On Tuesday March 17, 2020, in accordance with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s Executive Order aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19, my local breweries closed their taprooms and moved to an off-sale only business model. I visited three of them on my way home from work purchasing crowlers at each and even coming home with a new hoodie. Two of the three breweries I visited Tuesday had turned their bar areas into crowler filling operations. One had set up tables so that only one person could be in the establishment if social distancing is being adhered to.

I wasn’t the only one. I saw several social media posts from people I know doing the same. Perhaps the one that brought me the most joy was from a friend in the Twin Cities who sent a video of him pouring Bad Weather’s Bohemian Pilsner (I love that beer) into one of the pilsner glasses we gave him and his wife for their wedding. He sent it as a good-natured taunt, but it provided a chance for us to briefly reconnect in a chat and make sure all of our people are still well in these crazy new times.

Almost everyone who owns or works in one of 180+ breweries in Minnesota does so out of a deeply held passion for beer. Many of them left better paying, more stable work to follow their dreams. Now those dreams may be dashed by forces out of any of our control. It’s not just breweries, if you have a favorite local beer bar or restaurant they are affected by this too. Get out there and patronize them if they remain open at all. Commit to buying those crowlers and growlers. Commit to getting takeout once a week from that favorite place. Few, if any, of us can single-handedly keep a place afloat, but many small actions can yield big results.
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We don’t want to see any of our favorite places taken down by this.

At the beginning of the year I made beer resolutions to write more on this blog and to begin studying for the Advanced Cicerone® Exam. Life events got in the way of both of those goals, but they remain goals and I haven’t abandoned either of them, at least in spirit, despite a lack of progress.

This year has brought some big changes to the LykeBeer Universe. My wife changed jobs and we finally took a leap we’d been contemplating for at least two years; we sold our house, replacing it with a condo on the edge of downtown. We’re reducing the amount we need to clean inside, eliminating outside maintenance, and adding a walkability factor to our lives. According to the website www.walkscore.com we left a home with a walk score of 11, for one with an 83 on a 100 point scale.   

In terms of beer, we no longer have our beloved downstairs bar, The Trackside Tavern, which provided ample glassware and liquor storage along with housing our Dedicated Beer Fridge. The process of eliminating seldom-used stuff, including a lot of glassware, from our lives was a big one. If we could have taken the bar (and our library) to the new place, we would have; as it turns out, the bar was a big reason why the buyers picked our house over similar ones.

We had hoped to get the move completed during summer, but the timeline stretched into the fall. The dream of finding a place in a great location that was also move-in ready did not come true so we moved out of the house, put most of our belongings in storage, and headed with two VW-loads of stuff to the guest room of a very generous friend.

Selling a house is an all-consuming set of tasks: I think I spent two hours studying for the Advanced Cicerone® Exam during the summer and you probably know how infrequently I wrote a blog post. One task was to consume the contents of The Trackside Tavern. It was a lofty goal and we made progress, but in the end moved with about 20 cans, three crowlers, two bombers, and stainless steel growler full of beer plus two cases of liquor. I don’t drink nearly as much packaged beer at home as I once did. My fair city has a blossoming taproom and brewpub scene so I frequently stop somewhere for one on the way home instead of cracking a couple open during the evening cooking and eating ritual.

Once renovations are complete and we’ve actually moved into the new place, we’ll have a Dedicated Beer Corner of the kitchen refrigerator. The ongoing challenge will be to maintain “Efficient Variety” a nice variety of beer in that limited space. I think my days of buying cases of beer are over; I’m going to be Mr. Six-Pack now with the occasional variety 12-Pack. I can’t bring myself to buy mix-your-own-six-packs; too many of those shelves are a store’s way of moving beer that’s past its freshness peak.
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For us, I’ll try to maintain small stocks of Helles Lager or Pils, Vienna Lager or Brown Ale, Porter or Stout, and something tart like Saison or Berliner Weiss. Undoubtedly, something seasonal will work its way in there as well. Those styles will cover our bases for the preferences of Mrs. LykeBeer and me. I can always go out to grab something for the hopheads, if I know they’re coming… 

​This past weekend was All Pints North, an annual beer festival organized by the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild in Duluth. I recently saw another writer refer to it as “Brewers’ Summer Camp” and it is. Minnesota currently has approximately 170 operating breweries and brewpubs, in a given year two thirds to three quarters of them will show up and pour beer. One of the reasons for that big turnout is that the day before All Pints North, the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild partners with District St. Paul-Minneapolis of the Master Brewers Association of the Americas in organizing a Business and Technical Conference for the members of both organizations. It is a very good conference that takes a deep dive into several aspects of operating a brewery or brewpub each year. I attended the conference a few times while I was doing some brewery consulting work and each year it seems to draw a “rock star” or two of the beer world.
 
