New for 2016: Ads!

On December 1, I turned in the manuscript for another book. It was an opportunity to think about the next book ... or not. In the near term, I'm going to look for other options, which means I need to earn pennies where I can. I have tinkered with ads once in the past, but abandoned them because we are talking pennies--and because they junk up a blog. Beggers writers can't be too choosy though, so for the near future, you'll be seeing these delightful opportunities featured on the blog. I highly encourage you to click through and explore them to see if, for example, QuickBooks or hipster eyeglasses are right for you. Or at the very least, forgive me for this transgression.

Four Peaks Down

And so it goes.

Anheuser-Busch InBev is buying Arizona's largest craft brewer and brewpub owner, Four Peaks Brewing Co. Founded in 1996, Four Peaks produced 70,000 barrels of beer this year. Financial terms of the sale set to close in the first quarter of 2016 were not disclosed. Four Peaks is the sixth brewer to join A-B's craft and imports portfolio, The High End. The other craft brewers A-B has acquired in recent years are: Goose Island Beer Co., Blue Point Brewing Company, 10 Barrel Brewing, Elysian Brewing Company and Golden Road Brewing. 

At this point, the only game worth playing is guessing (1) what AB's ultimate strategy is, and (2) which states they'll target next. Here's the current state-by-state map of Bud Micros (Little Buds?)--and you can see that Four Peaks marks ABI's first foray into a red state. I do find it interesting that their focus has been on the West Coast.

I wonder if this has to do with distribution complexity. Do these states have more distributors? If so, it would make sense that Bud is using the Little Buds to coax their distributors into dropping independent craft breweries. Any theories?

Reinheitsgebot RIP?

I am currently finishing up a print article for All About Beer on the subject of Reinheitsgebot--which as many of you know, turns 500 next year. By one of those strange coincidences of the universe, Stone brewing yesterday released its first Berlin-brewed beer. I don't want to step on the thesis of my article, but all this did get me thinking. As I talk to German and German-American brewers about the legacy and significance of Reinheitsgebot in its native land, everyone seems to agree that something's gotta give.

There is a current of change running through the center of the beer industry that is not only changing the way beer is made (in small batches to be sold locally), but the kinds of beer (vivid flavors in place of blander, industrial ones). Germany has been somewhat immune to these forces, both because it already had a robust network of local, small-batch breweries and because Germans have long been proud of the quality and superiority of their beer--thanks largely to the marketing success of Reinheitsgebot. But it hasn't been entirely immune, and small breweries have been opening and making what other countries call "craft beer," often in styles not native to Germany. The introduction of Stone beer will only accelerate the process.

None of this spells the death-knell of Reinheitsgebot necessarily. I've spoken with brewers who feel that it's due for an upgrade for the 21st century. The notion of "purity" isn't impossible to police, but the definition may need tweaking; brewers aren't using henbane quite as much as they used to, and cherries and coriander seem fairly wholesome. There may be some wiggle room. In any case, I guess the upshot of all this is that at exactly the moment we're celebrating this wonderful, weird artifact from the early 16th century, there may be some hard discussions about how much longer it should be embedded in the German tax code.

No doubt we'll come around to this topic again soon enough--

Two a Day

As I traipsed around the country on my book tour, I found myself regularly saying something like, "there are 3,500 breweries in the country"--usually by way of an excuse for why I hadn't tried a certain spectacular local beer. It turns out I was 644 breweries off. Today the Brewers Association pegged the figure at 4,144. If you're wondering why they've chosen the odd timing of early December to make this announcement, it has to do with a certain historical precedent:

As of the end of November, there are now 4,144 breweries in the country, topping the historic high of 4,131 breweries in 1873.

That official figure from 1873 is somewhat fishy (record-keeping wasn't quite as precise during the Grant administration), but it's good enough for press releasing. The more important stat is in a bullet list within the release, and helps explain how I could be off by so much when I talked about brewery figures:

Brewery openings now exceed two a day.

I was apparently using a figure that was grossly out-of-date: ten months. Is it sustainable? Are we in the midst of a bubble? Questions for another day. For the moment, just rest in that two-a-day stat; the emotional truth of it is startling.

Me, I'm off to the Holiday Ale Fest.

