Coronavirus Diaries at Five: Baerlic Brewing
Five years ago, during the acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, I collected reports from several Oregon breweries as they struggled to navigate the crisis. This week I will have some follow-ups from the same breweries on what has happened since. Today we hear from Ben Parsons of Baerlic Brewing.
Baerlic started life as a scrappy brewery in SE Portland with a small taproom and a self-distribution model. They soon started to distinguish themselves as one of Portland’s best breweries and began expanding. They took over a neighboring pizza place, launched a project with a pub in a cart pod, and added another pub during Covid. Ben agrees that things are not great, but sounds a call to action. Oh, and one added note: Baerlic’s flagship IPA, one of the city’s best, is called Punk Rock Time.
Covid really messed with my sense of time—the last 3ish years feel like one and five at the same time. So it's rather odd to think about how the last five years has shaped the business ever since the bomb dropped. On top of that, I currently find myself in what is known as my mid life. I'm 45. I have two young boys—ages 8 and almost 12—so I'm that guy who schleps his kids around all the time to school, soccer, sleepovers etc. I definitely don't go out as often as I used to and have succumbed to the homebody life, wasting the extra hours I do have away on woodworking in my wood shop. Whether that's a result of Covid or middle age or both, I don't know.
What I do know is that when I do head out into the local beer world, there very much seems a sense of malaise, or even dread, within the industry at large. Whether its the ever-churning rumor mill of who's gonna go out of business next, or the glut of unemployed and capable brewers looking for opportunity, or the sense of accomplishment and sympathy you see in the eyes of those who have left the industry completely, it’s all just a bunch of downer shit, which if I'm being honest kind of grinds my gears.
I get it. This is NOT the industry that existed before Covid. It's hard. From a business standpoint it IS harder than it ever has been. But I'd argue that it isn't that much harder than when we started—success was never guaranteed. It’s just a very different kind of hard. I talk more about efficiencies and bottom lines and butts in seats than I ever have, but I also know that I do this because I love the industry. I love the culture. I love having a beer (or two) with my team after work. I love walking through our taprooms and seeing people smile and laugh and really truly connect with one another. And while the struggle is real, it's still the fucking beer industry for fuck's sake and we should get back to acting like it. We should party more. Like…a lot more. As dumb as it sounds, craft beer IS a state of mind, man!
Many others have mentioned the fact that a lot of people, specifically the younger generations, aren't drinking as much. We can blame a lot of things for that—the optimizer influencers on the internet telling us cold plunges are better for our brains than a beer after work, or that grounding in your backyard soaking in the low angle UV light in our organic cotton underwear to better tune our circadian clock is better for our longevity than gathering with our friends for a couple of beers and storytelling. I would argue that they're just fucking wrong. Two things can be true at the same time and this either/or binary thinking is not good for us. 10,000 years of human history proves as much.
And yes, inflation, cost increases—and now tariffs— aren't making things any easier. And real unknown challenges lie ahead. But, I truly wonder if we could get the posi vibes back into our industry, back into our business plans, back into our souls; that we could turn things around a bit. This is a bit of the chicken or the egg, but I believe if we succumb to the downer mindset, then we will surely keep heading down. But, if we could collectively turn the stoke up a bit—as difficult as it might be to muster—then maybe we'd be the party that everyone would want to go to again. And who knows, when the cold plunge pools begin to collect dust, maybe we can use em to keep our beer cold!
We have a saying at Baerlic that originated in our original taproom as a tool to increase the energy and engagement of the customers in the space—Louder, More Punk Rock! As in, turn up the music so that people have to engage their core a bit to talk. They have to lean into the table a bit to both hear and be heard. This almost immediately increases the energy or the flow of the space as people have to physically engage more with their tablemates. And as Punk Rock typically has a predictable and upbeat tempo, it just adds to and maintains that energy. It's an ethos we still conjure regularly to turn the party up and it works swimmingly.
Come on folks, louder, more punk rock!