Sightglass: The Class of 2012
This is the latest chapter in an ongoing collaboration between the Beervana Blog and Reuben's Brews. In today's post, I look at the modern era of American brewing, born around 2012, as hoppy ales became the ascendant craft style in America. What do a selection of breweriers founded that year tell us about where we were and how far we've come?
The age of little brewery start-ups began in the late 1970s, bumping along without much direction for decades. Breweries opened at quite a clip in the 1990s, leaping from around 300 to 1,500 by the end of the century. Yet for all those new businesses, they accounted for just 3% of the beer sold in the United States. Worse, the aughts were a time of near complete stagnation: the US added just 300 over the decade and those 1,800 breweries were still making less than 5% of the beer. Although there were certainly advances between 1985 and 2005, this whole era could be lumped together as a formative, pre-modern stage of American brewing.
In 2011, an important shift happened, and it augured a massive change that was underway. That year, the data analytics firm SymphonyIRI marked the first time that IPA was the most popular style among these smaller breweries, as it has remained since. This was the onset of a remarkable period in beer, when the number of breweries went from around 2,700 to 9,300 today. It’s a little bit hard to calculate the share of the market these little breweries now claim—in part because big breweries also makes this beer, because “beer” as a category includes a bunch of stuff that’s not beer, and because a lot of the little breweries are now owned by larger breweries. It’s a sizable percentage, though—and bigger if you talk dollars rather than just barrels. Most importantly, the past decade saw a lot more change in American brewing than it had the three previous decades. This period was when American brewing entered its modern phase.
In today’s post, I’m going to look at a sample from the class of 2012. Five hundred breweries opened that year, and those still in business are celebrating their tenth anniversary in 2022. They stepped into the brewing world with the expectations, assumptions, and understanding of the pre-modern age, and over their lifetimes experienced a world of enormous change, fast growth, and the abrupt, Covid slowdown. Each of these breweries has something to tell us about this era, and together they paint the picture of American brewing.
The Breweries
Travel back in time a decade, if you will. AB InBev (ABI) shocked the world by purchasing Goose Island outright a year earlier. It came with an asterisk, though: most of Goose Island had already been sold to Craft Brew Alliance, itself partly owned by ABI. Perhaps, many in the industry thought, it wasn’t the start of period of acquisitions, just an outlier event. Craft brewing still seemed like a small-time industry, and breweries battled big beer, they didn’t sell out to them. (Boy, was that wrong!)
Beer-wise, it was a simpler time. The best-selling beers nationally included not just Sam Adam’s Boston Lager but (amazingly) Sam Adam’s Light, Widmer Hefeweizen, and New Belgium Fat Tire. Amber ales were the third-largest selling craft style. IPAs like Lagunitas and New Belgium’s new gambit, a beer called Ranger, were trending, but it wasn’t obvious this was a permanent change rather than a fad. Even after three decades, most of the country didn’t drink craft beer and had an unsophisticated sense of it. Many parts of the country were still beer deserts. That’s the world into which the following breweries stepped, none of them able to know what the next ten years would bring.
Below is a sample of the class of 2012. I’ve tried to arrange the nine breweries to shed light on some of the key developments in the decade, particularly in the way people thought about and later developed their breweries. The inspiration for this post was Reuben’s tenth anniversary, and the brewery is a great place to start because its launch was so typical of the earlier, pre-modern era of brewing. From there, I hope the breweries will flesh out the story of the decade.
Reuben’s Brews, Seattle
The story of how Adam and Grace Robbings came to found Reuben’s is so typical you can go all the way back to Sierra Nevada for a similar narrative. Grace bought Adam a homebrew kit, and he fell in love with his hobby. His beer was good, and eventually they wondered if they could shoestring-and-bootstrap his passion into a business. Where the story takes on a decidedly modern flavor is what came next. Reuben’s launched with a very homebrew-y lineup of oddball beers, including a bunch of rye ales. The stereotype of a homebrewer is a tinkerer who is off to the next recipe before their current batch is in the keg. That was very much true of Reuben’s, but amid all of that experimentation, a theme emerged that matched the times: IPAs. It’s a joke now that every Northwest brewery has to make an IPA—and nearly true—but not many have managed to make their names synonymous with the most popular style. When I visited this spring, Matt Lutton told me that the brewery had never lost barrelage, even during Covid, and most years they grew rapidly. That’s the power of IPA and what a timely shift from rye beers could do for your brewery in the 2010s.