All Pints North itself is held at Bayfront Park with a lovely view of the Duluth-Superior harbor and lift bridge and is a “rain or shine” event. This year the temperature was in the mid-80s with a slight breeze so it wasn’t bad at all. I missed this event last year due to a wedding so I noticed some changes such as layout of where brewers were set up, but it continues to be a really fun event with plenty of beer, fun games and activities, as well as music from Viva Knievel, a cover band comprised mostly of staff from Bauhaus Brew Labs.
 
There was one thing the Guild could do to improve the festival, however. The check-in process was very slow and the line to enter stretched from Bayfront Park, past the Great Lakes Aquarium, and behind the Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center. We were about halfway back in that line and didn’t get into the festival grounds until 25 minutes after the start. To compensate, organizers extended the festival by 30 minutes, but there has to be a better way to get 4500 people into a park. Multiple points of entry is the first thing that comes to mind.
 
If thinking of attending All Pints North next year, keep a few things in mind. The event has sold out for the last several years so get your tickets early. Tickets sales begin about three months prior to the event, but the date is announced much earlier. Once you know the date and have decided to attend, book a room. It’s Duluth in the summertime, hotels will be expensive and they will sell out. Our preference is to book something in Canal Park or downtown and to walk, use the hotel shuttle, or a ride service everywhere. This year we parked the car on Thursday and didn’t move it until checking out of the hotel on Sunday. There are a lot of ancillary beer events around town in the days leading up to All Pints North. They can be a lot of fun and often feature some hard-to-find or special one-off beers so they are worth checking out. Finally, remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint…

Noted beer writer Stephen Beaumont has started a campaign for #FlagshipFebruary – a month of celebrating (and drinking) the flagship beers of the breweries that started and for a long time fueled the craft beer movement. Due to the lack of or shifting definition of craft in regards to beer, I like to think of this as the small brewery movement; but I wholeheartedly endorse the concept of Flagship February.

Beaumont’s campaign calls our attention to the fact that many breweries find themselves chasing the latest trends to attract and keep the ever-shortening attention spans of the public. Flagship February asks us to remember the beers that started this whole thing and liberated us from the state of affairs in the late 1970s when the number of breweries in the United States hovered around 50 and many of them were trying to perfect the same two or three beer styles; not the 7,000 breweries, making 100+ styles we see today.

As a result, I will only purchase flagship beers for home consumption during the month of February. Most, if not all, from breweries that got this whole movement started such as Summit, August Schell, Deschutes, Sierra Nevada, and Samuel Adams. Recently many of these “heritage” breweries have been faced with hard choices of whether or not to continue production of beers many of us used to drink all the time and now consider “fallbacks.” There are several examples, but most notable in Minnesota was the announcement about a year ago to discontinue Summit Winter Ale. A beer that had been made since 1987 – customer outcry reversed that decision, but it won’t stay reversed unless we buy the beer. Let us, at least for a month each year, make a commitment to the beers we enjoyed at the beginning of our beer journeys.

