7 ms·

The huge number of small breweries

32 points by lxm 4y ago

NickBusey 4y ago
Eat local is a big movement. Drink local should be just as important to those who drink. It supports the local economy. It’s more environmentally friendly. And the beer is usually way better to boot.
- spacemadness 4y ago
  This smells like large breweries asking their financial journalist friends to start pushing back on small breweries eating into their margins. Dedicating an article to “are too many small breweries are a problem?” is a bit too convenient of a slant when other options are on the table. “Stop creating breweries, it’s too risky. Drink InBev” essentially.
  - bacchusracine 4y ago
    >Drink InBev I will honestly quit drinking altogether first. I hate these big corpos who buy up what was a good brewer and a line with several good beers and immediately start changing the recipes and the process to destroy the beers. I've suffered through it too many times now to call it anything but malicious. What is the point in damaging an established brand, tarnishing an established product which will bring in money from people happy to pay for those flavors other than spite. In twenty plus years I've only seen a buyout happen once without it destroying the beers. No, if my only choices are the swill that companies like InBev produce I'll find something else to drink. It's about the flavor. Take that away and I'm gone and so are a lot of people.
    - spacemadness 4y ago
      I don’t drink much anymore these days but I absolutely noticed this when they bought Goose Island a long time ago. The flavor changed overnight. They can’t just buy everyone to quell indie beer geekdom once and for all but they sure continue to act like corporate bullies all the same.
      - bacchusracine 4y ago
        Goose Island was one of the examples I was thinking of. A shame. It really was an almost overnight change. And for what? To take a good series of beers and ruin them? As I said, I'm here for the flavors. Take those away and I leave with them.
        nerdponx 4y ago
        Their goal is to make money. They believed, correctly, that at least some consumers wouldn't care about or even notice a change in recipe, maybe because people broadly associate Goose Island with good-quality craft beer and continue to buy it. Consider this model: Goose Island with the old recipe sold K units per year at $P profit per unit. The new recipe can sell K/l units per year at $P×i, where l is the % of customers who switch away and i is the % increase in profit. If K × P < (K/l) × (P×i) then it's profitable to switch to the new recipe.
        Kon-Peki 4y ago
        Goose Island sold after their peak. They weren’t the best small brewer in Chicago anymore and many wanted to go do other things. For example, one of the brewmasters moved back to his hometown in Michigan and started a pretty well-regarded hard cider place. Speaking of, the “wine trail” in Southeast Michigan is worth it - not for the wine so much (it’s not bad, but it’s not anything to write home about), but that excellent small independent distilleries and breweries have popped up and now a large group of people with a wide variety of tastes can have fun alternating between the 3.
    - bsder 4y ago
      > hate these big corpos who buy up what was a good brewer and a line with several good beers and immediately start changing the recipes and the process to destroy the beers. <Cries in Ballast Point>.
- z2h-a6n 4y ago
  While I'm all for drinking local beer, is there any available data on whether it's actually more environmentally friendly than beer made by larger producers? I can imagine some aspects of the brewing process that would tip the scales either way, e.g. economies of scale favoring large producers, potentially-shorter supply chains favoring small producers.
plasticchris 4y ago
Recently a small brewery opened in my basement :) turns out home brew is better and easier than I thought. I had to keep telling myself people did this with wooden kegs and open fires, I can for sure do it with modern steel stuff.
- brenainn 4y ago
  Any words of wisdom? Trying out homebrewing is one of my goals this year.
  - plasticchris 4y ago
    Don’t buy glass carboys, anvil (blichmanns low cost brand) is good for equipment. Use a brewing calculator, start with extract, clean stuff well, and don’t overcomplicate it. Don’t make anything too strongly flavored, after 5 gallons you will hate it. 5 gallons is the best size for batches. Go straight for kegs (corny kegs) like they use for soda. Northern brewer is a good supplier (no affiliation just a happy customer). If you really get into it buy hops by the pound. Edit: almost forgot, temperature is the most important ingredient in fermenting. Put your kegs and fermenter somewhere that is a constant 60-70 degrees for ales. And start with ales.
