style, with different levels of judging experience, bring different personalities to the table. I know I’ve been a table captain at times and had to deal with brewers who were extremely certain of the correctness of their position. The judging guidelines are only guidelines, with necessarily subjective levels of ‘excellence.’ Some judges take that a LOT more seriously than others, and they’re persuasive, or just stubborn, and the others will give in to their arguments.

It ain’t a perfect world I guess.

After Prohibition ended in 1933, states were in need of a better system to regulate the manufacture and distribution of alcohol. They needed a way to discourage large breweries from monopolizing the industry, and to ensure that products were being made and transported safely. In many states the result was the establishment of three different tiers of alcohol-related businesses—manufacturers, distributors, and retailers—each with their own set of privileges and responsibilities.

Now, it’s clear this system has outlived its usefulness. The system is not responsive to our modern drinks landscape and mainly empowers distributors at the expense of the other tiers and to the determent to consumers.

Not surprisingly wholesalers oppose most, if not all, legal reforms to the system offered by manufacturers mainly because they like the way the current system works since they make a lot of money under it. And that’s the bottom line of this issue.

The exponential growth in most states’ craft beverage industry during the past two decades is largely due to reforms to liquor laws—allowing off-premise sales directly from the brewery or distillery, brewery self-distribution rights, taprooms and cocktail rooms. This craft beverage boom has increased jobs and tax revenue in every state.  But, these reforms are exceptions to the three-tier system which has dictated that manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers must stay in their own lanes.

It all started with good intentions. The three-tier system was created in hopes of more effectively regulating alcohol sales than the disastrous Prohibition laws that preceded them. The system obligates manufacturers to utilize a licensed wholesaler to distribute their products to retailers, save and except for limited rights of self-distribution granted to small breweries and farm wineries.  

For breweries who engage a distributor, beer franchise laws limit their ability to terminate a wholesaler who is not performing according to the brewery’s satisfaction. Moreover, large national manufacturers have figured out how to game the system by maintaining their own network of wholesalers, which allows them to exert the type of influence that the franchise laws were designed to prevent. Small, local breweries are not able to do so, which puts them at a competitive disadvantage.

Opponents of liquor law reforms aimed at removing restrictions from the manufacturers have cited the need to preserve the three-tier system as a sufficient objection. As if preservation of this system is now the objective in and of itself.  Preservation of the three-tier system has, in essence, become the battle cry of maintaining the wholesalers’ leverage in the marketplace. 

The basis for alcohol regulation in most states is to regulate alcohol manufacture and sale as a public safety issue. Thus, when looking at proposed reforms, the key question should not be “how would the new law affect the three-tier system?”, but rather “does this new law create a public safety issue,” with the understanding that causing manufacturers to make more money (and wholesalers to make less) is not a public safety issue.

 As Prince once famously said, “the baker should enjoy the bread.”

Half a decade ago, the Elysian Brewing Company had craft beer true believers travel to Seattle from near and far to cause trouble at the company’s taprooms after news of its sale to Anheuser-Busch InBev hit the headlines in 2015. People were buying beers [at Elysian’s Seattle pubs] and literally dumping them on the floor.  After morphing from crunchy sideshow to full-flavored phenomenon, the American craft brewing industry was growing like mad. Tensions ran high that macrobrewers would co-opt and commodify the sector’s indelible anti-corporate cachet, and those small independent breweries that did deals with the Goliaths last decade were considered as naive as Samson and as treacherous as Judas.

But half a dozen years later, the idea of meeting brewery sales with Old Testament vitriol seems downright antiquated. Over the past 18 months, the craft brewing industry has seen an uptick of acquisitions, roll-ups, and mergers at a pace reminiscent of last decade’s M&A mayhem. The latest, a buyout of the CANarchy portfolio (anchored by Oskar Blues and Cigar City, which remain prominent O.G. craft brands despite slipping sales) even carried a nine-figure price tag befitting a big bad corporate buyer. But rather than scorn for the sellouts, these deals — to macrobrewers, private equity firms, and industry outsiders — have received a decidedly more muted response. It's a remarkable development. Where have all the hate tourists gone? Or, to put it another way: How did a craft beer industry and community so opposed to selling out become so inert in the face of their beloved breweries getting sold off? 

Conversations about craft brewery sellouts usually start with Goose Island’s 2011 acquisition by Anheuser-Busch InBev, which turned out to be the first of 11 deals the world’s biggest beer company would ink in its push into the craft brewing category last decade.  It was all fresh and surprising then.  Not now.

The influx of new players, the spectacular growth, and the undeniable demand from the American drinking public all brought legitimacy, primacy, and new urgency to the craft brewing industry. Bigger craft breweries are more complex businesses, and operating like renegade outsiders at scale is a recipe for chaos. Thus the appeal of strategic partners like ABI, Molson Coors, Heineken, and Constellation, all of which scooped up craft breweries in those years. Whether breweries were acquired, or simply forced to compete with those that had been, it contributed toward a mounting professionalism in the sector — at least compared to its overconfident, undercapitalized, and defiantly grass-rooted former self. This corporatization helped to blunt the furor. 

Drinkers torched those acquired breweries on social media. Beer bars and craft bottle shops (which were then far more influential in advancing the craft beer cause) canceled the accounts of breweries that had left the fold. Microbrewers turned their backs on longtime friends. However you can't expect that kind of tribal enthusiasm to last that long.  A decade of sales, competition, and stiff headwinds have forced industry participants and drinkers themselves to accept a commercial pragmatism that would’ve seemed almost heretical when the money first started flying. “It’s just that the industry has changed, more than the people have changed.

Meanwhile, drinkers who had once feted craft beer for its vast array of flavors, got a taste for beverages beyond the scope of America’s small independent breweries. Hard seltzer, canned cocktails, and other “beyond beer” offerings blurred lines for consumers and producers alike. You see this shift in supermarket beer aisles, which are stocked these days with drinks that are only beer by technicality and tax code. But changing tastes have also brought a new set of buyers to the table that place nowhere in the tidy, triumphal David-versus-Goliath narrative that once animated the passions of craft beer fans and brewers. Back in the day, there was Big Beer and there was craft beer and there really was a pretty clean line between the two; the black and white is now pretty gray.”

Consider the companies that are writing the checks to acquire craft breweries over the past year and a half. It’s not craft beer’s arch-nemesis from Big Beer.  It's companies like a Canadian cannabis conglomerate that bought  SweetWater in December 2020, then Green Flash and Alpine in December 2021. CANarchy’s new boss is Monster Beverage Corporation, an energy drink behemoth that dropped $330 million for the portfolio in mid-January.  Coming from outside the beer industry, they carry much less cultural baggage, and make for much less obvious villains off the bat. 

Even the recent buyers that are in the beer business are not the stereotypical bad guys. Kings & Convicts, which took Ballast Point off Constellation’s hands in 2019, then bought Saint Archer’s production facility in San Diego this month.  The private equity firm that purchased Uinta in 2019 just sold the struggling Utah brewer to U.S. Beverage, a longtime importer/marketer. A different private equity firm bought Catawba Brewing Co.’s Carolina-based empire to round out its Southeastern roll-up. These just aren’t hulking conglomerates that inspire disdain in the general drinking public — to the extent that the general drinking public even frets over which company owns their favorite beer brands at this point. 

That brings us to the gem of them all, Bell's.  In November 2021, news broke that Michigan’s beloved Bell’s Brewing Company would be acquired by Japanese mega-brewer Kirin. (Technically it was acquired by New Belgium, which is a subsidiary of Little Lion World Beverages, which is a subsidiary of Kirin, but you get the point.) Founded in 1987, Bell’s was one of the few pioneers of the early craft brewing era that had remained fully independent the whole time; now it was “selling out” to a corporate player. Reactions to the deal (terms of which were not disclosed) were not categorically positive, but the backlash was nothing on the order of the old days. 

There are two main reasons for this. First, despite being a bona fide macrobrewer, Kirin is far less familiar to — and so strikes far less fear in — the American drinking public than any of last decade’s strategic buyers. Kirin is Big Beer, make no mistake, but by folding in with New Belgium, it felt very different than jumping into the Anheuser-Busch pipeline to be shot out into every convenience store in America. Despite controlling a plurality of its home market and being one of the world’s largest beer makers, the Japanese conglomerate has made inroads into the lucrative American market without drawing the same ire or scrutiny as its higher-profile global rivals. 

