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So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

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Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#121

Post by microtherion »

munificent wrote: post #32

I live in Seattle where the IPA thing is just out of hand. My uncharitable pet theory is this: A certain class of men (sometimes women, but it's almost always men) get interested in something and then desire to make it part of their identity. That in turn means they want to convey that they are more into it than other people. Their passion expresses itself as competition. Most people that aren't really into beer don'…

> A certain class of men (sometimes women, but it's almost always men) get interested in something and then desire to make it part of their identity. That in turn means they want to convey that they are more into it than other people. Their passion expresses itself as competition.

Absolutely! I'm seeing the same thing in chocolate, where people chase cocoa %ages, and spicy food, where people brag about how many Scoville Units they can handle.

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#122

Post by criddell »

rsync wrote: post #79
walrus01 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making a neutral observation that various activities have a high proportion of dudebros, and declaring that only men should participate in said activities are two different things.

Actually, your parent is correct: it is sexist . It makes a distinction based on sex. It is sexism. It is not, however, negative , as your parent implied.

I've never heard sexist used to just indicate a distinction by sex.

Google tells me sexist means:

> characterized by or showing prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex

That sounds negative to me.

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#123

Post by nostromo »

FernandoTN wrote: post #24

Running a brewery ends up being more about running a business than actually brewing... Every corp ends up being much more intensive in the administrative side once the process or product has been standardized or reached a stable version. Isn't this the case for most businesses, including tech?

This is definitely true for tech.

A lot of startup founders, including myself, fall in love with the idea of building technology -- but quickly learn founders are usually required to be great salespeople more than great technologists.

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#124

Post by justincredible »

munificent wrote: post #32

I live in Seattle where the IPA thing is just out of hand. My uncharitable pet theory is this: A certain class of men (sometimes women, but it's almost always men) get interested in something and then desire to make it part of their identity. That in turn means they want to convey that they are more into it than other people. Their passion expresses itself as competition. Most people that aren't really into beer don'…

> My favorite Tweet ever was someone who described this process that dudes do where they show up, take over a hobby, and drive all the fun out (and thus women) as "MENTRIFICATION". It is my new favorite word.

Versus when chicks show up, deconstruct every aspect of a hobby, and drive away anyone who was actually interested in it. At least with competition someone wins.

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#125

Post by bostik »

walrus01 wrote: post #2

My personal taste complaint with a lot of people who open a brewery... Everyone seems to think that more hops = better beer. There are so many other possible flavors and types to a beer than some type of IPA that is absolutely overloaded with hops. But that seems to be a very common type of thing to brew. When I open something and am assaulted with the aroma of hops, it's not appealing anymore. It was interesting 7-8…

> taste of hops in a beer can be used to mask many errors and missteps

You are not alone.

A microbrewer here in London said it really well: most small breweries go with IPA and in general overdo their hops because it allows to hide faults. Without the overpowering hoppiness their beers wouldn't taste good at all.

As a casual home brewer, I try to avoid hoppy concoctions. And at some point I will learn how to do proper German style weissbier...

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#126

Post by jofer »

walrus01 wrote: post #2

My personal taste complaint with a lot of people who open a brewery... Everyone seems to think that more hops = better beer. There are so many other possible flavors and types to a beer than some type of IPA that is absolutely overloaded with hops. But that seems to be a very common type of thing to brew. When I open something and am assaulted with the aroma of hops, it's not appealing anymore. It was interesting 7-8…

> ...I have a personal theory that the overwhelming aroma and taste of hops in a beer can be used to mask many errors and missteps in the brewing process...

For what it's worth, more hops absolutely masks errors in brewing. It's something that any homebrewer finds out very quickly.

IPA's/etc are very easy to get a drinkable beer out of no matter how many mistakes you make. (To be fair, it's not just IPA's that are forgiving. Weissbiers are actually quite easy to brew due to the yeast hiding off flavors nicely, and ambers can be easy due to lots of caramelized, unfermentable sugars hiding off flavors. You can overdo the sweetness in an amber or mess up the fermentation in a wheat more easily than you can make an undrinkable IPA, though.) That's not to say that really good IPAs are easy to brew, just that you'll get something drinkable no matter what.