    - brenainn 4y ago
      Thanks for the tips, I've made a note of these. Thanks to the other commenter as well.
  - webnrrd2k 4y ago
    Its been years since I've done any home brew. Its easy to start, and my recommendation is to just start with a minimal set up. Don't overcomplicate it. Try buying a beer kit from a local supplier, or online. Temperature is a big part of the fermentation process, so ots good to start brewing in the winter to get most of the fermentation done when it's naturally cold. There is tons of info available online. It really a simple thing... If you can do basic cooking or baking then you can brew beer. Just give it a go and see how it turns out.
chihuahua 4y ago
https://archive.ph/uOEBE https://archive.ph/uOEBE
Overtonwindow 4y ago
If people are drinking then the breweries are making money… If people didn't buy the beer, the breweries wouldn't exist.
- tialaramex 4y ago
  For legal reasons it can make more sense to operate a brewery than it might do all else being equal. In the UK for example, suppose I think this district of my city could use an establishment where people can buy booze in the evening, relax, maybe buy a meal, even listen to some live music once in a while, and I have my eye on a mid-size industrial unit in a fairly populated part of town with few nearby rivals. Easy right? Nope, that unit is not authorised for this purpose, and all three things I want to do (sell booze, sell food, live entertainment) require licenses issued by local government. I'm going to spend a lot of money on lawyers and fixers to smooth the path to making this happen, and at any time there might be objections which blow it up completely, no refunds. But, if I'm setting up a brewery well, that's an authorised purpose of an industrial unit, and under modern laws the brewery is allowed to sell booze. So now I can open, initially I cut a deal with a decent local food truck to park "outside" and piggyback on their food license, then if we stay afloat for a few months with no major incidents I apply for a license variation to offer food on site too, with historical practice on my side. I can have the same successful business, but at much lower risk by starting a "brewery" even if brewing booze barely breaks even.
bitexploder 4y ago
To me this is all very cool. If you are starting a brewery you have to have a laser focused business plan and ideas that will help you stand out. Your odds of making it big are low, but if that is a goal you should probably be aiming for that from the start. I love that small neighborhood breweries are a thing. No the universe doesn’t really need your take on an IPA, but people who enjoy craft brew will often drink a local beer over another if it is good. If you get enough of a following, maybe try and package and distribute some, but I think being a cool local tap house is way easier in the current market than trying to package and distribute right away.
- tracerbulletx 4y ago
  Yeah, the large variety is the feature that actually creates the value. The fact you can go to almost any new town and discover a new beer you've never heard of before is the joy of discovery and the "collection" drive that powers the industry.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Yeah, there’s no reason we need all our beer made in the massive piss factories of Milwaukee Wisconsin. Even if local beer X and the local beer Y from 50 miles away are basically the same from different breweries- why not?
    - jcampbell1 4y ago
      Some people actually like lagers and don’t want that fruity taste and smell that all ales have. Lagers are much more expensive to brew in terms of time and equipment and benefit from industrial scale. It is perfectly fine that I enjoy crisp piss and you like your fruitcake beers.
      - Nursie 4y ago
        Commercial lagers are brewed very fast. Real lagering is a long process, sure, but the big boys don’t do any of that. They have a very fast turnaround, often less than a week. Enjoy your lager if you like, I do from time to time, but it’s only one type of beer from a very wide spectrum. And don’t kid yourself you’re getting a cold-aged beer in the traditional style unless you’ve got evidence that’s what’s really happening.
robert2020 4y ago
I thought we passed peak craft beer years ago. Guess not!
mac3n 4y ago
WSJ thinks we'd all be more efficiently served by a few very large breweries, all owned by InBev (Budweiser, Michelob, Stella Artois, Beck's)
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  The article is critical of the quantity of microbreweries so it must be pro-big-beer because everything is a partisan conspiracy to slowly erode the things we like. Be afraid, be angry, and elect someone who promises a quick fix.
- bacchusracine 4y ago