When I Climbed the Mountain

The writing life is filled with peaks and valleys. I've been bumping along at high altitude lately, but no time was more exhilarating than the day I woke up in Tampa, Florida after a book event, got on a plane for Atlanta, was picked up at the airport and zipped downtown to CNN. I was there to do the spot you see below--two and a half minutes of very fluffy commentary on winter ales and "light beers." (When asked to do light beers, I selected session IPAs, which was my own subversive contribution.)

At CNN, they take your pic and give you a lanyard and then you go through a pretty serious security screening. The spot we did took maybe an hour, and I got to joke around with Coy Wire, a former NFL player who hosted the piece (a down-to-earth, self-effacing guy), and a couple of producers they roped in to taste the beer. Afterward, I was shuttled to Decatur for another Beer Bible event, and I was on a 10 pm flight to Nashville for the next book event. For one marvelous day, I felt like quite a big shot.

Anyway, there it is, my 2.5 minutes of fame on national TV. The piece ran several times yesterday, and now I have it for posterity.

ON-AIR GUEST

With Coy Wire on the set.

It's Hard Out There For a Publisher

This is a slightly random aside, but I wanted to draw your attention to a great post about the state of the internet over at Talking Points Memo. For those of you who don't read political blogs for fun, TPM may have escaped your notice. It's a left-of-center site that grew out of a personal blog by Josh Marshall. (As an aside to the aside, the site was my introduction to blogging. I'd never heard the word "blog" until Paul Krugman called attention to some of the work Marshall had been doing on the coded racist words of then Majority Leader Trent Lott. Within a month, I had started my first blog.) Like all news/opinion sites, it has struggled in the age of social media.

What's changed in the last 4 to 5 years is the inroads social media sites have made into the paid advertising space. Much as Craigslist virtually destroyed the classified ads business that local newspapers owned, a site like Facebook can deliver ads more efficiently and cheaply than most traditional advertisers. 

The great liberation brought about by the internet made it possible for someone like me to put my voice in front of (potentially) the whole world--a phenomenon new in the world. But if you envision the structure of media as a funnel, where the voices of the public are the wide end, and the media gatekeepers act as the narrow end, what happened with the internet--and especially, with social media--was the elimination of that narrowing. Now all people can connect with all people, which means the writer in this equation isn't very important anymore. Josh' perspective is that of he publisher, but since we can all now be publishers as well as writers, it may be a distinction without a difference. Writers and publishers are still casting around now to figure out how to make a living. Many of us develop nervous tics because it seems like our societal value is approaching zero. Though from a purely academic perspective, the changes are fascinating.

Which I suppose is about as good a place to segue to links as any. Today at All About Beer I discuss a significant epiphany I had in Miami, Florida on the subject of beer. True story.

So join me back in the Abbey Brewing pub. Most beer culture in the world right now has its roots in European brewing. Abbey reflected that—with a healthy dose of American sprinkled in. As I mentioned, Miami is loaded with culturally-specific businesses, so there’s nothing out of the ordinary about a European-American pub making up part of the tapestry. And yet, in that moment, I realized how much American beer culture—especially craft beer culture—carries with it this European valence.

We also have the latest Beervana Podcast up and ready to caress your ears in our dulcet tones. In this latest episode, we discuss wintry beers, touching on topics like wassail, Lamb's wool, glühkriek, bière de Noël, and of course, price elasticities. We have also slightly tweaked the format to include news and beer recommendations (an extension of the "Beer Sherpa" feature birthed here on this blog) as well as a a "mailbag" feature, in which we are attempting to draw you into the discussion. We welcome questions, comments, criticisms, witticisms--anything that inspires you. Email us at the_beerax @ yahoo.com.

Let's Make a Deal

Many of the recent craft-brewery buyouts have been like shiny objects to attract our gaze, but lacking in any real value. One buyout is mostly like the next. When Constellation purchased Ballast Point on Monday for a billion dollars, though, it was more than just clickbait. It makes us consider what things are worth, and that made us consider seriously where the beer market is headed. Constellation wasn't a pundit talking about where the market was headed--they pontificated with their dollars. All of which brings me to a question.

