I’ve just returned from my 15th annual trip to the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. That number still boggles my mind and I’ve seen the fest (from its days at Currigan Hall), the City of Denver, and the attendant brewing and drinking communities change greatly in that time. Taking a cue from another beer writer, I’ve decided to avoid writing another lengthy diatribe on the GABF (like the controversial one from last year) and here’s an only slightly less diatribe-y list of my thoughts on this year’s GABF.
Let’s Start With The Positive…
1. What an electric moment it was when Jack McAuliffe walked onto the stage during the awards presentation. It was great to see him receive the praise he never did during his brief brewing days.
2. Denver is becoming one hell of a city. I’ve been attending the GABF for 15 years and the changes have come fast and furious in that time. The last year has seen a massive amount of new construction and the continued expansion and growing prominence of new neighborhoods, such as the Highlands. No longer are visitors restricted to scouring the same two or three bars in the increasingly seedy LoDo district. By avoiding the usual suspects, I also ate (and largely drank) better than I ever have in Denver during the fest. The potted salted caramel cheesecake at Colt & Gray was reason enough to leave LoDo.
3. It was fantastic to visit a bevy of new breweries of varying sizes that have opened up in Denver in the last week to year. From the unbelievably tiny Wit’s End Brewing to the fantastically communal Denver Beer Company to the excellent Renegade Brewing Company, these new entrants have brought a renewed vitality to a self-proclaimed “Napa Valley of Beer” whose scene was frankly getting a little stale. That several of the new faces also won their first GABF medals was a great celebration of their hard work.
4. The best beer I had at the festival was Remi’s Saison IPA from the Equinox Brewing Company in Fort Collins, Colorado. This was apparently (and sadly) a one-off collaboration with a local homebrewer, named Remi Bonnart, who won the National Homebrewer of the Year title in 2010. Tasty and intriguing stuff.
5. Despite some grumbles from attendees regarding floor space, I actually thought recreating the 30th anniversary floor plan with the original brewers was kind of a nice touch.
6. Thank god that Falling Rock finally reopened the lower pit area in front of the bar (if only for one night). I attended one Dogfish Head event and an Oktoberfest style event in this area a long time ago and the extra room makes the difference between being smashed together in a hot assed bar after standing in a half-block long line and having the ability to actually talk and share pints with friends. Let the nerds pack together in the basement. I’ll take the outside pit any day. We almost skipped Falling Rock this year (in part because of Point 2 above) due to the horribly packed environs this central meeting point offers experiences every year. Let’s hope this happens again next year.
The Less Positive Parts Of The Festival…
1. I have no idea what a dozen or so of the awarded beer styles mean. I’m sure you can explain to me what Field or Indigenous Beers are but the categories left folks around me at the awards presentation scratching their heads.
2. I really wasn’t blown away by many of the beers that I tried at the festival. Perhaps it is age, cynicism, or something else, but I thought the overall trend was towards pretty mainstream flavors and without many particularly noteworthy offerings. I did have some solid lager beers and saw more of them at the fest, which was a very positive trend. The IPA’s, however, tasted pretty samey across the board.
3. Considering this was the festival’s 30th anniversary, I expected the Brewers Association to celebrate with more events or to put a greater focus on it. The association really didn’t and it seemed a bit of an afterthought.
The Downright Disappointing Parts Of The Fest
There is only one point to be made here, with a few sub-points:
1. Where did all the brewers go?
1a. Putting the awards presentation aside, I saw or ran into a grand total of 5 brewers at the 2 sessions I attended. I’ve never experienced such a shortage in my years of attending.
1b. Brewers were as scarce at booths as sartorial good taste (paging Garrett) and sober restraint. I lamented this fact last year and called upon the Brewers Association to do something about it. Instead, I saw a lot of booths (even whole aisles) staffed only by volunteers (many of whom knew nothing about the beer–I heard one get both the beer’s style and brewer’s state wrong in one exchange with an inquiring consumer) or by faux-brewery staffers wearing brewery lanyards but who actually were just working as know-nothing stand-ins for their brewer buddies.