  WSJ probably drinks wine and thinks anyone drinking beer is part of the servant class.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    The world's most interesting wines are also made this way, though. It's a common bourgeois fetish to be all about Burgundy, but Burgundy is full of small acreage growers and producers and smaller co-ops. My father's family is in the Mainz, Rhineland area of Germany and when I've visited they've taken me out to the suburbs of Mainz where there's little small operations right in the middle of town serving it in their own little restaurants.
  - atyppo 4y ago
    It's easy to dunk on the WSJ, but I doubt their writer is making that much money...
    - ipqk 4y ago
      but it's ok, because they're just a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.
viksit 4y ago
here to appreciate the punny title for a second :))
anemoiac 4y ago
Why do we need global-scale conglomerates to produce our beer??? I’ve always thought that local breweries serving locals should be the default, not an exception.
jvolkman 4y ago
There are ~15 breweries within two miles of my house in Seattle.
- datavirtue 4y ago
  Same in Cincinnati. Far more breweries than Starbucks...and we have a LOT of Starbucks.
Nursie 4y ago
Trying new beers and supporting local breweries is the whole point! Endless variations and ideas. Here in Western Australia there are tons, and the only ‘glut’ to speak of is probably that the Hazy IPA market is saturated, and it can be difficult to find some other styles. Red Ales are well represented, and very sweet stouts. But a good dry Irish-style stout? A nice spicy saison? A little harder.
cantSpellSober 4y ago
> "The long-building craft-beer boom is showing signs of slowing down" Do they provide any stats to back this up? > "Highland Brewing Co. [...] has gone from a basement brewery to a hilltop 40-acre destination that produces more than 40,000 barrels annually and generates around $15 million in revenue" This statement appears to contradict the thesis... All suffered under COVID, these stats indicate a small dip in craft beer sales in 2020, but a rebound in 2021: https://www.brewersassociation.org/statistics-and-data/national-beer-stats/ https://www.brewersassociation.org/statistics-and-data/natio... https://www.statista.com/chart/10280/americas-brewery-boom/ https://www.statista.com/chart/10280/americas-brewery-boom/
micro_cam 4y ago
In my state we have a lot of breweries that essentially just operate as family friendly restaurants with bars. Like towns of a few thousand people have multiple breweries. It turns out liquor license laws make it much cheaper to open a tasting room that serves food then a restaurant that serves beer. Some can or bottle their beer but the business model can work fine without major distribution. So people open breweries instead of pizza parlors or steak houses.
- noneeeed 4y ago
  More and more pubs in the UK are doing this too, especially the ones that are more focused on drinks than food. It’s a way to keep more money in the business as a whole, with the added benefit that the house beers are often cheaper and extremely fresh.
- tomcam 4y ago
  That scratches an old itch. I could not understand exactly the scenario you describe: small towns with multiple breweries. Never knew that loophole existed.
- jimmyjazz14 4y ago
  North Carolina by chance?
  - micro_cam 4y ago
    Montana. Good to know there are other similar states though
- fknorangesite 4y ago
  > In my state we have a lot of breweries that essentially just operate as family friendly restaurants with bars I'm in Canada, but yeah similar. The taproom might sell only a few snacks or something (or maybe get a local food truck to park outside), but people are also welcome to bring in outside food: many times I'd go with friends for drinks and then order a pizza or something delivered to the brewery.
iamben 4y ago
My brother works for an indy brewery in the UK. It's super hard work, but he loves the job. The industry is very tough and many of the independent players don't make it. Those who do are often swallowed by one of the big names or become everything they set out not to be (looking at you, Brewdog).
supernova87a 4y ago
Interesting to me how different the beer vs. wine industries are, in terms of the capital investment, the "demographics" of the number and type of wineries vs. breweries, etc. Why wineries are always located right there next to the vines, but breweries are not. How long it takes the product to age, who consumes it, etc. How it gets to market. I know there are tons of reasons behind it, but just interesting that similar things you drink can have such different dynamics behind them.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  The "located next to the vines" thing is more of a new world thing ("estate winery"). As is the whole idea of a winery as a tourist destination you go visit. Here in Ontario this model is basically legislated into existence via minimum acreage requirements and regulations around winery retail stores. In the old world it's not always like this. Varies from region to region. In some places, the wine is made by small cooperative producers buying grapes from small growers etc. Even in the North American "estate winery" model, large quantities of the grapes are often bought from off-site independent growers who don't have a winery themselves.