Gigantic Brewing, Portland, OR
In a contrast to Reuben’s, Gigantic’s arrival seemed either insightfully futuristic or amusingly misguided. The two veteran brewers who founded Gigantic, Ben Love and Van Havig, created a fun, offbeat, and immersive brand and tried something that was radical at the time: offering a beer lineup almost entirely out of single-release creations, with just one regular, full-time beer. They found artists to ink a new label for their constant stream of new beers and added occasional musical tie-ins, a comic series, and fun events. Whether by luck or design, it meant they were always able to experiment and evolve with the industry. Eventually, that led to an IPA-heavy rotation. But it also meant they could see which beers were popular favorites, and eventually a regular line-up did evolve. The brand was also built on what in 2012 was a very good outlet: 22-ounce bottles. As that trend faded, Gigantic resisted cans and became one of the two stalwarts in Oregon’s refillable bottle program, shifting in recent years to half-liter bottles. Both owners wanted to create a small, stable business with low debt, and this allowed them to pursue their offbeat strategies and weather Covid, even while expanding two three pubs/taprooms.
Sante Adarius, Captitola, CA
For decades, a brewery’s business model didn’t deviate too much from a standard blueprint. Call it the “generalist with a flagship” model. Breweries covered their bases with a number of beers for every taste. By 2012, the market had grown enough that some breweries thought it might support a niche focus. A then-married couple, Adair Paterno and Tim Clifford, wanted to make complex, mixed-fermentation beers at a time when they were very rare and mostly not made well (at least in the US). It was also a moment when some folks thought these kinds of beers might play a larger role in American brewing in the future. They were right—sort of. Located on the north coast of Monterey Bay, Sante Adairius was and remains one of the country’s most-respected breweries. They were one of the early adopters of the wine-club model of subscription sales, and their club, SARA’s Cellar, is closed to new members. In its decade of life, Sante Adairius has been called one of the country’s best breweries numerous times by a range of outlets. They have helped elevate this style of brewing, a modern adaptation of Belgian methods, to become one of the most accomplished in the world. On the other hand, breweries who went in deep on these kinds of beers have found that customers have a limited appetite for them. Sante Adairius has demonstrated how to succeed with this model, but there aren’t room for too many breweries to repeat their success.
Two Roads, Stratford, CT
Two Roads, despite the reference to Frost’s famous road less traveled, crafted a business model that was close to the polar opposite of Sante Adairius. The ownership group who founded the company included Phil Markowski, the beloved author of Farmhouse Ales. Yet Two Roads was anything but rustic. The owners found a gorgeous (and huge, at 100,000 square feet) 1912 factory in disuse and refurbished it with a modern and expensive brewhouse. From the start, the idea was to offer contract brewing services in tandem with the house beer. Under the Two Roads brand, the brewery followed rather than led trends, and now has a massive product line, with a core group focused on IPAs, but one that includes hard seltzers, vodka cocktails, and non-alcoholic beers. While well-made, Two Roads wasn’t seeking to compete with the buzzy New England darlings—these were beers pitched to a grocery-store audience. Contract brewing has always had a role in the US, and with the massive growth of the early teens, it looked like a good bet. The brewery moved into the top-50 largest craft breweries list in 2018 and made it as high as 44 in 2019, with production around 150,000 barrels. Unfortunately, that was also when sales started to slow nationally, and capacity was no longer so tight. In the most recent list, Two Roads had fallen out of the top 50. With a fairly bland brand and no calling-card flagship, the Two Roads brand has struggled in the Covid and post-Covid eras.