The slow, methodical pace of its U.S. craft brewing acquisitions probably helps perception of its posture, too. After buying a 24 percent stake in Brooklyn Brewery in 2016, it acquired New Belgium Brewery in 2019, then Bell’s. Last decade’s frenzied hoovering unnerved craft beer industry types and diehard consumers at the time.  But by moving into the U.S. craft market a bit later, Kirin has benefited from watching its peers go first, avoiding their mistakes while laying sturdy groundwork that demonstrates a coherent strategy for the category. As a result, the Japanese firm looks nothing like a spoiled child clamoring after a shiny toy it’ll quickly tire of, and much more like a disciplined long-hauler. 

The second reason the sale didn’t draw much beer dumping or cultural lament: Bell’s, a top-10 craft brewer with strong brands and an enviable distribution network, was not an underperforming asset to be unloaded. It was a life’s work that came to a natural endpoint. The company’s founder and namesake, Larry Bell, was able to go out on top after nearly four decades at the helm with a (presumably lucrative) exit. Without an heir apparent waiting in the wings, the only realistic move was selling the brewery to his employees or an outside buyer, and Larry opted for the latter. 

Kirin’s Bell’s buyout signaled the end of craft brewing’s “movement” moment, because it sent one of the last true-blue craft beer pioneers riding into the sunset. There simply aren’t that many first-generation standard-bearers still standing after all these years. But even if it’s no longer a movement (or ever was), craft brewing is still a business, and a big one. 

What will happen now that drinkers (and plenty of brewers, too) have mellowed on corporate ownership and accepted the inevitability of sellouts? American beer culture is never going to be as entrenched and inbred the way it was with people who emigrated here from Northern Europe, who came from a genuinely beer-dependent or beer-centric culture. We’re just never going to have that in this country. 

At its zenith, craft beer might have achieved something close to that kind of social, civic saturation, but those days are in the rearview now. That doesn’t mean full-flavored beers are going anywhere, but the hate tourists showing up to dump them on the floor are pretty much gone. Being mad all the time is exhausting — especially if you’re not even sure who you’re supposed to be mad at anymore. 

-----------------------------------------------/

(from an article by Dave Infante / vinepair.com

When publicly-traded Monster Beverage recently bought Canarchy, a collective of six breweries that together constitute the 15th-largest US beer company, it seemed like the Brewers Association would be forced to boot them from their membership roles. That’s what happened to Lagunitas when it sold to Heineken, to Craft Brew Alliance (CBA) when it sold just a third of its company to AB InBev, and to dozens of other breweries over the past decade. In a surprise, they did not. In fact, the Brewers Association rushed to post a clarification within a few hours of the Monster news that Canarchy would remain a member in good standing.  As they say, the fix was in.

Sixteen years earlier, the Brewers Association ruled on whether CBA could remain as a member. At the time, no rule existed about minority ownership. The Brewers Association seemed to go out of their way to set a standard that would punish CBA for doing business with Bud.

Jim Koch, founder of Boston Beer, who was on the BA board at the time, and he was transparent about the organization’s hardball tactics: “We talked about different numbers and the number we came up with was 25%. Now could it have been 30, could it have been 20? Sure. But there was a benchmark. It became 25%. I think the Widmers were at like 33. I remember having discussions with them and they’re like, ‘We think the number should be higher.’ I said, ‘Well, look, it’s 25%; we think that gives somebody a pretty good semblance of control, but we’d love to have you back… All you have to do is buy back 8% and you’ll be under 25.’”

The Brewers Association is an industry trade group created to advance the interests of its members. Trade organizations are beholden to nobody but their members, and they alone decide who is eligible to join. The shift in their membership approach—from punitive to permissible—begs the question: Why would the BA scramble to keep a brewery that by no definition could be called “independent”—their principal selling point? What has changed so much in that decade and a half?

All you have to do is look at the list of largest American breweries to see what’s going on. Within the top twenty largest US breweries, not many are independent anymore. Once they reach a certain size, it becomes increasingly difficult for breweries to compete against international giants. Year after year we see sales of the most successful craft breweries, the charter members who helped shape the Brewers Association. They take their volumes with them, damaging the BA’s effort to speak for “craft beer.” The losses of Bell’s heightens a problem that started with Goose Island and continued with Lagunitas, Founder’s, New Belgium, Ballast Point and the rest.

Efficiencies of scale, distribution footprints, and marketing and advertising disparities all make it very difficult for relatively smaller breweries—even those making more than a million barrels—to put a profitable six-pack on the shelf of a grocery store in a distant market. As a result, they keep peeling off the list of “craft.” Have a look at the twenty largest US beer companies—even among those designated “craft” by the BA, very few are free-standing independent breweries.

Breweries that grow to a certain size enter a reverse-Goldilocks problem. They are too big to stay in their local market and have to start pushing out. Yet they’re not big enough to sell efficiently in a regional or national market. In the past eight years, we’ve seen them deal with this challenge in familiar ways: selling a portion of their company to partner with a large, national brand who can add those efficiencies; combine with other breweries in a collective; expand into non-beer segments; or sell out entirely.

This means headaches for the Brewers Association. For the most successful of the craft breweries, “independence” is increasingly a losing proposition. A larger craft brewery can sacrifice ownership independence and sell to partners or private equity, or they can sacrifice organizational independence by joining a collective. Going it alone—true independence—really becomes challenging when a brewery enters the rarefied heights of the country’s top twenty breweries.

Of those breweries we would consider classic craft companies, only Sierra Nevada has remained healthy selling beer while remaining truly independent. Deschutes and Stone have been in trouble for years, Gambrinus and Yuengling have carved out a niche as regional domestic lager breweries, and Boston Beer has shifted to an FMB strategy. If the Brewers Association were to stick with the punitive approach that 86-ed CBA all those years ago, they’d have to think long and hard about how Canarchy, Duvel, and Boston Beer would qualify.

This isn’t a problem of the Brewers Associations’ making. It’s a structural feature of the beer industry in the US. It is also a worrying development, an echo of an earlier era when consolidation blighted the industry. What does it say about how we regulate the sale of beer in the US that the most successful start-up breweries eventually have to sell out to giants to survive? Is this the world we want to live in and, critically, what changes would allow those larger regional breweries to compete?

Are brewers growing exhausted by the pace of releases and constant need to push boundaries, seemingly just for the sake of doing so as they emerge from the lockdowns and restrictions of Covid?  Pioneers like Fritz Maytag (Anchor Brewing Company), Jack Mcauliffe (New Albion Brewing Company), and “The Beerhunter” Michael Jackson. built a movement by producing and writing about beer styles that had generally fallen by the wayside, including stouts, porters, and pale ales. Later, breweries such as Dogfish Head would begin to take these styles to another level by experimenting with the addition of culinary ingredients or brewing techniques that were novel to beer. Dogfish Head, established in 1995, produced beers that were far outside of what was considered normal at the time—beers loaded with ingredients like maple syrup, raisins, beet sugar, pumpkin, and anything else you could wrap your head around. Their production brewery lost money for years and had to pull in resources from their restaurant just to stay open. They had a vision, though—a belief in a truth that they wanted to express—and they believed it would translate. Eventually, it did.

So what exactly is the difference between the innovation this industry was built upon and what we are witnessing today? On the surface there does not appear to be much of one. The beers sitting in front of you today seem almost like the next logical progression. However, once you look beneath the surface, the differences become much more obvious.

Today’s consumers have more choices in beers and brands than ever before. With roughly 9,000 breweries in the U.S. and more on the way, consumers are becoming buried beneath options. That isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, unless the majority of those options are becoming increasingly similar to one another. That loss of originality—is what is killing the heart of our movement. Where have the artists gone? Where have the brewers with something to say gone? Beer shops and liquor store shelves are lined with a plethora of overly hopped, juicy, hazy, fruity beers, but why? Is it because we are all suddenly extremely passionate about this one style, or is it because we are all desperate to have an offering in that hot new style category? 

Many brewers seem to be scrambling to pack ingredients and haze into beers often to appease their consumers, not because those are the beers they are reaching for at the end of a brew day. It is not what many of brewers and serious craft fans are passionate about. 

Is it the fault of millennials, who allegedly can’t drink the same beer twice? Is it because young drinkers really don't like beer and prefer a fruit juice in disguise? Or ist the real problem the brewers themselves? . Many brewers  are actively chasing trends in an effort to gain or maintain their market share and stay relevant that's understandable especially not but the direction just might be inherently unprofitable. When a company, no matter the industry, spends time and resources trying to catch a wave that has already peaked, it is riding that wave on its way back down. When a company spends that same time developing its own unique offerings, however, it creates its own wave that it can ride in its entirety. It is a risk to go with your own unproven creation; it may not resonate with people. It is far easier to go with what seems to be working in the market, but in the long term, that decision carries with it the risk of slowly killing what it is they have fought together to build.