Constellation paid a massive premium on the assumption they can build it into a formidable national brand and get a share of the growing craft pie. So, if you had been one of the C-level executives at Constellation (CEO, CFO), would you have recommended this deal?

The way you answer the question depends on how you weight several variables: 1) where the market is headed; 2) how strong Ballast Point's brand and beers are compared to other craft breweries you'd consider buying; 3) how much the market actually favors local ownership (which is to say: will locals abandon it because it's a national brand; will non-locals embrace it in an environment of localism?); and 4) whether the Ballast Point brand can translate easily into a national brand, and 5) whether Constellation has the infrastructure to support a national brand. There may be other factors as well, some unknowable (like the way the deal was structured), but these give you an idea of the calculation.

If you think Ballast Point's brand can become one of the small number of successful craft brands, that the craft market will be much larger than it is now, and that the focus on localism is overblown, a billion dollars doesn't look like a bad bet. Well?

A spirited discussion has been going on at Facebook for a couple hours, so you might prefer to comment over there.

The Point Made More Fully

Here.

Many observers believe this is further evidence of a bubble in the “craft” segment—the outrageous prices paid for breweries remind them of mortgages in 2007. Of course, that’s always possible. If the market flatlines tomorrow, Constellation will lose big on the deal. But consider: since 1990 or so, the overall beer market in the United States has remained a pretty steady 200 million barrels. (Per-capita beer consumption has declined, but the population keeps growing.) In 1990, pretty close to 100 percent of the market was mass market lagers. By 2015, the 200 million barrels of mass market lager had shrunk to about 175, and that drop-off curve gets steeper each year. They are currently hemorrhaging two or three million barrels a year, and if trends continue, that number will grow faster.

Big beer companies are well aware of these trends, and they’re asking themselves the same question: How much of the market 10 years from now will still be mass market lagers?

Read the rest.

Big Beer Bets on the Future

Another week, another buyout, another yawn. Except not this time, because the topline number has startled even cynical old beer writers like me:

Corona and Modelo beer brewer Constellation Brands Inc (STZ.N) said it will buy San Diego-based craft beer maker Ballast Point Brewing & Spirits for about $1 billion to compete in the fast-growing craft beer market.

A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you're talking real money. Some quickie comments as the news comes in.

The Rationale

Ballast Point is one of the strongest brands in the US. There aren't a ton of top tier brands out there, so it makes sense that Constellation paid premium dollars for it.

The Valuation

On the other hand, the brewery only made 115,000 barrels and was only the 31st largest craft brewery in the US last year. Which means Constellation paid super premium dollarsar--far in excess of the current value of the company. (No financials were disclosed on the Lagunitas deal, but reports said Petaluma's--and Chicago's--finest was also valued at $1 billion, and it brewed five times as much beer in 2014 and has far greater capacity.)

The Radical Shift in the Market

All of which leads me to this last point, which is one I think most people haven't fully digested yet. Big beer companies are betting on the steep decline of mass market lagers in the US. I constantly get asked whether we're in a bubble or not, and this should be gold-plated proof: we're not. A permanent upheaval has begun in the beer market, as mass market lagers get replaced by what we formerly called craft beer. Whomever can hoover up market share on the full-flavored ales and lagers  will be the big winner in the marketplace of 2030. And if you don't believe me, believe AB InBev, Heineken, MillerCoors, and now Constellation, who are paying way, way more for breweries than their absolute 2015 value. 

The reason is because they're betting on the future, and they're betting on "craft."

Update. I elaborate on this post at All About Beer: "Betting a Billion Dollars Against a Bubble."

You Can't Recycle Originality

Martyn Cornell, who surprised me by admitting he as an MBA, just reviewed the new book by BrewDog's James Watt. It's a fascinating dissection not just of the book, but the business of beer. Here's his final paragraph, which is a great place to start a discussion:

Will someone who buys Business for Punks, given luck, be able to turn themselves into the next BrewDog? Well, no, probably not, or not in the UK beer market, because as far as what BrewDog now represents, there is only room for one iconoclastic, rule-breaking, self-proclaimed punk brewery, Dickie and Watt spotted that gap in the market and filled it extremely successfully. We may well see firms start up that will be “the BrewDog of grocery retailers”, “the BrewDog of software manufacturers”, even “the BrewDog of estate agents”. But no sector, I suggest, can sustain more than one marketing guerrilla, and guerrilla marketing is what BrewDog does brilliantly and what its fans respond to enthusiastically.

