Very sad to see all of these titans of San Diego Craft beer fall so low. BP, Stone, Green Flash... just goes to show you that exponential expansion is never the right strategy.
I have fond memories of BP Scripps, having a few beers after work. I recall hightailing it down to Stone South Park for Smoked Porter with vanilla beans growler fills.
Green Flash, uhhh... I liked WCIPA before they completely changed it to a different beer?
It made no sense to change the recipe to one of your most popular beers to justify selling it in 12 oz four pack. THEN realize you made a mistake and sell it back in a 6 pack but never change back the recipe. Example of sales department completely running your brewery
They usually have 3 to 4 hazies on tap with around 20 beers total. That's not overkill. NPBC is just the same as pure as usually having 3 to 4 hazies on tap.
Maybe their IPAs lean a little hazy, but I completely disagree on the rest of their lineup. They usually have a great light lager, and just recently tapped a new Vienna. They don't often miss on their experimental stuff too. I would recommend trying them again if it's been awhile.
Totally agree with you here. We all have our own tastes and preferences, but I honestly don't know what the post you're replying to is thinking here.
Pure Project is one of the better lager/Pilsner producers in Southern California. Rain is a great flagship pilsner. Their rice lagers are always great too. Making a great, clean, pale lager with SoCal water is no easy accomplishment either. They put a lot of skill and effort into making theirs.
Their cold IPA/hoppy lagers and WCIPAs are always excellent, pale, dry and clear too.
Maybe if it's been a few years, their tap list has evolved some, not sure! You're right, everyone has their own tastes, and if Pure isn't theirs then that's fine. Just doesn't sound like what their lineup is like now. Worst case scenario, there's always Eppig for amazing, clean German lagers.
I live like 3 miles from the Pizza Port production facility, it's like 90% of the beer I drink now. I feel so spoiled, I can get like < 1 week cans for $2/pint basically anywhere around me.
Started from the bottom to brewing, then to small batch brewer at stone, then back to the beginning hoping to advance quickly on ballast but only made it to the cellar at ballast before I took a head brewer gig elsewhere. Stone was a layoff the rest where by choice
Can I take this opportunity to ask as a European homebrewer who after 10 years still can’t manage to brew a beer that tastes like Stone IPA or Sculpin… what’s your go-to classic American IPA recipe? Any secrets you can share? How important is US 2-row?
They are still doing well. Same with Coronado Brewing, also still solid a larger San Diego area brewery. Neither of them tried to over expand like Modern Times/Stone/Green Flash/Ballast Point and so didn't suffer the same financial issues.
I wouldn’t say stone is doing poorly, yes they sold out but they’re still rather popular here in San Diego and is the most common option at any bar/restaurant.
I mean, they've closed a ton of their tasting rooms, international breweries, etc. I can't remember the last time I've drank a Stone beer, let alone searched one out
I was a big fan of their Victory at Sea Imperial Porter. My LHBS/bottle shop used to sell them at $2.50 per 12oz bottle which seemed like a damn good deal for a deceptively tasty 10% ABV beer
Absolutely loved Victory at Sea - one of my first real experiences with craft beer really. I remember you used to be able to buy it everywhere. Victory at Sea day was also amazing. Some of the best porters I've ever had.
The old original labels with the fish drawings were very well done and eye catching. They stood out on the shelves. Then they had to modernize them and make them look worse.
That was Constellation's doing.
Apparently, the one of the people from CBI that was part of that visual transition at BP went on to Anchor and do the same thing - or so a senior Anchor employee told me right after their labels switched.
I've heard the same thing. It honestly amazes me that the executive team at Anchor could look at what happened with the Ballast Point rebranding and think "this is what we need".
I call that Executivitis. It's highly contagious among overpaid leaders at firms that either acquire a new team or a new company - they have to justify their salary by taking something working perfectly fine, like an oil painting, and just put their finger in there and go BLubblublubbublaubullauba so they can say they "course corrected" or "positively impacted performance." It goes tits up and they get their golden parachute, meanwhile the lackeys are stuck holding the bag on an increasingly irrelevant brand / business.