So, there seems to be a couple of options. Brewers can stop blaming the market and the consumer. Brewers can be bold and create. They should remember why they took out that loan for brewing school, worked two jobs to make ends meet, and chased their dreams; it was because they had a vision. Owners, must allow their brewers to take the brand in directions that may break away from IPAs and pastry stouts. When breweries decide to focus on what caused craft beer to be so special in the first place, they will maintain the integrity of what made the craft movement so special and differentiated us all those years ago when the first craft brewers began their breweries. 

When breweries attempt to control market share by chasing what they think consumers want, they lose their identity and individuality and are no longer artists. They may as well peel off that “independent” craft beer seal from their labels and sell the brewery to AB InBev. That is the equivocation of the second option.

After all, what was that word that people used to describe the difference between all of the large beer brands for years? Oh, yeah: Sameness.

Cleaning Up Craft Criteria  

As we move into the third decade of the 21st century and finally (I hope) recover from the pandemic it's time to address three basic questions about what we call craft beer.   1. Do we need a label to tell the difference between breweries that are worthy of our support and those that are not? 2, Should we call the “good” breweries craft breweries, independent breweries, microbreweries, or something else altogether? 3. What criteria should we use to decide who belongs in the club and who doesn’t?   

Some people argue that craft beer is an unnecessary label, a term made up by grocery store managers to organize their shelves and guide the uneducated consumer. While I can understand the desire for a utopia where every beer stands on its own merit, it seems that most people who take beer seriously do not share this point of view. Here are a few points in support of that position:

• It was not so long ago that the (US) Brewer’s Association ran a PR campaign aimed to get everyone to differentiate craft beer from crafty beer, lest someone confuse Allagash White (craft) and Blue Moon (crafty) as being similar beers.

• Along the same lines the BAs Independent logo seems to be widely used. While technically not the same thing as craft beer, it’s clearly an attempt to differentiate some breweries from others.

• In other countries the classifications for beer are if anything more confusing than in the USA.  For example in the UK just about everyone seemed to agree that craft beer and real ale (aka cask ale) were different. 

For the most part both drinkers and brewers of “craft beer” want to have some way of setting themselves apart from the international conglomerates of the beer world. 

It's clear that many people want the vocabulary to divide the world of beer into those who are worthy and those who are not. So then, what’s wrong with the term craft beer you may ask? Sometimes, the literal meaning of a word is appropriate for what you want to describe, but its use can still be confusing. Even though it wasn’t used until 1984 the term craft beer is strongly associated with the rebirth of interesting, flavorful beer in the United States some 40 years ago.  While this label is also widely used for breweries located outside the US, it’s less clear that it applies to breweries that predate the likes of Anchor and Sierra Nevada? Can a brewery that is nearly a century old and only makes one beer, like Orval, be a craft brewery? What about a brewery that is nearly a millennium old, like Weihenstephan? If I judge by what’s in the glass, there’s no question that these breweries should be discussed in the same genre as craft beer. On the other hand, "independent breweries" would be a questionable label, given that Orval is owned by the Church and Weihenstephan by the state.

Of course, what you call something depends on how you define that thing. So, let’s start with the definitions and then work up to the name. I suggest that breweries who meet the following four criteria are worthy of your support no matter how old they are, their country of origin, or (to some extent) who owns them:

1. Quality – A brewery that makes beers that are generally of a high quality.

2. Identity – A brewery that has a distinct identity.

3. Ethical – A brewery that follows ethical business practices.

4. Transparent – A brewery that doesn’t try to obfuscate or deceive its customers.

. So at a minimum the monastic breweries, like Orval and Chimay, would be craft by this criteria.

Still confused?  Here's a bit more explanation of the criteria:

Quality – The first and most important criterion for being counted among the breweries worth supporting is the quality of the product they produce.  In earlier attempts to define craft beer the Brewer’s Association focused on the quality of the ingredients, and rightfully so, but the skill of the brewer is equally important. Big breweries have been guilty over and over again of cutting corners on ingredients to save money or make their beer taste bland in pursuit of a wider market share, but that’s not always the case. When SAB/Miller owned Pilsner Urquell and built a new brewhouse they retained the triple decoction mashing regimen that is traditional for that beer, even though many reputable German breweries have abandoned decoction mashing altogether. Small breweries are much less likely to do this, but more likely to make a beer that falls short because of errors in process or simply because the recipe was not well thought through. The current trend toward an endless string of one-off beers is not helping in this regard. 

Identity – According to statistics on the Brewer’s Association website, there are now over 9,000 breweries in the US at the end of 2021, and a whopping 8864 of them were classified as craft breweries. I would contend that if this number were reduced, say cut in half, it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.  The question is how would you do the culling? Obviously, the quality of the product would be tantamount (see criterion 1). Beyond that I would argue that the identity of a brewery, the intangible qualities that make it stand out from the crowd, are the next most important criterion. Guinness and Pilsner Urquell may not fall under the umbrella of craft beer, but they both make an excellent product that is immediately recognizable. They each pioneered a much-copied style of beer, and if for no other reason than for the sake of history I want those breweries to prosper.  While we might be able to agree that Miller High Life, Budweiser and PBR would be hard to distinguish without the labels, the same thing can be said for a lineup of hazy IPAs with various fruit puree additions. So if a brewery is going to put their beer into a package and distribute it, they should perfect their recipes and techniques before branching out.  

Ethical – With so much choice at our fingertips there’s no reason to buy beer from breweries, large or small, who engage in questionable business practices. Who doesn’t want to support breweries that partner with community organizations, use local ingredients, try to do what they can to be sustainable with their use of energy and water? That pay their employees a fair wage and treat their customers with respect,. Finally, breweries that adopt practices that purposefully undermine other breweries would fail this criteria. 

Transparent – The Brewer’s Association has been calling for greater transparency when it comes to ownership for some time now. I think that’s fair, after all if we are going to evaluate a brewery on their ethics we need to know who owns the brewery. It could equally well apply to ingredients, or process, or where a beer was manufactured. Some beers historically have a strong connection to a location, so when Newcastle Brown is brewed in the Netherlands or Goose Island 312 Urban Wheat is brewed in New York, the brewery should tell the consumer this on the label. I’d like to know if the raspberry character of a kettle sour comes from additions of fresh fruit, aseptic puree, or artificial flavors and colors. In fact breweries should list the malts, hops and other ingredients used in all their beers. And they definitely should list the canned on date as priority number one.  My rule is no date, not buy.

Even if you only apply a couple of the criteria to your beer purchases I believe you will be helping the craft industry grow and prosper.

HopFlation: Will Increased Beer Prices Affect Future Purchasing Decisions? 

By Ty Web

For many of us, one of the finer points of drinking craft beer in the Garden State is the variety of quality beers available within 20 minutes from your home or apartment.

You’ll wait outside for new releases, you’ll buy their bottles as soon as they go onsale, you’ll wear their merch and you’ll tell your friends about the beer — even your buddy who only drinks White Claw. Maybe he will convert one day.

But will there ever come a time when craft beer’s prices are just too high that it actually alters your spending habits?

Maybe.

Recently, I was at very large beer store. There were plenty of local beers and beers from all over the U.S. Even some sought after items from across the Hudson. I was drooling as I saw DIPA after DIPA and Stout after Stout of great stuff with some random beers I’ve never seen before. Jackpot.

Some beers from NY were $26 a 4 pack. Many 4 packs were $18-$20. Those were from smaller to mid-size breweries. Larger local craft hovered between $14 and $18. (Very few breweries in NJ are what I consider “large”).

I was having company later that day, so I figured I needed about 12-16 beers to be safe plus a few left over. But would I pay $80 for 16 beers today?

A year ago, even 1 month ago, I certainly would have. I’ve never blinked because of cost. I’ve stopped by breweries and dropped $200 on bottles like it was my job.

That was “then.” That was before the cost of ingredients went up again. Before labor was not bountiful. Before gas prices got even more ridiculous again. Before these supply chain issues were in the forefront.

I hesitated. I panicked. I said I can’t possibly think like this. What have I become? What am I doing? Am I nuts?

Truth be told, I’m a consumer feeling the pinch of the economy. I’m just an average guy. No more, no less. 

Ultimately, I opted to pick up two packs of Stone IPA and a 4 pack of Founders Velvet Rush. Total cost, $39. No guest complained that day, but I didn’t feel right.

