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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)

#281

Post by mikekchar »

legitster wrote: post #61

I have a friend who dropped everything in his life to start homebrewing and trying to enter the brewing industry. He's broke and miserable and doesn't understand why the jobs are so bad. I'm trying to convince him that the fact that people are willing to give up everything to take one of these jobs is why you have to give up everything. It's ironic as well, because the types of jobs he is running away from (spreadshe…

I almost started up a brewery. At the last minute I thought, "What job do I want in this brewery". I went through all of the normal jobs: brewer who does all the physical labour, bottle washer/filler, sales person, etc, etc, etc. I didn't want any of the jobs. What I really wanted to do was to devise interesting new beers. As a home brewer I did that weekly. As professional brewer I would be lucky to do that seasonally.

I realised, "This is not a job I want" and gave it up. All of the successful brewers I know (and I'm lucky enough to know quite a few) really enjoy building a business. Brewing is what they do because brewing is cool to them, but their real passion is building the business. I had a lucky escape, because that's just not my thing.

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

#282

Post by Cougher »

mumblemumble wrote: post #81
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…

Former home brewer and, for a short time, amateur beer judge here. You've got it right. It's not that more hops = better beer. It's that more hops = easier beer. Malt-forward beers are much more difficult to get right, and require a lot of very careful attention to detail. Hops are easy: Just throw them into the batch and set a timer. Their strong flavor is also useful for masking a lot of consistency problems and of…

"The days when one could get away with marketing something like Shiner Bock as a bock are long gone."

Can I look forward to the days when one can't get away with marketing American IPAs as IPAs? Because they're nothing like the British originals. I was also a homebrewer and a beer judge for a short time. That was back in the day (the 80s) when Pilsner Urquell was still the most bitter beer in the world. There was a stereotypical homebrewer who used to dump loads of hops in his beers as a sort of "hot sauce penis waver" to express his manliness. These guys paid no attention to beer style or brewing history. This mindset went on to have the dominant influence on the American microbrew industry, which has included varying degrees of misapplication of beer style claims. I've long given up on trying beer from American brewers as only a few of them use any degree of real creativity and understanding that malt does more than just provide color and something for yeast to create alcohol with. Unfortunately, the rise of microbrews inevitably brought the demise of imports, relatively speaking. I could get on board with the canned beer fad if the labels were even remotely readable, but like their overhopped beer, art and nuance is something that is wielded like a sledgehammer to clobber us over our heads.

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

#283

Post by Smithalicious »

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'…

I don't think "hipsters exist" is a particularly novel theory and I especially don't see how any of this is a gendered issue that requires some kind of anti-men rant.

I also think it's not very nice to accuse people of not actually enjoying their hobbies.

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

#284

Post by jiofih »

jiofih wrote: post #109
walrus01 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an enthusiastic road cyclist I don't think there has ever been a time in modern history when the cohort of people who ride 10,000km+ a year for general conditioning/cardio/training, and spend $2,000+ on road bikes, wasn't gender ratio skewed by at least 85:15 towards men. It is kind of unfortunate because there should really be nothing gender specific about cycling.

That’s gonna be the top 20% of commute distances, but plenty of men and women doing 10k+/year in Europe.

Why downvoted? That’s a 12km daily commute.

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

#285

Post by Chris2048 »

shkkmo wrote: post #263
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition is why our modern standard of living is what it is. People seeking to do things better, faster and cheaper in order to make a buck (or even just for the bragging rights) in order to improve their own personal standard of living gives us electric lighting, oranges in February, the massive amount of infrastructure it takes to get this comment from my fingertips to your eyeballs and every other part of moder…

> Competition is why our modern standard of living is what it is. Yet you can say the exact same thing about cooperation. I would argue that cooperation is atleast as critical an ingredient here as competition. Indeed, the infrastructure that allows me to view the comment you posted depends on open standards, open source software and generally could not have existed without groups of people working together to accomp…

> cooperation, freedom and passion are more important than competition, greed and ego

These things aren't mutually exclusive. You can compete as a team and with the help of friends.

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

#286

Post by shkkmo »

Chris2048 wrote: post #285
shkkmo wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Competition is why our modern standard of living is what it is. Yet you can say the exact same thing about cooperation. I would argue that cooperation is atleast as critical an ingredient here as competition. Indeed, the infrastructure that allows me to view the comment you posted depends on open standards, open source software and generally could not have existed without groups of people working together to accomp…

> cooperation, freedom and passion are more important than competition, greed and ego These things aren't mutually exclusive. You can compete as a team and with the help of friends.

Of course they aren't mutually exclusive. Did you read where I acknowledge that competition is an important and useful dynamic? I just think that competition is fundementally less important than cooperation.