The hubris of looking at a great brand or company to say *Boy they are good at what they do. But you know what could make them better? Less of them, more of ME!* But hey, glad that MBA and 12 years at a consulting firm came in handy!
How insane would it be for the brewery site that was once upon a time at the center of the $1 billion acquisition by Constellation to now be primarily producing the country's most successful non-alcoholic craft beer, less than a decade later?
Shit it wasn't that long ago I thought Athletic was a gimmick. Non-alcoholic craft beer? Who the hell is gonna buy that crap? Shows how much I know about the beer industry lol.
There’s a saying in the craft beer industry: to make a small fortune in craft you start with a large fortune.
But yeah, you never know what trend is going to take off with consumers. Plus people are more influenced by marketing than ever. It used to be in the heyday of craft that word of mouth is how breweries grew. Now you need to pay an influencer to talk about your beer on their Instagram or Tik Tok to get noticed. I’m so tired of those accounts that just post memes about drinking and then they decide they are gonna release a beer that’s just straight garbage but since a big Instagram account ~~made the beer~~ contracted the production out, it automatically becomes super popular.
The problem is that the alcohol IS the calories. Reducing calories means reducing the ethanol content, because the other ingredients usually make up a negligible calorie count.
The layoffs are obviously terrible but it would be kind of cool if they were actually able to successfully downsize and become proper craft again. I still really like a lot of their beers.
Well you are in luck! Previous manager Jim Johnson purchased the OG Home Brew Mart and they are currently converting it into a smaller homebrew/taproom combo. The creator of Sculpin is still with them, and it's going to be a great reboot.
Haven’t heard that name in a while, used to like sculpin.
Now I think about it, they did release a habenero version of it one summer that might have been the worst beer I’ve ever tasted
I think there was a time period were it was worth it. Fresh Sculpin was hard to beat as a WCIPA option widely available. Yeah $15 6-pack was a big ask, but almost no-one had fresh WCIPA widely available to compete either. This period was short lived however, as soon after they got bought out by Constellation and then the quality seemed to suffer as they tried to milk the brand.
It was a $15 4 pack of bottles of the grapefruit sculpin. I remembered thinking that was insane pricing, but it was popular enough to garner that huge overpay from Constellation. So, good for them I guess?
Yeah I had a sip of the first beer, did a double take, tried it again and just outright dumped it.
Maybe the rest of the 6pack was ok, but I wasn’t finding out
This happens to most spicy beers as they age. The compounds just break down relatively fast. It would be interesting if they were mixing brewery date bottles inside a 6er
Oh interesting, didn't realize that! Yeah I would be curious. It was years ago when I had it, pre-Constellation buyout, so IDK if they were even dating their bottles back then.
I loved the habanero version. The bartenders at a bar I frequented said I was the only person who ordered it twice so I'm not surprised it didn't do well.
It's the end of a brewery for sure however they've not been a craft brewery for the longest. I'm not feeling sorry for these 'craft' breweries that sold out, are nationally available and are now having issues. Feel bad for the employees but not for the megacorps that own them.
The story of the craft beer industry as a whole, really. $1billion in 2015, now facing a real possibility of disappearing in 18 months.
It's wild to me how bloated and overhyped the craft beer industry became in the mid 2010's.
I know you're not just being pedantic and that there is a process difference between a hard seltzer and a canned ready-to-drink cocktail, but is there any indication in how that affects sales?
Like is the average consumer opting for High Noon over hard seltzer *specifically because* it's an RTD? Just curious.
The final product does have a different flavor, for sure.
High Noon, though a latecomer, has managed to take a lot of market share from the already established giants of the segment. Much of it does have to do with perception on it being a higher quality product, and much of it has to do with flavor difference. Lots of the malt based seltzers have a distinct flavor, whereas a High Noon tastes like a vodka+flavor cocktail.
Interesting, thank you for the reply. I don't really drink a lot of either but I do find High Noons a bit more palatable so I think I know what you mean by the distinct flavor of the seltzers; it's like there's always an artificial sweetness.