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  > Why wineries are always located right there next to the vines, but breweries are not. I would have figured that is because grains can be stored for relatively long periods of time, while grapes cannot. Is there another reason??
  - supernova87a 4y ago
    No, exactly -- how one is a fresh fruit derived thing, the other is a stored grain thing. You don't find a lot of breweries in farming country. Are breweries mainly a city thing? Etc.
r053bud 4y ago
This is similar to how a lot of wine works in Europe. Tons of small producers typically making it for the love of the craft and keeping it in the family. I see this as a win.
atyppo 4y ago
Perhaps every brewery branching out from uninspired IPAs would help resolve the "issues of consumer selection." I get that they're easy to make and harder to screw up, but they're literally the only thing available at a lot of places.
- fknorangesite 4y ago
  > they're literally the only thing available at a lot of places. I'm surprised to see this sentiment. It certainly rang true a decade+ ago, but back then craft breweries were more novel, and there was more [over]reaction to bland, mass-produced lagers, etc. Sours were really trendy rather than IPAs just pre-pandemic, and these days in my experience most places have a pretty varied selection of types available.
  - atyppo 4y ago
    I'm in NYC and my odds of finding a craft beer that isn't an IPA (or possibly sour) are slim to none if I'm not at a beer bar like Proletariat or Burp Castle (two random examples). I've managed to find one brewery I really like in New Hampshire called Schilling Beer Co that mostly focuses on European beers and has a really good food menu as well. It's a shame more places don't have more diverse beer menus.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    Personally I’d like to see more stouts that aren’t super heavy dessert stouts.
  - bsder 4y ago
    It's still mostly true. I like either piss water or toxic sludge but can't stand IPAs (I loathe the taste of hops) and my choices in microbrews are always very limited. If there are a dozen IPAs there will be maybe two lagers and single thing that pretends to be "dark". As I understand it, it's economics and experience. IPAs are fast to brew, and there are options for adjusting the flavor if you screw it up. Lagers and stouts take longer and are very prone to simply failing with no way to "fix" it when it does.
- 4y ago
indymike 4y ago
I have no problem with widespread availability of great tasting, local beers. This is a feature, not a bug.
zahma 4y ago
About 15 years ago, we had a great brewery that changed the game, and it felt like all of a sudden, there were so many options and relatively little difference between them. There are only so many IPAs with so many hops that a brewery can make. That got old quickly, but I still look fondly upon the days of cracking open a tall boy of Surly Furious. I threw up my hands and chose a brewery that was local and reliably high-quality, and I suspect many consumers will feel overwhelmed with choice and short on time to peruse the dozens of offerings at their beer purveyor. I wouldn’t advise anyone to try to hop into that sector with dreams of making it big. The first movers got a great deal by tapping a fresh market and forming early consumer followings. Those days are over. Consumers don’t need to have an allegiance to a microbrew because it’s so easy to get now, and unless your brew is God’s very own nectar, your business will be tenuous. Some of the biggest names sold out to The Enemy (i.e. AB InBev), like Goose Island or Wicked Weed. They got rich, and then their product went to shit. I’m fairly certain I got formaldehyde poisoning from a Devil’s Backbone IPA bender (another AB InBev casualty). So in support of my body, please make great beer — just don’t quit your day jobs. (Sorry for the two awful puns. I swear they were unintended but I left them in anyway after groaning.)
tw98521358 4y ago
The reason we have so many is because it’s a true competitive marketplace. Regulatory burden is low, brewery license are easier to get than liquor licenses so anyone can start one. We have so few competitive sectors left in the USA that it’s surprising to many at the WSJ what a market sector might look like if competition was allowed and free market dynamics were in place.

