My personal taste complaint with a lot of people who open a brewery... Everyone seems to think that more hops = better beer. There are so many other possible flavors and types to a beer than some type of IPA that is absolutely overloaded with hops. But that seems to be a very common type of thing to brew. When I open something and am assaulted with the aroma of hops, it's not appealing anymore.

It was interesting 7-8 years ago. Now it's just "oh here we go again".

I have a personal theory that the overwhelming aroma and taste of hops in a beer can be used to mask many errors and missteps in the brewing process, which might be more easily tasted by the customer if it were, for example, a weissbier.

Quoth the article:

> Being intimately aware of the financial health of your company might not be glamorous, but it is as important as monitoring your fermentations or selecting hops.

At the advice of a therapist, a friend of mine started looking for things which bring him joy, with the phrasing, "I love $X. It brings me joy." We started doing it together, and I've also started doing it on my own. I realized that one of the things that brings me the most joy is a clean house; but I hated to clean. Somehow, verbalizing that a clean house brings me joy has made the process of cleaning... enjoyable. Cleaning went from something I 'had to' do for abstract (guilt from upbringing) or external reasons (friends and clients coming to the house), to something I do, just for me. And again, somehow, it has also made a clean house more enjoyable to me.

There will always be the parts you love and the parts you don't want to have to do. Selecting hops, especially for something that many people will potentially enjoy, is super fun (in my imagination anyway). But it is only by "being intimately aware of the financial health of your company" that you are even in a position to do such a thing. Based on my experience, connecting these two things in your psyche is the key to at least easing the burden, if not making the entire process enjoyable.

I have a friend who dropped everything in his life to start homebrewing and trying to enter the brewing industry. He's broke and miserable and doesn't understand why the jobs are so bad. I'm trying to convince him that the fact that people are willing to give up everything to take one of these jobs is why you have to give up everything.

It's ironic as well, because the types of jobs he is running away from (spreadsheets, sales, boredom) are even more pronounced in this industry.

I appreciate having a job completely removed from my interests in life. And I've found the inverse of the above axiom to be true: jobs that seem super unappealing from the outside are often the most rewarding. Either the people who do it really enjoy it, or get treated well to stay in their position.

For most of our history, humans have not had many if any choices about the type of lives they live or the work they do. It would make sense that we are ill equipped to handle making good choices.

Running a brewery ends up being more about running a business than actually brewing...

Every corp ends up being much more intensive in the administrative side once the process or product has been standardized or reached a stable version. Isn't this the case for most businesses, including tech?

Give me a brewery that isn't concrete floor, dark walls, and exposed ceiling, and I'll be a regular like Barney Grumble. Every one I've been to in LA is like this. All that hard surface makes it impossible to hear anyone without yelling, and breweries are not clubs, they are places to have beer and talk to your friends. Restaurants used to have carpeted floors and drapes for a reason——actually hearing your friends.

I wish there was a "Stripe Atlas" for brick and mortar businesses. 90% of the work to start a restaurant, cafe, shop, etc., must be the near identical to others colocated in the same city/state.

The rise of "ghost kitchens" tries to solve this in some way but I think there's opportunity to go further.

The world if full of people that like to eat/cook that open a restaurant, like to travel and open a hostel, like to do X and open Y. They all later realize it is a completely different endeavor.

OK, add brewery to the list of bed and breakfast, bar, restaurant, movie theater and book store. All things people fantasize about owning yet know nothing of how grindingly difficult and prone to failure they are. Dream on...

From what I've read and from talking to friends in the industry, there isn't a ton of money to be made making suds unless you get bought out for your brand. That said, I think it's a fun business for the right kind of person.

Running a brewery is generally far easier than running any other kind of alcoholic establishment. The permits are often easier and the hours are limited. One successful approach I've seen is to locate cheap light industrial space around well paying businesses in areas with horrible traffic. You'll capture a well behaved, affluent clientele and only need to open from 4-9pm. Even in towns with a saturated brewery market (San Diego...), there are areas which still need breweries because of the effects of traffic. Many folks would much rather wait for traffic to die down with a beer in their hands, and maybe grab a quick food truck dinner.

I've done a bit of consulting work for breweries and beer bars over the last couple of decades, nothing in the brewing process directly (mostly bespoke hardware and software solutions), but have had a great view into craft brewing.

it seems like there hasn't been any real technological progress in craft brewing since the 90's. in the 90's, there were unix based control systems, with X11 interfaces, for larger craft breweries, while smaller breweries were using notebooks and pens.

now, there are spreadsheets.

it seems like there's a lot of room for the booming craft beer industry to have a shake up in software.

Tony Macgee of Lagunitas has a full on book on this. Fun read. Henhouse and Lagunitas are basically across the street from each other and both have great beer. Bonus they are next to my office!

https://www.amazon.com/You-Want-Start-Brewery-Lagunitas/dp/1...

Discussion from 6 years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7375043

If anyone wants to experiment at home, the folks at Penny Arcade have a weekly stream where they create 'D&D-theme' beers:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v_dJC0AKD8&list=PLjZRIC6PME...

Names of previous concoctions:

* War Priest

* Long Rest

* Bardic Inspiration

* Little Dagger

They go into detail about what each ingredient will/should add to the final taste.

Something I'm noticing is the emergence of contract breweries who will take a recipe and a label, and brew up a batch of beer. Mostly over-hopped. I think that this kind of custom brewing with economies of scale will strongly affect the "craft" beer market. It might make some people think twice about setting up their own brewing operation.

Why is there a completely unrelated video playing constantly on the right margin and using up my data?

I live in Seattle where the IPA thing is just out of hand.

My uncharitable pet theory is this: A certain class of men (sometimes women, but it's almost always men) get interested in something and then desire to make it part of their identity. That in turn means they want to convey that they are more into it than other people. Their passion expresses itself as competition.

Most people that aren't really into beer don't like hops and bitterness. It is very much an acquired taste. So liking hoppy beers is a good signal that "look how much more into beer I am than you!" Even better — and this is always a good signal that bros have shown up to suck the fun out of your hobby — there is a number you can use to measure it. Menus show IBUs so a table full of dudes can pick their poison and show how hardcore they are.

I like some amount of hops, but I've had beers that literally just taste like hop tea. The flavor just dominates everything else and leaves little room to enjoy all of the fun nuances you can get from the actual brew.

Before IPAs it was porters with the darker the better. Or Belgian beers with competitions to see who can handle the highest ABV. It's always about getting the best score and not just, you know, enjoying some beer.

My favorite Tweet ever was someone who described this process that dudes do where they show up, take over a hobby, and drive all the fun out (and thus women) as "MENTRIFICATION". It is my new favorite word.

See also: Riding bicycles, listening to music (ugh audiophiles), metal guitarists playing 64th note scales, etc. I can't wait for the day that bros discover knitting and it becomes nothing but a race to see who can make the longest scarves.