What does 2024 look like in your area?

Bill Campbell.

 

2023 has not been a great year for Georgia based breweries. There have been eight closings I can think of right off, including some long timers like Orpheus, Burnt Hickory, Second Self and Atlanta Beer Co. I think we may be net negative openings to closings or maybe breakeven. As for 2024, I am hopeful it will be better. The thing that concerns me is, I see a lot more beer six months or older on the shelves from good breweries than I have in past years. Doesn't seem like inventory is turning as fast. That's all anecdotal evidence though, who knows.

 

More of the same. Hardly any beers from outside of Upstate NY or Vermont, unless it's Bud and all the other big name garbage.

It's a sea of ~$20 4 pack hazy ipas with a label that makes me go just about fucking crosseyed trying to decipher what's inside. Fruit beers galore with the ever present "Yuengling special". $28 for a 4 pack of Chimay. Local breweries charging premium prices for a used car level beer.

Someone call the amberlamps.

 

It feels like more places are opening here but I dont really keep track. When I go out, not often I go to the same few spots. I can say that Forest and Main never is busy when I am there. Hope that’s not the norm. Human Robot is/or has opened another space.

I agree with @JackHorzempa about rather have 12oz cans. I continue to buy what is on sale at the spot I go to but the selection keeps getting smaller. The cost of a beer out($7-8 average) is too much for me. I can’t wonder if this will hurt brewers in the long run with less consumer cash laying around.

To a happy and healthy 2024.

Enjoy

 

A useful resource for us is the Breweries in PA website. There is a tab “List of Breweries in PA” with pull downs for list of:

· Current Breweries

· Future Breweries

· Grand Openings

· Brewery Closures

Cheers!

https://breweriesinpa.com/

 

Breweries are dropping like flies here in south central Pa.
Some of them weren't worth a hoot anyhow, but a couple will be missed.
I never even made it to Devil's Eye before they closed. We drove past it on a road trip and I thought to myself, "Self, next time we pass by this way, we need to pop in for a sampler." Welp, you snooze you loose.
I don't foresee this trend getting any better any time soon either.
Hopefully the strong will survive and the fad chasing breweries will just go away. The market was over saturated anyway. Too many people with no business sense, restaurant experience or even the ability to brew a solid beer were opening up breweries without a clue as to what is really involved.
Nothing urks me more than thin, weak watery beer.
Even distilleries are shutting down around here.
I highly doubt 2024 will be any better.

 

Thanks for the info.

Enjoy

 

I don't know exactly how many new breweries opened in the Triangle this year, probably 4 or 5, and only one closed which technically wasn't even in the Triangle (Double Barley). Aside from that a bunch of taprooms opened from breweries from here and elsewhere in NC too. So it seems, at least from the outside looking in, everything here is just chugging along.

 

Yeah, I venture up into South central PA (Gettysburg, Wayneboro, Harrisburg, Lancaster, York, Hanover etc and I’ve sampled mostly bad to average breweries…maybe a couple solid ones at best. Is Pizza Boy still the king in the region or is there one that really stands above the others I should check out?

 

I personally have no drinking experience with South/Central PA breweries but recently the What’s Brewing TV show has visited a number of breweries in that area which might be of interest to you. I suspect this ‘expanded range’ for this show is that Lew Bryson is now a fairly regular guest host and he lives in that area.

Below is the show that featured Pizza Boy.

Cheers!

 

The tax on beer in Sweden went up 5% this year and is going up another 7.6% by year's end. I suspect that this will have a substantial dampening effect on sales for alot of Swedish craft breweries, many of which are barely breaking even or operating at a loss (with some having done so for several years, under much different macro economic conditions). Interest rate hikes and increased input costs are likely also putting pressure on alot of breweries. The breweries which have been successful in achieving above average pricing power, by high demand for their products, are likely to fare better than those that have had to stick to middle of the road pricing and that are not experiencing a recent cycle of strongly increasing demand.

 

I spend 1/2 of my time in central Wisconsin. My county of 16,000 people had three small craft breweries.

