Riddle of the Liquor: Part 3, Something Borrowed

     In this Riddle of the Liquor series, I've been exploring the Victorian era wedding tradition of a bride wearing something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. Three out of those four were easier than others. What do you borrow in brewing or craft beer in general? You buy equipment, you create recipes and you sell product. You really don't borrow anything. While visiting home, I came across a book I didn't finish before I moved to Portland. The Audacity of Hops was recommended reading from a craft beer enthusiast. In that, I came across the stories of how many craft breweries got their start.

     Before reading this book, I knew nothing about Jack McAuliffe and the California connection to the craft beer. I had grown up on the East Coast and came into the craft beer scene relatively late in the game, in 2004. I thought I was ahead of the curve, but after reading about Anchor Steam and Jack McAuliffe making a splash in the late 1960s/early 1970s, I was humbled. Not that I claimed to know a lot of the "ancient" history of craft brewing, I knew of Sierra Nevadas and the Boston Beer Companies of the world, who were "second wave" brewers. Fritz Maytag (of Anchor Steam) and Jack McAuliffe were pioneers, when going up against Big Beer seemed silly and it was illegal to homebrew. If you wanted to start a brewery, you would have to have brewing equipment sent from Germany or make your own. McAuliffe, whose first foray into homebrew was during a tour in Scotland with the US Navy and finding books about homebrewing. It's a story better told in The Audacity of Hops. The brewery he started which he endured 14 hour days and limited resources but rich in brewing knowledge and product quality.  He even created a gravity brewing system, which he then lent to Hopland, now known as Mendocino Brewing when New Albion Brewing folded in 1982. Hell, there are stories of kids finding their uncle's homebrewing equipment and borrowing it to make their own libations.

     As you know, one of the key ingredients to beer is yeast. That being said, yeast is often lent out, sold or even stolen, to be put into beer to give its alcoholic kick and flavor.  Just like yeast that eats sugar, you can say our minds eat knowledge and produce a product.  After the cursory introduction into the world of beer through drinking and tasting, some of us move onto homebrewing. Most kits are bought new, anywhere from a Mr. Beer kit playing with extracts to an intermediate kit from Midwest Supplies where you boil grain to make the wort, a lot of the recipes are borrowed. The American Homebrewer Association has message boards where users share recipes, not trying to make money and occult the information, but to lend knowledge to fledging brewmasters. Not only do we share recipes, sometimes brewers become so good that they start breweries. They hire on people willing to learn the process and apprentice. Sometimes they hire people who went to school for fermentation or other engineering backgrounds and they learn the recipes and become good at what they do. Eventually, things bottleneck and a master brewer can be plucked away from a brewery for the next upstart.

     From reading this book, I learned how hard it was to get funding to start a brewery. Perhaps it's the anti-borrowed part of this article. Just like McAuliffe and other first and second wave brewers, it was impossible to get funding for breweries. Banks refused to lend money to small, start up breweries. The hegemony of Anheuser-Busch stymied growth. Despite craft beers being popular with the consumer,  Anheuser-Busch could strong arm distributors into not carrying new beers. Distribution is super important in the craft beer game.  Since Prohibition and until the homebrew/brewpub legislation was past in the late 1970s/early 1980s; breweries could not sell directly to the consumer - it had to go through a distributor.  Why is there a measly kitchen or food truck near a brewery? Laws, stupid.  We can't have people getting shitfaced without putting a burger in their belly to look like we're trying to keep drunks from getting 110% drunk. Tangent aside, banks wouldn't lend to breweries because they thought that it was all a fad. Big Brew would swallow up subsidiary suds slingers. That is a topic to be pursued in another article however. Needless to say, banks are a little more friendly but that's to say you don't have to worry about a candle because it won't burn down the house - only because of the Beer Pioneers.

     In the depths of capitalism, how much can one lend without being bitten in the hand? In any walk of business, consumers will follow their feels. Tell a good story and have a good product, people will spread the word and eat/drink your product. Borrowing things forces us to become better at what we do. If I'm giving you something that you can use and is surplus to my requirements, it typically means I'm doing bigger and better things. Giving you a tidbit to start your own batch is just good practice, because if you're good it's going to make me better. Entrepreneurs are fighters. Sometimes, it's a friend who will one up a story, which means you have to tell a pretty amazing story to keep ahead of the curve. It's because we lend, we have a plethora of choice in beer. Peach goses. Berliners. IPAs with IBUs over 85. They exist because someone gave something and someone had to go above and beyond to make the new next best.

Na zrowie!