Are we all crazy? Thoughts on the Craft Brewers Conference.

by Matt

It took some time to convince me to go to the Craft Brewers Conference.  You would think we would have jumped at the chance: one big party filled with brewers and beer?  The truth is, I’ve been to trade shows before, and they aren’t all valuable.  “What can you find at a trade show that you can’t find on the internet?” I wondered.

However, once I saw the seminar list, it was no longer a question.  We were going.  I knew that there wouldn’t be a better time to speak with industry experts, and to prepare ourselves with knowledge of how to make our beer great, and how to make our business plan a reality.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how many came that were just like us; or, at least at the same stage in the process we are.  The audience was asked: “How many of you are starting up a new brewery?” The Brewers Association reported (six months ago, that is) that there were 1,252 breweries in planning; my guess is, there were representatives from almost every one of these breweries there.  My thought was, as I looked around the room at the hands raised: are we all crazy?  Opening a brewery requires a lot of money; staying in business requires you to sell a lot of beer.  One talk I went to estimated that one million dollars in sales would yield 50 thousand in profits.  That’s – actually not much.  Why are we all doing this?

Will the next big brewery please stand up?

Then, I spoke with someone who thought that the craft beer phenomenon was unparalled in American economic history.  Think about it: thousands of business owners entering the market – and actually succeeding – at taking away share from a few big guys.  Does this happen?  Has there ever been this many people fighting against one common competitor?  It’s not easy for me to think of a parallel.

Because of these thoughts, I went to two different talks on “the bubble”; that is, the moment when craft beer stops growing and all of these new breweries begin closing.  The good news is: it doesn’t seem to be anytime soon.  In fact, smaller breweries are least at risk of this bubble; macro breweries are steady at best, and rapidly declining at worst.  Larger craft breweries (e.g. Sam Adams, New Belgium) are a bit more at risk, and actually losing some of their share to newer and (arguably) more inventive breweries.

No, the other bubble

I also want to make this clear: the Craft Brewers Conference is actually not at all about drinking beer; but it is everything about brewing beer, and about operating a successful brewery.  I, for one, am very happy that the Brewers Association exists: this organization’s goal is the promotion of craft beer, craft breweries, and the people who operate them.  This conference was a way to train all of these prospective business owners on what it means to operate a small brewery; I can’t imagine there being a single better forum to obtain all of this information.

Some other tidbits I learned, that I did not expect:

–     The TTB (the branch of government regulating beer sales and production) is actually improving their methods to provide approval to breweries trying to open.  Can you imagine that?  A branch of government actually making progress on something?  I know, it’s weird.

–     As we suspected, it is likely easier to make good beer as a large brewery than as a homebrewer, with just a little bit of experience.  This was truthfully not a huge surprise to us, I just didn’t expect to hear a brewer actually say this out loud.

–     In a talk on advanced techniques in sour beer production, the speaker had a bullet point on his presentation that stated “Fuck yer IBUs” in reference to avoiding hops in beer.  I believe this point was aimed towards brewers thinking of brewing something like a sour IPA; but it was a very bold statement, and made me wonder if it was a call to a new age in brewing.  Could sour be the new bitter?  (I don’t actually think so; but it was an interesting thought nonetheless.)

Finally, if there was one message that came across, in every meeting we went to, it was this: if you want to be a successful brewery, you need to have great beer.  That seems obvious, but I’m guessing, with so many new breweries out there, that it could become an overlooked fact.  I can tell you, after this conference, that I have all the confidence in the world that we will be able to do so.

Sure, we might be crazy.  But we’re sure as hell ready.