Quench Your Thirst

Let’s take a good hard look at the beer industry.  There has been massive growth in the amount of brewers who have entered the world of beer in Canada.  In BC and Quebec, the brewers there are leading the creative push on style development.  Ontario is getting there but welcome to the world of conservatism.

You’ll notice I said brewers, not breweries.  It is extremely expensive to start a brewery from the ground up.  The easier alternative is to become a brewer who licenses another brewer to create a batch of beer under contract.  Hence ‘contract brewing’.  This is a generally good premise to start a business with - the contract brewer increases the capacity of their own brewery, the new brewer gets an experienced brewer who knows how to make beer consistently good (we hope) and the capital investment is put off to another day.

Here’s where I see the issues -

1. Most of the new breweries are picking the bar arena to focus their distribution.  Why?  It’s relatively less expensive because you are putting your beer into kegs instead of bottles.  The caveat is this: The on-premise sector only accounts for 20% of all beer sold in Canada and then draught beer only accounts for a total of 9% of all beer.  Secondly, this is the one place where competition reigns supreme.  You can lose a tap in a whim.  The wise brewers are starting to get this concept: This is a retail market and true long term success comes if you understand how to get your beer in the hands of a consumer so they can enjoy your beer at home.
2. Contract brewing is relatively easy to get into and therefore relatively easy to get out of.  I suppose my concern is that we need to keep breweries in business - consistency is again at the forefront and people need to get comfortable with the brewers.  If brewers come and go, it does nothing for the long term viability of the industry.

One last thing - there’s an article in All About Beer this month and I must admit was quite refreshing to hear what this brewer said.  New Glarus Brewing, master brewer, Dan Carey said this:

I think I brew beer for people.  I don’t brew beer for beer geeks.  I brew beer for people who don’t know what an IBU is, or ABV.  I brew beer for people that work for a living and come home and just want a beer.  If that’s boring, then I’m boring.”

Amen! I’m not a fan of this extreme beer movement.  Pushing the limits of ingredient use is not something I’m interested in.  Give me a well made, consistently good beer that I can have more than one of, any day and I’ll be happy.

Cheers