1c. A number of brewers either decided not to attend the GABF or were locked out from attending due to the awards and floor space closing up early. I heard several grumbles about some breweries being permitted to enter a large number of beers while others were then shut out entirely. I also heard from several well-known brewers that they were focusing on their local markets instead of attending the more national (or hyper-local, see below) GABF.
1d. It appears that the GABF is no longer vital to the industry nor a must-attend event for many brewers or beer lovers. It is at its essence grown into a company paid vacation (for admittedly hard-working) brewers and a gigantic local beer fest. Without the benefit of numbers, I would imagine that three-quarters of the attendees at minimum hail from within 30 miles of the 80202 area code. And while the hotels and car rentals are booked long in advance, beyond industry folks, the impact of the festival seems largely lost on many of the 49,000 attendees. And I understand why you would be hesitant to attend. If you run a little brewpub in Virginia or even a large craft brewery in Boston, it’s hard to say what value the GABF offers your brand or brewery. (With this said, I need to ask someone like Joe Short why he spends so much time and money on his GABF presentation. I may be missing a whole side to this or maybe he just likes to party). Perhaps the GABF medal is still a coveted commodity and it’s clear that many breweries still want to take a shot and send a few beers to compete. But the festival itself seems much an afterthought. It has simply turned into the world’s largest bar for Denver-ites. Unless you’re trying to sell beer in Colorado, it seems as if the festival has turned into the last place you’ll see a brewer during the last week in September.
Reading over my post from last year on the unfortunate aspects of the Great American Beer Festival, I think most of the criticisms remain true and that the opportunities for beer education and brand building have essentially been lost at the GABF. For next year, I hope the Brewers Association considers the simple point I made last year: breweries that choose to pour beer on the festival floor should be required to have a representative at the booth at all times.
The local ABC affiliate (WCVB) ran an episode on its excellent Chronicle program this evening profiling the wide variety of fantastic brewers that we have in Massachusetts. For those viewers who made their way here, I welcome you and hope you enjoy BeerScribe.com and local craft beer. I’ll try and post the video when it comes up on the WCVB site.
Cheers,
Andy Crouch
I like drinking beer in garages. I’m not talking about sitting next to lawnmowers, beat up Ford Escorts, and discarded tools in your buddy’s man cave. I prefer brewery-garage outfits where the drinking environment is about as deconstructed and scaled down as you can imagine. In most cities around the United States, breweries exist in functional if interchangeable industrial buildings, often characterless warehouse spaces with ample drainage and vertical height. But in a handful of edgier locales, brewers turn old mechanic shops and garage storefronts into funky drinking experiences.
Now brewing in garages is nothing new. Thousands of homebrewers do it every day and many commercial brewers turn to garages when other spaces prove too expensive. With the rigors and restrictions of modern zoning ordinances and the scornful, watching eyes of alcohol licensing bodies, few of these brewers can convert their ordinary repair shops into welcoming beer Mecca’s. The key, my friends, is the brewery taproom.
For those beer geeks living in repressed towns and states, prepare yourselves for a shock: there are places in this country where you can visit a brewery, sit down, and have a pint or two instead of just a two-ounce thimble sample. On a recent trip to Asheville, North Carolina, I visited brewery after brewery, each housed in converted garage spaces. I bought pints, sat in lawn chairs and picnic tables, and even heard live music, with guitarists and drummers banging away amid pallets of grain and kegs.
As someone who has never lived in such a free society, I’m supremely jealous of these fortunate beer lovers. For them, a visit to the local brewery isn’t limited to a rote tour of ubiquitous industrial vats, followed by the requisite short pour of a beer or two. Instead, the brewery becomes a community meeting spot, fully integrating into neighborhoods and inviting consumers to become regulars.
The importance of being able to invite consumers into these breweries cannot be overstated. Otherwise kept at arms length, brewery patrons become more than consumers as they sip pints a few feet from bubbling fermenters and brewers working the kettle. A connection is built and a sense of belonging and place develops, tying the brewery and consumer together.