For the first time in my 25 year “career” of drinking craft, I made a beer decision based on price. I pushed aside an emphasis on location, independence, perceived quality and loyalty. That scared me.

Placing Founder’s lack of BA independence aside, they still make a solid beer at a reasonable price point. Even before they lost their BA tag, you all drooled over KBS and CBS. Don’t pretend. Stone IPA is an O.G., and despite its size, is still independent under BA standards. Both breweries were “gateways” for me and likely, for you. 

I’m not blaming breweries for their pricing decisions. Everything costs more. We see it everywhere. My question is whether the time has come when people will start to focus more on price in their purchasing decisions? If so, the winners will be larger, national craft breweries or worse, faux craft brewers owned by Big Beer. The latter scares me.

The losers here could be small to mid-size breweries that don’t have the luxury of dropping their prices substantially and don’t access to buying ingredients in bulk.

Let’s be honest. The average person will do their best to maintain their standard of living, and that includes supporting local as much as possible. However, at some point, is it possible that the same scrutiny folks place on food purchasing, gas and other items will occur with beer? Would folks sacrifice local, higher quality based on our current situation, for “lesser” quality beer? Will hard liquor and other alcohols cut into local craft even more if more bang for the buck matters more?

I struggle to use the term “lesser” quality here, because as we know, large breweries actually excel at consistency and quality control. So let me rephrase the question — will people begin to buy beer from larger craft breweries for cheaper prices moving forward because they can’t keep buying more expensive 4 packs, despite the fact that conceptually, craft fans strongly desire to support local beer?

Only time will tell. I sure hope I’m wrong.

The number of breweries is at a historic high and continues to climb. As of Dec. 1, the Brewers Association counted nearly 9,000 breweries in the United States, At the end of 2011, there were 2,033 breweries, or less than a quarter as there are now. That’s incredible growth even when factoring in the effects of the pandemic.  It of course begs the question are we drowning in too much craft beer?

On one hand, that makes this a wonderful time for beer lovers. It is easier than ever to find a great IPA (still the most popular craft-beer style in America), stout or session ale at a bar or liquor store. Previously ignored styles such as gose and Berliner weisse  and sours and BA gems have become trendy, while brewers have a free hand to experiment with Belgian IPAs or saisons packed with unusual herbs.

On the other hand, the explosively expanding market has created a new set of problems for brewers. New arrivals are finding it difficult to stand out on the store shelves. And the competition for taps, even at bars that have dozens of them, has become intense, forcing the new brewers to convince the owners that their product is more deserving of a spot than better-known, established beers. Because of the amount of new breweries consumer habits are also shifting. Whereas drinkers first found the a brand through its taproom, they’re now seeking out the taproom after sipping at a bar, restaurant or at home. As bars and restaurants emerge from the pandemic shutdown are both the becoming the biggest competition and opportunity for brewers.

For the bar owner picking the draft list has become exponentially harder than it was in the past.  Many have to balance styles, but how many spots do they have for national breweries? What local breweries do they want to focus on?  Every time a local brewery opens, making really high-quality beer, it pushes a national or regional craft brewery off.  Bar/restaurant  owners have to say no to people way more than you say yes.

Even when they are given a chance, some small brewers have experienced frustration with the way bars order products. Instead of buying three kegs of a new beer and running through them all, as it might have done when local beers were a novelty, many bars tend to buy a keg and, once it’s empty, fill the draft line with a competitor’s product, and then another one, and so on, before rotating back to the first brewery’s beer weeks or months later.  However that’s now  what the culture of the beer world is.  In order to meet demands for new beers and desirable one-offs, bar owners have no choice but to change offerings.  Breweries are approaching their work as an art and want to try new things which is makes sense since that’s what got people to try their beer in the first place.  The problem is there’s a finite number of tap handles.

Many in the beer industry pin their hopes for continued craft growth on small breweries localization: the idea that consumers would rather drink beers made down the road than across the country. In national surveys conducted by the Brewers Association, 67 percent of craft beer drinkers said it was important to them that their beer be locally made.  That in part (and of course bars being forced to close during the height of the pandemic) explains the move by small breweries to begin canning and, where allowed, self-distributing.  Beyond the sheer number of breweries, another phenomenon is complicating the lives of brewers is fickle customers. They want what’s new and something they’ve never had before. There's not much left of brand loyalty.

The deluge of beers in the marketplace has increased competition which now is spinning a once-steady landscape and claiming victims. The breweries most in jeopardy tend to be older, larger and with wide wholesale distribution. In contrast, the model for success -- though in more modest terms -- are smaller operations that self-distribute or have moderate distribution with multiple avenues to sell their beer.  

With the success of breweries often dependent on having a good answer to the question “what’s new” more than a few are simply using the same base recipe and just dry hopping it differently.  The name will of course be new though the taste will be strikingly familiar. 

File under You Can't Beat The System 

Night Shift Brewing broke into the distribution business in 2016 with all the fire of a revolutionary, vowing to fix what it called a broken system from within. The Washington brewery — as both an independent brewer and distributor — would take on the big wholesalers who dominated the industry and balance a game that for years has chewed and spit out the little guys.

“The current system is anti-competitive, stifles innovation in distribution, and creates a large barrier to entry for new distribution companies — we’re committed to changing that,” Night Shift said at the time. “After watching wholesalers squash every brewery effort to reform year after year, we finally decided — it’s time to work within the broken system to offer ourselves and our brewery friends a new model.”

I would love to say that in this case, the little guy prevailed; change came. But not so: Last month, Night Shift announced it would fold its distributing company into one of the largest craft beer wholesalers in the country. The cost and effort to scale up in the distribution business proved too much for Night Shift to bear. The "System" won.

So Night Shift struck a deal with Sheehan Family Companies, a wholesaler with one of the largest distribution networks in the country, to purchase the brewery’s distribution company and acquire the distribution rights to its portfolio in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Sheehan, worth more than a billion dollars, operates 17 different distributers across 12 states and the District of Columbia. And it recently acquired the Massachusetts distribution rights to Framingham brewer Jack’s Abby.

Night Shift co-founder Rob Burns offered a sobering perspective on why the experiment failed, the confidence and optimism the brewery had five years ago replaced by the cold reality of dollars and cents. “There’s a reason why wholesalers are consolidating across the country, It is a game of scale. It is a game of maximizing trucks and dollars per drop and logistics, and we are not going to be able to match that. We’re just not going to be able to get there. There’s too much market pressure. When craft was growing double digits, it was a lot easier to see a pathway to get there, or to at least be a force in the market for a longer time.”

Still, Night Shift Distributing managed to assemble an impressive list of 35 partners over its run, including breweries, wineries and distilleries. NSD had amassed 2,000 accounts and delivered over 2.4 million cases of beer, wine and spirits. Sheehan has started talking with NSD’s partners about joining its massive network. Many of NSD’s former partners, including the rapidly growing non-alcoholic brand from Connecticut, Athletic Brewing Co., which increased production by about 400% last year, have much to gain from jumping into Sheehan’s empire. The distributor’s network and legion of sales representatives can easily help grow a brand already intent on expanding its distribution volume outside of the state.

I’m not so much concerned with them, as I am the smaller breweries that want to distribute, but don’t have the volume to attract a distributor the size of Sheehan.

Take Worcester’s Redemption Rock Brewing Co., which suddenly finds itself without a distributor. Redemption Rock joined NSD last year in an effort to expand its footprint in the Boston area, while continuing to self-distribute in Central Massachusetts. Allowed to go at its own pace, Redemption Rock started by sending a couple of pallets to NSD a month. “In the last month we did three pallets,” said Redemption Rock CEO Dani Babineau. “Our goal was to increase the amount we were getting over to them. It’s a fine balance between what we send them and what we have in the taproom.”

Redemption Rock loved that NSD was itself a brewery and understood the challenges of trying to grow. It cared for the beer as its own, keeping it cold from the warehouse to the package store. And it did not require lifetime contracts.

Before news of the sale broke late last month, Burns told Babineau Night Shift could no longer distribute Redemption Rock beer by email first, then the two, both part of the Mass Brewers Guild Board of Directors, talked by phone. Burns, Babineau said, told her Night Shift would happily help Redemption Rock find a new distribution partner.

Redemption Rock doesn’t know whether it could strike the same pressure-free deal with Sheehan. 

Just another example of the flaws of the three tiered system which continues to defy fairness.

