The hot new thing in craft beer? Good old-fashioned lager

Yeah, if there's also a higher price then that can be a factor in and of itself. But the beers I'm thinking of, both Hofbrau Munich and Freising in particular, are actually cheaper than most of the potential comparables.

 

Michael, can you find this beers fresh? In my area there seems to be just the one drop we got in the Fall of 2018 and then just dusty beers thereafter.

Cheers!

 

They sure seem to move at a couple of chain stores by me, get restocked, and aren't gathering dust. Beyond that I can't say that I've been checking the dates. If they tasted off it would be a different story, but that's not the case. So, assuming 6 months or so, personally I wouldn't sweat it.

But, sure, if we're talking a year or more then they will continue to sit.

 

Well, that is a good thing for you.

I have not seen any re-stocking near me.

Cheers!

 

Thanks for the response. I always appreciate you taking the time to post. You're talking about dollar investments (tanks, ingredients), but I was really trying to get at production time and how that can influence how a brewer wants to price their product. It may only cost X amount to add a lagering vessel, but a brewer is still going to work with physical realities regarding how many tanks they can have and therefore how much liquid can get through their system in a given amount of time. Regarding lagering times, 8 weeks might be scientifically bad for most brewers in your eyes, but brewers are lagering for that length of time (including brewers who are driving some of the interest in lagers that this thread is focused on) and some swear by it. So rather than focus on if it's needed (which is interesting though), let's take it as a given that some brewers are factoring this into their production time and costs. If a brewer is only making lagers, and lagering for 8 weeks on average, this might create a bottleneck (pun unintended) in their production process that restricts the amount of product they can get to market in a given amount of time compared to a brewer focused on IPAs. In the end, I would think that these volume realities and time-to-market factors will impact one's pricing approach that go beyond the more concrete costs of goods and gear... but I'm speculating and your knowledge is firsthand.

 

I wonder what's going on here. Do they have a canning line? Mobile canner? Or beer shipped for canning elsewhere (either in Europe or the US)? @herrburgess

You're practically my brother.

"People are going crazy for lagers?" Really? Unless you're talking about things like Michelob Ultra, but I doubt Suarez is really contributing much to that.

 

I think they're available in germany, too. think ive seen them advertising them at "craft" beer events/fests

 

Mahrs is canning their beer. I assume they have their own canning line (are there Mobile Canning vendors in Germany?).

You can see the can here:

https://www.mahrs.de/beer-cans/?lang=en

FWIW I have not see any Mahrs canned beer at my local beer retailers. I wonder if I ever will; it seems like Mahrs was discontinued in my area a few weeks ago.

In a few weeks I will see the Shelton Brothers at the Philly Bierfest. If I think of it I will ask about this.

Cheers!

 

Well, I just did it again, bro : last night I had a slot to fill in a mix a six, so I just grabbed a bottle of Hofbrau Original, not even looking at the date. I'll try to get to it tonight and write down any impressions, and only check the date afterwards. Let's see what we got .

 

Doh! That should have been a few years ago.

Cheers!

 

My approach here gets some other brewers upset because I don't value time to age a beer and I believe that if you're focused on lager production, you should just know when planning that your equipment cost up front is going to be quite a bit higher than it would need to be for the same volume of ales. I think it's just a matter of setting yourself up for success for the types of beers you wish to brew and operating within those confines. For me, all of the final price is directly related to the cost of goods with the exception of barrel aged beers, in which case I find them to be a big disruption to my work flow and a big time commitment from a racking and packaging perspective, so I take into account what it's worth for me to do that extra work and that number is kind of arbitrary. That said, most of our barrel aged beers are still less expensive than similar beers from other breweries.

 

But what about the extra area needed for the 'extra' lagering tanks? An ale brewery would require a smaller space to brew 3,000 barrels a year vs. a lager brewery brewing that same volume, would it not? For the case of a brewery that leases their space this would be additional cost all else being equal, right?

Cheers!

 

It’s all in how you set it up... lager tanks stacked 4 high require very little floor space. If I was doing an all lager brewery that wanted to produce 3k I wouldn’t go without stacked tanks. That said, you can fit a lot of fermenters into a small area even without stacking if you set it up right. Unfortunately, not a lot of people in this industry have the necessary experience to start set up well... but then should a brewer expect customers to pay more because they have production inefficiencies?

 

ever seen/been to red oak's facility? you'd never know they crank out 20k+ BBL a year with that building's footprint. their 120 horizontals are stacked (I believe) 4-high. (may be 3- tho. those are some big -- and heavy (when full) -- tanks.)

 

And while a lot of BAs have a low opinion of Anheuser-Busch they have the best QA/QC in the industry from my perspective. The typical lagering time for Budweiser is three weeks.

@honkey brought up the topic of:

“With proper yeast management (pitch rate, pH, aeration, purity of culture, nutrition, temperature control, etc.) and with modern technology there should be no benefit to such long lagering times.

And:

“I've never seen 2 months as being anywhere near a necessity with the exception of breweries that messed up earlier in the process.”

If you do things ‘right’ upfront there really is no need for an extended (e.g., 8 week) lagering time.

I just bottled my first lager of the season, a Tmavý Ležák (Czech Dark Lager), yesterday and I lagered this batch for one month. I tasted the beer from the hydrometer sample and detected nothing off in this batch.

I took several brewery tours during my recent visit to the Czech Republic and they all lagered their beers for one month.

I suspect that some breweries choose to lager for longer durations just because they feel this is ‘traditional’?

Cheers!

 

When we replaced a brite tank with 3 horizontal tanks stacked in Tombstone, we ended up only losing something like 3 feet of floor space. We have 1,200 sq. ft. of production space in Tombstone and we manage to put out 1,700 bbl annually pretty easily. Most of that is ales, but we could do the same with lagers if I was asked to and given 3 more lager tanks. It would make canning days pretty crammed though.

 

I can’t justify the price in buying older imports, I just can’t. I can get fresh beer from Red Oak or with a bit of a drive Old Mecklenburg, I’m lucky I have that option. Finding fresh imports here are tough, some are past their best by dates, most others at 6 months old or older, finding fresh Pivo is almost as hard, if it’s of decent age it’s 4 months old, most probably 6 plus. I can buy 3 day old Hopgarten from Red Oak which is superior head to head. I’d love to have a super fresh Weihenstephaner Original, but that’s simply impossible. There’s no way imo that any older import would match Old Meck beers. If I lived in a state without a quality local option I might have a different view.

 

Do high bay buildings command a higher lease price per square foot?

Yes, many of the new small, local breweries are startup businesses by homebrewers. Not a lot of background there from a facilities planning/maintenance perspective. A fairly recent small, local brewery near me had issues expanding since they had difficulties getting local permitting since they did not implement the plumbing per local ordinances. That business is owned by four former homebrewers and none of them were facilities/plumbing 'experts'.

This may be a rhetorical question but a new brewery will indeed price their product so they can be profitable (i.e., stay in business). Whether their customers will support them is a differing issue.

Cheers!

 

I was shocked to see their production area, I had no idea, efficiency is the word to the max, and the owners resources seem unending.