To be sure, these garage breweries aren’t brewpubs in any traditional sense. You won’t find any food, beyond peanuts or popcorn, and the beer is usually sold off-site as well. And you’re always aware that the brewery hovers around you, not hidden away behind glass partitions. It’s like you’re part of a club whose membership privileges include sneaking into the brewhouse after hours.
Beyond the unique character garage breweries offer to visitors, brewery owners also derive several benefits from such operations. Beyond the obvious advantage of providing a much valued source of income for folks operating on tight margins, garage breweries offer brewers and owners a level of direct contact with consumers that elude more traditional industrial operations.
Sadly, most states preclude breweries from operating tap rooms, let alone ones so devolved to the point where the line between brewery and tap room virtually disappears. Visit at the right time and you may be asked to help move a tank hose or add some late boil hops to the kettle.
Returning to Asheville, it’s easy to see why the garage brewery model satisfies both beer lovers and brewers. Whether it be strolling through French Broad’s old school fermenters with an inexpensive pint of Rye Hopper in your hand or leaning against the brew kettle at Craggie, sipping an Antebellum Ale, and listening to a jazz combo band, the charm and vibe are infectious. You want more of it. You demand more of it. And then you remember that your town doesn’t have anything like it. And that’s why you travel.
-Article appeared in Issue 54 of BeerAdvocate Magazine.
It’s been a busy week in the world of Massachusetts beer. In case you’ve been living in a cave (or were just out of town like myself), the controversy started with the Idle Hands Craft Ales company announcing that the Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission (ABCC) had denied its application for a so-called farmer-brewery license. Beyond impacting this single nano-in-development, the ABCC’s decision included a section purporting to be an advisory opinion, which held that in order to qualify for a Farmer-Brewery license, a farmer-brewer must “grow at least 50-percent, in the aggregate, of the quantity of cereal grains and hops needed to produce the anticipated volume of malt beverages.” The ABCC explicitly stated in its decision that “the industry is put on notice that the Commission will be applying this ruling prospectively and, specifically, during the next annual renewal cycle to ensure that every applicant for a farmer-brewer license meets the state law definition of farmer-brewer by growing at least 50 percent…”
This statement no doubt scared the hell out of dozens of brewers around the state that continue to operate under such a license, even if their renewal period was still a few months away. Read as an advisory opinion, the agency’s decision sought to redefine a long-standing license that a large number of production breweries in the state use for their operations.
The response to the ABCC’s decision and advisory opinion was fast, furious, and devastating. Everyone from newbie nanos to United States Senator Scott Brown piled on the vitriol against the ABCC, calling the decision everything from a “job killer” to a “devastating financial opinion.” Speaking at a well-timed annual meeting of the Beer Institute in Boston, Senator Brown lit into the decision. From the start it appeared clear that it was only a matter of time before either the legislature or other state politicians acted to quell concerns. On the state level, Senator Robert Hedlund filed legislation to allow for a new manufacturer’s permit for craft brewers. On the federal level, Senator Brown announced his support for the long-pending bill to roll back the taxes brewers pay to pre-1991 levels, which would cut the per barrel tax to $9 under legislation. Under the bill, the taxes paid by small breweries on their first 60,000 barrels produced would also be cut from $7 to $3.50. A few days later, State Treasurer Steve Grossman, who oversees the ABCC, announced that the agency’s decision would be rescinded and that public hearings on the rule would be held.
The funny thing about all of the controversy, however, is just how uncontroversial the ABCC’s decision should have been. Little is generally known by the public of the farmer-brewer designation and craft brewers themselves seem to also lack knowledge about its history. This fundamental lack of understanding, combined with the ABCC’s admittedly clumsy handling of the situation, has allowed what is otherwise a seemingly proper decision to go up in flames, squelching a broader and necessary discussion.
Long before the Harpoon Brewery sought the state’s first brewing permit in 1986, the Massachusetts alcohol licensing law contained but a single type of permit allowing for the manufacture of malt beverages in the state. In 1982, at a time when no breweries existed in the state, the state legislature tried to encourage brewing by adding a “farmer-brewer” or “farmer-brewery” license. Little changed since its passage, the farmer-brewer law was intended to encourage “the development of domestic farms.” Under the license, individuals and corporations can brew and sell their own beer on the site of the brewery. The measure passed with little fanfare and went unused until small, upstart craft breweries saw the benefits of its less restrictive terms and much less expensive licensing fees.