32 points by lxm 4y ago

Eat local is a big movement. Drink local should be just as important to those who drink. It supports the local economy. It’s more environmentally friendly. And the beer is usually way better to boot.

spacemadness 4y ago
This smells like large breweries asking their financial journalist friends to start pushing back on small breweries eating into their margins. Dedicating an article to “are too many small breweries are a problem?” is a bit too convenient of a slant when other options are on the table. “Stop creating breweries, it’s too risky. Drink InBev” essentially.
- bacchusracine 4y ago
  >Drink InBev I will honestly quit drinking altogether first. I hate these big corpos who buy up what was a good brewer and a line with several good beers and immediately start changing the recipes and the process to destroy the beers. I've suffered through it too many times now to call it anything but malicious. What is the point in damaging an established brand, tarnishing an established product which will bring in money from people happy to pay for those flavors other than spite. In twenty plus years I've only seen a buyout happen once without it destroying the beers. No, if my only choices are the swill that companies like InBev produce I'll find something else to drink. It's about the flavor. Take that away and I'm gone and so are a lot of people.
  - spacemadness 4y ago
    I don’t drink much anymore these days but I absolutely noticed this when they bought Goose Island a long time ago. The flavor changed overnight. They can’t just buy everyone to quell indie beer geekdom once and for all but they sure continue to act like corporate bullies all the same.
    - bacchusracine 4y ago
      Goose Island was one of the examples I was thinking of. A shame. It really was an almost overnight change. And for what? To take a good series of beers and ruin them? As I said, I'm here for the flavors. Take those away and I leave with them.
      - nerdponx 4y ago
        Their goal is to make money. They believed, correctly, that at least some consumers wouldn't care about or even notice a change in recipe, maybe because people broadly associate Goose Island with good-quality craft beer and continue to buy it. Consider this model: Goose Island with the old recipe sold K units per year at $P profit per unit. The new recipe can sell K/l units per year at $P×i, where l is the % of customers who switch away and i is the % increase in profit. If K × P < (K/l) × (P×i) then it's profitable to switch to the new recipe.
        Kon-Peki 4y ago
        Goose Island sold after their peak. They weren’t the best small brewer in Chicago anymore and many wanted to go do other things. For example, one of the brewmasters moved back to his hometown in Michigan and started a pretty well-regarded hard cider place. Speaking of, the “wine trail” in Southeast Michigan is worth it - not for the wine so much (it’s not bad, but it’s not anything to write home about), but that excellent small independent distilleries and breweries have popped up and now a large group of people with a wide variety of tastes can have fun alternating between the 3.
  - bsder 4y ago
    > hate these big corpos who buy up what was a good brewer and a line with several good beers and immediately start changing the recipes and the process to destroy the beers. <Cries in Ballast Point>.
z2h-a6n 4y ago
While I'm all for drinking local beer, is there any available data on whether it's actually more environmentally friendly than beer made by larger producers? I can imagine some aspects of the brewing process that would tip the scales either way, e.g. economies of scale favoring large producers, potentially-shorter supply chains favoring small producers.

plasticchris 4y ago

Recently a small brewery opened in my basement :) turns out home brew is better and easier than I thought. I had to keep telling myself people did this with wooden kegs and open fires, I can for sure do it with modern steel stuff.

brenainn 4y ago
Any words of wisdom? Trying out homebrewing is one of my goals this year.
- plasticchris 4y ago
  Don’t buy glass carboys, anvil (blichmanns low cost brand) is good for equipment. Use a brewing calculator, start with extract, clean stuff well, and don’t overcomplicate it. Don’t make anything too strongly flavored, after 5 gallons you will hate it. 5 gallons is the best size for batches. Go straight for kegs (corny kegs) like they use for soda. Northern brewer is a good supplier (no affiliation just a happy customer). If you really get into it buy hops by the pound. Edit: almost forgot, temperature is the most important ingredient in fermenting. Put your kegs and fermenter somewhere that is a constant 60-70 degrees for ales. And start with ales.
  - brenainn 4y ago
    Thanks for the tips, I've made a note of these. Thanks to the other commenter as well.
- webnrrd2k 4y ago
  Its been years since I've done any home brew. Its easy to start, and my recommendation is to just start with a minimal set up. Don't overcomplicate it. Try buying a beer kit from a local supplier, or online. Temperature is a big part of the fermentation process, so ots good to start brewing in the winter to get most of the fermentation done when it's naturally cold. There is tons of info available online. It really a simple thing... If you can do basic cooking or baking then you can brew beer. Just give it a go and see how it turns out.