Any commercial brewery _should_ be beyond basic mistakes, but scaling brewing is hard. What I'm saying really only applies to homebrewers, but I suspect it carries over to smaller breweries as well.

The hardest beers to brew well are actually Pilsners, Lagers, and American-style pilsners/mega-brews. Anything with very clean, crisp flavors. I hate to say it, but if you want to really test your skills, try brewing a miller lite clone... This is especially true in homebrewing, where proper lagering/aging and fermenting at low temps needed for lager yeasts used by pilsners/lagers/etc is difficult.

At any rate, my hat is off to Czech brewers. Trying to brew a really good pilsner or bohemian lager is damned hard to perfect, and it's an absolutely sublime style when done right. Sadly, it's somewhat rare to find a brewery in the US that can do it well.

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#127

Post by mortenjorck »

petra wrote: post #51
tempsy wrote: post #9

I wish there was a "Stripe Atlas" for brick and mortar businesses. 90% of the work to start a restaurant, cafe, shop, etc., must be the near identical to others colocated in the same city/state. The rise of "ghost kitchens" tries to solve this in some way but I think there's opportunity to go further.

1. I wonder why we are not seeing "cloud brewing"? The process, as they describe it, seems very standard. 2. For restaurants, it's either "ghost/cloud kitchens" or franchises. If you go outside those, it's possible that restaurants require too much uniqueness and too much risk to fit a standardized model.

In Chicago, I’ve started to see “co-brewing” spaces where a few smaller breweries share a single brewing and taproom space.

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#128

Post by seiferteric »

uxp100 wrote: post #111
seiferteric wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is inherently sexist to suggest that men or woman may exhibit certain behaviors more than the other. I am not sure when we crossed the line that making any such suggestion is inherently sexist.

"Mentrification" suggests that men enter women's hobbies and ruin them. It also suggests that there is a right and wrong way to engage with things (See conversations about how men and women engage with fiction differently, analysis vs elaboration, power rankings vs fan-fiction, etc). Rather than saying the word "mentrification" is sexist, which is a complex question (like nobody is being hurt because someone on twitt…

I agree that Mentrification is not the right word. The OP was implying it can happen in hobbies already dominated by men, not just hobbies dominated by woman. Perhaps Brotrification would be better.

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#129

Post by stdbrouw »

petra wrote: post #51
tempsy wrote: post #9

I wish there was a "Stripe Atlas" for brick and mortar businesses. 90% of the work to start a restaurant, cafe, shop, etc., must be the near identical to others colocated in the same city/state. The rise of "ghost kitchens" tries to solve this in some way but I think there's opportunity to go further.

1. I wonder why we are not seeing "cloud brewing"? The process, as they describe it, seems very standard. 2. For restaurants, it's either "ghost/cloud kitchens" or franchises. If you go outside those, it's possible that restaurants require too much uniqueness and too much risk to fit a standardized model.

As others point out, contract brewing is definitely a thing, but a better comparison than cloud computing would be shared hosting: you're stuck with whatever stack they happen to have installed, no admin rights, and you get the same dismal bandwidth as all other tenants. Or back to brewing: yup, the process is fairly standard – and how could it not be – but great breweries tend to be great not just because they have good recipes, but often because they have mastered their gear and have perfected their processes across the board. Only very few contract breweries are that good.

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#130

Post by homonculus1 »

rsync wrote: post #79
walrus01 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making a neutral observation that various activities have a high proportion of dudebros, and declaring that only men should participate in said activities are two different things.

Actually, your parent is correct: it is sexist . It makes a distinction based on sex. It is sexism. It is not, however, negative , as your parent implied.

It is negative. "Mentrification", just like "mansplaining" and "manspreading", is loaded, pejorative, and exists to define a behavior as bad and exclusively male. Play around with sexist attitudes if you like but let's not be coy about it.
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