But from the beginning, applying the farmer-brewer designation to small brewers was complicated and fraught with problems. In the beginning, the ABCC enforced the spirit of the regulation and required brewers to cultivate at least one ingredient used in the brewing process, be it hops or barley. This, of course, caused problems for local brewers. As the Boston Business Journal put it more than twenty years ago, “[s]ince the climate here is not appropriate for growing barley adequate for brewing beer, to get the license [brewery] owners must lease farmland to grow a crop they will never use.”
“I don’t know of any other business that is required to farm in the state in order to do business,” Jonathan Tremblay, the then manager of the Cambridge Brewing Company, told the Journal. To qualify for the farmer brewer license, the brewpub grew 10 acres of useless barley that it leased from a farmer. At the same time in Northampton, one of the state’s only other brewpub proprietors, Janet Egelston, wanted to open new locations of the popular Northampton Brewery in Worcester and Salem but the state’s laws caused them to open in Portsmouth, New Hampshire instead. The nature of the farmer brewer license also caused her to postpone for five years her marriage to a business partner, until a state senator filed special legislation exempting from the state law prohibiting joint ownership of both brewery and restaurant.
In response, the ABCC filed legislation in 1990 attempting to scrap the farmer brewery license and replace it with a new brewpub license. After long being stuck in a legislative committee, and while no other brewpub licenses were granted, the legislature finally passed the law in 1998, adding licenses for pub brewers and pub brewers. While the new license allowed pub brewers to operate without the farming requirements, the legislature did not remove the language for non-pub based farmer brewers.
The ABCC itself acknowledged the farcical nature of the license. “The farmer brewery license is not working out well at all. It is making hypocrites and dishonest people out of legitimate business people by claiming they are growing the commodities that go into the product when in fact they are not,” George McCarthy, former ABCC chairman, told the Boston Business Journal in 1990. Somewhere thereafter, the ABCC changed its application of the ingredient growing requirement, allowing new craft brewers to enjoy the benefits of a license never intended to govern their operations. Craft breweries favored the farmer brewer license and continued to open and operate under its designation.
Fast forward to today and craft breweries are suddenly up in arms over something that should have been addressed by their lobbyists and the legislature decades ago. Until recently, Massachusetts brewers have been a largely disorganized bunch, preferring to go it alone in their operations and eschewing a larger, statewide group effort. The resurrection of a statewide brewers guild has helped this situation but the group has not taken steps to alter the state of the farmer brewery designation before the legislature.
The ABCC decision certainly frightened business owners who have worked hard to develop their operations or spent time in the planning stages. The Idle Hands press release on the denial of its license best captures this feeling.
Though this decision helps clarify a license that has been on the book for years, it sets a precedent that creates far-reaching effects on breweries, bars, restaurants, retailers and ultimately consumers. There are cost implications and more important issues relate to economic growth, industry innovation, and consumer access to a greater variety of local beers. These effects are further amplified as the brewing industry is one of a few growing industries in an otherwise struggling economy. Existing breweries of all sizes will have to adapt to the 50 percent requirements or apply for alternate licensing, and local entrepreneurs will have to determine whether they can invest in an industry that no longer supports growth and innovation.
While the ABCC’s unexpected change in course sent craft brewers scurrying in response, and with good reason, the agency’s decision was neither unforeseeable nor out of line. State law allows the ABCC to make rules governing brewing licenses, with comment periods usually given to the public and those affected. The ABCC even has the power to issue emergency regulations, as it did earlier this year when it prohibited the sale of caffeinated alcoholic beverages in the Commonwealth.
The odd thing, however, is that craft brewers are either ignoring the spirit and language of the farmer-brewer law or want to continue to operate in ignorance of it. For its part, Idle Hands conceded that it was not going to produce any significant portion of its own ingredients in line with the farmer brewer’s licensing guidelines and most craft brewers grow very little or none of their brewing ingredients.