I'd take this a step further. In the business of beer, it's very difficult to follow the blueprint of any successful brewery. They're all more or less singular achievements that are very difficult to replicate. Here in Oregon, Ninkasi Brewing pulled off the neat trick of going from start-up to powerhouse in just a few years. Founded in 2007, it was able to become one of the top-three breweries in just five years. Surely there are lessons in the Ninkasi approach? Let's look at how they did it.

First, founders Jamie Floyd and Nikos Ridge took advantage of a bizarre anomaly that existed as late as 2007 in Oregon: the city of Eugene, the state's second-largest, had very few breweries and none that had become the dominant local player. Second, they came of age just in the moment that IPAs were not only becoming ascendant in craft brewing, but going through a big change in form. All of Ninkasi's early beers were hoppy and captured the zeitgeist for the "new" IPAs (which have since gone through another iteration in evolution). Of course, the brewery also had great branding, a great sales force, and great beer--necessary but hardly sufficient elements for success. In other words, cribbing notes from Ninkasi wouldn't be much help to a brewery today.

Here are some of he biggest American breweries: Boston Beer, Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, Lagunitas. Could you imagine trying to replicate the elements of their success? Try building an empire on an amber lager or amber ale today, as Boston Beer and New Belgium did. Lagunitas sells a certain California ethos as much as it does beer, but imagine trying to replicate it now. Sierra Nevada might be the one model a brewery could replicate, but the benchmarks--extraordinary quality standards with landmark beers and quiet consistency over the decades, looks like a daunting task.

I get that business books always take the shape of a kind of long-winded humble-brag about how an entrepreneur did something. But by the time you get to that phase of the business, the lessons are too particular to really benefit anyone coming up. There are a ton of things you have to do just as a matter of course for any business. But the secret sauce that leads to exceptional success in the marketplace is almost always a spark of originality that captures the imagination of customers. And you can't successfully recycle originality.

When Giants Join Forces

Q: How many Elysians could AB InBev have purchased for the price of one SABMiller (minus MillerCoors)? A:

1,700

(Not everyone is amused.)

Counterfactuals

A little Saturday morning chin-scratcher for you to mull. Stan links to an article about the famous "judgment of Paris" in the wine world and wonders:

What if Fritz Maytag had not bought Anchor Brewing in 1965?

What if the committee charged in 1906 with interpreting the meaning of the Pure Food and Drug Act had decided to implement some sort of legal differentiation between all malt and adjunct beer, or enacted a proposal that lager beer be required to lager at least three months? (Both were considered and rejected.)

What if the USDA had not released the Cascade hop variety in 1972?

In comments, I suggested that there is no analogue in the beer world. It's just impossible to imagine that beer would remain the one product immune to the post-industrial return to quality and diversity that came to all the other products on the grocery shelves.

But there's a side debate here--one Stan and I have been batting back and forth for years. When we look at the landscape of American brewing now, what we see is a fully-developed American idiom: hoppy ales made with neutral yeasts and base malts, accented (if at all) with just a bit of caramel malt. Whether the name on the package is IPA, double IPA, white IPA, Session IPA (etc), that national lineage is always evident. I have argued to Stan--who has steadfastly remained unconvinced--that there is basically one source for all that. So let me put it out to you, and you can line up in the Stan, Jeff, or alternative camp as befits your reading of history:

What if Ken Grossman had never made Sierra Nevada Pale? (And as a corollary: Sierra Nevada Celebration?)

Discuss.

The End is Nigh

In order to locate a two-month period in which blog posts were as bereft here as they were in Sept and Oct this year, you have to go back to 2006. During these past two months, I've been on a national book tour while trying to complete a book manuscript. And so blogging has suffered mightily. Fortunately for all concerned, things are finally coming to a conclusion. My mid-November, it should be back to the normal level of randomness you have all come to expect.