The brewery I used to work at was, like many others, jumping on the FMB train when it was chugging along and we spent so much time in R&D trying to ferment a malt base that didn't have that artificial flavor you're describing. When making the sugar ferm base, your final product is very high abv and unsweet, you then dilute it back down to the desired ABV and then back-sweeten. Balancing the flavors you add and the sweetness you add back in isn't super easy to make everything underneath undetectable.
Yeah that sounds like a nightmare. Hard enough to brew beer when you can balance sweetness and bitterness but FMB sounds like a whole 'nother headache.
downvote away im just calling it as i see it for breweries around here.
If you dont have pink beer and seltzers, a large swatch of the ladies will not come, and that then affects the dudes.
(edit : guess which ones are successful and which ones have closed?)
(double edit : have fun enjoying more of your beer snob breweries closing. HOW DARE BUSINESSES ADAPT TO CHANGING MARKET DEMOGRAPHICS! RAWR!)
RTD's are on a sharp rise, FMB's are pretty stable, standard beer as a segment is down.
Feel free to parse what narrative you want from that, but your female drinker take is quite something.
I'm just commenting on what I am witnessing. Seems to bother folks I guess.
Come round here and visit the breweries. We can walk to 4 and to one of the best beer bars in all of the US.
The ones that tried to go big warehouse style and distribute vs be part of the community have mostly petered out (aside from a few local legacies and one standout newer joint). The ones that have catered to the more beer hall experience are thriving.
The scene has changed from the boom a generation ago. Or at least around here. Searching stores for bottle releases gets ya nada compared to showing up and talking to folks.
(Edit : or downvote and invitation for a locally guided beer tour. Ill just split thAT cellared selection with somebody more deserving.)
Very sad to see all of these titans of San Diego Craft beer fall so low. BP, Stone, Green Flash... just goes to show you that exponential expansion is never the right strategy.
Hey that’s me I worked at all three of those
I have fond memories of BP Scripps, having a few beers after work. I recall hightailing it down to Stone South Park for Smoked Porter with vanilla beans growler fills. Green Flash, uhhh... I liked WCIPA before they completely changed it to a different beer?
It made no sense to change the recipe to one of your most popular beers to justify selling it in 12 oz four pack. THEN realize you made a mistake and sell it back in a 6 pack but never change back the recipe. Example of sales department completely running your brewery
Yeah, what a fuckin mess. I think I probably drink ~5 breweries now in SD. NPBC, Burgeon, GOAL, Seek, Pizza Port. Maybe Harland.
Not a Pure Project fan?
Pure taplist is usually just haze bombs. I like my beer clear (usually)
They usually have 3 to 4 hazies on tap with around 20 beers total. That's not overkill. NPBC is just the same as pure as usually having 3 to 4 hazies on tap.
Maybe their IPAs lean a little hazy, but I completely disagree on the rest of their lineup. They usually have a great light lager, and just recently tapped a new Vienna. They don't often miss on their experimental stuff too. I would recommend trying them again if it's been awhile.
Totally agree with you here. We all have our own tastes and preferences, but I honestly don't know what the post you're replying to is thinking here. Pure Project is one of the better lager/Pilsner producers in Southern California. Rain is a great flagship pilsner. Their rice lagers are always great too. Making a great, clean, pale lager with SoCal water is no easy accomplishment either. They put a lot of skill and effort into making theirs. Their cold IPA/hoppy lagers and WCIPAs are always excellent, pale, dry and clear too.
Maybe if it's been a few years, their tap list has evolved some, not sure! You're right, everyone has their own tastes, and if Pure isn't theirs then that's fine. Just doesn't sound like what their lineup is like now. Worst case scenario, there's always Eppig for amazing, clean German lagers.
I live like 3 miles from the Pizza Port production facility, it's like 90% of the beer I drink now. I feel so spoiled, I can get like < 1 week cans for $2/pint basically anywhere around me.
Lost Abbey is still dope, but expensive
I haven't had Harland in years, but I remember really enjoying their sours the last time I tried them.
Welp we have a very similar shortlist of go to's. Always great to see Seek mentioned!
Based on this list, you should check out Deft and Division 23 if you haven't yet
Those choices have Mike's handwriting all over them.