We are now at the one month point of our Federal Government being in a state of partial shutdown. This, in my view, is an absolute abomination. As I see it, the primary, first, and most important function of the Congress is to fund the public good functions that we have determined over our history should be funded by the Federal Government. The national media has given a lot of coverage to important functions, especially the ones that are currently not funded, but the workers are considered “essential” so they expected to continue their work despite a lack of funding (meaning that they are not getting paychecks).  This applies to approximately 420,000 federal employees. There are also 380,000 federal employees who are furloughed. They are not paid or expected to work. Imagine working for an employer that says “You and your job are important, until they’re not…”

The 380,000 federal employees on furlough includes the Alcohol and Tabacco Tax and Trade Bureau, known colloquially as the TTB, part of the Treasury Department.  This means that no new brewer certificates are being issued and no new label approvals are happening. So there are new breweries that are held up from opening and existing breweries are held up from putting new beers on the packaged beer market. All the while, like all of us with any type of payroll deduction are still making our contributions to the Federal Government. There has been some coverage of this in the media, what follows is a series of links to stories about it.
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https://www.postbulletin.com/news/local/shutdown-affecting-craft-beer-industry/article_dccbd2d8-142f-11e9-944d-170acdfa478c.html

http://www.startribune.com/minnesota-breweries-feel-impact-of-the-shutdown/504434742/

https://growlermag.com/government-shutdown-leaves-brewers-distillers-and-cidermakers-in-limbo/

So there are new breweries who are sitting in limbo waiting for one of the many authorizations to open, there are existing breweries that have a planned expansion sitting in limbo, and there are existing breweries who cannot get label approval for beers they intended to put in the market, but aren’t able to do so. Some of the people affected by this are my friends. All of these people affected by this are having to figure things out on the fly because politicians are unwilling to end a shutdown which is nothing more than a manufactured problem – or as I called it when I taught middle school – drama for the sake of drama.

The late summer and fall have certainly been a busy time in our household. We've been busy with work and have taken some time to get away and try some new beers by visiting Duluth, Minnesota - one of our favorite cities - in October, which included our first trip to Ursa Minor Brewing. Then in November, we ventured to Boston for Thanksgiving. Showing up while family members had a couple of days of school and work before the holiday allowed us to try some new places and a couple of old favorites. We visited Democracy Brewing, Harpoon, and Trillium's Seaport location one day, and Cambridge Brewing Company and Lamplighter Brewing Company the next. It is important to enjoy moments in new and old places along the beer journey.

As the hectic days of the year end holidays hit us with full force, self care is vital so remember to take time to for yourself. I firmly believe a well-made and well-served beer is a part of that and I am guess you do too since you're reading this blog. I will also put some time into study for the Advanced Cicerone® exam. The next level of Cicerone certification is a long range goal and may or may not come before Beer Judge Certification Program training. For now, my study consists of fleshing out the Advanced Cicerone outline available at www.cicerone.org - while studying for Certified Cicerone® exam a few years ago I had purchased the study guide materials available for sale at Chris Cohen's www.thebeerscholar.com and they quickly became my primary study materials, especially Cohen's annotated Certified Cicerone® outline.

My New Year's Resolution  will be to post more here, friends. The wide world of beer brings me a lot of joy and I should share more of it.

​Cheers!

When I write about service in this blog it is specific to beer service, but overall service can have a big influence on a patron’s likelihood of returning. Recently, my wife and I were traveling through a part of a neighboring state we don’t often visit. As the time for lunch approached, we began to see signs for a production brewery with an on-site pub that was just a few miles off our planned route and decided to give it a try. It turned out to be one of the more extreme service failures we’ve experienced.

Arriving just after noon, we found the place busy (a great sign) and were offered the option of sitting at the bar or a high top near the bar. We are normally people who opt to belly up to the bar, but chose the high top on this day, we’re not sure why, but it was our key mistake. We proceeded to sit at our table for more than five minutes without anyone coming to the table. I almost suggested walking, but there we were, hungry and off our planned route. Eventually a server came by and asked if anyone had taken our drink orders. We said, “No” and she offered to get us drinks “while we figure out who your server is.” The bar was swamped by this time so it was not surprising the beers didn’t fly out to us, but by the time they arrived, they were headless…

The beers were delivered by the server who was “just getting us drinks” so we weren’t surprised when she didn’t ask us for a food order. We continued to sit and after a few minutes, we placed our menus on the edge of the table to signal our readiness. A few minutes later, the host stopped by and asked if we were finished with the menus to which I said, “Well, not really; we haven’t placed a food order yet.” The host set off to get our server – who turned out to be the same person who got drinks “while we figure out who your server is.” She took our order and we waited.