However, tomorrow I depart for Miami to begin the final leg of the book tour. I'm arriving early so I can enjoy a bit of sunshine and Cuban food. Thereafter follow these stops, for anyone who happens to be nearby:

• November 4 at 8pm, Miami, FL
  Books and Books, Coral Gables 
• November 5 at 7pm, Tampa, FL
  Hidden Springs Ale Works  
• November 6 at 5pm, Atlanta
  Ale Yeah Craft Beer Market (you can also pre-order signed copies)  
• November 8 at 2pm, Nashville
  Yazoo Brewing special event
• November 9 at 6:30pm, Richmond, VA
  Ardent Taproom - ticketed event ($30 gets you the book and three Ardent beers) 
• November 10 at 6:30, Washington DC
  Busboys and Poets Brookland 

What else? Well, I did manage to do a bit of serious blogging while I was on the road, and you can read about that over at All About Beer in a post I promised last week after passing through Milwaukee:

The Pabst complex is so compelling because it’s so tangible. Capitalism is a violent and sometimes jarring force, and as quickly as it graces a business with the generative power to rise from the pavement, it can strike it right back down. For 15 decades, that brewery continued to grow in lunges, expanding capacity to remain lean and efficient, to gobble up more and more of the growing market. The excitement and energy we are witnessing in brewing now is no different than the one that visited the U.S. 150 years ago when German immigrants brought their brewing expertise and inspired drinkers with lager beer. But in 1996, the same calculus that fueled that empire also led to the decision to quit the place: beer could be made more cheaply elsewhere. In a pen stroke the buildings went dark.

Read the rest here.  Finally, Patrick and I have a new Beervana Podcast on the subject of cider. It coincided with the Cider Made Simple book launch last night (with very serious thanks to Nat West, Kevin Zielinski, Abram Goldman-Armstrong, and Silas Bleakley and Kristina Nance). In this week's episode, we do a survey course on cider. (At one point in the podcast, there's an inadvertent Happy Halloween from the producer. You have to listen to hear it.)



You can also listen to it on iTunes.

Wonderful Cider Event on Thursday

If you have even a passing interest in this cider phenomenon that has been on a slow boil for the past few years, I strongly encourage you to come down to Reverend Nat's this Thursday for what is going to be a spectacular evening. The headline event is the book launch for Cider Made Simple, but in fact, it's going to be a full-immersion cider experience, tickling your brain as well as your senses.

I'll begin by talking about the book and giving an overview of cider's terrain, including European archetypes as well as modern American expressions. I will be aided in this endeavor by four of the best cider-makers in America who will be in-house with their ciders as examples of this terrain:

• Kevin Zielinski of EZ Orchards, who will have a traditional French-style cidre for us to try.
• Abram Goldman-Armstrong of Cider Riot!, who will have an English-style cider.
• Silas Bleakley of Rack and Cloth, who will be bringing an example of what I call a "modernist" American-style cider in Cider Made Simple.
• And of course, the host, Nat West, who will have more than one example of what I call "experimental" ciders in the book.

During the program, these four gents will describe their ciders and discuss American cider-making. It should be an incredibly enlightening evening, and having this kind of expertise on hand, along with this range of ciders, is extremely rare. Whether or not you want to buy a copy of the book, do yourself a favor and come on by for some great cider and cider discussion.

Scenes of Mergers Past

I'm about to be booted from my Chicago hotel room, so I don't have time to explore this theme in detail, but I wanted to put a bookmark on something. Yesterday I spent a couple hours walking around (and photographing--more on that later, too) the derelict Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee. I keep hearing about how it's been redeveloped or under redevelopment, but basically the giant buildings--blocks and blocks of them--are gutted and idle, like a quickly-abandoned Soviet city. And it was quickly abandoned, 20 years ago, when the owners shifted production to a different facility, turning Pabst into a contract brew.

Each time I speak on my book tour, someone asks the same question: what's going to happen with the future of beer, with consolidation and so on? Wandering around that complex is a nice meditation on at least one potential future--and a likely one, at least for many of these quickly-growing young breweries. Capitalism is a violent and sometimes jarring force, and as quickly as it graces a business with the generative force to rise from the pavement, it can strike it right back down. The excitement and energy we are witnessing in brewing now is no different than the one that visited the US 150 years ago, and thinking it is a permanent, stable state is belied by the lessons of history. Anyway more on that soon. Meanwhile a couple of pictures to tide you over.