What's Wrong With Craft

by Faux Hopnonymous

Words like “independence,” “artisanal,” and, well, “craft” feed into the industry’s myth-making. The image of the plucky young homebrewer making beer in a garage is as present now as it was 40 years ago. As the tale goes, David still twirls his slingshot, hurling cans of locally brewed, independent, small-batch, hoppy Pale Ale towards a soulless, multinational Goliath. But after all this time, craft beer’s continued reliance on its old narratives is no longer a call to arms: it’s a warning sign. Underneath all that mythos is an industry in the midst of an existential crisis, grappling with stagnation and facing an uncertain future. 

The idea of the shadowy, underhanded Big Beer operative lurking around every corner, desperate to snatch back the sliver of market share stolen by independent beer, permeated the minds of craft beer makers and drinkers. But what’s the most serious challenge—the conglomerate of multinationals collectively known as “Big Beer,” or craft beer’s own flaws? They have become their own worst enemy.

Despite fervent promises to do and be better, the industry seems stuck in a pattern of repeating its mistakes, from exclusionary behavior and poor workplace standards to quality-control issues and even outright dangerous practices. In response, the same conversations are had, the same promises made, all while real change remains elusive. Craft beer can no longer afford such complacency: As sales shrink in these almost post pandemic times, as it fails to live up to its founding stories—or to sell itself to new and, importantly, more diverse consumers—it’s clear that ambitious, radical change will be needed to return the industry to a growth phase, and wider relevancy. 

Craft beer’s pitch to the consumer has long been that it is a better product because it is not mass-produced. It is made not by some faceless corporation but by someone with a story. Its position is that you should care about that person and what motivates them; that understanding their process will further your enjoyment. It is an industry that looks to beer’s many traditions, but which offers something new and exciting. This beer is worth paying more for by virtue of its crafted status, in other words.

The fact is that craft beer remains an expensive endeavor. As in any industry, smaller businesses can’t compete with larger companies on pricing. In beer, the independent breweries that come close—such as Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., and Boston Beer Co.,—rely on economies of scale, enormous product turnover, and placements in mainstream retail. Still, they don’t approach the price points of, say, Budweiser, or Miller Lite. With or without favorable contracts, hops remain enormously expensive (even more so if you’re looking for more covetable and sought-after varieties), and specialty malts and ingredients like high-quality fruit add to the cost. 

Craft beer was never intended to compete on price, though. Instead, the sector’s reputation for quality and creativity has been used to justify its higher price tags to consumers. The key is convincing new drinkers that their experience is going to be good enough to merit the few extra bucks—a problem that is becoming keener for the industry. Craft beer urgently needs to make the case—to wider audiences, communities, and cultures than it has historically spoken to—that the enjoyment it offers is worth the sticker price.  

Little of the work to convert potential drinkers takes place on neutral ground for the uninitiated. Relying on niche shops or bars as industry evangelists means struggling to reach those who are unfamiliar with such spaces. How, then, can craft beer more actively pursue new avenues, and cater to new demographics? Getting beer in local liquor markets and bodegas is a good starting point, even if it’s still going to be at a premium price.  History has shown that once customers taste craft beers and get to find out about the ingredients and processes which drive the premium price, they are happy to buy it.

For that value proposition to truly work, the beer has to be good. That it often isn’t is one of the industry’s most trenchant problems. If you have to define your product by what it isn’t (macro lagers) , you don’t have a product. Local beer doesn’t taste better if the beer isn’t good. There’s nothing craft about beer that’s inconsistent, and on occasion, undrinkable.  Unfortunately that's the case far too often.  Too many small breweries fail to prioritize quality-assurance processes, lab testing, sensory training, and other educational practices for their staff. There’s too much bad beer out there. That’s craft beer’s problem. Until there are better standards across the industry, why is an average customer going to pay a premium for a four-pack?  Face it, things like under-attenuated beers and beers that are little more than fruit nectar with some alcohol in the background don’t scream ‘craftsmanship. 

Craft beer admittedly has problems with representation and inclusion that also extend to its customers and to those working in the industry. Today, many small breweries remain understaffed, stretch overworked employees between poorly defined roles, often fail to take workplace safety seriously, and offer relatively low compensation in the process. 

Craft beer can still be a welcoming place where drinkers go to encounter new experiences, creativity, and a spirit of collaboration. To fulfill that promise, brewers just need, collectively, to commit to doing and being better than what came before now. 

Dirty Lines Ruin Beer  

How many times have you ordered a beer at a bar and immediately notice that it tastes bad, or looks bad?  Right, more than should happen.  Then when you ask the bartender for a different beer and discover it  also tastes off then the issue isn’t with the keg of beer, it's most likely draught system, in other words, dirty lines. You beer came through dirty, gross, disgusting, vile, outrageously nasty draught lines that should have been cleaned but the owner or manager was too lazy or cheap or dumb to do it. 

 I understand that the pandemic has forced bars to cut corners but this is one that should never go unattended. Dirty draught lines are a systemic problem. There’s no excuse for it, but frustratingly, there are multiple parties on the hook that need to come to a comprehensive solution on the issue. You might say this is just the retailers fault..the onus is on them to solve this problem and maintain their draught lines.  In its most basic interpretation, you’d be right, but put into context, the entire industry needs to pitch in to address the issue more aggressively and make draught line cleaning a required best practice to serve beer on draught to the public. Breweries, Wholesaler, Retailers…and yes, consumers most of all. 

Let’s get down to brass tacks. If you’re a retailer, and your customer has a bad pint of beer at your establishment due to an issue with your draught system, one of these things will happen:

1. They won’t notice that it’s off and they’ll order another one. They’ll have a blissful smile pasted on their face because they really needed a beer and you provided it. This is the the least likely scenario. Dream on.

2. They won’t be able to directly tell you why it’s off, but they will realize they’re having a suboptimal experience in short order. You cannot BS people, and regardless of their expertise in beer, they’ll realize they’re not having a very good pint of beer at some point. They’re unlikely to order another beer, and while they might switch to wine/spirits for their second/ third round during that visit, they’re unlikely to return as often as you’d like, if at all. This is the most likely scenario.

3. They immediately notice that it tastes bad, or looks bad, and not only don't they ever come back, your bar/restaurant slowly get a reputation for poor quality and you lose incremental sales. 

If you serve beer through a draught system and sell it to people for 7,8,9 or 10 bucks a pint without taking care of your equipment, you’re disrespecting your customer, and you will slowly lose a lot of money over time. Focusing on draught quality makes you a lot of money…not focusing on it makes you go out of business. 

Draught line cleaning, in terms of policy-oriented solutions, is in an abysmal state in this country. There has been absolutely no legislation put forward on a national level that standardizes or even starts the ball rolling on requisite safety standards for draught cleanliness, cleaning frequency, or inspection standards. 

Beer is a culinary product. Beer should be treated the exact same way as food in terms of its potential to harbor bacteria, germs, and all the other little creatures that can make you sick. 

On the bright side many states require regular draught line cleaning, but all too often the methods used fall short of what is needed to actually maintain draught quality. This, coupled with a complete lack of consistent enforcement mechanisms, cleaning standards, or oversight, means there’s frustratingly little transparency in the beer industry around these practices. 

As I see it, beer wholesalers should be the draught police in most circumstances, and odds are the account will thank them.  Unfortunately that's not always the case.  I have seen many wholesaler reps that I’ve worked with in market drink a bad pint of beer with me sitting right next to them and not say a word. I know it’s difficult to do that without thinking you’re going to damage a relationship with the account, but understand that if you don’t do it, no one else will. 

A draught system’s only job is to get beer from the keg to the glass with the goal of serving the customer a beer as the brewer intended. That’s it. If it’s not doing that job perfectly, it’s costing everyone money. 

Everyone loses when bad beer is poured. Breweries make less money, distributors make less money, retailers make less money, and the customer has to drink bad beer that wasn’t how the brewer intended them to drink it.  And then the ENTIRE beer industry suffers because they have lost a drinker.

 Beer is wonderful, spectacular, incredibly delicious beverage and everyone should enjoy it. Draught quality best practices are a long term investment with massive returns. As bars and brewery tasting rooms reopen I ask them to please take the time to focus on the value drivers for your business and what's best for the consumer.

Right now, beer quality in the serving procedure is the easiest and most effective way to do that.

Too Many Beers

There are now more than 8,700 breweries operating in the United States. There are another 1,000 or so applications on file for breweries in planning. However, there is still a fixed amount of grocery store shelf space, and the market segment of craft beer drinkers seems to have stabilized, if not shown signs of declining numbers. This means that more and more breweries are vying for the attention of a somewhat finite audience on a very finite number of shelves. The question becomes, how do you stand out? 