While the ABCC’s abrupt announcement in the Idle Hands decision and its later advisory opinion was far from the best way to handle the shift of how it will apply state law, craft breweries operating in Massachusetts have to take some responsibility for their failure to address a glaring and long-standing problem. State Senator John Olver, the one who assisted Egelston in navigating the brewpub law in 1990, telegraphed the situation to the Journal in 1990. “The farmers brewery license was set up for another time and was never successful.”
It’s time for the Commonwealth (and its brewers and legislators) to address these long-standing issues in a responsible and public manner.
It’s David versus Goliath, only in liquid form. Often framed as extreme versus session beer, two sides of the coin, mortal enemies fighting a cage match for consumer attention, the debate over beer alcohol levels is playing out in barrooms and liquor stores from San Diego to Boston. The narrative often involves a clash of drinking cultures, with brash upstarts promoting hop bombs and barrel aged beer mammoths while a few quiet warriors work to promote a new world order of beer, filled with three and four percent alcohol ales and lagers.
On its face, the comparison of big and small beers offers an attractive dichotomy, a true exercise in contrasts. And after pumping the extreme beer balloon to its swollen limit, the mainstream media now stands ready to burst the engorged alcohol behemoth in favor of the next big (or little) thing. With articles promoting the trend-worthiness of lower alcohol beers splashing across Advertising Age and the New York Times, it’s easy to get swept up in the rah-rah spirit behind the session beer movement. Experience, however, suggests that it’s going to be a while before Americans toss aside their regular IPA’s and stouts and openly embrace the idea of lower alcohol beer.
In choosing the ‘session’ banner, American promoters have knowingly wedded themselves to a beer culture that is entirely foreign to this country. The British concept of session drinking involves the consumption of many rounds of lower alcohol beer over an extended period, say five or six beers after work. In adopting the session moniker as opposed to simply calling their efforts a campaign for lower-alcohol beers, these brewers face target consumers who are not given to long stints in the pub or hours of uninterrupted drinking. Our drinking culture is goal oriented: have a beer to accompany a meal or fill a short window of time after work and before a commute. Most drinkers don’t sit around and have a half-dozen beers before heading home and with craft beer prices in many markets approaching $7, 8 or even $10 a pour, regular ‘sessions’ would be bankrupting.
Beyond incompatible consumption levels, transferring the concept of session beer to the United States has hit other hurdles. Born in the pubs of England, even hard core sessionistas have a difficult time actually defining what they mean by session drinking. Is 4.5 ABV session worthy or must it be 3.5 or lower? Often obsessed with the numbers, the side of session beer that promotes balance and flavor harmony is lost in the process. Belaboring such beer minutiae escapes or disinterests most drinkers. With a history punctuated with terms of government enforced moderation and prohibition, Americans have a difficult time relating to such beer confines. Most American drinkers don’t have experience in purposely selecting lower alcohol products in order to sustain a lengthier drinking session and have simply viewed alcohol as a means to a socially lubricating end.
The state of our beer culture is influenced by our purveyors and producers. Local drinking establishments don’t put a premium on courting the session drinker. Whether based in concerns related to promoting over-consumption or sheer laziness, most bars don’t list the alcohol levels in the beers they serve unless mandated by law. The consumer looking to undertake a true session is left asking the busy bartender about lower alcohol options or doing their own advanced legwork. For their part, American brewers have also not focused much attention on producing low enough alcohol beers to provide a sufficiently sizable point of differentiation from other brands.
Despite recent headlines, American beer culture has a long way to go before lower alcohol drinking gains a true foothold. We have adopted a totally different world view from that of the British session beer experience, which simply isn’t transferable to or in tune with our local beer and drinking culture. To be sure, promoting lower alcohol yet flavorful beer options is a worthy mission. But calling it session beer in the United States is a little like calling three tables in a restaurant back alley a German beer garden.
-Article appeared in Issue 53 of BeerAdvocate Magazine.
Give and Take…