Beer Bible in Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Chicago

Next week I have the great pleasure to visit three great beer cities on the book tour, and if you're in or near any of them, consider checking them out. They all look to be special events.

Monday, October 19 at 7pm
Sugar Maple Bar, Milwaukee


I am especially excited to be returning to the Badger State, where from 1992-1995 I spent three glorious years studying Buddhism and drinking beer. Wisconsin is something like Oregon in that locals drink so much of the beer that a lot of breweries don't distribute very far outside the state (notably New Glarus). The Sugar Maple has an amazing taplist, and I'm psyched to slurp down some local specialties. I believe I'll be doing my standard talk and answering questions before signing books. Look for me in my motion-W hat, Packer fans.

Tuesday, October 20 at 6:30pm
Goose Island Taproom, Chicago

This is going to be a cool event. Goose's Brett Porter will be on hand as I do the usual talk and Q&A, and I hope we can coax him into a bit of Q&A about Goose Island and his activities as well. I've known Brett since the 1990s when he was at Portland Brewing, and this will be a homecoming of sorts, too. Note that the event is in the new taproom, which adds allure and sparkle.

Wednesday, October 21 at 7pm
Urban Chestnut (Grove Brewery and Bierhall location)

This is another one of those events I've been looking forward to since the tour was scheduled. At this very special stop, I'll be doing a tag-team conversation with Stan Hieronymus. Stan was a source of support and guidance as I was writing the book, and we have developed a friendship over the past five years. When we get talkin' beer, it's generally a geeky, fun time. You can't miss this one--I can definitely promise, because Stan, at least, is awesome.

Do We Call the Brewery "Widmer Brother" Now?

Just starting to see reports that Kurt Widmer plans to retire at the end of the year. The most shocking part of this news is that he's 63 years old. That must mean I'm ... 47! Good lord--time is a cruel taskmaster.

I'm sure we'll hear more in due course, but I see no reason to do anything but offer Kurt and Widmer Brothers the best on the news. Few people have meant more to Oregon beer than Kurt and Rob, and I don't think anyone begrudges them some time to go relax and enjoy. I'll leave you with a rare photo of Kurt pulling a pint last year after the Gasthaus reno. He was actually pouring my pint. Thanks, Kurt!

Bleary-eyed

Blogging has been spotty at best around these parts, and I'm afraid that's likely to continue. I just finished up a ten-day leg on my Beer Bible book tour, and I'm home for six before setting off again. (If you want incredibly fragmentary, context-free micro-reports of my observations, you can always follow along on Twitter. How's that for a sales pitch?) The one piece I almost posted here last week instead went to All About Beer. So if you want to see what I discovered in lower Manhattan, that's the best I got.

More ... sometime.

On Beer Pricing

Michael Kiser has a provocative post at Good Beer Hunting. It's a long piece and he makes a number of points, but the thrust is basically this:

I’m arguing for a greater tolerance among consumers and retailers toward the costs associated with certain beers, or the revenue opportunities they legitimately represent for those breweries in a wider spectrum of considerations. Otherwise, this industry you’re claiming you have passion for and want to see grow is being held back by your own narrow idea of “what beer costs."

I think there's some basic economic misunderstandings along the way--which (plug alert!)--you can learn about in our latest Beervana Podcast. But that's not my major concern. For me, the problem is that Micheal's looking at the consumers, not the breweries.

Somehow these guys stay in business.

Pricing is an interesting issue, and customers would do well to understand that some beers necessarily cost more than others to make. But here's where Michael and I part ways: the beer industry should not depend on the kindness of customers to keep them afloat. They are not charities we need to support with our dollars. And indeed, to do so perverts the market and keeps weaker (and less scrupulous) players in the game.

I'd point people to Oregon as a great rebuttal to his thesis. Here breweries must compete on both price and quality. Our supply is insane. Breweries that overcharge or make mediocre products don't sell a lot of beer. (Rogue is basically the only brewery that overcharges, and their Oregon sales have been in decline for years.) We have natural ceilings on what breweries can charge for standard and specialty beers, both in pubs and on the grocery shelves. Specialty beers can't fetch more than about $15 (in a very few rare cases slightly more) without getting stuck on shelves--and breweries in other states where super-premium pricing in the norm avoid Oregon. Why would we pay $30 for a wild ale from Allagash when we have Block 15, De Garde, Solera, Logsdon, and Cascade here at home?

