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It’s a well-known (if not scientifically documented) fact that as we get older, we start complaining more about the weather. Sit near an old man on a park bench sometime, there’s really no condition that he can’t find fault with. Too hot. Too cloudy. Too much humidity. Lots of hot air these days; very few cool breezes. Nothing’s ever right or as good as it used to be. EDM music and so forth…

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Let your inner six-year-old rejoice: From the astounding popularity of Milk Bar chain’s cereal milk-flavored fro-yo, shakes, cream soda and cookies to the ever-growing number of actual restaurants that serve nothing but bowls of cereal, Saturday mornings are back, baby. Get your portion of a balanced breakfast with these six beers made with and designed to taste like breakfast cereal. It is the most important meal of the day, after all.

Somerville Saturday Morning
People freaked when Massachusetts-based Somerville launched this Belgian tripel with Cap’n Crunch Crunch Berries in March, and it’s easy to see why: The nostalgia is real. Crunch Berries pop in the aroma, a sugar-dusted fruitiness that floats above the base bouquet of dried banana, pear, circus peanuts and corn flakes in a bowl of almond milk. Sips are slightly more fruit-forward, with rich pear and regular old Cap’n up top; alcoholic warmth enhances the toasted almond notes at the swallow. And it doesn’t even scratch the roof of your mouth.

Brew Rebellion Saturday Morning Cartoons
Is there a more delightful substance on this earth than the pool of unicorn-colored milk left over after you’ve finished a bowl of fruit-flavored cereal?  Brew Rebellion’s 5.8% milk stout made with Fruity Pebbles captures this flavor perfectly, pairing it with soft, smoky cocoa, cola and toast. Head brewer Andy Sutfin rotates the cereal used in the stout regularly; previous batches have incorporated Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Apple Jacks and Cocoa Pebbles. And lest you forget which one you’re drinking, each bottle is dipped in wax and pasted with actual pieces of cereal.

Black Bottle Cerealiously
In 2014, Black Bottle pissed off just about every kid in Fort Collins when it bought out the entire Count Chocula supply from several of the town’s grocery stores in order to make this 6.4% ABV milk stout. The brewery’s since struck up an informal relationship with General Mills that helps avoid such dilemmas; the cereal maker occasionally sends Black Bottle the hundreds of pounds of cereal needed for a week of steeping in the beer. More than a dozen different cereals have gone into Cerealiously, including Lucky Charms, Golden Grahams, Reese’s Puffs and Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch.

Big Time Breakfast Cereal Killer
That name is pretty accurate: Not only do Big Time’s brewers throw every cereal grain they can find into imperial stout; they also mash in with a mixture of Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, Cocoa Puffs and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Steeping with coffee and cocoa nibs makes the beer even more coocoo. It’ll be available at Big Time’s Seattle brewpub on draft and in hand-filled bottles this fall.

Ballast Point Victory at Cereal
Each December, San Diego-based Ballast Point observes Victory at Sea Day—a celebration of its beloved imperial porter made with vanilla beans and cold-brew coffee, Victory at Sea—by releasing various treatments of the beer. The years have seen versions made with pumpkin spice, gingerbread, peppermint, coconut and even ghost peppers. But none (at least to our palates) has been better than Victory At Cereal, made by dry-hopping the beer with Cap’n Crunch. The cereal infuses the flavor with sugary, bready notes that fuse with whole milk, coffee, toast, cocoa and french vanilla—and it even has that Cap’n Crunch film that coats your tongue.

Noble Rey Baracus Gets Super Cereal
There’s no telling which cereal you might experience during a visit to Noble Rey’s Dallas taproom; throughout the year, the brewery releases small batches of its American brown ale, Baracus, spiked with a rotating selection of breakfast boxes from Count Chocula to Reese’s Puffs. Also keep an eye out for Cereal Killa, a witbier dry-hopped with Fruity Pebbles, if you need a second helping.

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Conventional wisdom dictates that lagers are clean and crisp, nearly devoid of yeast-derived flavors. Beers fermented with Brettanomyces, on the other hand, are all about what the yeast can do: fruit and funk and farmhouse flavors.

So how could the two ever coexist? What seems like an oxymoron actually isn’t, nor is it anything new. Both of New Belgium’s base beers for its wood cellar program, Felix and Oscar, begin with lager yeast, and rumor has it that a lot of the saccharomyces (brewer’s yeast) strains present in Cantillon bottles are actually lager strains. So while this practice is nothing new, the resulting beers are more recently being labeled as Brett or farmhouse lagers.