chihuahua 4y ago

https://archive.ph/uOEBE https://archive.ph/uOEBE

Overtonwindow 4y ago

If people are drinking then the breweries are making money… If people didn't buy the beer, the breweries wouldn't exist.

tialaramex 4y ago
For legal reasons it can make more sense to operate a brewery than it might do all else being equal. In the UK for example, suppose I think this district of my city could use an establishment where people can buy booze in the evening, relax, maybe buy a meal, even listen to some live music once in a while, and I have my eye on a mid-size industrial unit in a fairly populated part of town with few nearby rivals. Easy right? Nope, that unit is not authorised for this purpose, and all three things I want to do (sell booze, sell food, live entertainment) require licenses issued by local government. I'm going to spend a lot of money on lawyers and fixers to smooth the path to making this happen, and at any time there might be objections which blow it up completely, no refunds. But, if I'm setting up a brewery well, that's an authorised purpose of an industrial unit, and under modern laws the brewery is allowed to sell booze. So now I can open, initially I cut a deal with a decent local food truck to park "outside" and piggyback on their food license, then if we stay afloat for a few months with no major incidents I apply for a license variation to offer food on site too, with historical practice on my side. I can have the same successful business, but at much lower risk by starting a "brewery" even if brewing booze barely breaks even.

bitexploder 4y ago

To me this is all very cool. If you are starting a brewery you have to have a laser focused business plan and ideas that will help you stand out. Your odds of making it big are low, but if that is a goal you should probably be aiming for that from the start. I love that small neighborhood breweries are a thing. No the universe doesn’t really need your take on an IPA, but people who enjoy craft brew will often drink a local beer over another if it is good. If you get enough of a following, maybe try and package and distribute some, but I think being a cool local tap house is way easier in the current market than trying to package and distribute right away.

tracerbulletx 4y ago
Yeah, the large variety is the feature that actually creates the value. The fact you can go to almost any new town and discover a new beer you've never heard of before is the joy of discovery and the "collection" drive that powers the industry.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Yeah, there’s no reason we need all our beer made in the massive piss factories of Milwaukee Wisconsin. Even if local beer X and the local beer Y from 50 miles away are basically the same from different breweries- why not?
  - jcampbell1 4y ago
    Some people actually like lagers and don’t want that fruity taste and smell that all ales have. Lagers are much more expensive to brew in terms of time and equipment and benefit from industrial scale. It is perfectly fine that I enjoy crisp piss and you like your fruitcake beers.
    - Nursie 4y ago
      Commercial lagers are brewed very fast. Real lagering is a long process, sure, but the big boys don’t do any of that. They have a very fast turnaround, often less than a week. Enjoy your lager if you like, I do from time to time, but it’s only one type of beer from a very wide spectrum. And don’t kid yourself you’re getting a cold-aged beer in the traditional style unless you’ve got evidence that’s what’s really happening.

robert2020 4y ago

I thought we passed peak craft beer years ago. Guess not!

mac3n 4y ago

WSJ thinks we'd all be more efficiently served by a few very large breweries, all owned by InBev (Budweiser, Michelob, Stella Artois, Beck's)