Craft beer drinkers are notoriously promiscuous. In the old days, your grandfather was a “Bud Guy” or a “Miller Guy” or whatever regional specialty he liked. The same beer was in that man’s fridge every day of the year. Beer was a commodity like toilet paper. He found one he liked, and he kept buying it. He didn’t need to try them all. Craft beer drinkers are different. Craft beer drinkers want to try EVERYTHING! Look at Untappd. People earn awards based on how many different types of beers they try and even for trying more than one of a certain style. No one gets a prize for really loving Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (an excellent beer) and drinking it every day of their lives. So craft breweries have to give the customers what they want. 

It started out harmlessly enough. A brewery would have a year round ‘flagship’ selection, beers that they had perfected through trial and error. Sometimes the process took years before a new product was added to the regular offerings. Along with these masterpieces came Seasonals. These beers were something fun and limited for consumers. Maybe a fruity wheat beer for Spring or Summer; perhaps an Oktoberfest lager or a pumpkin beer for Fall. How about something higher in ABV and a little darker for Winter? Each year, the same Seasonals were released. Maybe there would be a little recipe tweaking from batch to batch to make them more interesting, but it was essentially the same reliable selection. Then flagship sales started to fade. Brewers began to realize that seasonal beer sales were dramatically outpacing the sales of the flagship beers they’d worked so hard to perfect. So brewers began offering more Seasonals. Why not split Summer into two seasons? After all, you might be in a different mood on Memorial Day than on Labor Day. Why not have a beer to highlight every special time of year? 

That brought the one-off. One-off is a term meaning that a brewery intended to make a recipe once and never again. The idea used to be that a One-off was a fun, and sometimes silly, experiment in flavor. “What would happen if I added vanilla and blueberry to my American Wheat Ale recipe? Would it taste like blueberry cobbler?” These innocuous experiments were typically served at a brewery’s tasting room, a few random kegs would be sent to select draft accounts, and only occasionally would they make their way into packaging. Then things changed.

 As brewers started to realize that Seasonal sales were the lifting tide for their businesses, more Seasonals had to be offered. The thought became, “Why have a Memorial Day release and a Labor Day release when you can produce a different beer every month?” Then, it got more intense. “Wait, my competitor is releasing a different beer every two weeks? They have a line around the block, full of people waiting to buy cans of the new beer, something they’ve never tasted to even know if they’d like? I should release something every week then! Then things really got out of hand. Instead of just packaged One-offs, which anybody on the street, or the internet, could buy, there became taproom only One-off selections: extra special One-offs that could only be consumed at the brewery’s tasting room. More and more of the flagship beers saw declining on-premise sales. Why would you go to the brewery to drink the beer you could get at the gas station? Why not drink the super rare stuff? Tasting room sales are where breweries typically earn the highest profits and are testing grounds to chart consumer preferences. If it’s not selling at your brewery, you probably won’t continue to make a whole lot of it, right? 

And here we are. Breweries are constantly working to release a new beer every week, if not more than one. They are competing with one another for their share of an ever more fickle craft beer demographic. And the worst part is that they aren’t allowing themselves to get better at making their beers. There is no time to perfect a recipe when it’s a different one every week. Brewers aren’t given the chance to taste a beer and say, “Hmmm…maybe I could adjust the hop additions next time. Maybe I could have chosen a different yeast strain for this. Maybe the fruit (or coffee or chocolate or pineapple upside down cake or chicken noodle soup or whatever addition was too high on this. I bet it’d taste better if I dialed it back next time.” Instead, it is a forced trajectory of constantly innovating and never refining.

 With that, the inevitable end is that beer quality suffers. Consumers become frustrated that when they buy new beers, they don’t taste like they said they would on the package. If that happens to enough people enough times, their attentions get pulled in other directions. It’s not a great path forward for craft beer. Wine producers strive to make essentially the same products year after year. Through cultivation, fermentation, and blending, the products are slightly different, but more or less the same over time. You don’t see a lot of wineries adding Fruity Pebbles cereal to their Merlot to get the jump on the producer down the valley. It’s through refinement and perfection that they define their brands. That’s how the craft beer industry found its success years ago. My hope is that we’ll find it again. 

The Sameness of Craft Today  by Hopnonymous Jr.

I'm sitting at my local semi-dive bar and their beer menu lists six cans of fruited hazy IPA and pastry stouts, 3 tap lines of macro swill, and 7 lines featuring styles that are chasing trends in the current craft beer market. Forgetting the macro stuff, this line up is prima facia evidence that the craft movement is in big trouble as this pandemic finally ends.   I am also fairly often described as, among other things, a pessimist, so take this for what it's worth. 

As consumers are leaving flagship brands in the dust and instead clamoring for whatever the latest styles are, I am finding brewers growing exhausted by the pace of releases and constant need to push boundaries, seemingly just for the sake of doing so.

So how did we get here?

If we rewind the tape on how the craft beer revolution began, images of a young Ken Grossman building Sierra Nevada from the ground up in 1980 spring to mind, as well as those of pioneers like Fritz Maytag (Anchor Brewing Company), Jack Mcauliffe (New Albion Brewing Company), and “The Beerhunter” Michael Jackson. These early brewers and writers built a movement by producing and writing about beer styles that had generally fallen by the wayside, including stouts, porters, and pale ales.

Later, breweries such as Dogfish Head would begin to take these styles to another level by experimenting with the addition of culinary ingredients or brewing techniques that were novel to beer. Dogfish Head, established in 1995, produced beers that were far outside of what was considered normal at the time—beers loaded with ingredients like maple syrup, raisins, beet sugar, pumpkin, and anything else you could wrap your head around. Their production brewery lost money for years and had to pull in resources from their restaurant just to stay open. They had a vision, though—a belief in a truth that they wanted to express—and they believed it would translate which it did.

So what exactly is the difference between the innovation this industry was built upon and what we are witnessing today? On the surface, I will admit, there does not appear to be much of one. The beers sitting in front of me today seem almost like the next logical progression. However, once you look beneath the surface, I believe the differences become much more obvious.

Today’s consumers have more choices in beers and brands than ever before. With roughly 8,800  breweries in the U.S. and more on the way, consumers are becoming buried beneath options. That isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, unless the majority of those options are becoming increasingly similar to one another.

To me, that—the loss of originality—is what is killing the heart of our movement. Where have the artists gone? Where have the brewers with something to say gone? I understand that the liquor store shelves are lined with a plethora of overly hopped, juicy, hazy, fruity beers, but why? Is it because we are all suddenly extremely passionate about this one style, or is it because we are all desperate to have an offering in that or any other, hot new style category?  So my question is where have the artists gone? Where have the brewers with something to say gone?   It's the loss of originality that is killing the heart of the craft movement. 

It's clear that many brewers are scrambling to pack ingredients and haze into beers simply to appease their consumers, not because those are the beers they themselves are reaching for at the end of a brew day. Frankly for me, and many others, the juice has gone out  the countless, undistinguished juicy, double juicy, juicier, juiciest countless beers in the marketplace.  

While I have heard people blame millennials, who allegedly can’t drink the same beer twice, for this current culture, I would argue that the real problem lies with the brewers. Many of them are actively chasing trends in an effort to gain or maintain market share and stay relevant  That however can be unprofitable. 

When a company, no matter the industry, spends time and resources trying to catch a wave that has already peaked, it is riding that wave on its way back down. When a company spends that same time developing its own unique offerings, however, it creates its own wave that it can ride in its entirety. It is a risk to go with your own unproven creation; it may not resonate with people. It is far easier to go with what seems to be working in the market, but in the long term, that decision carries with it the risk of slowly killing what they have all fought together to build. 

So, we have a couple of options. Brewers can stop blaming the market and the consumer. Brewers should be bold and create. Remember brewers, that is why you chased your dreams; it was because you had a vision. 

Owners, allow your brewers to take your brand in directions that may break away from juicy IPAs and pastry stouts. When you focus on what caused craft beer to be so special to us in the first place, you will maintain the integrity of what made the craft movement so special and differentiated. 

When breweries attempt to control market share by chasing what they think consumers want, they lose their identity and individuality.  They are no longer artists. They may as well peel off that “independent” craft beer seal from their labels and sell the brewery to AB InBev. That is the equivocation of the second option.

After all, what was that word that we craft drinkers used to describe the difference between all of the large beer brands for years? It was: Sameness.

