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I think a winery and vineyard sound much more appealing than brewing.
by cylinder 13y ago
I think a winery and vineyard sound much more appealing than brewing.
- dmm 13y agoI would be willing to bet that a winery has just as much dealing with regulators, cleaning, and sales.
- bitops 13y agoIt's all really hard work and a winery is likely even more work. You need to always be watching the grapes, you have to hire seasonal workers to pick the grapes (actually not much automation in this area) plus the unpredictability of the weather.
- fphhotchips 13y agoDo you mean geographic area, or grape-picking? Because these [1] are fantastic at picking grapes automatically. Sure you still need a driver, but it's slightly faster than doing it by hand. [1] http://www.agha.org.au/cms/uploads/images/Grape%20harvesting.jpg http://www.agha.org.au/cms/uploads/images/Grape%20harvesting...
- maxerickson 13y agoYou are also more directly exposed to your crop. Brewers have to deal with hops, but grains aren't a big problem.
- mbarrett 13y agoI've done both wine and beer, recently planted my own home vineyard of 650 vines. In my experience, much more can go wrong with wine than beer but both are worth it when you open the first bottle.
- deutronium 13y agoDoesn't that depend on if you continue the whole process for each. With beer, did you also grow and malt the grain?
- mbarrett 13y agoI did not but I was only basing my findings off of the production of beer/wine, not the agriculture side.
- poulsbohemian 13y agoI would tend to agree with this, on about four points that come to the top of mind (though I am not a commercial producer of either, I observe what my friends and neighbors in the business experience): 1) Grapes have more bug problems 2) Grapes have more potential frost problems 3) With grapes, you have to watch your sugar contents really closely. With hops, you grow, you harvest, and often you turn into a dried pellet form, IE: the end-product with grapes is more temperamental. 4) You are (typically) aging wine longer than beer, so there's more time when something can go wrong. Had a friend who was cellar master at a winery. New guy comes in and does something stupid, ruined wine that had been sitting in barrels for two years.
- _ak 13y agoRegarding 3: the same goes for beer, except you can mess up over the course of just a few minutes to an hour instead of a few months. Crush your malt too fine or too coarse, mess up the mash temperatures, and you end with things like a too high or low efficiency, a stuck sparge, or too many fermentable and unfermentable sugars. Of course, in a fully automated industrial brewery this usually isn't a problem, but your typical nano or micro-brewery is a still a lot of manual works, and thus many ways to mess up manually. Edit: and now that I think about the other things: Regarding 1 and 2: some hop varities have mildew problems, and bad weather has negative influence on the growth and other things like alpha acid, so bad weather can have quite the impact on hop quality and availability. The 2013 hop harvest in Germany was quite the disaster, apparently. AA% is a lot lower, and young plants of some new breeds got way too much water.
- poulsbohemian 13y agoAll great points, thanks for the info!
- smackfu 13y agoBrewery is better because you can make a great beer anywhere. In most of the world, a winery tops out at "this sure is pretty... and the wine is OK".
- zwieback 13y agoIt seems like making wine is basically farming, making beer is basically an industrial product. I'm glad I live in Oregon where there are plenty of people doing either one.
- DigitalJack 13y agoEvery brewery I've been to in oregon (portland) thinks "microbrew" means "put a shitload of hops in it."
- zwieback 13y agoSo glad you said that! It's very challenging to find beer that's not overhopped but they do exist. Coming from Germany I'm still looking for some good lagers that aren't insanely hoppy.
- poulsbohemian 13y agoGood luck! I studied in Muenster way back as a university student. Thankfully Pinkus Mueller is much more available these days in the US and I don't need to negotiate with a distributor to get a case or two. Koestrizer is still hard to come by though. Hard to find a really good beer in the US. The big name brewers produce corn-flavoured water, the micro-brewers produce over hopped barley soda pop (ok, I exaggerate a little, I know they are all trying to produce interesting products).
- Avshalom 13y agoBroadly* speaking it's an east coast/west coast thing. East Coast imperial IPAs barely qualify as pale ales on the Best Coast. *very broadly, no you don't need to tell me about DFH 120 minute or what have you.
- twoodfin 13y agoI think you're greatly exaggerating the difference, unless you want to name any highly rated East Coast "Imperial IPA" that isn't as hoppy as, say, Stone Pale. Heady Topper, for example, is pure hop madness.
- poulsbohemian 13y agoFor what it's worth... I live in the heart of Washington's wine country. Every year there are dozens of new wineries, and the same number that go bankrupt. Very few people who move here to be a "gentleman farmer" enjoying the imagery of the harvest find that to be the case - most end up bankrupt. While I am not in the wine business, it's pretty clear there are a lot of shenanigans that go on, like buying wholesale wine and putting a nice label on it - like most businesses, the marketing matters at least as much as product quality. I make cheese, and have spoken to some of you here about that as well. Producing commercial dairy products blows away the health and safety regulations in beer and wine making. Think it is hard putting a fermented grape in a bottle for sale, try something that comes out of the backend of a live animal...
- smackfu 13y ago>it's pretty clear there are a lot of shenanigans that go on Even in California, the beautiful tasting room all done up in oak often has nothing to do with the beautiful vineyards outside.
- justincormack 13y ago"making cheese is farming bacteria" as my (French) book says. Its fun to do, but I don't have a desire to do it commercially.
- poulsbohemian 13y agoI am trying to decide whether or not to pursue it commercially. Makes a fun hobby though and a great way to teach your kids about microbiology ;-)
- eru 13y agoThat saying applies to beer and wine as well. (Only that for cheese, you farm the bacteria on animal products.)
- justincormack 13y agoAnd salami and so on. With cheese it is pretty extreme - you don't even bottle it so even the outside of it is made form bacteria too...