Waterluvian 4y ago
The article is critical of the quantity of microbreweries so it must be pro-big-beer because everything is a partisan conspiracy to slowly erode the things we like. Be afraid, be angry, and elect someone who promises a quick fix.
bacchusracine 4y ago
WSJ probably drinks wine and thinks anyone drinking beer is part of the servant class.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  The world's most interesting wines are also made this way, though. It's a common bourgeois fetish to be all about Burgundy, but Burgundy is full of small acreage growers and producers and smaller co-ops. My father's family is in the Mainz, Rhineland area of Germany and when I've visited they've taken me out to the suburbs of Mainz where there's little small operations right in the middle of town serving it in their own little restaurants.
- atyppo 4y ago
  It's easy to dunk on the WSJ, but I doubt their writer is making that much money...
  - ipqk 4y ago
    but it's ok, because they're just a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.

viksit 4y ago

here to appreciate the punny title for a second :))

anemoiac 4y ago

Why do we need global-scale conglomerates to produce our beer??? I’ve always thought that local breweries serving locals should be the default, not an exception.

jvolkman 4y ago

There are ~15 breweries within two miles of my house in Seattle.

datavirtue 4y ago
Same in Cincinnati. Far more breweries than Starbucks...and we have a LOT of Starbucks.

Nursie 4y ago

Trying new beers and supporting local breweries is the whole point! Endless variations and ideas. Here in Western Australia there are tons, and the only ‘glut’ to speak of is probably that the Hazy IPA market is saturated, and it can be difficult to find some other styles. Red Ales are well represented, and very sweet stouts. But a good dry Irish-style stout? A nice spicy saison? A little harder.

cantSpellSober 4y ago

> "The long-building craft-beer boom is showing signs of slowing down" Do they provide any stats to back this up? > "Highland Brewing Co. [...] has gone from a basement brewery to a hilltop 40-acre destination that produces more than 40,000 barrels annually and generates around $15 million in revenue" This statement appears to contradict the thesis... All suffered under COVID, these stats indicate a small dip in craft beer sales in 2020, but a rebound in 2021: https://www.brewersassociation.org/statistics-and-data/national-beer-stats/ https://www.brewersassociation.org/statistics-and-data/natio... https://www.statista.com/chart/10280/americas-brewery-boom/ https://www.statista.com/chart/10280/americas-brewery-boom/

micro_cam 4y ago

In my state we have a lot of breweries that essentially just operate as family friendly restaurants with bars. Like towns of a few thousand people have multiple breweries. It turns out liquor license laws make it much cheaper to open a tasting room that serves food then a restaurant that serves beer. Some can or bottle their beer but the business model can work fine without major distribution. So people open breweries instead of pizza parlors or steak houses.

noneeeed 4y ago
More and more pubs in the UK are doing this too, especially the ones that are more focused on drinks than food. It’s a way to keep more money in the business as a whole, with the added benefit that the house beers are often cheaper and extremely fresh.
tomcam 4y ago
That scratches an old itch. I could not understand exactly the scenario you describe: small towns with multiple breweries. Never knew that loophole existed.
jimmyjazz14 4y ago
North Carolina by chance?
- micro_cam 4y ago
  Montana. Good to know there are other similar states though
fknorangesite 4y ago
> In my state we have a lot of breweries that essentially just operate as family friendly restaurants with bars I'm in Canada, but yeah similar. The taproom might sell only a few snacks or something (or maybe get a local food truck to park outside), but people are also welcome to bring in outside food: many times I'd go with friends for drinks and then order a pizza or something delivered to the brewery.

iamben 4y ago

My brother works for an indy brewery in the UK. It's super hard work, but he loves the job. The industry is very tough and many of the independent players don't make it. Those who do are often swallowed by one of the big names or become everything they set out not to be (looking at you, Brewdog).

