From Insurgency to Inertia — Why Craft Beer’s Future Depends on Those Still Willing to Sort the Vinyl from the Leather
Disclaimer: I came up under chefs, sommeliers, artists, DJs, and others who view producing and presenting the world’s essential decadence to others as a sacred responsibility. I understand if reading that sentence caused you to roll your eyes; this piece is probably not for you.**
To My Fellow Cicerones® and Anyone Else Still Working To Sort The Vinyl From The Leather,
Fifteen years ago, I became one of the first 100 Certified Cicerones in the world. Today, there are more than 5,000 of us. Last month, I received word that I had passed the Advanced Cicerone exam, making me one of less than 250 at work in an industry that, for the first time in my twenty-year career, feels stagnant and uninspired.
The beer is undoubtedly much better today than in 2009 and far easier to come by. Suppose this afternoon I have a taste for something Pilsner-ish. Living in Oakland, CA, I’d have my choice between the most awarded German-style Pils in US history, the current GABF Gold Medal Czech-style Premium Pale Lager, a World Beer Cup gold medal-winning Helles, a GABF gold-medal winning Cream Ale, and Wondrous’s “2 Ten Euros,” which on any given day might outshine them all. I can find each of these beers in pristine brewery-fresh condition without even getting on a freeway.
When I started in this industry, such a state of affairs existed only in my most ambitious fantasies. The breweries we were excited about back then didn’t brew much lager. Most sought their footholds at the periphery, forsaking the pale lager market at the beer industry’s core as too well fortified and fixed in favor of massive multinational conglomerates. On top of that, neither Humble Sea, which makes the Helles mentioned above, Faction, which brews the Cream Ale, nor Wondrous existed back then. Trumer was brewing their standard-bearing Pils right up the road in Berkeley; however, their beer wasn’t available at the brewery. It was typically sold skunked by UV rays and staled by weeks or even months of warm storage. Moonlight’s “Reality Czech” was around back then, but I would not have believed it if you had told me there would come a time when I could routinely walk into my local grocer and grab freshly packaged cans.
We did this. Those of us committed to advocating for beer consumers made it not only feasible but essential for mainstream retailers to stock quality beer and store it at the proper temperatures. We educated consumers on the importance of checking expiration dates and the virtue of patronizing their local breweries. We reversed decades of inertia that encouraged consumers, wholesalers, and retailers to view beer as a perdurable commodity, distinguishable solely by brand and packaging. We transformed an industry in the time it took for me to level up from a Certified Cicerone to an advanced one.
So why does our industry feel so much less exciting today? Why, following nearly two decades of unabated growth and improved quality for the end consumer, are prominent periodicals publishing pieces announcing the end of our revolution and former industry titans tripping over themselves in a rush to rebrand as beverage companies? What did we have then that we don’t now?
“These guys weren’t bullshitting, they were beating on drums, tearing it up, hurling horses off cliffs.” — Bob Dylan when asked about hip-hop, specifically regarding what he thought of Public Enemy and Ice-T.
From 2009 to 2011, I was behind the bar at The Monk’s Kettle in San Francisco’s Mission District at least four nights a week. I recall blending an un-hopped lager called “Uncle Fudd” with a Flanders Red Ale called “Cuvee Des Jacobins Rouge.” The lager had been brewed with cedar branches and smelled of butterscotch and Labrador tea. The Flanders Red Ale was bracingly tart with aromas of balsamic vinegar and Palmer’s cherry sours. In 2012, I collaborated with the remarkably talented chef Sarah Kirnon on a series of dinners. At one of these events, we paired each course with two beers: one fermented conventionally and the other a beer of similar composition influenced by “wild” yeast, bacteria, or both. One of the beers we poured that night was fermented on the famed Tartine Bakery sourdough starter.
This was the closest our work ever felt to “hurling horses off cliffs.” Back then, working in craft beer meant doing wild, unprecedented things. Presenting customers with unfamiliar beer styles, glass shapes, flavor combinations, and experiences placed us in the lineage of founders like Rob Tod, filling his car with samples of White Ale and pouring them for potential customers who knew only of Lite Lager and Guinness. Or of the brewers at Sierra Nevada hearing from a lab that their Barleywine was too bitter and replying “thank you,” or of Lagunitas as Dr. Frankenstein reanimating “India Pale Ale.”
