Beer Birthday: Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of beer writer Jay Brooks. Jay is a veteran beer writer (Celebrator Beer News, All About Beer, BeerAdvocate, etcetera etcetera) whose column Brooks on Beer appears in the San Jose Mercury News. He has contributed to the Oxford Companion to Beer as well as Playboy Magazine. His guidebook, California Breweries - North (Stackpole Books), comes out later this summer. He is the co-founder of SF Beer Week (and it broke my heart to miss it for this first time in its fourth iteration last month). To anyone who follows the brewing industry, none of this is news. But for years, a convivial component of his Brookston Beer Blog has been celebrating brewers and those in the beer community on their birthdays. So please...join me in wishing Jay a very happy birthday.

Brewmaster Craig Cauwels, yours truly, the Beer Chef Bruce Patton, the birthday boy

Beer bloggers Jay Hinman, Chris Cohen, Steve Shapiro, Jay Brooks, moi, Bryan Kolesar

Outdoor Speakeasy: Me, Brian Lenzo, Jay Brooks (whose blog I copied this from), and Meg Gill

The Session #67: How many breweries in 2017?

My buddy Derrick Peterman over at Ramblings of a Beer Runner hosts this month's The Session. Man it's been awhile since I've joined the fray. Derek opens:

There's been much cheering and fanfare reverberating throughout the brewing community about the latest brewery numbers recently released from the Brewer's Association, who counted exactly 2,126 breweries in the United States.

The theme he suggests us beer bloggers blog about is:

Where is it all going? The growth shows no sign of stopping and the biggest problem most breweries have is that they can't brew beer fast enough. But can the market really absorb all these new breweries?...Tell us how many breweries the Brewer's Association will count five years from now in 2017, and why you think it will be that number.

Answer: 5,001.

Oh, I should extrapolate? Well, it's like this. Yes, there are well over 2,000 breweries already. The Brewers Association further purports that there are over 1,600 BIP (breweries in planning)! True, not all of them will brew in the light of day (and to be sure we will see a huge bump in the number of failed/shuttered brewing concerns, but it will long be outpaced by new and succeeding ones). But blink and the number of brewery-opening hopefuls has already risen, so let's just say that by early 2014 when all their i's are dotted and they've navigated the alphabet soup of ABCs and TTBs, etc, there will be nearly 4,000.

"Impossible!" you say? Why? A recent Gallup poll concluded that Americans prefer beer to wine 39% to 35%. So it stands that there should be 4% more breweries than wineries, right?! (Hey, I'm a wordsmith, not a mathematician.) OK, but really, my point is that it'd be logical that since more Americans prefer beer to wine, there should be more breweries. Or at least the same amount. Fine, how about at least HALF as many!? But no, as it stands today, there are 7,626 bonded wineries in the USA. That's fewer than 28% as many licensed breweries as bonded wineries.

So where are the remaining 2,875 breweries going to come from that I'm predicting will open by 2017?

Tiny, nano, pico, "boutique," retirement-plan, post-law-career, I've-always-loved-homebrewing-and-all-my-friends-said-I-should-go-pro breweries. One of the biggest arguments against the success of more packaging breweries is that shelf space remains finite. So clearly we cannot have nearly 3,000 new "regional" breweries concocting over 15,000 barrels apiece. But people love supporting local and that's just not a fad or trend that will dissipate. Once people get a taste for serious, flavorful, characterful beer, they do not revert back to the industrial, commoditized swill. And if my hometown of Portland can support 50 breweries--yes, 50 breweries in a city with just over 1/2 a million folks--then so can other progressive towns. And if littler hamlets such as Asheville, Bend, and Grand Rapids can support over a dozen breweries, then who's to say many more with less than a 1/4 million residents can't do the same?

Craft beer consumers are savvier than they've ever been. The mid-90s bust needed to happen; too many bogus breweries needed to have bullshit called upon them. But now, there's a more knowledgable and talented pool of prospective brewers/brewmasters. The AHA estimates that there are a million homebrewers in this country. I'm one of them and I have zero aspirations of going pro. But if only 0.002875% of them do seriously plan on making an avocation their vocation, then welcome to a world with over 5,000 breweries.

Yes, Tugboat Brewery. I flippin' love it

I've lived in Portland for a mere 5 months and it's taken me this long to visit a mere half of the breweries in town. The 18th was Tugboat Brewery, perhaps the most misunderstood, maligned, and mysterious brewery in Beervana.

Pouring house beers since 1993, Tugboat remains in its original downtown location under the same owner/operator. If you look aside as you're entering Bailey's Taproom on Broadway at Ankeny, you just might spot it on the poorly lit side street-slash-alleyway. Inside, you're sure to find a sparse population that, I surmise, consists mostly of people drinking alone, but the errant couple, couple of buddies, or small group. You'll find not very many house beers and mostly guest taps because while the brewer may be a "professional," he's hardly working full-time. You'll also find a small menu of appetizing sounding nosh and a jar of serve-yourself salty snack-mix.

What you won't find are any beer geeks.

When I tweeeted from Tugboat that I had found my new downtown nighttime staple, Kris from Beer Musings from Portland tweeted back: I haven't been there for years & I was so underwhelmed I've avoided going back.

Perry from Brewmance NW twitplied: I haven't even made it there yet... damn I feel lazy right now.

And SNOB Ritch from Behind the Pint twote: there must be some mistake, did someone at Tugboat get a hold of your phone?

To be fair, Brady from The Daily Pull, Sean the Homebrew Chef, and some guy in Tokyo named Christopher either supported or didn't mock me for going. (UPDATE: Brady's all about the "MAGIC" sprinkled on the popcorn.)

While they had a whopping three house beers when I stopped in, the Chernobyl Russian Imperial Stout (14% ABV) was actually pretty good, if you like 'em leathery and cigary like I do. I generally don't dig beers named for their color (except Browns) but the Hop Gold was decent (because it was hoppy and tasted like the glass was garnished with grapefruit pith) and I couldn't bring myself to try the Red.

More importantly, I had a great time. The bartender was super friendly and chatty. The drunk on the barstool next to me appeared to be antisemetic at first until I deduced he really just missed his ex-wife who's Jewish. He also got up and stumbled over to the upright piano and started playing great backround melodies. And the other few scattered souls compared Beervana's brewpub scene to their inferior ones back home, which was various cities, respectively.

I asked the bartender (sorry, forgot his name) if Bailey's opening up directly across the street helped or hurt business. He admitted that it has grown to funnel more and more of their remaining customers. And I get that. If I'm downtown and I want a selection of great, interesting beers in a setting where I can actually see the people I'm talking to, I'll go to Bailey's. But Tugboat ain't nearly as bad as my cohorts say it is, and that's WHEN they even acknowledge it backhandedly as Beervana, The New School have done. Then again, Angelo at Brewpublic seems to know what's up. Though whether or not he's returned in the last 2 1/2 years I dunno. (UPDATE: Bill at It's Pub Night also appreciate's its charms.)

As a final note, of the fewer than 100 licensed brewing facilities in Oregon, Tugboat ranked 81st in production (138 barrels) for 2010 and that's with most of the nanobreweries behind them beginning their brewing operations midway through the year! My belated new year's resolution is two-fold. Get to the rest of Portland's breweries, and help Tugboat get up to 139 bbls.