As the wait was dragging on, our server came by to say the food would be up soon. By this point I had about an inch of beer remaining in my glass, but missing the chance for an easy second sale, she left without asking if I wanted another. By the time our food arrived, my glass had been empty for several minutes. The server plopped our food on the table and turned to leave, turned back, grabbed my empty glass, then tipping the glass back and forth between her fingers asked if I wanted another one. My beer was delivered a few minutes later by the bartender who then asked my wife if she wanted another. She ordered the house root beer and it was promptly delivered. Our food was very good, but my wife’s sandwich had been delivered without the side of mayonnaise she’d requested. About halfway through the meal and no check in with the server so my wife asked the host who quickly went to the kitchen and returned with the side.

Plates empty, drinks dissipating, the check arrived, my wife put her card in the folder and we waited; eventually the host noticed it had been sitting there for some time and said she’d take care of it. When the server came back with the card and receipt, she alerted us to the presence of a survey explaining they have a new manager who is seeking feedback on their service. My wife filled out the survey, but none of the questions touched upon the issues we encountered so in the contact information section I wrote, “Please see back” and proceeded to write a note about our experience and signed it with contact information. My wife left a small tip and a note as to why – she is a true educator in that regard, hoping to turn this into a learning opportunity for our server. We left the table, I dropped the survey into the box near the host’s station and we headed to the restrooms before hitting the road again. As I waited for a minute for my wife to come out of the restroom when our server came up to me and said, “I just wanted you to know I wasn’t trying to ignore you.” A little stunned, I said, “Um, what?” Then holding the receipt where my wife left her note said, “I wasn’t trying to ignore you. We are doing a team approach. That’s what the new manager wants, so I wasn’t trying to ignore you guys.” I responded by saying, “It turns out I know about this business and what I can say is that your systems need improvement” and I walked away. My wife saw most of this exchange and chose to hold back. We were both astounded that I was confronted in this way.

I should have asked to speak to the manager, but we’d been there for 90 minutes on what was supposed to be a quick stop for lunch and just wanted to get out of there. The high top opposite us was waiting for their first drinks when we arrived. By the time we completed our meal and payment process, the second group at that table was finishing up. Our table should have turned in 45-60 minutes; it didn’t.
Our server was very concerned that I not think she was ignoring our table. I didn’t; I thought she was poorly trained. What we saw here was a system breakdown. Somehow our server didn’t know our table was in her section and once she realized it, didn’t show much effort to save the experience for us. I can say that I probably won’t be returning with my wife if I’m in the area again. Our food was good and if someone were to ask about the place, I would share our story of slow service and advise the person to sit at the bar.

Perhaps the key lesson is this: Good customer experiences go a long way toward keeping a place in business. If the product is available elsewhere (as this brewery’s beers are in that area), the experience is the only thing that drives a person to come in and pay more for a draft from the tap instead of drinking a bottle or can of the beer at home. 

A few days ago I had the opportunity to attend a Draft System Workshop. It was a great review of the concepts of draft system management and maintenance that I learned while studying for the Certified Cicerone® exam.

When most people think of beer packaging, they think of bottles and cans. A draft system is part of the most intricate way to package beer. Draft beer packaging includes the keg, all of the components of the draft system, as well as a glass. It can also be the most profitable way for an on premise retailer to serve beer. When well executed, a draft beer is a lovely thing.

When a draft system is not functioning correctly, the most common symptom is over foaming, but that can happen when the beer is too warm, or when it’s too cold; when the system pressure is too high, or when it’s too low. Draft systems should be installed and calibrated by professional draft technicians. When a draft system isn’t regularly serviced, a number of off-flavors can be developed from mineral and microbial deposits that can take root in the keg coupler, the beer line, or the faucet.

From the consumer’s perspective it is often difficult to know if a retailer is utilizing draft system best practices. You won’t know if a keg has been inside their cooler for at least 24 hours before it is tapped to ensure the beer is being served at the proper temperature. You won’t know if the draft system is cleaned at least every two weeks as recommended by the Brewers Association. You won’t know what is done to ensure a beer clean glass is used to serve the beer. There are many places where things can go awry. The beer drinker and the brewer must put a lot of faith in the retailer and thankfully, things often work out. The beer is proper temperature, the draft system has been service recently enough, the glass is clean, and the bartender executed a respectable pour.