Tree House, Charlton, MA
Buzzy New England breweries, you say? None was hotter than Tree House, which was one of the key breweries to introduce not just a new beer style, but a new business model. In fact, if you wanted to capture a decade in a single brewery, it would almost certainly be Tree House. The decade was defined by a beer originally called New England IPA, and Tree House was one of its central authors. More than that, the brewery saw the same opportunities in constantly-changing beers that Gigantic did—Tree House just took it to another level. Beyond coaxing throngs to snatch up precious four-packs of cans with each release, Tree House managed to sell the beer for basically draft pint prices—all the while avoiding having to share the revenue with wholesalers or retailers. It was a model other breweries emulated, and a few have managed to echo Tree House’s success. It was a force of nature, a brewery that left other owners shaking their heads in amazement. Over the course of the decade, Tree House expanded to three other sites, and in a fourth they produce house ciders. Thanks to a handful of New England breweries, nearly every player in the industry turned to hazy, juicy flavors, and colorful 16-ounce cans. Long after seltzer has become a footnote, we’ll remember Tree House’s impact.
Societe, San Diego, CA
For reasons detailed in the listing above, San Diego has had a rough decade. Since the 1990s, the SoCal IPA was big, dry, bitter, citrusy, and clear—and out of step with a country falling in love with sweet, soupy, tropical-fruit bombs. In 2012, though, that phenomenon was years away, and Societe was free to make what I still think may be the best San Diego IPA—The Pupil. Co-founder and brewer Travis Smith (who left Societe in 2019) got his start at Russian River, and he knew how to bring the elements of an IPA together. His IPAs weren’t hazy, but they were juicy and predicted the coming trends. Over the years, Societe continued to make beers that were at once understated for San Diego, yet accomplished—and they made traditional beers as well. They have even introduced a year-round 4.5% light beer, something that seemed normal enough for Societe (as opposed to the shock Stone delivered when it introduced Buenzveza.) As makers of the bombastic San Diego IPAs faltered, one after another—Ballast Point, Stone, Green Flash—Societe’s beers seemed poised to survive. This approach didn’t just make them stand out in a crowd of hop houses, it allowed them to transition more easily into the post-hazy world.
Union Craft Brewing, Baltimore, MD
In the 1980s and 1990s, the US brewing revival was suffused with a sense of purpose. People who started breweries seemed to have a sense of mission, as if making beer was an obvious public good. It was connected with the idea that little breweries were unleashing creativity and “craft,” and fighting the bland commodification of big beer. A lot changed in the teens as craft beer grew up. Many of the most successful breweries sold out, our awareness of the business of beer grew, and our romanticism died. Union is in this way a throwback to an earlier, more idealistic time. The brewery embarked on a very ambitious project in 2018 to create a market for local manufacturers in an old Sears building that now houses the brewery. It was a big part of their community focus. However, in a very teens moment, the brewery also had a serious #metoo incident when female employees accused co-founder and brewer Kevin Blodger of harassment. The brewery investigated the charges and Blodger left the company, but that didn’t satisfy everyone. It seemed to send the brewery into a phase of soul-searching, and they have been working on company culture to align with their values. The efforts seem to be working—it was voted best brewery by Baltimore Sun readers this year. Union had to decide if its idealism was core to the company or dispensable; so far it looks to be the former. But following the racial and gender awakenings of the teens, no brewery gets a pass.
Wicked Weed, Asheville, NC
We can’t talk about the past decade without mentioning the buyouts. In 2012, international giants hadn’t begun acquiring little breweries—a testament to how weak craft beer was then. With success and growth, however, big breweries reconsidered the little guys. Their volumes were comparatively tiny, but the margins were great and their products reached an audience that just wasn’t buying light beer. Beginning in 2014, the land grab began, and ABI added one of the hottest breweries in the hottest market in the South to their portfolio: Asheville’s Wicked Weed. As the buying frenzy got going, a certain kind of brewery emerged as the ideal candidate: brewery’s with well-appointed facilities and brands that were professional but not too distinctive—ideal for shaping to reach a mainstream audience. Wicked Weed was founded with a sizable outside investment, and launched with a large, two-story building that expanded with the addition of the Funkatorium in 2014. ABI saw potential in the non-wild side, though, and recast the label as an IPA brand. By the time Bud bought Wicked Weed, the buying phase had been going on a while. ABI had no reason to think the public would react negatively, but an interesting thing happened just after the purchase. Breweries that had signed up to participate in the forthcoming Funkatorium Invitational beer fest pulled out, and for the first time we saw that while consumers might yawn at the latest sale, small competitors weren’t so sanguine.
