We’re loaded up and trucking right through your feedback.
In the pub, we enjoy a pint or two while looking back at a big retirement, talking some new guidelines and wondering maybe we’ve been looking at the whole “bubble” thing wrongly.
We stop in the brewery to look at Sierra Nevada’s Ruthless Rye recipe and why Denny gave them a bunch of guff for it when they were making it. (Plus Drew’s weird feelings about late additions of Magnum)
Then in the Lounge, Denny talks to Rebecca Schranz - the Queen of Getting Shit Done- at St. Louis’s Earthbound Beer about expansion, taking over an old brewery space and what happens when you find a hand to god Bat Cave in your cellar.
Finally we tackle questions we can answer. Drop a quick tip on ya and Drew reveals he’s deeply weird about notebooks.
I enjoyed it, as usual, Denny. I also reviewed some of the posted links relating to the whole craft beer scene and I found those to be very interesting and insightful. The effects of the large conglomerate acquisitions are rippling through the industry as each brewery is acquired. Battles for taps and shelf space continue to be waged daily (with market power making it a pretty unfair fight in favor of the big guys); I hope the little guys can hold out, but I think Drew may be onto something in terms of a shift in paradigm away from the mid-sized brewers…and the analogy to restaurant lifecycles and their geographic markets/marketing seems very likely to become the case for craft brewing (however that may ultimately be defined).