On the occasion there is a problem, your best option as a consumer is to have a conversation with management when a beer you’re familiar with doesn’t taste quite right. Be as descriptive of the problem as you can; it may help to diagnose the issue. Most people selling beer will want to know correct things and make you a repeat customer.

In the last month, Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s Smuttynose Brewing Co. and San Diego, California’s Green Flash Brewing have been sold at auction prompting many to suggest that there is a bubble in the beer industry and it is about to burst. There was a previous shakeout in the mid-1990s and the fact that around half of the breweries operating in the United States today are less than five years old is cited as evidence of that bubble.

Looking at both of these companies progressions from founding to sale indicate rapid growth and a belief by their leadership that those rates of growth would continue unabated are the source of these companies’ financial woes. This seems particularly true in the case of Green Flash which bought a local competitor in 2015, opened an East Coast production facility in 2016, and announced plans to reopen a space once used by another brewer in Nebraska in 2017. In the cases of both companies, banks holding their loans lost confidence in their abilities to pay when reality did not measure up to projections. Both companies currently say they will continue to operate in some capacity.

I don’t see these events as a bubble about to burst, rather a reflection of the changing nature of the beer industry. Like with food, there has been a growing movement to source things locally when possible. As a result, smaller brewers have turned to a taproom business model whereby most, if not all, of the beer produced is sold at the taproom either by the glass or in take-home packages like growlers and crowlers. The days of being a production-only brewer are fading as competition for tap handle space and shelf space in the on-premise and off-premise environments have become harder to attain and maintain.

Going a route that does not require a distribution relationship can be much more profitable for a small brewery as well. Examining the website of a large national liquor chain finds that a ½ barrel keg of beer retails for $89-$249, depending on brand, with most priced in the $150-170 range. That ½ barrel has seen a 25-30% mark up at both the retail and wholesale levels. This means a ½ barrel keg in that average price range brings the brewery about $100 in revenue. In a taproom the approximately 120 pints or 160 twelve-ounce pours contained in that keg which can generate $600-800 of revenue at $5 per pour. These numbers make it no surprise that many established packaging breweries have also added taprooms where they are allowed.

Well-run taprooms can also become fixtures of their communities by being what sociologist Ray Oldenburg called “a third place.” According to Oldenburg, home is your first place, work your second; a third place is an informal public location where community members gather. Third places serve a variety of functions, not the least of which is giving the community a sense of identity and uniqueness.
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While unfortunate for those directly involved, the hard times of a couple of mid-sized players in the beer world do not spell tough times for everyone. If brewers commit to their communities and are pragmatic about growth, there is a lot of success to be had.

I am lucky enough to be married to a woman who is passionate about beer. She has no intention to become a Certified Cicerone® as I did a few years ago, but she knows beer and knows what she likes. One thing I’ve seen over the years is the tendency of bartenders and servers to make assumptions about what she wants; often it seems as though they are gender-based and those assumptions are usually wrong.

Many bartenders and servers are flummoxed by her questions of whether the malt of a stout or porter she is interested in ordering leans more toward chocolate or coffee; or if a beer contains “C” hops such as Cascade, Centennial, or Columbus and, if so, which ones. It is unclear if they are just unequipped to answer the questions or baffled by surprise that a woman is asking. Too often, service professionals try to steer her away from what she wants toward something lighter in color and weight on the palate. Why risk alienating a customer, any customer, by not delivering what they want?

My wife’s current job requires occasional travel and often means she will seek out a taproom and sample the local wares without me (I claim to be only a little bit jealous). However, on many of these solo expeditions she tells of being served at a bar and then ignored. This despite it being a slack time in the taproom, the bartender will chat up guys on their own, couples, and groups, but not her. Since her mention of this, I have seen it happen way too often myself.

The beer industry is not alone in these assumptions, the number of times my salad has been placed in front of her while her burger lands in front of me in a restaurant are too numerous to count, but we can do better.  A 2015 U. S. Yankelovich MONITOR survey, which garnered more than 10,000 respondents, revealed that 26% of weekly beer consumers were female. Not many industries can afford to alienate more than a quarter of their customers, and beer is not one that can…