Take three examples from the past year: GoodLife and Ale Apothecary’s collaboration Brett Lager; Arizona Wilderness’ Blanc Farmhouse Pilsner; and Creature Comforts and Jester King’s collaboration Mutualism Southern-style Farmhouse Lager.

All begin as one style or another of lager. Brett Lager was born as a Dortmunder; Blanc as a straight-forward pilsner; Mutualism as a pilsner brewed with locally grown wheat and grits. All three beers could have ended their fermentation journeys after the lagering process (in fact, Creature Comforts kegged off some of the base Mutualism pilsner and the staff of both Creature Comforts and Jester King drank through it as-is). Not stopping there, the brewers decided to add Brettanomyces, and in some cases additional wild/souring bacteria, to further ferment the beer.

“Who the heck Brett ages a lager? Let’s take a long beer and make it even longer,” jokes Ty Barnett, GoodLife’s owner.

The goal of initial lager fermentation, says Creature Comforts’ wood cellar and specialty brand manager Blake Tyers, is to create a neutral palette on which the Brett can express itself. Because lagers ferment cleanly, without an ale yeast’s phenol and ester by-products, flavors produced by the Brett really shine through.

“We looked at a paper from Chad Yakobson [founder of Crooked Stave and formerly the author of the Brettanomyces Project], his early stuff was theorizing on how if you had less esters and phenols, then the secondary fermentation, once the Brett got involved, it would show more mature flavors more quickly,” Tyers says. “That was originally our intent, that the Brett would show its own characteristics more clearly.”

Arizona Wilderness founder Jonathan Buford found a similar result with Blanc.

“Dosing the bottles with Brett was unique because this was an already dry beer,” he says. “We needed Brett to eat dextrins as there were very little sugars left from the initial fermentation. This stresses the Brett out and it funk-ified the beer rather quickly, which was the biggest surprise.”

If Brettanomyces flavors (and some acidity, in Mutualism and Brett Lager) dominate the three beers, why even use the word lagers to describe them at all?

“It was to initiate a conversation with the consumer so they can learn more about the process of these beers. [With our] mixed culture program, we only roll out a handful of bottles every year and each one is kind of a chance to talk to people about different processes,” Tyers says. “The name was basically to get a conversation started. And to show people that it’s not just some infected batch of beer that turned out this way.”

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Purpose Brewing & Cellars’ co-owners Laura Wilson, Peter Bouckaert, Zack Wilson and Frezi Bouckaert | Photo by Tim O’Hara Photography

Peter Bouckaert sounds tired. The 21-year veteran brewmaster for New Belgium is ready to formally unveil his new project, Purpose Brewing & Cellars in Fort Collins, Colorado, on Saturday, but he’s still wrapping up projects at New Belgium before he officially departs sometime at the end of the year. Double duty is taking its toll on his sleep schedule, but Bouckaert is audibly energized about what he’s been brewing at Purpose.

“Being open is almost more relaxing in a way, to find our groove in what we can do and what we want to do,” Bouckaert says. Purpose’s taproom has been quietly open since August, but the grand opening will take place Saturday, September 22 from noon-7 p.m. and will feature double the number of beers the brewery normally offers on tap.

Purpose typically offers four beers, one of which always falls under the “Smoeltrekker” umbrella, a rotating series of beers that have little in common except that they’ve come from a wood barrel.

Purpose Brewing & Cellars | Photo by Tim O’Hara Photography

“That’s been unique in that we always pick something substantially different, from more of a wine extraction to something substantially sour to a fruit addition,” Bouckaert says. “The other beers [on tap] are one-offs, where we try to work as a chef, with our ‘salt and pepper’ basically.”

By salt and pepper, he means fruits, spices, mushrooms, flowers … essentially every edible ingredient under the sun.

“It’s been really fun looking at different ingredients, talking with different people about process and ingredients,” Bouckaert says. “We always try to do it as the salt and pepper, to use it to enhance the flavor but don’t exaggerate it.”

For a peek at what Purpose has in store for its grand opening, see the tap list below.

Hibiscus
Belgian blonde with pink peppercorn and hibiscus flowers.

Bos Trip
Amber beer laid down on shiitake mushrooms.

Herfst
Bright pink Belgian blonde married with cranberry, ginger, mace, orange peel, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves.

