Yes , it’s that time of year when everything is either a retrospective from last year or predictions for the future. This is really neither of those, because last year was pretty shitty and next year isn’t looking too hot, either. It’s not my fault, so just chill out and have a pint while you read some of my older posts about all kinds of neat things.
You might notice how none of them really finish up completely – or maybe that’s just how I feel after something sits in my draft folder for 3 months before I crap out some hamfisted conclusion that ostensibly completes my argument. I haven’t been posting pictures much, either, which is a lack of effort on my part. Maybe that will change this year – dammit! Prediction alert!
The chicken killer
So I’m currently sitting at the Santa Fe Brewing outpost in northern Albuquerque, a shipping container- themed food court and beer hall called Tin Can Alley. I’ve been here before, many times in fact, and I come back for the cheap growler fills ($8-$10) and open atmosphere of the whole arrangement. There’s a very healthy crowd here on a Saturday afternoon, probably 75% capacity across the whole place, which is good overall but it’s hard to tell how well the beer is selling in this context. It’s a good scene, though.
In my goblet is a barleywine called Chicken Killer, a mostly American-style barleywine, with some hop character and a bold, malty finish. The board says ‘dark fruit and spice’ but I’m not getting the spice. Once upon a time I would have tripped over myself to get a beer like this, indeed, I used to stock up on Chicken Killer bombers in my previous lives in New Mexico. It was a not-terrible strong beer at a very reasonable cost over the last 20 years (at least), and I’ve been a fan of barleywines since the start of my beer life. It’s very likely I’ve written about it before, actually….but since nobody read those posts anyways I’ll keep this in. Just in case there’s a BW enthusiast out there that doesn’t know about SFBC and their chicken killer…
He’s dead, Jim!
A lot has been made of the recent failures of some local breweries in the last year, but mostly the dumpster fire chapter 11 filing of Bosque Brewing was spectacle and 100% predictable in the year(s) leading up to their failure. That a brewery could pick up millions of dollars in debt in the current economic environment is perplexing, given how many larger operations have either folded or sold in the last, say, 5 years. Who the fuck decided to give this company all that money without any evidence of regular returns (aka revenue and/or profits)? They kept expanding to new locations without waiting to see how the others would work out, which is a strategy, I guess..?
The fallout from such a large failure, though, is hard to pin down when it spans several industries and hundreds of worker bees at a dozen different taprooms. Unemployment benefits and SNAP benefits will hopefully be easy enough for these folks to access, but healthcare is obviously going to be an issue these days. The food supplier, Sysco, is a big enough company they can easily absorb the loss, but it could easily impact their policies about running debt moving forward, impacting hundreds of other businesses and the way they handle finances. That the taprooms all sit vacant is a given, commercial property that needs to be leased out, etc. On and on, down to the actual customers that spent time at the bar in these places. I spend a lot of time at a certain taproom, and it would disrupt a large community of regulars if they failed for some reason. Anyways, my thoughts go out to those folks who have suffered through no fault of their own; this was a failure of management in the truest sense.
MEE LIKEY
It was, and is, that time of year where barrel-aged beers break out of the cellar and into tiny goblets to be consumed by bearded weirdos across the land. It is no exception in Albuquerque, where La Cumbre celebrated a 15 year anniversary this December, along with the annual release of their La Negra BBA-stout. It’s a slowly-evolving, luscious banger that features chocolate and dark fruits and molasses and the typical flavors of this style. I tried a vertical flight on their big stout day and found a lot of consistency across the years, with the best profile coming from the reserve variants.
That day, and most of this winter, have been exceptionally warm, with a light breeze and plenty of clear skies to saturate an outdoor drinker with vitamin D. I sat on the patio of the brewery and enjoyed my tiny goblets of dark fire, talking to some new friends and eating nachos from the food truck. What a great way to enjoy these beers, when usually I’m huddled around a fire somewhere (not that I mind that scenario either). I do enjoy the chance to talk with other drinkers, too, and that’s a lot easier when your teeth aren’t chattering.
Around Midnight…
So this year I went out with some friends to a very large house party to celebrate the new year, and found myself in the center of some serious debauchery. The common wisdom that younger generations aren’t drinking as much may not always hold true – but then again, the folks I think of as ‘younger’ are in their 30’s, so what the fuck do I know? What I saw was a lot of liqour and white claw, a handful of macro lagers, and no craft beer. I was not drinking that evening myself, so made a study of it while I thirsted for a proper drink.
I found myself really stressed about the amount of white claw a person had to consume to stay in that happy area – especially compared to the folks who were, say, just taking shots of vodka (*shudder). It seemed like they were constantly hunting for their can, or a new can, and some folks just grabbed any can looking for a drop. “I don’t know these people” I had to repeatedly tell myself while watching some serious foraging behavior. I have come to believe that hard seltzers bring out the worst in people, and it’ll be a hard time changing that opinion. I saw the same behavior when I was slinging jello shots at outdoor festivals, and I can’t unsee it now.
I think my generation, and the one in the twilight zone immediately after, will always have some pretty trashy drinking habits – we grew up in the time of Four Loko and Strawberry Wine (Boone’s Farms), malt liquor dressed up like cinnamon whiskey (Fireball), and a whole galaxy of flavored spirits that simply weren’t available before the late 90’s. Hard ciders and boozy energy drinks and all the flavored shit, no wonder the rebound landed on flavored booze water. Whelp.
What I didn’t see on New Years was much craft beer. Maybe it was there, kept out of sight, but the cans I clocked were seltzers and macro lagers. This is in a city with 45-ish working breweries. I’m not exactly surprised, when you look at national sales numbers and average that across drinkers, maybe 2 in 10 will be repping something from a local brewery. Even at an event where they’re all drinkers, drinking, you’re not looking at many craft beer fans in a crowd of 50. And many aren’t ashamed to drink a seltzer (they should be). In a city where you can’t pick up craft beer unless you go to the freaking brewery, it’s just easier to grab a case of flavored water from the local gas station.
I’m pretty harsh about seltzers because they’re awful and lazy and they hurt the beer markets by existing. I feel like people should develop better taste as they get older, if only because they’ve got more information about the things they consume. Personal opinions won’t change the reality of a market saturated with poor options, if you want to excercise your tastes you’ve got to work for it. Oh well.
Even the lagers are dark
We’re at the very peak of the winter season here in Albuquerque, waiting for a massive storm to blow through, and my favorite brewery has released a Schwarzbier, or a dark lager, and it’s delicious – even if it does lack the usual ABV I enjoy. There’s a few other darker beers on tap, including an Imperial Stout on Nitro, so it’s not like I’m worried about getting a buzz on eventually. I’ll get there. Sometimes you’ve got to stop and drink the flavored water.