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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)

#61

Post by legitster »

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 (spreadsheets, sales, boredom) are even more pronounced in this industry.

I appreciate having a job completely removed from my interests in life. And I've found the inverse of the above axiom to be true: jobs that seem super unappealing from the outside are often the most rewarding. Either the people who do it really enjoy it, or get treated well to stay in their position.

For most of our history, humans have not had many if any choices about the type of lives they live or the work they do. It would make sense that we are ill equipped to handle making good choices.

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

#62

Post by lflux »

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.

It’s not uncommon for craft brewers to contract out the brewing of bigger runs. Evil Twin (and I think his brother, Mikkeller as well) was exclusively a “phantom brewer” who developed recipes and then had other breweries brew them on contract. Sometimes it’s bigger established breweries that do a few batches on contract for them, but there’s also explicit contract breweries like De Proefbrouwerij

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

#63

Post by tashoecraft »

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 still seeing it? Feel like I’m rarely seeing a beer list of mostly ipas and almost all of my friends order something different now a days. I’ll occasionally order one, but it used to be my got to.

As another commenter here posted, I think a lot of people formed an identity to it. As the person who likes craft beer and ipas were the king of craft beer. Now I just find them too much.

Funny thing happened to me, my friend said he liked ipas so I would always get them for him, he always said I knew what he liked. Years later he told me he actually hated ipas but wanted to seem like he liked them and eventually did.

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

#64

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#65

Post by smcl »

helpPeople wrote: post #14

I'd rather we used general terms "So you think you want to sell drugs" Glamorizing drug "tasting" is what's going on here. If we are going to criticize social media, why do drug dealers get a free pass?

I'm not sure which side of the fence you're on, but either way this attitude isn't going to achieve what you want and will cause people to ignore you very quickly

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

#66

Post by electricslpnsld »

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…

This might have been true a few years ago, but even in my middle of the road rust belt city you can get a huge variety of beers now. There are entire breweries dedicated to sours alone! Even within the IPA genre the crazy hopped to death west coast IPAs from the early 2010s seem to be getting pushed out by New England IPAs, milkshake IPAs, and a smattering of super weird stouts.

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

#67

Post by Eric_WVGG »

zwieback wrote: post #10
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…

Couldn't agree more. I live in Oregon, the craft beer center of the universe, and find that the vast majority of craft beers is too overwhelming to actually enjoy. There are more breweries learning how to do good lagers but still few and far between.

This surprised me but Portland, Maine actually has twice as many craft breweries as Portland, OR.

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

#68

Post by LawnGnome »

zwkrt wrote: post #6
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…

This is a west coast phenomenon, I’ve found the Midwest and east coast to have a lot more variety. It feels in Seattle like beer bars have a “token” stout in the same way that they have a single house wine. Hops must be what sells though.

At this point, it might even just be an Oregon and Washington thing: if anything, it was the year of sours in BC. There are still breweries pumping out ten different IPAs, but most seem to have pulled back to a couple of core varieties and there's a bunch more experimentation going on up here.

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

#69

Post by amyjess »

victor9000 wrote: post #54
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'…

The abundance of hops in beer is a west coast thing, as east coast beers tend to be more mild. So that's something to look into if west coast beers don't appeal to your palate. However, assigning a regional flavor to some sort of bravado seems odd. Do people say the same thing about a dry wine, a strong flavored cheese, or an Islay scotch? Of course not, so this seems more like a personal issue than anything else.

Honestly, discovering east coast beers actually made me like hops.

My experience with west coast beers convinced me that hops were awful and that my ideal bear would have _just_ enough hops to prevent spoilage and that's it. Which is why I drank nothing but Scotch ales, Belgian beers, and milk stouts for a long time. Eventually, I even started moving away from beer as I finally decided to give wine a chance.

And then I tried a New England-style hazy IPA, and I fell in love. It's hoppy, but it's not bitter. Most have 40 IBUs at the absolute most, and 30 is pretty common (and when it's 40, it's balanced out by enough malt that the bitterness isn't detectable). They taste like alcoholic orange juice (less harsh than a screwdriver, though). So nowadays I will drink every hazy, juicy, and milkshake IPA I can get my hands on. (Edit:) So it turns out I actually do like hops after all; I just hated what west coast beers did with them.

And milkshake IPAs really make a mockery of the original concept of an IPA: not only are they not bitter, but they're actively sweet because they have added lactose (which is an unfermentable sugar and thus directly contributes to sweetness). They're great if you really want an IPA for people who hate IPAs.

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

#70

Post by [deleted] »

tasogare wrote: post #44
seiferteric wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How?

> 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. You seemed to have missed that part.

[deleted]
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