Oud Hert
Old Elk bourbon barrel-aged dark roasted ale.

Houblon
Hoppy ale made with locally grown and malted grain by Troubadour Maltings and rested on Japanese citrus Yuzu and Kabosu, then double dry-hopped with Belma and Bravo hops.

Smoeltrekker #22
Soft sour blonde aged in a 2015 vintage Albariño wine barrel from The Infinite Monkey Theorem out of Denver. This barrel was inoculated with one of Peter and Zach’s mysterious cultures.

Smoeltrekker #6 and #17
Medium sour. A blend of 66.6 percent barrel #6, a brown aged in a Chateau Montelena Zinfandel barrel, and 33.3 percent barrel #17, a gold aged in a 2015 vintage cab franc barrel from The Infinite Monkey Theorem out of Denver. These barrels were inoculated with one of Peter and Zach’s mysterious cultures.

Nacht Up
Nacht, a black ale matured on top of coconut, orange peel, vanilla beans, grains of paradise, and Brazilian Amburana wood, laid to rest, or should we say “woken up” on locally fire-roasted Sumatra coffee. Brewed with locally grown and malted grain by Troubadour Maltings.

Biere de Mars
Brewed with locally grown and malted grain from Troubadour Maltings, as well as lemon verbena and lemon peels, finished with Brettanomyces yeast.

Read more: 6 questions for departing New Belgium brewmaster Peter Bouckaert

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Tulip Town in Mount Vernon, Washington, the county seat of Skagit Valley | Photo by Amber Watts

In the year-plus since Amber Watts and Ron Extract left their positions at Austin’s Jester King Brewery to open their own venture, they’ve learned a lot about beer’s primary ingredient.

“Coming from Texas, it’s so dry, we didn’t expect to have water issues in Washington,” Watts says.

Turns out, “things are a bit more strictly regulated here than they were in, say, unincorporated rural areas in Texas,” Extract adds.

The business partners, who are also a couple, have encountered a set of unanticipated challenges as they search for a location for their forthcoming project, called Garden Path Fermentation, in Washington’s Skagit Valley. They’d promised to open in 2017, and are now confronting the obstacles they face to meet that timeline.

Much rural property in Skagit Valley isn’t connected to a municipal sewer or water system, and the use of well water for commercial endeavors is strictly regulated. The choice facing Watts and Extract once they found a tentative location: shell out more than a million dollars for a line to hook up to municipal water or ditch the location and search for a less rural spot. They couldn’t stomach the first option, so they walked away from that property.

The difficulties are a result of the pair’s ambitions for Garden Path. If they’d set out to open a brewery in a downtown industrial building, they’d be well on their way. But Garden Path won’t just be a brewery, and they’re not aiming for an industrial, cookie-cutter location.

“If it ferments, we’re interested in fermenting it,” says Extract, explaining that Garden Path Fermentation plans to produce beer, cider, mead, fruit wines and even fermented food from local ingredients. “I’ve seen comments online that we’re probably overextending ourselves or taking on too much, but converting sugar to alcohol, it’s the same process whether those sugars come from barley or fruit or what have you. We don’t see that in any way as overreaching.”

Garden Path’s first fermentation of cherry wine | Photo by Amber Watts

The pair originally conceived of an “estate brewery,” growing all its own raw ingredients to make cider, beer and wine. That was part of the lure of Washington’s Skagit Valley, a fertile area with a climate well-suited to farming nearly all year long.

“That was something we abandoned really quickly, actually,” says Watts. Once she and Extract spent more time in the valley, they realized that the area was full of multigenerational farmers already growing much of what Garden Path would need. “It would be really arrogant of us to come here from Texas and say ‘We’re going to grow everything.’”

The focus soon shifted from an estate brewery to a locally minded brewery/cidery/winery. Garden Path does intend to grow certain ingredients, including some apples and pears for cider and perry (wine made from pears). To that aim, the business has hired Saul Phillips, who has an orchard background, as lead agriculturalist. Phillips’ previous experience in both agriculture and biotech/cell research make him especially curious about native yeast, uncommon cider apple varietals and what the combination of the two can yield.

“Long-term, what I’d like to see with Garden Path cider is the opportunity to provide quality ciders that highlight varietal characteristics and year-to-year vintage differences,” he says. “Each batch should be a unique expression of something, even if it’s roughly the same recipe. I’m interested in consistent quality rather than consistent product.”