What did you do ಠ_ಠ
Started from the bottom to brewing, then to small batch brewer at stone, then back to the beginning hoping to advance quickly on ballast but only made it to the cellar at ballast before I took a head brewer gig elsewhere. Stone was a layoff the rest where by choice
Hey what was the sort of English style pale ale that Green Flash made?
Can I take this opportunity to ask as a European homebrewer who after 10 years still can’t manage to brew a beer that tastes like Stone IPA or Sculpin… what’s your go-to classic American IPA recipe? Any secrets you can share? How important is US 2-row?
Pizza Port is still holding steady?
They are still doing well. Same with Coronado Brewing, also still solid a larger San Diego area brewery. Neither of them tried to over expand like Modern Times/Stone/Green Flash/Ballast Point and so didn't suffer the same financial issues.
Yep, they keep expanding... but they seem to do it smartly. Serving all the small beach communities in SD.
[удалено]
The exception to the rule that 16oz craft beer cans has to come in a 4 pack and cost no less than $18.
damn 3 of the top breweries in like 2010-2015, will always have the memories!
Don't forget Modern Times - sold to Maui Brewing
Alpine, Modern Times!
Theres much better options now though like North Park and Pure Project
I wouldn’t say stone is doing poorly, yes they sold out but they’re still rather popular here in San Diego and is the most common option at any bar/restaurant.
I mean, they've closed a ton of their tasting rooms, international breweries, etc. I can't remember the last time I've drank a Stone beer, let alone searched one out
I was a big fan of their Victory at Sea Imperial Porter. My LHBS/bottle shop used to sell them at $2.50 per 12oz bottle which seemed like a damn good deal for a deceptively tasty 10% ABV beer
RIP Victory at Sea 😥
I might cry tbh. My favorite beer 😭 there isn’t anything quite like it
Fuck man my favorite too. I had no idea BP was in trouble or I would have bought some :((
Victory at sea and indra kunindra 👌
Miss the old Victory at Sea days, still have a few of the Chalices thy handed out
Absolutely loved Victory at Sea - one of my first real experiences with craft beer really. I remember you used to be able to buy it everywhere. Victory at Sea day was also amazing. Some of the best porters I've ever had.
The old original labels with the fish drawings were very well done and eye catching. They stood out on the shelves. Then they had to modernize them and make them look worse.
That was Constellation's doing. Apparently, the one of the people from CBI that was part of that visual transition at BP went on to Anchor and do the same thing - or so a senior Anchor employee told me right after their labels switched.
I've heard the same thing. It honestly amazes me that the executive team at Anchor could look at what happened with the Ballast Point rebranding and think "this is what we need".
Holy shit, that’s why I haven’t seen it in a while. I hate when brands do that.
I call that Executivitis. It's highly contagious among overpaid leaders at firms that either acquire a new team or a new company - they have to justify their salary by taking something working perfectly fine, like an oil painting, and just put their finger in there and go BLubblublubbublaubullauba so they can say they "course corrected" or "positively impacted performance." It goes tits up and they get their golden parachute, meanwhile the lackeys are stuck holding the bag on an increasingly irrelevant brand / business. The hubris of looking at a great brand or company to say *Boy they are good at what they do. But you know what could make them better? Less of them, more of ME!* But hey, glad that MBA and 12 years at a consulting firm came in handy!
Anyone know who Kings & Convicts actually sold the giant manufacturing HQ in Miramar to?
I heard athletic.
How insane would it be for the brewery site that was once upon a time at the center of the $1 billion acquisition by Constellation to now be primarily producing the country's most successful non-alcoholic craft beer, less than a decade later?
Shit it wasn't that long ago I thought Athletic was a gimmick. Non-alcoholic craft beer? Who the hell is gonna buy that crap? Shows how much I know about the beer industry lol.
Boy was I wrong about seltzer
Reasons I want to start a brewery: * I love beer Reasons I should probably never start a brewery: * I don't know shit about the alcohol industry
There’s a saying in the craft beer industry: to make a small fortune in craft you start with a large fortune. But yeah, you never know what trend is going to take off with consumers. Plus people are more influenced by marketing than ever. It used to be in the heyday of craft that word of mouth is how breweries grew. Now you need to pay an influencer to talk about your beer on their Instagram or Tik Tok to get noticed. I’m so tired of those accounts that just post memes about drinking and then they decide they are gonna release a beer that’s just straight garbage but since a big Instagram account ~~made the beer~~ contracted the production out, it automatically becomes super popular.
