Sixpoint Beer Purchasing App

Reading this thread just makes me further my love for @Sixpoint and his/their presence here on BA. Wish that their beer was more accessible here in south central PA and that I could get these small batch brews but their continued posting here tells me all I need to know about them. First class.

 

IMHO in today's world of "nanobreweries" anything over a 30 bbl system has to be considered at least a "mid-sized" brewery.

Once you have a 50 bbl system, you are no longer "small batch" and you have some serious volume being brewed.

And if you are brewing on a 100+ bbl brewhouse, you're nowhere near "small batch" anymore. That's big!

@RobNewton @JackHorzempa @ecpho @jrnyc @PA-Michigander

But I think we are missing a very important point here. We keep obsessing over the "batch-size" but what we should be talking about is distribution.

In the above examples of Trillium and TreeHouse, they have undoubtedly scaled up the size of the brewhouse and batches, but the distribution model has remained the same. In other words, almost all of the beer is still being sold directly to the consumer, so its almost guaranteed to be fresh and not mishandled in the supply chain.

In the Lagunitas example, where its a very large batch, the beer was managed through the supply chain to guarantee a level of freshness and fast turnover at retail.

I think this does reinforce that brewing these types of beers are not necessarily only about the size of the batch, its more about the quality and management of how its distributed and consumed.

 

Until we all stop lining up at these places this won't change either. Not going to start distribution if people are still buying all of your beer traveling to you.
Despite this I am still curious as to Augie's comments, they sounded directly related to the brewing method and not post bottling/canning.

 

True but they are selling direct to consumers in order to maximize profits and cut out the distributors and retail establishments from their profit margins. They could very easily be sending these beers out to local shops in MA and even other parts of New England (like the Alchemist did when they were distributing and Grimm does in NY) and they would still sell out in a day.

Agreed but doesn't the Lagunitas BY example prove it can (and IS) being done then?

 

I haven't had any troubles scaling any styles including NEIPA's. I think there is one inherent problem with larger systems in that the whirlpool addition will result in more hop utilization than a small system that can chill wort in 10 minutes or so like I could do on a 5 gallon batch. I could see this being a disadvantage for the style, but I haven't had issues with it in Tombstone. If I did, I would just switch a percentage of the whirlpool hops to a hopback. Once you get to the commercial set ups though, most chillers are sized to chill the entire volume of wort in 45 minutes or so, so going from 15 BBL to 50 BBL shouldn't result in much of a difference.

At my last brewery, our whirlpool utilization was much higher than it is here at TBC even though the systems were the same sized. I believe that was due to the dimensions and performance of the whirlpool. I also seem to retain a lot more aroma from a whirlpool addition here, but it's hard to say if that is equipment related or hop related since I have a large budget now being in a self distribution brewery with good onsite sales. I am able to afford higher quality hops.

 

I can also attest to the same phenomenon with whirlpool hop additions on a larger scale.

 

I agree 100% with you here. Augie was not discussing the distribution aspect, he was discussing the brewing of the beer at the brewery.

Augie seems to have the opinion that the so called 'NE' style IPA can not be 'replicated' on a large scale brewing system. Maybe it is the size of the fermentors that is the issue?

Maybe @augiecarton will join into this discussion and share why he thinks the way he does on this topic.

Cheers!

 

I am still not comfortable with the NE moniker and if you look at the oat hazed, british phenolics, late hopped beers they are still in their nascent period and evolving faster than we can categorize them so this discussion is fraught with pitfalls. today there are at least the "4 ingredient," "the fruited" "the lactose" "the adjunct" "the wheat" and so on and on. no typed conversation can flesh this out so please write direct questions, send them in and we will discuss them on the show where point and counterpoint flow more freely.

All that being said:

At this exact moment the trend seems to be farther and farther away from the soul of beer toward the removal of all edges to create flatter and flatter palates that will never offend or engage anyone. these could easily be done on large scale. But even down that trend line there are still some highlights of beauty through technique.
The genius NE IPA's can not and wont be replicated much beyond a 50 BBL brew house. As StHubbins said "its a fine line between clever and stupid" and that is never more true than in the current iterations of NE ipa. there are a couple dozen genius examples of nuance and balance and a couple hundred examples of neutered,pop, mundane beverages that happen to contain alcohol.
the genius ones are artisinal and can only exist in small clips of time by their nature. the things you need to do to "smooth" the constituent aspects of a great NE IPA over a very large brew will always leave you with one of the soulless "well it is flabby and it does taste like juice" versions.
there is no doubt that those will make a lot of people happy and some one will go into that business but it won't be the chef's innovating in the style currently, and it won't be good for our art. but hey "MMMM BOP" sold a ton of copies and pleased a lot of people, each artist needs to decide what type of artist they will be.

 

I'd throw Surf Wax by Burial out as an example of a well made, mass produced, NEIPA. I'd put it there with Born Yesterday.

 

you would need to define "mass produced" NOTHING burial does even approaches medium scale

 

Mass produced might have been poorly worded. I had seen earlier in the conversation people discussing "NEIPA" beers made on a bigger scale and I see Surf Wax distroed to all the stores around where I live. I think SW is a great example of that style I can get fairly easily, but probably not "mass produced."

Own Benefactor was a great collab you guys did together. Enjoyed that beer immensely.

 

Is NE IPA the EDM of beer? Allowing people to make a lot of money off repetitive, lazy and low quality products?

 

Thanks for coming on and joining the discussion, I look forward to becoming a more regular listener to your podcast not just because of the current topic but just for love of beer in general and for some reason this escaped me.
I would be curious about looking at this from a general trends perspective. Say, geez, almost 20 plus years ago now you have brands that start to live off of the reputation of adding more and more hops to beer, building their entire brand around it (Stone etc) and building what we know today as the West Coast IPA. That of course got way out of control with many pretenders in the field until my local grocery stores were filled (and still are) with 100+ ibu "hop bombs" because it sold.
Now you have what I consider the standard bearers of response to that style: Alchemist, HF, Tired Hands, Tree House, Trillium where some amount of sanity seemed to be brought back into the ipa fold. I guess what I want to ask is what do you consider the "genius" ipas and what makes them so. Thanks again.

 

well thanks for that, it and they are a ton of fun.
we are now leaving my area of in personal experience but of the group i would consider the avant garde of the modern school IPA currently being branded "NE IPA" i think treehouse is the largest brew house and i think they are 60 bbl. but we are outside my "known facts" here so take that lightly. if you listen to the show you know my thing is 'often wrong, always confident" so always treat any of my declarations suspect.

 

a lot to discuss and now i feel like i am a little too active on a non-carton thread, write this into the show and we will talk it through, beyond that any real list will be incomplete so i will pass on making one. i will say i am still very very happy any time anyone hands me a heady

 

Will do, I think originally we were looking for any past episodes in which this is discussed, didn't want to beat a dead horse if you had already gone over it in length.

 

Hahaha, gotcha

 

it never doesn't come up, it is what's going on right now by golly!. any episode will touch on "haze" the boring ones will linger on it. on the katarina martinez episode coming up an OH beer goes into the black glass and i treat it with a very weird mix of respect/disrespect so there may be some insights there. it was a perfectly lovely beer, very well made, that moved me very little. i'm still not sure where it left me feeling

 

Can’t believe I’ve never come across that podcast. Thanks very much for posting @HeyLady

 

its a great podcast and @augiecarton offers some fresh insights to the rapidly evolving industry - with personality and style of course..... looking forward to when we can do that show (Barcade in Jersey City?)

@HeyLady