“My task is to tell the difference between the vinyl and the leather… Leather ages, grows weathered, and wizened; vinyl cracks the first chance it gets. Leather is toughened hide; vinyl is the synthetic, store-bought alternative. Vinyl always smells like the absence of sweat” — William Jelani Cobb from the Introduction to “The Devil & Dave Chappelle”
By 2013, when I was hired to help open The Hog’s Apothecary in Oakland, succeeding on behalf of our customers increasingly meant guiding them as they learned to appreciate beer more deeply. We lightly chilled our Pilsner flutes at Hog’s and warmed our English, Belgian, and Sour Ale glassware. We curated daily flights to showcase the differences between a German-style Pils and a Bohemian Pilsener or between an American Brown Ale and an English Dark Mild. Our end goal — to create a world of endlessly rewarding discovery — remained the same, but we no longer accomplished it by making our offerings louder or more unusual. Instead, we sought to nurture the consumer’s capacity to perceive and appreciate nuance.
During this time, the number of breweries entering the market continued to surge. However, as this took place, the diversity of beer styles began to diminish. At first glance, this might appear to be a step backward. Yet, if we consider the world’s most renowned beer regions, places like the UK, Pilsen, Bavaria, and Brussels, it would suggest that mature beer scenes do not tend to offer a large variety of styles. On the contrary, these regions have meticulously refined their brewing techniques and serving practices around a signature coterie of beers. You won’t be served excellent Hefeweizen in London or exemplary Dubbel in Pilsen.
In 2016, I left Hog’s Apothecary to join HenHouse Brewing Company. As we began selling significant quantities of HenHouse beer wholesale, it became clear that American beer drinkers were honing in on what would become our beer style, and the industry was reacting accordingly. The consumer had decided that IPA was their choice, and succeeding on their behalf, not to mention winning their dollars, meant improving the quality of the IPA in their glass. Much of that work fell to brewers and raw materials suppliers, optimizing their products and processes to pack IPAs with unprecedented aromatic intensity.
The second half of the job, ensuring the beer arrived in the customer’s glass in the same condition it left the brewery, was where we came in. During my time at HenHouse, our sales, logistics, and marketing teams advanced the most rigid freshness and cold-chain standards in the industry’s history. We succeeded in selling beer with a 28-day shelf life at mainstream grocers throughout the Bay Area while insisting that beer always be kept in a cooler. Another ambition that many told us was unreasonable and impossible to maintain.
We held in-account events where we poured brewery-fresh examples of our IPA against out-of-code or warm-stored versions. We launched a beer festival that exclusively featured beers that had been in the keg for less than 10 days. We produced a podcast that delved deep into topics like a defining pastry stout and the future of “thiolized” yeast. We endeavored to make the rabbit hole bottomless and the descent more rewarding every step of the way.
By 2019, HenHouse had become the fastest-growing brand in California grocery stores despite not being available in the state’s three most populous counties. For those who had dedicated careers to helping our customers distinguish vinyl from leather, it was deeply gratifying to watch those breweries willing to do the work necessary to get their beer to the shelf in superior condition thrive.
“When something is new to us, we treat it as an experience. We feel that our senses are awake and clear. We are alive.” Jasper Johns
If there is a lesson to be taken from my career, it’s this: we succeed when we are unreasonable, idiosyncratic, and defiant of prevailing conventions. We made space for ourselves by pushing envelopes and raising standards, not by hedging bets or attempting to anticipate and appease the whims of a winnowing market.
I don’t mean to downplay the headwinds we currently face. Growth has stalled, mainly because young people can’t afford anything. Many of the stories we told ourselves about this industry when it was booming, particularly the one about being 99% asshole-free, proved to be myopic. The pandemic wreaked havoc on the cost of making and delivering beer. It also hastened a decline in the appeal of drinking beer in bars. Today, many of the on-premise venues we counted on to introduce our products to new customers have shuttered. Meanwhile, as labor costs and competition increase, the experience in brewery taprooms is becoming increasingly generic and low-touch. Profit margins have narrowed, and the stylistic scope of our offerings has followed suit. We are an industry that made our road by walking, and today, we spend far too much time on well-trodden paths.
The work ahead is the same as it ever was. There are large demographics we are yet to court effectively — new beer styles are to be invented, and dormant ones are to be revived. This time, we have a head start; millions have already bought in. In those cases, our job is to make the rabbit hole bottomless and the descent more rewarding every step of the way.
I am encouraged by every side-pull faucet I see being operated correctly to deliver the customer a novel, fitter way to experience a beloved beer style. I get discouraged whenever I read about a self-pour tap house opening up. If you’ve plunged a hot poker into a glass of bock, you are advancing our cause; if you allow your guest to order via a QR code and never engage a member of your staff, you are conspiring in our demise. If your menu uses terms like “double-decoction,” “thiols,” or “incognito,” and your servers and bartenders can convey to customers why those things make the beer in their glass more delicious, you are likely a magnet. If those words linger on digital menu boards or can labels without context, you might be pushing people away.
Whatever will ultimately reinvigorate this industry lies hidden somewhere upstream from where we are today. Those with the courage to stray from the path and the fortitude to fight against the current are the ones who will make it out.
