Coronavirus, Kombucha, and Communal Yeast Strains

Three items in today’s news roundup—one disturbing, one unexpected, and one illuminating.

Coronavirus Here and There

Yesterday, the world recorded 640,000 new cases of Covid-19, and 32% of them were located in the United States. We also logged nearly 3,000 deaths. This is the worst the pandemic has been in the US, and by most accounts it’s just ramping up.

Some of the stats are frankly staggering. Over 10% of North Dakotans have had a confirmed positive case. Twenty-two states have seen a confirmed infection rate of 5% or more. If we exclude Andorra, a minuscule country with 77,000 residents, no country has an infection rate above 5.8%. Eleven states (!) have higher rates.

Oregon continues to do well by standards relative to the US—but still middling by world standards. Our infection rate (which may be artificially low due to poor testing) is 1.9%, twice the world average and three times worse than Norway. And the state is currently doing quite badly, and may begin to look like the rest of the country.

I don’t know if there’s a correlation, but with one exception, beery countries are not doing well. Belgium continues to be the Europe’s problem child, with a 5.1% confirmed infection rate, and Czechia isn’t far behind with 5.0%. The UK hasn’t done great, but sits in the middle of the pack at 2.4%. Germany is doing notably better at containing the virus (infection rate 1.3%), while the government does much more to support citizens and businesses. I had an exchange with Matthias Trum over email following my recent Schlenkerla post, and he explained how the government was handling things.

Government support is good: all wages of staff not working are covered for the time being, so we did not have to lay off anyone. And for the newest lockdown of taverns (Nov 2 - Jan 10, 2021) we are supposed to receive a compensation of 75% of net sales of the corresponding timeframe last year (wages refunds will be deducted from that). So that is probably better than being open with the fewer customers that would come in now. The compensation is supposed to be applied also to the suppliers of taverns (e.g. breweries), but only from a certain threshold of sales onwards (i.e. if they have more than 80% of sales in gastronomy), so this will be a tough call for many breweries. The brewery association is working on it, and I think at least the Bavarian government is aware of their responsibility to brewery diversity. Hopefully therefore not too many will close (so far I know of only one case, but they had it coming before anyhow).

Meanwhile, Congress is showing signs they might pass a modest bill to help Americans. Any help is welcome now.

Full Sail Transitions to Kombucha

Have you heard of Kyla hard kombucha? I hadn’t, but apparently it’s the beverage private equity firm Encore knows how to sell. They have done a miserable job with the brewery that makes Kyla, Hood River’s Full Sail. In the five years Encore has owned Full Sail, they’ve managed to nearly destroy the brand and turn it into an also-ran even in its home state, where it sells less than half the beer it did at purchase. But hey, kombucha!

Through September, Full Sail has produced more than 1.5 million gallons of alcoholic product taxed as wine this year. [Most of which is Kyla.] OLCC figures show that Full Sail began canning products classified as wine in a big way in 2018, but its production has exploded this year. It produced 403,000 gallons in 2018 and 513,000 gallons last year, and has already tripled that volume through September of this year, according to the most recent data available.

Encore’s portfolio focuses on food and beverage company, and the reason management destroyed Full Sail’s brand is treating it like soda or boxed cookies; every couple months, they flooded the beer aisle with more “flavors” of beer. Turning the company into a manufacturer of flavored malt beverages, where this model actual works, makes a lot more sense. For fans of the once-great brewery, however, it’s a sad end.

Communal Yeasts

A final note that maybe doesn’t quite count as current events—though it may be news to you! I was listening to an old MBAA podcast interview with Fritz Maytag. (Some of the discussions are overly specific to brewing operations, but it’s an excellent resource.)

I love listening to Fritz because he is a bridge to an earlier era in brewing, and because he was new to the craft and worked at a weird, little brewery, he thought about things deeply. I’d like to direct you to one passage, about yeast. Have you ever stopped to wonder why strains often have such poor provenance? Because brewers in cities all shared strains:

“We used to get it from the other breweries. We only brewed once a month and we tried to keep the yeast in a milk can in the refrigerator, and it would overflow and it was full of bacteria. So it was clear to me we needed to use fresh yeast, so I would go around to the breweries—and we’d only brew once a month—so I’d alternate, Lucky Lager this month and Berghie next month, and then to Falstaff the next month and then to Hamm’s and then to Grace Brothers up in Santa Rosa. So I only troubled any one brewer maybe twice a year. I would take my milk can and they would fill it with liquid yeast, and we’d start out each month with fresh yeast.

This isn’t unique to San Francisco. George Howell, an old Scottish brewer, told me the same thing was standard in Edinburgh in the 1960s, and until the 80s, breweries around Roeselare would got to Rodenbach for their yeast. I’m sure this was typical everywhere. It’s why those breweries in Belgium and England that repitched their own strains are so valuable.”

And then there’s this amazing tidbit I’ll leave you with:

“We still had bacteria. I was deep into brewing bacteriology in those days, so I was very aware that even the yeast we were getting from the other breweries. Of course it had Lactobacillus and Pediococcus, but the numbers were small so it wasn’t instant spoilage the way it was when we were using our own.”

None of those facilities exist anymore, and most of the regionals died between the ‘60s and ‘80s. It’s not surprising when you learn how things had degraded in so many of the facilities. My guess is quality plays an under-appreciated role in the consolidation of the 20th century.