His interest in cider terroir and mixed fermentation mirrored what Watts and Extract were hoping to achieve on the beer side.

“When we met him, he was talking to us about his process for making a spontaneous-fermented cider using traditional varietals and we thought ‘We need to bring this guy on board,’” says Extract.

When it comes to beermaking, the pair plans to work closely with another brewery who will produce Garden Path’s wort, the unfermented liquid that yeast chomps on to create beer.

“For us and for our team, wort production is not necessarily the most interesting part of the process. I wouldn’t say it’s the least interesting, but our focus is on what happens afterwards, about transforming ingredients through partnership with our microbial friends,” Extract says. Garden Path will make ample use of native and wild yeast and bacteria, which are already being developed into a house culture that will ferment beer and cider. They also plan to make beer “in a non-interventionist way” without the use of temperature control for their fermentations. Luckily, the valley’s warm months are suited to ale yeast fermentation while cooler months make more sense for lager brewing.

To head this endeavor, Garden Path snagged Jason Hansen as lead fermentationist; he formerly held the role of head brewer at Sante Adairius Rustic Ales. There, he used SARA’s house culture to create the brewery’s thumbprint: balanced, characterful saisons and farmhouse-style beers. Garden Path hopes he’ll bring much of that same perspective to the new brewery.

“We love beers that have this sensibility of balance, of nuance, of lower ABV, of not pushing extremes, but using a mixed-fermentation approach,” says Extract.

All of the brewery’s beers will be mixed-fermented, which means they’ll be fermented with a culture of locally-cultivated microbes. But some of Garden Path’s ales will probably be a bit “cleaner” tasting than some mixed-fermentation or farmhouse beers, Watts says. For a portion of beers, Hansen will select the saccharomyces (“clean” brewers yeast) present within the house mixed culture to ferment the beers, which will be slightly accented by Brettanomyces and bacteria for complexity and balance.​

“We want to make beers that will confuse people at beer festivals. The beers people tend to gravitate towards at festivals are generally ones that you can understand in two ounces; we want to brew beers that people end up drinking a pint of,” she says.

All of that, of course, hinges on Garden Path eventually finding a location. Extract says they’re doing “literally a bit of digging” to find a spot with the character they’re looking for as well as proper zoning. Acknowledging that could take some time, Watts says the pair is open to a plan B: setting up shop in a temporary space to get up and running while they continue to build out a permanent site.

“It was hard to come to this decision but we could compromise on our start-up site so we don’t have to compromise on our permanent site,” she says.

It’s already been a winding road for Garden Path, whose name is a reference to the idea that a garden path is an indirect, meandering way of getting from one place to another. Is it beginning to seem too apt?

“We’ve said that,” Extract says. “We have.”

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There’s tourism — and then there is beer tourism.

Every major city has its niche. Chicago is jazzy, New York never sleeps, Paris falls in love, and Portland knows craft beer. That’s not just an assumption, it’s a fact. The Oregon Brewers Guild, one of the nation’s oldest craft brewers associations, counts 105 breweries in the Portland metropolitan area. The city has acquired the nickname “Beervana” for the wide variety of craft beers brewed in Portland and throughout the state of Oregon. By becoming aficionados of one of mankind’s oldest beverages, Portland has made its mark as the beer tourism capital of the world.

It’s not just the beer crafted here that makes for a unique experience when visiting the Rose City. We boast quite a few medals. Bicycling magazine ranked us the No. 1 most bike friendly city in America multiple years in a row.

Our 350 miles of bikeways are not just for locals. We recently joined the likes of Chicago, New York, and Pittsburgh with our own public bike share program named Biketown. Launching in 2016 with 1,000 bikes and 100 bike stations, Biketown is easy and enjoyable to use. All you have to do is download the Biketown app, register your name, create a pin, and head to your nearest station.

In Portland, you can hop off the plane, check into your room at the Kimpton RiverPlace Hotel, located on the southwest end of Portland’s riverfront bike path, grab a city cruiser from the Biketown station just outside, and go enjoy some of the world’s finest craft beers. Don’t forget to stop by the gift shop in RiverPlace and grab yourself a uKeg. This Portland-born pressurized growler will keep one of the delicious beers you find fresh, cold and carbonated for a night cap at the hotel’s second-story waterfront patio.

In Portland, you can enjoy the sunset while enjoying a local, craft beer fresh from the tap of a uKeg. Then take home that beautiful miniature keg for years of reminiscing on your experience in Beervana.

