Where Did March Go?
Well that was quite the hiatus, eh? Between a conference in Nashville, grandmothers in the house, a week of playing daddy daycare to Graham, and regular life chores, the month of March seemed to melt away. No brewing was had and that was partly because the first 14 days were a scramble to finish conditioning, packaging, and shipping entries off to NHC.
Speaking of NHC, results from the San Francisco Regional were posted yesterday and unfortunately none of my beers placed and will not advance to finals. I’m disappointed to say the least. I had high expectations this year for the Helles and the California Common in their respective categories. Alas, it was not meant to be, and I’ll keep on trucking. I’m pretty much on a mission now to get the Helles through next year and win the Pale Malty European Lager category eventually. The expression is becoming cliché but you learn more from your failures than your successes. With that in mind I look forward to getting my individual scores and score sheets back in the coming weeks to study the notes and correct imperfections.
I’ve checked the AHA competition calendar and there are a couple competitions to enter this spring and summer including the San Diego County Fair (aka the Del Mar Fair to all us SD yokels), the World Beer Cup in the Bay, and the Mid-State Fair in Paso Robles. I also stumbled upon a Coffee Beerfest in Sacramento later in the year which they may open to homebrewers. Coffee, beer, and coffee-beers? Count me in.
While these competitions are invaluable for getting objective feedback from professionals, I find festivals are equally invaluable for receiving sometimes subjective feedback. If you want to have a commercial brewery, and a successful one at that, you obviously need to produce high quality beer. But you must also listen to the peeps on the street, their likes and dislikes, style preferences, etc. I’ve participated in two festivals (plus another two I organized in grad school) and hopefully I can participate in a couple more in 2019. It’s great to have people express appreciation for the craft face to face and let you know what they like.
In March I did manage to get to the homebrew store with the family to pick up supplies for the next two brews – a Golden Stout with coffee (from my favorite Handlebar Roasters) and a SMASH IPA - two row, Azacca hops, and San Diego Super yeast from White Labs. Now that I don’t have to dedicate future brew days to rebrewing NHC entries for Finals I’ll be able to get straight to the now very backed up brew queue, starting with the Golden Stout. Always look on the bright side of life!* I may get to it this weekend if I can finish off a keg (since I’m currently at storage capacity). In any case I’ll have that brew day post and recipe to share in the future.
Hopefully one of these days I’ll have a proper post on the happenings of the future commercial brewery but that’s on hold now as we get Graham settled into daycare, ourselves settled into our new busy-AF routine, and work on simplifying our financial lives this Spring by selling the condo we haven’t lived in for seven years.
The latest on the brewery front is in fact from 2018. I contacted a commercial real estate agent last fall and had a look at a couple properties in town. I felt good about our meetings, he seemed to have good local knowledge, contractor references, and connections in the City. He spoke like he was going to be my new best beer friend. I left him a follow-up email and voicemail a couple weeks later in November and have never heard back. So that’s fun!
I also got a reference for an architect in Goleta and had a good conversation with him about considerations on buildings, zoning, locations, tenant improvements, code, the whole lot. A few takeaways from my conversations with the agent, architect, and friends and acquaintances that have restaurants and breweries/taprooms within the City limits:
1. The City is a nightmare to deal with which is why so many people just go to Goleta or County areas. Look forward to throwing your lease payments down the proverbial shitter while the review boards, inspectors, etc. nitpick and second guess every goddamn thing.
2. For opening a brewery, and for my idea of what I want my taproom to be, I should really own the building that I want to open in. This gives unilateral control on building improvements, design, timelines, etc. Nice idea but what that means is that I need someone to loan me a cool $1 million or more (on top of the $500-750k for startup costs) or find a wealthy benefactor that really wants to gift me commercial real estate in Santa Barbara. I think I’ll just keep playing the PowerBall.
3. There are a lot of new beer happenings in town. I won’t say we’re saturated since it is a tourist town and most of the breweries are complimentary. However, in a roughly 18-month span there will be one new brewery, four new brewery taprooms, and one remodel/rebrand of a brewpub along a one mile stretch of State St. Rumors abound about another brewery taproom going into the adjacent Funk Zone. These openings include local breweries’ taprooms from Goleta, a great brewery from Camarillo (Institution Ale Company), and a heavy hitter in Modern Times.
For the time being I’ll keep refining recipes, strategizing funding alternatives, and attempt a better understanding of the local real estate options. Until next time.
This little guy (and his mom) makes it hard not to look on the bright side of life.