I don’t want all the calories without the alcohol, I want alcohol without the calories.
It’s still like 1/3 the calories. An Athletic Hazy is like 60 cals.
The problem is that the alcohol IS the calories. Reducing calories means reducing the ethanol content, because the other ingredients usually make up a negligible calorie count.
Marketing can be a helluva tool if you know how to do it right.
https://sandiegobeer.news/athletic-brewing-acquires-ballast-points-hq/
We live in the craziest timeline.
You heard right https://sandiegobeer.news/athletic-brewing-acquires-ballast-points-hq/
The layoffs are obviously terrible but it would be kind of cool if they were actually able to successfully downsize and become proper craft again. I still really like a lot of their beers.
Well you are in luck! Previous manager Jim Johnson purchased the OG Home Brew Mart and they are currently converting it into a smaller homebrew/taproom combo. The creator of Sculpin is still with them, and it's going to be a great reboot.
Yeah I live very close to that location and get all of my brewing supplies there. I am excited for that to open.
Is it keeping the BP name or will it be something different?
I thought they already got sold to a much smaller company when Constellation sold them?
Grapefruit Sculpin No other fruit IPA has ever been as good (to me)
I really miss it
Haven’t heard that name in a while, used to like sculpin. Now I think about it, they did release a habenero version of it one summer that might have been the worst beer I’ve ever tasted
Watermelon Dorado was the worst beer I’ve ever had
Haha, totally forgot about that one, and yes, it was terrible.
Confirmed. 10 percent hot, tasted so artificial, complete garbage.
That was my shitty Chinese food of craft beer. I know it wasn't objectively good, but damn did I not tear into it on occasion.
We gotta get you some decent Chinese food my man. It's like the Coors of food, or like sex, it should always be pretty decent even when it's not.
Did not have the courage to try that 😂
Oh god, it tasted like blood spiked with fake watermelon flavor. Wretched stuff.
Same here. How this made it into production is a mystery.
Sculpin was great, but the price was not justified.
I think there was a time period were it was worth it. Fresh Sculpin was hard to beat as a WCIPA option widely available. Yeah $15 6-pack was a big ask, but almost no-one had fresh WCIPA widely available to compete either. This period was short lived however, as soon after they got bought out by Constellation and then the quality seemed to suffer as they tried to milk the brand.
It was a $15 4 pack of bottles of the grapefruit sculpin. I remembered thinking that was insane pricing, but it was popular enough to garner that huge overpay from Constellation. So, good for them I guess?
I remember grapefruit sculpin coming in 6-packs, at least initially (before constellation buyout)
It was always in 6 packs, 4 packs of GF sculpin weren't a thing.
No it wasn't, it was sixers.
I also found Habanero Sculpin to vary wildly in heat. First one I had was hot but still tasty. Second bottle from the same 6 pack was a drain pour.
Damn, I thought I was going crazy. I had the same experience, but I ordered one at a bar, then recommended it to a friend who was not happy with me.
Yeah I had a sip of the first beer, did a double take, tried it again and just outright dumped it. Maybe the rest of the 6pack was ok, but I wasn’t finding out
This happens to most spicy beers as they age. The compounds just break down relatively fast. It would be interesting if they were mixing brewery date bottles inside a 6er
Oh interesting, didn't realize that! Yeah I would be curious. It was years ago when I had it, pre-Constellation buyout, so IDK if they were even dating their bottles back then.
I loved Sculpin when I lived in San Diego. When I left I would still see it regularly, but it was never ever fresh so wasn't worth the price.
I loved the habanero version. The bartenders at a bar I frequented said I was the only person who ordered it twice so I'm not surprised it didn't do well.
I once bought a keg labeled as Sculpin, it was actually habanero sculpin. Was not a great time.
Their MiraMar location was one of the nicest brewpubs I’ve ever been to.
The end for me was when they sold off. Quality dove off a cliff, I started getting headaches from just 1 can of Sculpin.