Cheers!

Source Links:
http://oregoncraftbeer.org/facts/
https://www.bicycling.com/rides/advocacy/americas-best-bike-city-portland-oregon
https://www.biketownpdx.com

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From left: Christine Celis, Celis Brewery’s head brewer Craig Mycoskie and Daytona Camps | Photo by Matt McGinnis

“Instead of playing in sandboxes, I’d be playing with spent grain.”

Christine Celis grew up in a brewing family, which is not like growing up in other families. Her father, Pierre, founded Brouwerij Celis in his hometown of Hoegaarden, Belgium, in 1966, and later moved to Austin, Texas, opening Celis Brewery there in 1992. In just a few years, Celis became the fastest-growing craft brewery in the country.

“I had the opportunity, as a child, of playing in the brewery. I would crawl into the open mash tun and play with my little scooper, putting spent grain in wheelbarrows,” she says. “Or I’d go on the second floor and look at the beer when it was boiling; it was fascinating of course. I remember rollerskating under the bottling line because the floor was so smooth underneath the conveyer belts. Sometimes my friends would come and we’d all rollerskate, or play with the plastic crates. My dad always said ‘Let them have a good time, I’ll put it back in the evening.’”

Celis recounts stories of beer delivery runs with her father, sitting in the front seat on his lap (in those heady decades before seatbelts) while he told her stories about European kings and quizzed her about Belgian cities.

“He was so nurturing,” she says. “He was just a really physically small person, but with a big heart. And every picture that you have, he is always with a smile. I’m now getting emails and Facebook messages from people saying ‘Meeting Pierre was the best thing that happened to me because he turned me on to drinking craft beer.’ He is so hard to explain. I don’t have even the words for it.”

Pierre Celis died in 2011, leaving behind a decades-long impact on brewing … and, his daughter says, an unfinished legacy. Celis Brewery was a gateway for many early craft beer drinkers, especially through its Celis White, a Belgian-style witbier. But the company was purchased wholly by Miller Brewing Company in 2000 following a business partnership that began in 1995 intended to expand Celis’ production capacity. The original brewery shuttered in 2001, while Miller retained the rights to the brand.

“We didn’t anticipate it at all. Having no more brewery, I can honestly say it was detrimental to my dad and to me as well,” Christine Celis says. “I always wanted to brew the Celis White, to brew beers that I grew up with, to have the brewery back. If you don’t have your name, something is missing. Therefore I was determined to get that name back no matter what I had to do.”

Thus began her struggle to return Celis Brewery to family ownership, a process that would take 17 years. Finally, this year, after “much talking, negotiating and headaches,” Christine Celis was able to assemble enough investors to buy a building, brewing equipment and, most importantly, to purchase the trademark Celis from the then-current domestic and international rights owners, Total Beverage Solution and Craftbev International Amalgamated, Inc.

“Sometimes you have to struggle a bit and fight a bit,” Celis says. “Before this, the moment wasn’t ready. Now the stars aligned and it was meant to be.”

Celis Brewery | Photo by Matt McGinnis

The journey was less difficult for Tom Fisher Riemondy, the great-great-grandson of Albert Fisher, who founded Salt Lake City’s A. Fisher Brewing in 1884. The brewery sold to San Francisco-based Lucky Lager around 1960; Lucky Lager was then rolled into General Brewing and later Pabst. Somewhere in this matryoshka doll consolidation, the federal trademark for Fisher Brewing fell dormant. Fisher Riemondy’s cousin, luckily, had retained the state trademark for approximately the past two decades.

“My parents, or my mom more specifically, and aunts and uncles have great memories of the brewery,” Fisher Riemondy says. “And now we’re finding out that for a lot of people, Fisher beer was the first beer they ever drank.”

He and three other owners have revived the A. Fisher Brewing name, opening the doors to a new five-barrel brewhouse in the Grainery District of Salt Lake City. All of the owners are in their early to mid-30s, young enough to have never held an original Fisher lager to their lips.

“We assumed that a lot of people would remember the brand but weren’t 100 percent positive what that response would be until we opened,” says co-owner Tim Dwyer. “Turned out to be a little bit more robust than I expect. People are very excited; older folks bring us in their old antiques and bottles and are telling us stories about the old brewery. The brewery itself had sort of faded, but people definitely remember that beer.”