Exploding the myth of the seltzer wellness lifestyle-

Mark Anthony Brands will launch a new, higher-ABV White Claw. Called White Claw Surge, it ups the hard seltzer’s ABV from 5% to 8%.  White Claw Surge joins newcomer Truly Extra, an 8% ABV version of Boston Beer Company’s Truly Hard Seltzer, which launched nationally last month. It’s also competing against PBR’s Stronger Seltzer—also 8% ABV—which advertises itself as the “spiked-er” version of spiked seltzer,

These new releases come as companies realize that drinkers were already spiking standard-strength hard seltzers, and they allow brands to cut out that middle man. They also invite a reconsideration of hard seltzer, a beverage category whose popularity has so far been repeatedly linked to health-conscious, “lifestyle” consumers choosing moderate-ABV and low-calorie beverages.  What’s more, these higher-ABV seltzers are sold in 16oz rather than 12oz cans.

After just five years of national distribution, hard seltzer is a $4 billion category in the U.S. The spate of new, higher-ABV hard seltzer offerings from some of the largest brands in FMBs upends an oft-repeated tenet of hard seltzer’s rise: That it’s a result of health-conscious drinkers motivated by moderation. In fact, hard seltzer is more likely the beverage of indulgent partying—“Ain’t no laws when you’re drinking Claws,” right?

Aside from the seemingly unchallengeable juggernaut that is Michelob Ultra, hardly any new alcohol brands have successfully cornered the perceived “better-for-you” beer segment. Despite media buzz and financial backing from Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., fitness-focused craft beer brand Sufferfest Beer Co. folded in December. The pace of new 100-calorie craft IPA releases has slowed. Non-alcoholic beer, while energized by new brands, remains a drop in beer’s sales bucket at just 0.4% of the overall market. 

Consumers might say they’re health-conscious, but that doesn’t necessarily motivate their real-world alcohol purchasing decisions. The conventional wisdom is that drinkers choose hard seltzers as a more healthful alternative to beer. But these higher-ABV seltzers pack the same caloric punch as popular IPAs: Both White Claw and Truly Extra have 220 calories per 16oz can. Bell’s Two Hearted IPA (7% ABV) has 282 calories per 16oz, and New Belgium Brewing’s Voodoo Ranger IPA (7% ABV) has 249.

Whether it’s surveys or sales data, results consistently show that brands with big ABV and flavor can win over drinkers. And that’s made even more evident by White Claw’s push into this space after accruing $2.2 billion in 2020—the fourth-highest total for any alcohol brand inchain retail, as tracked by market research company IRI.

Breweries and, increasingly, hard seltzer makers are responding to demand for stronger, more flavorful beverages with higher-octane offerings, often subtly—or not-so-subtly—calling out the elevated ABV. Truly Extra displays its 8% ABV at the top-right of the package, ensuring it’s one of the first things a consumer sees when eyeing that can on the shelf.

Not only do these products ratchet up the ABV, but that means their calorie counts tick up, too. A 16oz can of the new White Claw Surge Blood Orange flavor, for example, contains 220 calories (though only 2 grams of carbs). Smooj, a popular hard seltzer smoothie brewed by a division of Michigan-based HOMES Brewery, contains 240-300 calories per 12oz can—roughly two to three times as much as a 12oz can of Coca-Cola.

None of this is evidence that calories or carbs don’t matter to some segment of the population. If they didn’t, Michelob Ultra wouldn’t be the second-best-selling beer in the U.S. Rather, the growth in higher-ABV beer and seltzer offerings indicates there’s a massive counterweight to the wellness-minded crowd. These drinkers are looking for ABV bang for their buck, whether in terms of single serve FMBs from a convenience store or a six-pack of Double IPA from the grocery cold box.

By the Beer Underground's second in command 

NotHopnonyous

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SEND IT BACK

Beer, even craft beer, will go “bad” under normal conditions. In fact, the quality of beer starts to change as soon as it leaves the brewery. Does bread straight out of the oven taste as good after sitting on a counter for a week? A keg of beer has an average shelf life of a few to several months if it’s kept in an optimal environment, which includes being stored cold.

Considering that up to a third of that time is spent sitting at the brewery or in a distributor’s warehouse, the window is even smaller for the consumer to enjoy it. Poor storage practices or poor draught system maintenance can quickly degrade draught beer quality. With this in mind, how do you recognize a beer that is past its prime and when  (not if) you should you send it back?

Ultimately, you should be able to send back any beer that you are unsatisfied with. Your favorite watering holes and restaurants should want you to be happy, but consumers seem to have hang-ups about doing this. Everyone has heard horror stories of retribution from restaurant staff for sending back steaks that were not satisfactory to the customer. Others have adopted a mentality that all beer is good and “we should be so lucky” to have any. and there are still some who fear being labeled a “beer snob” by their people for rejecting a mistreated beer.

I believe these are, to put it kindly, all flimsy concerns. The likely outcome of asking for a different beer would be a server who is perfectly happy to bring you a beer that you’ll appreciate and enjoy. Additionally, the interaction offers a chance to discuss what was wrong and how to fix it. I think it would be difficult to disguise malicious retribution from wait staff in a beer, and I doubt a busy bartender has time to coordinate an attack on your meal.

If you care about the next person who orders the beer, or the brewery that crafted it and know that what you have in your glass is not how the brewer intended it to taste, or be served, then you have a DUTY to send back the beer and voice your concerns. 

A big caveat here is that there is a distinction between bad beer (mistreated) and beer that is not someone’s preference. Sending a beer back, simply because you don’t like it — unless you’re relying on your server or bartender to cater to your tastes — is a no-no. You should be asking yourself and your server a few questions about the craft beer you’re served, If they steer you wrong then it's right to complain.

Ever wonder why your beer tastes bad?  Here the the four most common reasons.

• The beer was stored at improper temperatures. Most beer kegs should be stored below 40°F. Above this temperature, beer spoiling factors increase, resulting in oxidative flavors like wet cardboard.

• The beer was served with a dirty glass/wrong glass.  Have you ever ordered wine and had the server just place the bottle in front of you? Your beer experience is improved when served in proper glassware. This means your glass must be "beer clean" if not it may hurt the appearance, flavor, aroma or general experience that comes with enjoying craft beer.

• The beer served at an improper temperature.  Extremely cold beer hinders the development of volatile compounds that make up the complex aroma and flavor of your beer.  Most beer in the US is served at 38 degrees, far too cold for many styles.  When I want a special BA Imperial Stout for example I order it first and let it sit while I drink a different beer.

• The  beer was served from contaminated draught lines.  Sadly this is more common than you might think.  A properly poured draught beer is quite special but if a draught system is not properly serviced, beer spoiling bacteria can contaminate the beer corrupting the entire experience. 

Whichever the reason for the bad beer, management needs to know so they can cease serving of it, find out the reason, and if they are blame free, inform the wholesaler and brewer.  By sending it back you are actually performing a public service.

Ultimately, the consumer is just as responsible for blowing the whistle on bad beer as anyone else who comes in contact with it along its journey to your glass. It will help ensure that the experiences future craft beer enthusiasts have are never negative. Strive to be a steward of beer,.  

And needless to say, just because beer goes bad, doesn’t mean we have to drink it. 

Rising Beer Prices & Mystery Freshness:

A Consumer’s Perspective

I do not own a brewery, never have and never will. However, it would seem to me that as a consumer who purchases a significant amount of beer each year, a consumer is quite integral to the ecosystem of the

beer industry (despite the small handful of those breweries who feel that consumers complain too much and don’t deserve their attention).  

Even before Covid, I noticed that the price of 16 oz. 4 packs started to creep up in bottle shops and stores across New Jersey. I get it. Fuel prices, production costs, ingredient costs, canning costs and a litany of

other factors can influences price. For some interesting reading, you can locate some 2018 articles online describing why global warming will be The cause for increased beer prices.

I’m going to kick those articles to the curb for now and focus on beer prices in what is our current “normal,” because that’s the reality of what’s going on now.

Ponder this: when are craft beer prices so high that they actually influence your decision not to purchase it? I can tell you that I finally reached that point a few days ago, after 30+ years of drinking craft and

spending money like a drunken sailor.  

In addition, the decision of certain breweries to avoid date stamping their beer is only going to cause a bigger issue, as more and more high- cost stale beer sits on shelves.

Here is my story. I walked into a liquor store I had not frequented in a while because it was near my travels. As I looked around and saw majority of non-local but very popular craft beers, I was staring eye

level at a four pack of a well-known brand one state over. In fact I saw four different types of their beer. Score.  

