A local friend and brewer told me that I needed to get a blog together because there is a paucity of brutal honesty in Columbus. Every damned time some industrious bugger opens up a local enterprise, the community sings his, or her praises.
As such, I'll also review bars and restaurants time to time, because the same dynamic applies.
It's not necessarily fair. I love local businesses and I support them, but there are too many great local business people out there busting their asses to do right by the community for some half-assed opportunist to cash in on that loving feeling.
That's especially true with beer. Craft beer is a passion. I've talked to the people who brew it and they aren't in it for the money. It's all about the beer and the people who enjoy it. You can see it on their faces. When Angelo Signorino is drawing pints at a beer festival he is absolutely giddy. Eric Bean will stand there and talk about brewing with inebriated dorks for an hour. While is wife rolls here eyes and wonders if he'll ever get his ass back to the house and clean the gutters. The schedules are grueling, but they do it because it's not a job, it's a lifestyle.
Angelo oversees two microbreweries. He's got to keep 12 taps, and four beer engines flowing. Oh, and every Friday Barley's cracks open a 10 gallon firkin at each location. Any brewer will tell you, cask conditioned beers are a huge pain in the ass. They also aren't the most profitable beers, but craft brewing really isn't about the profit. In fact, owning a craft brewing operation is probably one of the worst business decisions a person can make. You're probably not going to get rich and you won't retire at a young age. The upside is that you'll enjoy going to work every day.
And it's not pretty work, either. From the outside looking in, it seems nice enough but there's dark side. Imagine being Kim Kardashian's gynecologist: It's hot. It's wet. It's sticky. People get hurt.
When Eric took the helm at Columbus Brewing Company he inherited a mess. Columbus Brewing Company was mediocre, at best. Oh, there were fans but they were drinking shit. Columbus Pale Ale was like one of those watery Utah beers because people who were more interested in counting beans than brewing beer tried to cut costs. Eric brought the focus back to the beer, and under his direction Columbus Brewing Company has emerged as a serious player in the craft brew business.
Then you have Elevator Brewing Company where Vic Schlitz has been working at both ends of the brewing spectrum with an impressive selection of light beers, contrasted by a series of beefier, barrel-aged offerings. Elevator would probably do well to trim the selection back and revisit the standard bearers of the craft industry, because I find their Pale Ale and IPA just a little unfulfilling. That's because they're both brewed in the traditional British sense and I like the less subtle American approach. Perhaps rolling out American variations would be in order, but that's just me being picky. Regardless, Elevator holds its own.
These three (four if you count Barley's twice and you probably should because they each have their own identity) operations are the heart and soul of Columbus' craft beer market and they have set the bar rather high. New brewers are welcome to join the fray. I know that Eric, Angelo and Vic welcome it because craft brewers tend to feed off each other. The friendly competition between the brewers builds the market for everybody.
Likewise, a lackluster brewing operation can be detrimental to everybody. If a traveler visiting from out of town is unimpressed with one brewery's offering, they might write off all the breweries. Then they'll tell their friends that Columbus has a weak beer scene and that rumor will spread. It's not really fair, but it happens.
The reason for that is because cities that are known for great craft beers make it really hard to find a bad beer. Portland, San Diego, Denver...Cleveland, believe it or not, has become a Midwestern Mecca of craft beer. Surprisingly enough, the vaunted Great Lakes Brewing Company might be the least inspiring brewery, if only because they seem to be suffocating under the weight of their own success.
For its size and demographics, Columbus has a paucity of brewers. We need more and they've been starting to spring up. Neil House, Four String, Zauber and Hoof-Hearted have opened for business and there are more on the way. Unfortunately, a lot of people entering the market don't have the chops. When Jay Wince opened up Weasel Boy in Zanesville he did so with hundreds of batches of home brew under his belt. His beers weren't just vetted by friends happy to catch a free buzz, he entered competitions and had his beers objectively evaluated.
Some of the new brewers have barely graduated from extracts in plastic buckets. The operations they've invested in don't appear to have the capacity to sustain a profit and if they happen to have a natural affinity for brewing beer, it's unlikely they'll be able to satisfy demand. Brewing equipment is not cheap and expanding is difficult when you can't afford to halt production to install a new brew kettle or roll in a bigger fermenter.
Moreover, after sampling some of these new beers, I'm not impressed. I'll go into detail in future entries but I've had a couple of beers that are not worthy of the honor of representing Columbus. I have a friend, we'll call him Bob, who is an avid home brewer and, while he relentlessly sells himself short, his beers don't seem as amateurish as some of those being celebrated locally.
That will not stand.
As a consumer, I don't owe you my business. I'm not going to drive by Barley's to support you while you try to figure out how to get that weird molasses flavor out of your IPA. I'm not going to spend $12 on 64 ounces of mediocre bucket brew, when I can spent $9 on 72 ounces of Columbus IPA, which might be the best IPA in the country, by the way.
As I delve into these beers, my goal isn't to belittle anybody. I genuinely want to see more brewers in Columbus. I just don't want them to suck. Blowing kisses and throwing roses at you because you opened a local business isn't going to address the deficiencies in your beer.
It's not a game, kids. This is serious business.
No comments:
Post a Comment