Coronavirus at One: Unexpected Benefits
In this ongoing series, I have been posting the reflections of brewers and cidermakers as they navigate the coronavirus pandemic. This week we'll have a series of our regulars discussing the pandemic at one year. You can see other posts in the series here.
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Some smaller breweries have to allocate production time to those beers that sell well. While many breweries have used the pandemic as a time to focus, these breweries can actually expand their offerings. For Heater Allen, that means being able to attend to sometimes neglected members of the line-up, as the brewery’s Lisa Allen explains.
It’s hard to believe that we’ve been through the slog of the coronavirus for a year now. Sometimes it seems like it’s been so much longer; sometimes I feel as if only a few months have passed. I was just chatting with a couple of friends while we sat outside getting hailed on (ahhh, NW spring) that it was weird to think about the things we did right before everything shut down and whether the shutdown will become an event that everyone remembers where they were, what they did right before it. Such events like 9/11, the JFK assination, the moon landing, or the fall of the Berlin Wall? Will it be that crucial and life changing of an event?
As for the brewery, Heater Allen is doing...okay. We’ve managed to weather the storm pretty well. With a small staff, low overhead costs, and our ability to move a number of beers into cans we will come out of this fine. A little bruised and battered, but fine. The last couple of months have been a bit disappointing sales-wise and yet as stuff begins to open up we are starting to see things pick back up—both in can and on draft. I am optimistic.
There have been a few benefits to this whole Covid mess as well. We have been able to brew a much larger variety of beers, which I think I have mentioned in previous iterations of this series. Pre-covid we had to brew so much Pils we just didn’t have time for much else. People have really enjoyed our single hop Pilsner series and it has been a lot of fun for me to experiment with a variety of hops. We’ve also put a lot of beers into can that would usually just be available on draft so it’s been fun to get a wider release on some of those beers, beers that I’m really proud of.
Head Brewer Lisa Allen with her father, founder Rick Allen.
As more of my friends and family members get vaccinated I’m looking forward to seeing some folks I haven’t seen in a while and to hang out inside without—gasp—a mask! All while being super careful, of course. I think all of us are ready to go back to something that looks like normal and yet I believe that “normal” will never look the same. I am just looking forward to my favorite local watering hole to open back up for on premise consumption—even if that means I have to brave the weather.