I told myself that I wouldn’t mind trying this beer, but then I saw the price of $25.99 for a four pack of 16 ounce cans. For the first time in 30 years I made a decision that I’m not buying it based on cost.  

Sure, I’ve decided not to by the entire allotment of BBA bottles and bought 4 instead of 6, but this was different. I then panicked and looked around for something to “back in to,” as if I would breathe more easily if I saw an NEIPA for $18. Just $18 for a 4 pack.

Please! Help me! $18!

And then, I felt calm.

I spied a 6 pack of Stone IPA bottles that was made 2 weeks ago. The cost was $11.99. I took it home and I enjoyed it as if it were 15 years ago when I was drinking that beer all the time.

What happened? I finally put my financial foot down.

One of the things that also deterred me from purchasing that other beer besides the price was the fact that there was no date stamp on their beer. So that brewery is telling me to trust them that what was sitting on the shelves at a place that you’ve never been to in a long time has costly and fresh beer.  

Call me crazy, but I have come to this simple conclusion: if there’s no stamp I simply move on. It doesn’t matter who brewed it. I don’t care. I don’t need a beer that was made yesterday. I just don’t like to engage

in Russian Roulette when I purchase beer, and I’ve been burned in the past.

How I spend on beer and everything else is much more important than it was prior to Covid. Think about the situation some of us are in. Credit card debt is rolling in now and in an effort to have some semblance of a normal holiday season, credit card debt from the holidays is now even bigger than it was. For some, decisions are made about what you’re spending your money on, how much you might be supporting local

businesses on takeout and if you have kids, what activities they have coming up. It’s all relative to your situation. I feel pretty comfortable saying that being married with a family is a decent patch of the craft

beer quilt.

So if we are being extremely careful with the purchasing patterns of everything else, why would it be any different for beer? Why would we blindly throw money at a brewery just because they command such a high price?

It may offend some, but from a consumer standpoint, it’s just beer. For breweries, it’s your passion and the reason you went into business, but for consumers, it’s just beer. For breweries, it’s the reason you may

have taken out a second mortgage to buy new equipment to be able to expand and that’s great. In the end, for this consumer, it’s just beer.  

I won’t downplay the fact that seeing a date stamp when the beer was made was a substantial factor in my purchase decision. We all know Stone was at the forefront for pushing a freshness-first approach. However, the pendulum has swung to a point where the decision not to tell the consumer when their beer was made is a bit troubling in my opinion.

If you tell me the cost to put a date stamp on the can was cost prohibitive, then maybe there would be some merit to the argument. I think we know that’s not the case. Then why?

I wish I had the time to go into a beer store and index the amount of beer that is sitting on shelves that is older than 30, 60, 90, 120 or 180 days or more. From what I can tell, the amount of aged beer sitting on shelves is staggering just from s visual standpoint simply by knowing when certain beers were seasonally released.

We all know how Covid has impacted us, and for breweries, especially larger craft breweries,  they may need to pump out more cans because their distribution of kegs has been greatly reduced. I understand.

However, if you expect the average person to purchase 64 ounces of liquid for $26 all the time, you have to be prepared for a consumer base that eventually is going to be more critical of that decision.

It hurts to say this because of how supportive I’ve been to local breweries, but when you think about the beers you used to rush out and  buy when craft beer was still flourishing15 and 20 years ago, but seemed to abandon when they were no longer “cool,” I find it ironic to be considering going back to them in the face of inflated prices and unknown brewing dates.

This is just my observations and opinions. Feel free to disagree, but please, look around. Breweries will do what breweries will do and might not care what I think, but at some point, please understand that there

is a limit to what folks will buy. Quite simply, I will support local craft until I can’t.

Until next time, choose wisely.

Hopnonymous 

  The Peanut Gallery Doesn’t Have to Buy Your Peanuts”

 If the recent events on Wall Street have taught us anything, it’s that outsiders can disrupt insiders quickly. The lessons learned from the Reddit/Robinhood/GameStop saga apply well beyond the financial industry.

 For example, a craft beer drinker “invests” in beer they like. They buy it, they (hopefully) buy it again, they talk about it, they post about it, they give the brewery likes and shout outs, they wear merch, they drink it in the tasting room, they take home a crowler or two, they tell friends about it and they feel good about it. Over time, like-minded folks help the success of a brewery.  

 Those same folks can also contribute to poor sales by not buying your beer and telling close friends not to buy it. We’ve all heard that a person who has a good experience tells one person and the person with a bad

experience tells 11. We have seen an explosion of craft beers over the past 10 years that now gives us more options than ever before. Given these options, we (the little people) pretty much have the choice to buy anything we want, whenever we want (online releases aside).

Knowing this, why are some breweries finding more and more ways to alienate certain of their client base when beer options are so plentiful in the marketplace? Here are some minor requests from the peanut gallery.

 Full disclosure: the breweries I currently frequent do not have any of the issues I describe below. However, some that I have really enjoyed over the years have at least one of these issues, and that’s why I have

personally pumped the brakes on them for the time being.

 Please stop mixing politics and beer. Tasting rooms and bars used to be the one place where people from all over could get away and meet, chat, drink and create new experiences. It did not matter what was on

your bumper sticker, what you did or how you voted. I’m happy to chat with anyone over a flight. Or just a nod and a smile from 6’ away, socially distanced.

 However, the landscape has changed for some breweries. For some, you are either on the “right” or “true” side of things (whatever that side  is) or you’re lumped into another bucket like a piece of garbage. You’ve

seen it. “This is my opinion and everyone else is stupid, a racist or ---ist if you don’t agree.” You’re passionate about making and selling beer. That’s awesome. Can you maybe stick with that?

 As much as you believe in the right to say anything anytime, don’t be surprised if you start to alienate more people than you think, considering that there are plenty of people out there who don’t even agree with a particular party or support a single politician anyway – but some of you act as if “we” do.  

 I’ve tripped over so many soapboxes on social media lately that my shins are bleeding.

 “This one time at band camp I heard it was just about the liquid with breweries”  

 If you must tell us where you stand, then please, be a little creative by telling us that your Gose has the saltiness of a left leaning millennial who finally figured out his favorite politician and his son are both on the take. Or that your Saison has the earthiness of right wing dirt that splashed up on mud flaps in the backwoods of some random state during a protest.

 If you want to polarize and alienate what could be 50% of the population (based purely on stats from the last election), are you ok if 50% of your customers stopped buying your beer right now? Would you still be killing it?

 Covid has forced people to decide on their purchasing decisions with a much keener process eye than ever before. So if you don’t want our business, just let us know.    

 Please date stamp your beer. With so many options of beer out there and so many brands date stamping their beer, why are some still not doing it?  Is it because breweries think people will just buy anything?

 A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Stone began their “Enjoy By” series. Taking a page from the Bud “Born on Date,” they made positive waves on the issue of freshness, which of course, can be taken to the

extreme. (Like the guy who only drinks beer that is a week old or else he drain pours it. He stinks.) Then everyone forgot who Stone was because, well, that’s just how things work these days. These days, the

amount of old beer on shelves is astonishing.

 Without any idea when a beer dropped, I’m supposed to walk into a store and spend $22-$24 on a 4 pack that may or may not have been made 3 months ago when there’s six other brands next to yours with a date stamp?  Pass.

 Please slow the secondary market from becoming the primary market. In the past, and more than ever, the integrity of the companies I buy products from matters to me. That’s a personal choice, and call me

crazy or old fashioned. Over time, and perhaps because of Covid, I’ve seen a slight shift from where things used to be. Take for example, limited or rare releases. A typical limited release beer has evolved to this:   

 This beer is only for sale at the brewery;

 This beer is only sold online;

 This beer is only sold to those who buy it (no proxies);

 This beer is on sale to anyone who buys it anywhere in the U.S. (proxies are fine);

 The beer sells out in 5 seconds; and

 Folks who would spend a large amount of money at that brewery are shut out.

 Certain breweries know the secondary market loves their beers. They know there’s a dude who shows up as a proxy for 16 orders just isn’t right who probably programmed bots. They know that even 2 years ago

that guy from out of state wasn’t coming into buy your beer, but locals still were.   

 Please tell us if you think we don’t matter. When you factor in the political rantings, making it harder to get beer locally and making it harder to know when beer was actually made it, maybe breweries could just tell us that we are a bunch of sheep who are butt hurt whiners.

 Tell us we aren’t needed for your success, now or ever. Tell us that you will be just fine without our business so there’s no confusion. Tell us that we will mindlessly just buy anything you put in a can or bottle.

Oh wait, some of you already have...

                                                           Hopnonymous