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Now that their families’ brewing histories are back in their hands, Celis and Fisher Riemondy face a similar challenge: bringing those legacies to bear on a modern beer landscape that looks vastly different than it did in the 60s or even the 90s. Neither plans to brew exclusively the same beers that the breweries did decades ago, but both look for ways to incorporate the past.

For Christine Celis, an important piece of the puzzle fell into place, somewhat serendipitously, in a junkyard in Ohio. This begins with a visit Celis took to the Copper Art Museum in Clarkdale, Arizona, which houses a copper lauter tun from the original Celis Brewery. The museum declined to sell it back to her, but mentioned that museum staff had heard of a similar copper kettle at a metal yard in Ohio. It turned out to be another piece of original equipment from Celis Brewery, and this time, Christine Celis was able to buy it back. It’s now a part of a museum adjacent to the new 22,000 square foot brewhouse—which, Celis adds, is full of shiny, state-of-the-art equipment including a centrifuge, yeast propagation lab and a canning line.

She’s fired up that brewhouse and plans to revive many, if not all, of the original Celis beers, starting with Celis White, Pale Bock and Grand Cru this year, and perhaps Celis Raspberry and Abbey Ale next year. Celis even has the original yeast strain used to brew White; it had been stored in Belgium and is currently being propagated by Celis’ brewing engineer.

“But you can’t just only have traditional beers; after all, it’s an evolving market. Beer is about new styles, new methods,” she says. “Look at barrel aging. That didn’t even exist in the 90s. I want to focus also on an IPA. I have foeders, so I will do some aging down the road on that. And maybe some sours.”

Fisher Brewing Co. 2.0 has also introduced more than a dozen new beer styles since its taproom opened in February, but the updated version of the classic Fisher lager is still what most drinkers seek. Because it’s a lager, the beer takes up more time in fermenters than ales do. This often means that A. Fisher is sold out of the beer that many consider its namesake.

“We really wanted to have a high variety of hoppy pale ales, all sorts of beers. But keeping a lager on that people drink [through] in seven days that takes a month to make, that’s a challenge we’re dealing with,” says head brewer Colby Frasier. “People have been pleased with the place that we’ve built and the beers that we make but we’re struggling to deal with the passion for that lager.”

To survive, legacy breweries will have to adapt to the tastes and preferences of their drinkers, the same as any other new brewery, restaurant or bar. But because they’re carrying a family name, history and reputation on their breweries’ shoulders, these owners have other, personal goals in mind as well.

“My dad would be really pleased and I think he would be surprised of the perseverance and what influence he had on me,” Celis says. “‘I want this brewery, and I need to get it done and I will have it.’ That came from him. I hate to underachieve, so I want it to be a very successful brewery but with a lot of character.”

She has a partner in developing this character: Her daughter, Daytona Camps, will be a brewer at the new Celis.

“I always wanted to continue my dad’s legacy. And my daughter wanted to be a brewer, and so I have now an additional motivation because it won’t get lost after I am gone. She can continue it. All of these components together, if that is not enough of a drive, what is?” Celis says. “And I wanted to have a Celis White again. I haven’t had one in 17 years.”

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Since the mid-2000s, opening a brewery has been a pretty solid business decision. Even as the total number of breweries in the U.S. rapidly climbed toward the highest it’s ever been, the failure rate of new brewing operations was near zero. Entrepreneur Magazine even hinted in 2015 that craft beer was as close to a sure thing as an investor could get.

But in recent years, that aura of invincibility has cracked. Craft beer’s decade of double-digit growth finally ended in 2016, with brewing trade group the Brewers Association reporting that craft beer sales had grown just 6.2 percent—less than half the growth reported a year before. Large legacy brewers seem to have felt the brunt of this slowdown, with Bridgeport Brewing Co., Craft Brew Alliance and Stone all announcing staff reductions within the past six months and Speakeasy Ales & Lagers abruptly shutting down in March and reopening under new ownership in May.

The number of new breweries and brewpubs opening has also been dropping since 2014, while the number of closures has been steadily increasing. A total of 97 craft brewers shut down last year, which represents the most closures in roughly a decade. And while the failure rate of breweries still remains incredibly low relative to other industries, those 97 closures represent an increase from 78 in 2015 and 75 the year before. Meanwhile, new brewery openings have been dropping by an average of 3.3 percent each year since peaking in 2014.