Here's a good example. Josh Pfriem recently released his first batch of barrel-aged beers, and he sold cork-and-cage bottles (12 ounce), for under $10. The quality was spectacular. He priced the beer to earn a profit. And in this market, he needed to: as good as his Flanders-style beers are, he couldn't have charged much more for them. And yet Josh seems to believe he can make a profit this way, shocker of shockers. When I toured the brewery this summer, he took me to his barrel rooms (he has two), where all manner of wildlings lay ripening. Josh has spared no expense at the brewery--he even has a centrifuge, which I've never seen in a brewery that small--and is busy expanding the barrel-age program. And he can make a nice profit doing it. You could also look to Belgium, where the lambic-makers somehow manage to put together spectacular gueuzes (blends of vintage lambic, portions of which are aged three years) that they can ship to the US and sell for under $20.

No brewer in Oregon to whom I've spoken has complained about price pressures. There's no danger that Oregonians are about to see their wonderful beer go extinct. But even if there were price pressures, it's not the consumer's responsibility to subsidize (or even worry about) the brewery with inflated prices. Beer is a good, honest beverage and it is quite possible to make it well and profitably. If it weren't, there wouldn't be 3,500 breweries in the US with just a handful of annual failures. As the market tightens, the best breweries will, like Josh Pfriem, learn how to continue to brew spectacular beer and sell it at a price consumers will pay. That's how markets work. Not by charity.

Your Omnibus Friday Post

I'm getting on a plane for Philadelphia today, so let's trot through these points briskly.

Southern Oregon Shooting
As everyone in ear- or eye-shot of electronic media knows, there was another mass-shooting in Roseburg yesterday. Discussion of things like beer are highlighted by this event for their triviality, and everyone in Oregon is a bit shaken this morning. Not surprised--good Lord, no--but disturbed. Our thoughts are with everyone at Umpqua Community College.

Legalized It
In one of the more bizarre coincidences, yesterday also marked formal cannabis legalization in Oregon. Anyone 21 years or older can now walk into one of the scores of dispensaries across the state and buy up to a quarter ounce of Purple Haze. It's clear we've passed into a new era, because not only did the day pass without attracting much media attention, but dispensaries reported fairly normal (if busy) days--no lines around the block. No worries, though, beer fans, this development isn't likely to blunt* the growth of your fave beverage.

How wild is your beer?
In a rare Oregon-focused post on All About Beer, I travel to Parkdale and talk to Solera's Jason Kahler about the wildest of wild ales--those that are made through natural fermentation.

If you wanted to boil the whole of modern brewing to a single goal, it’s trying to gain as much control over the biochemistry of the brewing process—starting with keeping wild yeast out of the brewery. This approach seems fundamentally contrary to brewing wild, which requires the embrace of randomness. When I visited Cantillon back in 2011, Jean Van Roy—who is equal parts poet, philosopher, and brewer—put it this way. “It’s never the same. Never. You never know what you will discover. That’s why lambic is so fun. In French we have a sentence. We say, tout est dans tout. If I translate it: everything is in everything. In this brewery, everything is playing a role in the final product. Everything.”

This is not the approach of the modern brewer; it’s something closer to an alchemist—which Kahler acknowledged. “It’s kind of magical in my head. There’s obviously hard science behind it, but I don’t understand all that science, and I don’t think you have to understand that science.”

Beervana Podcast: An Econ-focused Look at Buyouts and Mergers
When Patrick and I conceived of the podcast, we thought it would be cool to incorporate his expertise--economics--into our analysis. Beer isn't a platonic ideal--it's a product, bought and sold on the open market. So too are breweries, which lately have been selling a lot more than some people would like. We tap Patrick's wealth of knowledge to discover whether this is anything fans of good beer should be worrying about. (Plus a fun blind-tasting of some of the, err, finer products of these large breweries that are doing all the buying.) I'll like the Soundcloud feed below, but you can also get the podcast on iTunes. 






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*Sorry.