Taken 01.23.10 at Durango Mountain Resort, still known to many of us as Purgatory Ski Area. These guys could have done better (the one on the left had his can of Pabst to the left of his chair). Several Durango beers on tap, including SKA’s Euphoria, an aromatic bomb.
Euphoria’s also available in cans, 12-ouncers. Durango had 36 inches in snow in the four days before we arrived. Euphoria, indeed.
Last week I mentioned that when Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi wrote the business plan for Sierra Nevada Brewing their goal was to sell 3,000 barrels of beer annually. They produced 1,500 barrels the first year (1980) and the brewery passed 3,000 in its fifth year of operation.
The Brewers Association classifies breweries that make fewer than 15,000 barrels (31 gallons in a barrel, you’ll recall) “microbreweries” and those larger “regional breweries.” Quite honestly, 60,000 is a more important number to breweries because all barrels produced after that are taxed at a higher rate.
Anyway, it took Sierra Nevada 10 years to grow beyond “micro,” and five years later the brewery produced 150,000 barrels. Growth isn’t always linear. But just for the heck of it here’s a look at 10 breweries you’ve likely heard of and how long it took them to grow from “micro” to “regional.”
How are they doing now? Rather than use 2008 sales figures, which are more than a year old, I’ll update the chart in a few months, after the Brewers Association compiles the 2009 data.
| Brewery | Year | Barrels | Barrels |
| (Yr of operation) | That Yr | Previous yr | |
| Sierra Nevada Brewing | 1989 (10th) | 20,884 | 14,000 |
| Widmer Brothers | 1991 (7th) | 27,500 | 12,000 |
| Deschutes Brewery | 1994 (7th) | 19,719 | 8,564 |
| New Belgium Brewing | 1994 (4th) | 18,951 | 5,837 |
| Harpoon Brewery | 1994 (8th) | 24,000 | 12,950 |
| Boulevard Brewing | 1995 (7th) | 21,000 | 14,748 |
| Bell’s Brewing | 1996 (12th) | 15,631 | 10,250 |
| Stone Brewing | 2002 (7th) | 18,450 | 12,779 |
| New Glarus Brewing | 2003 (11th) | 18,700 | 13,700 |
| Dogfish Head Brewery | 2004 (10th) | 20,200 | 13,600 |
Marble Brewery in Albuquerque recently installed three more fermenters (above, on the left), each holding 45 barrels (almost 1,400 gallons). Marble brews mostly ales, so running 26 batches through each fermenter over the course of a year would constitute a leisurely pace and still yield more than 3,500 barrels.
Now consider this. When Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi founded Sierra Nevada thirty years ago the business plan called for production to max out at 3,000 barrels. “We figured we could make money at that, we wouldn’t get rich but we’d get by,” said Grossman, now the company president. Sierra Nevada produced 1,500 barrels the first year (1980) and passed 3,000 in its fifth. It now brews nearly 700,000 annually.
All things are relative. Yesterday Stephen Beaumont pointed to a Wall Street Journal story about U.S. beer sales volume falling. He suggests this is a victory for boire moins, boire mieux (drink less, drink better). I’m certainly on board with the drink better part.
He writes that the WSJ “doesn’t see this because they’re used to looking only at the large, public corporation side of things.” Indeed, 3,000 barrels here, 3,000 barrels there . . . nothing to the global beer powers. But 3,000 barrels equals close to one million 12-ounce bottles. To those of us buying niche beers that’s a lot of bottles.
Before 2009 no New Mexico brewery since Prohibition (and we don’t have numbers from before) had brewed 5,000 barrels. Marble made 5,200 last year, an increase from 1,950 in 2008 (the brewery began selling beer in April that year). The increase was a ridiculous 267 percent, the actual growth 3,250 barrels.
OK, you never heard of Marble. That’s part of the point. Also Great Divide Brewing in Colorado grew a little over 3,000 barrels (34 percent) in 2009 to about 12,000 barrels. And sales at Saint Arnold Brewing in Texas increased 13 percent (production rising not quite 3,000 barrels) to nearly 26,000 barrels.
We’ll never know how much Bud Light Lime A-B InBev sold in the Albuquerque area in 2009. Maybe it was more than 3,000 barrels, but it’s still just another brand passing through. Before that it was Miller Chill. Nothing changes.
But things have changed in the cooler at the only market in the village where I live. Corrales is an anomaly, long and narrow with about 8,000 people and no stop lights. Albuquerque and Rio Rancho are hard by and that’s where most people shop. Drive two miles past Frontier Mart and there’s a full-size grocery store with cheaper milk and a fully stocked liquor store.
Still, Frontier always had a solid, if limited, wine selection and the usual “craft” beer suspects. Then this fall they squeezed soft drinks into one cooler facing, making room for many more beers. Instead of just offering Sierra Nevada Pale Ale they have Torpedo. Always something from Deschutes and Full Sail. More than Fat Tire from New Belgium. And at least four New Mexico beers.
A-B InBev still owns the floor display, including its lineup of beers brewed in Belgium, but this is real change. Change not so easily measured by numbers.
Of course we’re headed back to number season, and there’s every chance figures for 2009 may not look as glossy as recent years. We know Boston Beer production was up 1.6 percent in 2009, and Samuel Adams sales seldom stray far from the rest of craft (in no small part because they account for more than one bottles sold out of every five). In 2008 the category was up six percent, Sam Adams six percent. In 2007, Sam Adams 14 percent and “craft” 12 percent. You get the idea.
Both the beer and the details herein.
The press release Deschutes Brewery sent out for Hop Henge Experimental IPA describes the beer as “our annual exercise in IBU escalation, combining several new hop processes and techniques to create a unique and unexpected beer.”
Notice that although Hop Henge checks in at 8.75% and includes, according to the press release, 95 bitterness units that it is labeled neither Imperial nor Double. But it is one big ass beer, and were it entered as an IPA in a competition would surely be kicked for its big-assedness.
Deschutes first brewed Hop Henge in 2006, some years calling it an Imperial IPA, and jamming a boatload of hops into a beer is hardly new. So what’s this about experimental? I asked and lickety-split the answer arrived in an email from brewmaster Larry Sidor:
“As always, hopping is an adventure with Deschutes Brewery. We kicked off this year’s Hop Henge Experimental Ale by milling 1.0 pounds of Amarillo and Centennial hops per barrel in our grain mill. Yes, you read that right, the hops went directly to the mill along with the grain! So, we ended up with a green mash. Never fear, lautering went fine with a high performance German lauter tun.
“The next hop stop was at the Kettle. We added Millennium, Herkules (more German influence) and Northern Brewer at just at 0.99 pounds per barrel. The next wort hopping was in the hop back using Northern Brewer, Citra and Brewers Gold at 0.6 pounds per barrel.
“Drum roll please, the final wort hopping was with Cascade and Amarillo in the whirlpool at 0.8 pounds per barrel.
“Let’s see, we’re now up to 3.39 pounds per barrel just in the wort. We’re not stopping here.
“So, off to the fermenter where we added Centennial, Cascade and Amarillo at 1.32 pounds per barrel. These were hop pellets, very unDeschutes!) So next, we added 0.3 pounds per barrel of Citra in the bright beer tank. I can finally relax and get those damn pellets out of my tank and back to leaf hops! So after seven days on dry hops we called it good with a grand total of 5.01 pounds of hops added per barrel.”
Blame the power of persuasion but it seems you can smell a blend of citrus fruits — grapefruit, clementines — northwest pine trees, pineapples, and on and on through the cap. Really.
Besides they had me from the point when they milled the hops.