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Over the last year, California brewers have been busy selling beer. A lot of it. Seven of the top 50 breweries in America are from California, more than any other state.
At the World Beer Cup earlier this year, California brewers took home 25 medals, not only more than any other state but only two countries won more medals and one of them was the U. S. (the other was Germany). Of the roughly 1,415 craft breweries operating last year, 228 of them were in California, which is about 16 percwnt of all craft breweries.
Several California brewers have added capacity to meet growing demand and a few have started offering packaged beer for the first time. At least two are now offering craft beer in cans. And there are at least 19 new breweries and brewpubs in the planning stages.
In the southern part of the state, Stone Brewing built a big new facility in Escondido and Pizza Port (now Port Brewing Co.) moved into their old one in San Marcos in order to offer the Lost Abbey series in bottles and the Pizza Port beers on draft.
Up north, Bear Republic Brewing in Healdsburg, added six-packs to their available packages late last year. In January Lagunitas Brewing in Petaluma put in a new bottling line along with several more fermenters.
Bear Republic’s 22 oz. bottles are now available in 22 states. The new six-packs are so far only available through one distributor in the Bay Area. Just two of their beers are currently in 12 oz. bottles: Red Rocket Ale and Racer 5. Even with that modest area they’re having a hard time keeping up with demand. So 15 minutes north of Healdsburg in the sleepy town of Cloverdale, Bear Republic co-owner Rich Norgrove is installing his brand new 100 bbl. fermenters into a new brewing facility. At 15,000 sq. ft. and two stories high it’s an impressively large space. Right now it’s littered with racecars and auto parts, which is Norgrove’s other passion, along with big metal tanks and boxes of bits and pieces.
Norgrove shows me the blueprints and tells me. "We’ve got all the equipment we need so it’s just a matter of installing it. I’ll be running water through the system in 45 days and the first beer in 60 days." The initial layout of the brewery will include two pod bays — to insure any lost liquid stays put — that will house 18 fermenters, nine in each pod. They followed the trail blazed by Stone Brewing in management of their wastewater and Norgrove is justly proud of the sedimentation and surge system they put in to treat domestic and process waste differently, which prevents overloading the local water treatment facility.
"Our initial capacity will be around 50,000 barrels." Norgrove says. He and his wife, Tami, also purchased the three bays adjoining the brewery so expansion will not be a problem should it become necessary in the future.
Thirty miles further up the road, Ukiah Brewing’s Bret Cooperrider decided to blaze another trail last January by becoming the first craft brewer in California to put beer in a can. His Ukiah Pilsner was also the first canned organic beer.
In early May, the San Francisco brewpub 21st Amendment added their name to that list becoming the 50th brewery in California to offer packaged beer when they began offering two of their beers, IPA and Watermelon Wheat, in a can. "So far, interest in our cans has been phenomenal." Brewer/co-owner Shaun O’Sullivan told me recently. "I’ve gotten lots of calls from distributors."
But don’t look for them at your grocery store anytime soon. For most, if not all, craft brewers canning beer is literally a handcrafted affair. Using equipment from Canada’s Cask Brewing Systems, cans are filled, sealed and put into six-packs all by hand. It’s very labor intensive as I discovered while helping out during one of the brewery’s first canning sessions. But that may not be a problem much longer. 21st Amendment is actively looking in the east bay side of the Bay Area for space to build a production facility.
Thanks to improved technology and a protective coating inside the can that insures the beer never touches metal, beer out of a can now tastes every bit as good as from a bottle. Since 2002, when Dale’s Pale Ale from Oskar Blues in Colorado debuted, more than two dozen craft brewers have put their beer in cans.
But of course, the only real valid test is how the beer tastes. So I tried the canned beer side by side with the same beer on draft. I couldn’t really detect any difference. Out of a can, both beers were every bit as flavorful as on draft and I could detect no metallic flavors whatsoever.
O’Sullivan is definitely a convert to the can and would like to move past the point where the metallic issue is even mentioned. To his mind, this is no longer a problem. And based on the samples of his beer and other canned craft beer I’ve had, I’d say he’s correct. But there is still a strong prejudice against beer in a can among beer aficionados. Hopefully, enough people will keep an open mind and at least give craft beer in a can a try. That will probably be enough to change the mind of even the most hardened critic.
So as the future’s beginning to look sunny again for craft beer, California looks like they’re having a second gold rush as breweries are offering packaged beer in ever-increasing numbers. This time the gold is in liquid form ranging from golden ales to coal black stouts. There’s definitely liquid gold in them thar hills.
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