If it’s called Saison, it should be a Saison not a huge sweet triple with coriander.
Feel free to add to the list, maybe we will change the world…
Water treatment.
1/ It’s also not a saison if you use 3787 like you did on your tripel. No saison yeast = not a saison, period.
2/ APAs, AIPAs, and IIPAs shouldn’t be cloyingly sweet. If it is, you blew it.
3/ +1 to water treatment. Gypsum in hoppy beers really helps.
4/ There are other great styles besides IPA. More lagers, kolsch, Belgian and Scottish beers would be a good thing.
5/Hefeweizen shouldn’t be a banana and bubblegum bomb. Ferment a little cooler.
6/ Belgian beers are better if you don’t ferment too warm. There are lots of domestic ‘Belgians’ that are overly estery and/or phenolic. Like in hefe, a banana bomb is not good.
7/ More CAPs would be a good thing. Probably more CAPs in a big regional comp than are brewed in the U.S. by breweries.
EDIT - And using beard material, testicles and bodily secretions in beer isn’t being creative or bold. It’s just plain stupid. 
IME, the good ones do it very well and the bad ones do a lot wrong.
Don’t try to pass off an ale as a lager unless it’s seriously clean
WY2112 may be a lager strain, but it doesn’t make a clean lager when fermented at ale temps
Manage fermentation temps better
Don’t rush beers and end up with D-bombs
Clean your taps (i.e., “Why does my IPA taste like coriander?”)
Don’t use Ringwood
Dump beers that didn’t turn out right
I’d modify this slightly to “Don’t use ringwood if you don’t know what you’re doing.” We have two British style brewpubs here. One constantly produces butter bombs, while the other makes great open fermented beers with Ringwood on an original Peter Austin system. But yeah, most breweries shouldn’t use it.
If your sour beer tastes like diacetyl, it’s too young (or needs more Brett). If your sour beer tastes like diapers, give up.
If you routinely have flights come back with only one empty glass, it’s time to reevaluate the rest of your line up.
If you want to charge significantly more for your imperial, high alcohol whatever, you should accordingly charge less for a session or lower strength brew
There’s always room for improvement.
You come up with some good threads Jim.
I agree with all the above. What I would add is that I think breweries should pay their brewers more. The starting wage for a person who is competent and who is expected to care about the little things that make a big difference in the beer, hence the businesse’s profits and future, should be at least 40K in today’s dollars.
I am shocked at how little brewers make. You expect art, science, and physical labor from someone you pay 14 dollars an hour?! Dream on.
Thanks Steve. I think what makes a good gripe session is one based on a real and growing problem, and then not just bitching to bitch. The responses so far show how cool this forum is. If this went on for 20 pages, it would be pretty valuable info for most of the come and go brew pubs I’ve tried out lately.
Be humble. If you opened last month there is a small chance that there is room for improvement and maybe you are not ready to be a dick to your customers and get away with it.
Also, try to accurately hit some styles well before going crazy and breaking all the rules. I try to tell new home brewers this even though they usually don’t listen. Even a great jazz musician had to have a solid background in music with theory, scales and such before innovating the big next thing.
I will say that I think brewers, like most people, should be better paid. However, the pay rate for brewers is probably in line with what the labor market will support. Most of the work done by brewers is cleaning and other physical labor tasks. Operating the brewhouse is mostly about following a procedure set out by the head brewer/owner. Most brewer positions are assistant brewer positions where the work is roughly similar to other labor-intensive jobs in the same pay range. These are positions that do not require a college degree and can be learned on the job in a relatively short period of time.
What unfairly drives wages low for brewers is the massive amount of demand for the position. You have so many people trying to get these jobs that breweries have their pick of people with biology and engineering degrees that they can tap to do much more complex work at a low wage. The people offering up free work to breweries also drives down their wages. Every homebrewer who comes in and “helps out” at the brewery is taking a job away from somebody and depressing the wages of people who do have those jobs.
+1
I don’t understand how the breweries around us pull this off. Tap rooms staffed by volunteers? Pfft, I don’t work for free.
What I’ve always respected about Allagash is their basic lineup. A single (White), a Dubbel, a Tripel, a saison and the Black. They perfected these styles and offer outside the box specialty in addition.
A lot of good points.
It is quite hard to get a knowledgable staff. Brewer is not just labor monkey. He/she is more like a farmer. Mechanically adept and fast thinking. It is a big deal when I lose knowledgable employee.
I would like to pay everybody 40K a year. Believe me. But I also have other obligations then just a labor cost and my biggest concern is not to run out of money. And by the way. I hold the bag of loans and I am responsible for them. So I have skin in this game that no one see.
What drives wages down is the whole notion of small business and scale. Do you know how much beer I have to sell for 40K? It is quite easy to require employers to pay more from people who do not employ anybody.
Now back to usual programming.
+1
I would add more bitters, and lower alcohol brews.
Yeah, I get all of that. I am solidly a free market proponent. I just think that the market for brewers is self-defeating. I’m not saying I have any answers beyond better pay = better employees = better beer. Desire to be part of the “Beer Culture” only translates into good employees and good beer to a limited degree. In the end, the beer culture is its own worst enemy in this regard.