supernova87a 4y ago

Interesting to me how different the beer vs. wine industries are, in terms of the capital investment, the "demographics" of the number and type of wineries vs. breweries, etc. Why wineries are always located right there next to the vines, but breweries are not. How long it takes the product to age, who consumes it, etc. How it gets to market. I know there are tons of reasons behind it, but just interesting that similar things you drink can have such different dynamics behind them.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
The "located next to the vines" thing is more of a new world thing ("estate winery"). As is the whole idea of a winery as a tourist destination you go visit. Here in Ontario this model is basically legislated into existence via minimum acreage requirements and regulations around winery retail stores. In the old world it's not always like this. Varies from region to region. In some places, the wine is made by small cooperative producers buying grapes from small growers etc. Even in the North American "estate winery" model, large quantities of the grapes are often bought from off-site independent growers who don't have a winery themselves.
Turing_Machine 4y ago
> Why wineries are always located right there next to the vines, but breweries are not. I would have figured that is because grains can be stored for relatively long periods of time, while grapes cannot. Is there another reason??
- supernova87a 4y ago
  No, exactly -- how one is a fresh fruit derived thing, the other is a stored grain thing. You don't find a lot of breweries in farming country. Are breweries mainly a city thing? Etc.

r053bud 4y ago

This is similar to how a lot of wine works in Europe. Tons of small producers typically making it for the love of the craft and keeping it in the family. I see this as a win.

atyppo 4y ago

Perhaps every brewery branching out from uninspired IPAs would help resolve the "issues of consumer selection." I get that they're easy to make and harder to screw up, but they're literally the only thing available at a lot of places.

fknorangesite 4y ago
> they're literally the only thing available at a lot of places. I'm surprised to see this sentiment. It certainly rang true a decade+ ago, but back then craft breweries were more novel, and there was more [over]reaction to bland, mass-produced lagers, etc. Sours were really trendy rather than IPAs just pre-pandemic, and these days in my experience most places have a pretty varied selection of types available.
- atyppo 4y ago
  I'm in NYC and my odds of finding a craft beer that isn't an IPA (or possibly sour) are slim to none if I'm not at a beer bar like Proletariat or Burp Castle (two random examples). I've managed to find one brewery I really like in New Hampshire called Schilling Beer Co that mostly focuses on European beers and has a really good food menu as well. It's a shame more places don't have more diverse beer menus.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  Personally I’d like to see more stouts that aren’t super heavy dessert stouts.
- bsder 4y ago
  It's still mostly true. I like either piss water or toxic sludge but can't stand IPAs (I loathe the taste of hops) and my choices in microbrews are always very limited. If there are a dozen IPAs there will be maybe two lagers and single thing that pretends to be "dark". As I understand it, it's economics and experience. IPAs are fast to brew, and there are options for adjusting the flavor if you screw it up. Lagers and stouts take longer and are very prone to simply failing with no way to "fix" it when it does.
4y ago

indymike 4y ago

I have no problem with widespread availability of great tasting, local beers. This is a feature, not a bug.

zahma 4y ago

About 15 years ago, we had a great brewery that changed the game, and it felt like all of a sudden, there were so many options and relatively little difference between them. There are only so many IPAs with so many hops that a brewery can make. That got old quickly, but I still look fondly upon the days of cracking open a tall boy of Surly Furious. I threw up my hands and chose a brewery that was local and reliably high-quality, and I suspect many consumers will feel overwhelmed with choice and short on time to peruse the dozens of offerings at their beer purveyor. I wouldn’t advise anyone to try to hop into that sector with dreams of making it big. The first movers got a great deal by tapping a fresh market and forming early consumer followings. Those days are over. Consumers don’t need to have an allegiance to a microbrew because it’s so easy to get now, and unless your brew is God’s very own nectar, your business will be tenuous. Some of the biggest names sold out to The Enemy (i.e. AB InBev), like Goose Island or Wicked Weed. They got rich, and then their product went to shit. I’m fairly certain I got formaldehyde poisoning from a Devil’s Backbone IPA bender (another AB InBev casualty). So in support of my body, please make great beer — just don’t quit your day jobs. (Sorry for the two awful puns. I swear they were unintended but I left them in anyway after groaning.)

tw98521358 4y ago

The reason we have so many is because it’s a true competitive marketplace. Regulatory burden is low, brewery license are easier to get than liquor licenses so anyone can start one. We have so few competitive sectors left in the USA that it’s surprising to many at the WSJ what a market sector might look like if competition was allowed and free market dynamics were in place.