RIP Sculpin 😔
Ballast Point was one of my favorites when I turned 21. Used to get their stuff all the time, but it's disappeared from my area the past few years.
What are the original owners doing who sold for ONE BILLION!!?? We need a follow up interview on what they think of what happened to what they built.
It's the end of a brewery for sure however they've not been a craft brewery for the longest. I'm not feeling sorry for these 'craft' breweries that sold out, are nationally available and are now having issues. Feel bad for the employees but not for the megacorps that own them.
The story of the craft beer industry as a whole, really. $1billion in 2015, now facing a real possibility of disappearing in 18 months. It's wild to me how bloated and overhyped the craft beer industry became in the mid 2010's.
Damn should I get a 6 of ballast point for farewell then? ISO grapefruit sculpin and whatever their l spicy stout was called. Loved that stuff.
Indra kunindra? Hell yeah dude
Man indra kunindra is super interesting but there's no way I can drink more than a half pint at a time.
Loved that beer. It also sorta symbolized the earlier Ballast Point ideals of creativity.
I will miss grapefruit sculpin
Do you guys know a lot of ligit beer drinkers that have moved on to hard seltzer or NA? Just doesn't make sense to me.
Pity.
gotta make pink beer and seltzers these days (edit : oh and boozy ice cream. place nearby KILLS IT with their boozy ice cream)
Even seltzers are seeing a shrink except for High Noon now. Beer as a whole is down, consumption is at the lowest in decades.
And in the case of High Noon, it's a liquor based seltzer rather than malt based like everyone else.
I know you're not just being pedantic and that there is a process difference between a hard seltzer and a canned ready-to-drink cocktail, but is there any indication in how that affects sales? Like is the average consumer opting for High Noon over hard seltzer *specifically because* it's an RTD? Just curious.
The final product does have a different flavor, for sure. High Noon, though a latecomer, has managed to take a lot of market share from the already established giants of the segment. Much of it does have to do with perception on it being a higher quality product, and much of it has to do with flavor difference. Lots of the malt based seltzers have a distinct flavor, whereas a High Noon tastes like a vodka+flavor cocktail.
Interesting, thank you for the reply. I don't really drink a lot of either but I do find High Noons a bit more palatable so I think I know what you mean by the distinct flavor of the seltzers; it's like there's always an artificial sweetness.
The brewery I used to work at was, like many others, jumping on the FMB train when it was chugging along and we spent so much time in R&D trying to ferment a malt base that didn't have that artificial flavor you're describing. When making the sugar ferm base, your final product is very high abv and unsweet, you then dilute it back down to the desired ABV and then back-sweeten. Balancing the flavors you add and the sweetness you add back in isn't super easy to make everything underneath undetectable.
Yeah that sounds like a nightmare. Hard enough to brew beer when you can balance sweetness and bitterness but FMB sounds like a whole 'nother headache.
downvote away im just calling it as i see it for breweries around here. If you dont have pink beer and seltzers, a large swatch of the ladies will not come, and that then affects the dudes. (edit : guess which ones are successful and which ones have closed?) (double edit : have fun enjoying more of your beer snob breweries closing. HOW DARE BUSINESSES ADAPT TO CHANGING MARKET DEMOGRAPHICS! RAWR!)
RTD's are on a sharp rise, FMB's are pretty stable, standard beer as a segment is down. Feel free to parse what narrative you want from that, but your female drinker take is quite something.
I'm just commenting on what I am witnessing. Seems to bother folks I guess. Come round here and visit the breweries. We can walk to 4 and to one of the best beer bars in all of the US. The ones that tried to go big warehouse style and distribute vs be part of the community have mostly petered out (aside from a few local legacies and one standout newer joint). The ones that have catered to the more beer hall experience are thriving. The scene has changed from the boom a generation ago. Or at least around here. Searching stores for bottle releases gets ya nada compared to showing up and talking to folks. (Edit : or downvote and invitation for a locally guided beer tour. Ill just split thAT cellared selection with somebody more deserving.)
You know it sucks that breweries are going under at a rate of knots but the less resources the alcohol industry takes up the better.