1 closed as the couple that ran it could not get consistent help and they just got burned out.

One closed due to rising expenses and lack of workers (also would rate their beers as third best..).

One doubled the size of their brewery and consistently runs out of one or more of the 12 beers they offer. Unfortunately for the local beer drinkers, they close for the season in late November and don't reopen till Mid-March. I can walk to this one, so hopefully I am helping keeping them afloat : )

Lack of workers is still a thing as most of the local bars have cut back and are closed on Mondays & Tuesdays (even in season). Note that this a tourist area where the population increases by 50+% in the summer.

 

It could be that I've been more oblivious this last half of the year to local breweries outside of my favorites, but I only recall one local breweries closing down this year. The owner's "retired", but the brewery was sold and reopened under different ownership and name. I do know of at least one or two that opened, so still net positive in the metro area.

Some breweries are still investing money into construction and projects around their facility to improve it for patrons too, which seems to bode well for how their business is going.

Guess we'll see. My area was a few years behind the haze craze and what not, so hopefully we're a few years behind any craft brewery closing mayhem too.

 

For me personally?

I’ll keep buying stuff that’s on sale or generally affordable. I have a price vs quality matrix in my head and that’s what I stick to.

A brewery opened up a couple miles from my house, hidden wit, I am excited to try it. But I usually only by a 4 pack or 2 from the local places every year just because 17 bucks for 4 pints starts to get expensive quickly.

I’ll keep buying three Floyd’s products, they aren’t cheap but I feel like I’m getting my moneys worth for it. Also will continue to pick up SN

 

Tröegs in Hershey are the big guys around here. Their beer is everywhere. Al's Pizza Boy is still churning out beer, but most are average at best. I usually order a guest tap when I visit the brewery, as they don't do many lagers, which I prefer.
Pour Man's makes some pretty good Czech Dark lagers, as well as others. Honestly, it's hard for me to find a beer I enjoy drinking on most draft lists these days.

 

The R.I. beer scene survived the pandemic with only a few closures and seems to have adapted to the "New Normal". Labor shortages are an issue, you are more likely to be served by an owner or a brewer in the smaller places, which is ok by me however I'm sure the workers are tired of the double duty.

Seltzers and ciders are increasing in popularity, the Stout/Sour/IPA market is still strong and somehow many of the other hundred or so styles can be found.

Next year???? the recession which started in 2020 that supposedly never happened and allegedly is improving........prices will go up yet I'm cautiously optimistic. Cheers.

 

2024 will be there year we cut to the chase and breweries simply liquify deserts and add vodka.

 

New places are continuing to open and several successful places (like Westbound & Down and TRVE) are expanding and/or buying other breweries. At the same time, a record number of places are closing too. Not an "alarming" number, but way more than in prior years. Feels like a new place closes every month. I think the breweries that have been struggling are opting to get out vs. hanging on in the red longer.

On the beer side of things, there aren't many places left making sub-par beers in this area. I might not like it all, but there are minimal QA/QC issues compared to years past. That's a really good thing IMO.

Our stores still seem baffled by what to stock. Soooooo many IPA SKU's sitting around gathering dust without even a cursory glance. IPA might be the best selling category, but it's not Jim Bob's Brewpub from Tiny Mountain Town CO. moving units. It's New Belgium, Sierra Nevada, Lagunitas, Odell, etc. (and a half dozen high-profile smaller/local brands, obviously) that make up 90% of IPA sales in CO. At some point I imagine stores are going to tell distributors to stop sending them beers that don't sell.

 

$6 - $8 pints of meh has me staying home.

When I'm in Germany, my friends don't like to go out to drink and pay 5 for something they can buy for 1 euro. I'm at that point now. The cost of food is another deterrent as it's easy to drop $60 - $100 in a night for not much.

The big beer store here has a great selection but again it's expensive. Unless you know what you want (research) the scope of choices is big.

In our little market (Columbia SC) we gained a macro beer pub (think BJs or Granite City) added 2 and lost 2.