pFriem Family Brewers, Hood River, OR
Let’s return to the Northwest for the final brewery. pFriem (full disclosure: this blog’s other sponsor) has become a regional favorite, now equally known for their lagers and hoppy ales. But before it gets lost to the mists of time, let’s recall the brewery’s vision in 2012: “Pfriem (pronounced “Freem”) is introducing a line of beers that features Belgian-influenced ales, including a Wit, Strong Blonde, Belgo IPA, and Strong Dark, along with two Northwest favorites, an IPA and Blonde IPA.” In 2012, Belgium was having a moment in craft brewing. In Oregon, Upright and the Commons were up and running with strongly-Belgian identities, and the most lauded beer in the world (by beer geeks) was Westveleteren 12. As consumers became more sophisticated and beer was featured more prominently with food, the Belgian tradition seemed like a winning play. Needless to say, that’s not how it turned out. pFriem still has an expansive barrel-aging program and in 2019 they added a new blending facility with a coolship, but it didn’t take them long to start making hoppier beer. They were also one of the first breweries to offer a year-round pilsner, a beer that ultimately became their co-flagship, along with IPA. Had pFriem not been able to escape its Belgian identity, it might have gone the way of Ommegang.
What the Teens Taught Us
So much happened over the past decade it’s hard to process. It began with the shift to IPAs as the major style for small breweries, and after a few false starts, hazy IPAs became the real driver of growth. This spawned a new business model in which breweries released batches of one-off cans in the taproom, exciting avid fans who wanted rare, special beers. All of this was good for the craft segment, and small breweries blossomed and grew.
There were unexpected cross-currents, however. First came a wave of fizzy, low alcohol alternatives to beer, first with seltzer, but then waves of canned cocktails, and spiked waters, teas, sodas, and lemonades. Next, the pandemic basically ended draft sales for a time, forcing breweries to reinvent themselves. Finally, the industry confronted how overwhelmingly White and male they were, and went through a sometimes painful growing process as a result.
Amid all that, breweries somehow managed to survive in far greater numbers than anyone expected. The class of 2012 offers a few lessons about how the industry evolved. Tree House and Gigantic explored radically de-emphasizing a core-lineup approach to selling beer, and novelty was one of the key features of the decade. But as the market tightened, we saw how valuable and important a beloved flagship is. Two Roads could really use a tentpole beer to bring people back to the brand. Meanwhile, the growth in the market has created room for breweries selling niche products, particularly those with a loyal following willing to sign up for bottle clubs. Sante Adairius is the example here, but we could also point to lager-focused breweries that opened up more recently. Still, as pFriem demonstrates, breweries also have to shift gears and go where the drinkers are.
At the end of this decade of explosive growth, we have inherited a much larger, more sophisticated industry with more variety, brewery-to-brewery than at any time in American history. But with that maturity, we may have lost a bit of that naive, freewheeling fun that animated craft beer as people discovered new flavors and styles. Many people brought a similarly naive idealism into the past decade, thinking that the grubbiness of commerce would take a back seat to community and craft. The buyouts demonstrated the reality that beer is business, which dented some of that idealism. More significantly, charges of racism and sexism punctured beer’s self-image as a force of social good. Like any other collection of humans, it was not, as people argued at the beginning of the decade, “99% asshole-free.” Of course, that self-knowledge is a good thing, and one of the greatest watersheds over the past decade were the number of people from underrepresented groups coming to own breweries, make beer, and enjoy it together.
This maturity probably means the next decade will move a bit more slowly. Periods of explosive growth are usually followed by relative calm. Having written about beer for the past quarter century, however, I do approach the coming decade with humility. We never know what’s coming next, and we’re usually surprised by what arrives. But I’ve also learned that whatever does come is always entertaining. Cheers to the class of 2012, all of you, and best of luck going forward.