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

#287

Post by rypskar »

Bootwizard wrote: post #12
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…

You're telling me. I've been into craft beer for around 8 years, a bit after IPAs really took off in the US. I have acid reflux, and nothing triggers it more consistently and quickly than having an IPA. It just tastes like straight up acid to me. I equate people who like really strong IPAs to people who are into extreme hot sauce just for the sake of injuring themselves with something that's overly hot. Is there real…

>>I have acid reflux, and nothing triggers it more consistently and quickly than having an IPA

For me it is to opposite, I have no problem with IPA and want them as hoppy as they get. But some pilsners triggers the reflux consistently. I think for me it is related to how carbonated they are.

I'm glad we now have a good selection and can select what we want, and not having it as it was 10+ years ago where we had 5-10 types of pilsners/light lagers to select from

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

#288

Post by mumblemumble »

Cougher wrote: post #282
mumblemumble wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former home brewer and, for a short time, amateur beer judge here. You've got it right. It's not that more hops = better beer. It's that more hops = easier beer. Malt-forward beers are much more difficult to get right, and require a lot of very careful attention to detail. Hops are easy: Just throw them into the batch and set a timer. Their strong flavor is also useful for masking a lot of consistency problems and of…

"The days when one could get away with marketing something like Shiner Bock as a bock are long gone." Can I look forward to the days when one can't get away with marketing American IPAs as IPAs? Because they're nothing like the British originals. I was also a homebrewer and a beer judge for a short time. That was back in the day (the 80s) when Pilsner Urquell was still the most bitter beer in the world. There was a s…

No, and there's not a strong historical basis for making the distinction, either - in the UK, the hop and grain bills for beers sold as IPAs have been in a constant state of flux for centuries now, and it wasn't all that long ago that an IPA coming from a London brewery could have been more bitter than a standard American IPA nowadays.

If it's any consolation, at least in the classification system used by the BJCP style guidelines, they aren't even in the same general category. But one could argue that the names used in a beer judging rubric and the names used for the purposes of marketing beer are not, despite the use of some common language, the same thing.

It's also, I think, not quite correct to blame the development of American IPA solely on machismo. That's undeniably a big part of it nowadays, but, when the style developed, it was much more about adapting the basic idea of an English IPA to taste good using the grain and hops that were being grown in North America.

For a good (mostly British-focused) blog that covers some of this history in excruciating details, see Shut Up About Barclay Perkins.

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

#289

Post by logfromblammo »

couchand wrote: post #258
logfromblammo wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In ages past, before the Reinheitsgebot, the brewers would have their own proprietary blend of gruit , some of which even included hops. I believe some modern brewers have attempted to revive the tradition, many using Sitka spruce tips as the primary flavoring element. A unique proprietary blend of flavorants would certainly be a competitive advantage over all those beers that just use the four major bittering herbs:…

> The IPA was invented because beer shipped to India acquired off flavors due to the longer travel times. It is almost by definition bad beer. More porter was shipped to India than pale ale. Would you consider porter by definition a bad beer?

I'd have to do a double-blind taste test using beers shipped to India on a slow boat without refrigeration, but I'd hypothesize that all beers subjected to such conditions would be ranked poorly when compared with beer that hadn't made the trip.

Porter was already strongly hopped--a practice that overwhelms other flavors introduced in the brewing process, not just those that develop during transport. As a style of beer, yes, it is worse than more lightly hopped styles.

Or at least that's what the subjective testing in my household shows. De gustibus non est disputandum. Your own testing might rank porters differently, according to your own tastes. But if the test subject does not specifically enjoy the flavor imparted by hops, then all strongly-hopped beers will rank poorly. For someone that does really like hops, all the beers that are basically carbonated alcoholic hop juice will rank highly.

As for myself, I hate IPAs. In a double-blind test, I will always rank all the IPAs in the test set as dead last, with tasting notes such as "worst beer I have ever tasted" and "this beer causes suicidal ideation". It's still okay for other people to like them, I suppose, but I will never be able to understand those who do.

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

#290

Post by padraic7a »

mumblemumble wrote: post #288
Cougher wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The days when one could get away with marketing something like Shiner Bock as a bock are long gone." Can I look forward to the days when one can't get away with marketing American IPAs as IPAs? Because they're nothing like the British originals. I was also a homebrewer and a beer judge for a short time. That was back in the day (the 80s) when Pilsner Urquell was still the most bitter beer in the world. There was a s…

No, and there's not a strong historical basis for making the distinction, either - in the UK, the hop and grain bills for beers sold as IPAs have been in a constant state of flux for centuries now, and it wasn't all that long ago that an IPA coming from a London brewery could have been more bitter than a standard American IPA nowadays. If it's any consolation, at least in the classification system used by the BJCP st…

It's an excellent blog, and from reading it it's quite clear that categories have been ever shifting; sometimes because of supply or government restrictions (esp war) and sometimes just for commerical reasons (increasing profit, changing customer tastes etc).
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