So far, 2017 seems to be indicating a similar trend in closures, and even well-established breweries aren’t immune. Valiant Brewing Co. and Branchline Brewing Co. had both been around for four years before the former closed and the latter filed for bankruptcy; On-the-Tracks Brewery and Offbeat Brewing Co. were both six. San Diego’s stalwart Lightning Brewery had just passed a decade in operation before being put up for sale in December.

So the big question: What is going on? Is increased competition causing these closures? Burdensome regulations? Fickle customers? Is the rent just too damn high? And is it even possible to open and operate a successful brewing business anymore?

To find the answers, we called up the folks who own (or owned, rather) several of the breweries that have shuttered in the past year. Here they are, in their own words.

Alejandro Brown, founder of Big Al Brewing in Seattle, Washington (opened August 2008; closed January 2017)

“Ultimately, what led me to close the doors was flattened growth, stagnant growth. I watched the potential for growth just dry out. From my perspective, there are two things feeding into that: the rotator market and the openings of new breweries.

When we first start 8.5 years ago, I believe we were the 86th brewer in the state. We opened with the model of brewing a new beer every month. We had about 30 or 40 bars that bought a keg every month, but as more breweries opened, we saw that dwindle to a keg every other month, then a keg every quarter. I’m in this camp, but there’s a camp that says every beer you drink has to be a discovery. But now there’s 330 breweries in Washington state now. That makes it tough, as a brewer, to have steady keg sales at bars.

Age is another thing. If your brewery is five years old and you’re hanging in the 2,000- to 6,000-barrel range, you’re probably seeing flat to declining sales at this point. We were producing 2,500 barrels at our peak. The craft beer market as a whole is growing every year, but that growth is being taken up by new breweries. If the new breweries are absorbing all that growth, the rest of us are going to be flat.

I think the key to success in this market is having solid retail, if you can build your business around your retail and you can have your taproom full every night, you’re going to be fine. Or if you’re so big and you’re above the 10,000-barrel mark, you might be flat this year but hopefully you’re well above the black. Or if you’re brand new and you’ve hit the ground running with some solid beers, you’re probably going to be fine because everybody loves the new guy. But the real test will come 24, 36 months down the road.

I think a lot of people start breweries because we love beer, and we’re just going to make beer and people are going to love it. It’s not like that anymore. You have to have a plan.”

(Brown landed on his feet and now Odin Brewing Co., a brewery in Tukwila, Washington.)

Jesse Evans, co-founder and CEO of Ale Syndicate in Chicago, Illinois (founded in 2012 as a gypsy brewery, opened as an onsite facility in 2014; closed December 2016*)

“It’s not the bubble’s fault. There was never a lack of demand for the beer. In fact, we had to cut back on distributors at one point. For us, it was really a production restraint. It’s simple math. Overhead was too high for the amount of beer we could produce in the space we had. There were all kinds of things that were always limiting: pump space, floor space, combined with the big cost of the space, the people we work with, and we were also a shared facility hosting several other breweries. That was something we were really passionate about, but these breweries are taking 20 percent of the space but not paying 20 percent of the overhead. We were basically landlocked in a very expensive building.

I learned in this process that whatever money you’re raising, double it. Maybe triple it. We raised a lot of money, but it would’ve taken twice what we raised to make things work. It’s definitely possible to be successful in the current environment, but it’s all about how much money is in your runway. You have to have enough that you can pick up, set up a new building and get it ready as a brewery.

If I could do it over again, first, I’d hire the same people in a split second. That was the heartbreak: losing the people you work with who are your friends. Second, I would never box myself into a space. If you’re in a warehouse, make sure there are contiguous spaces. Make sure there’s room for growth.

Also, what really worked for us was an amazing advisory board. Having that business leadership to balance out that brewing side. There was a big heart portion that led to decisions that may have gone against the business decisions. I enjoy the process of helping out other brewers, but if a brewery isn’t capitalized enough to survive in its own building, they probably shouldn’t be doing it.

It sounds cheesy, but you gotta know when to fold ‘em. That’s incredibly important. I worked hard to make sure I was holding everything together. We were always working, always crazed, and we should’ve said, ‘Hey, it’s time to take a pause and think about how we can do this differently. But it wasn’t until I was forced to physically separate from the business that I realized that.”

*Evans says Ale Syndicate will be back this year, as the brewery is working on an alternating proprietorship with an as-yet-unnamed Chicago brewery.

Ken Lewis, owner of New Riff Distilling and its brewery offshoot, Ei8ht Ball Brewing in Bellevue, Kentucky (opened November 2013; closed March 2017)

“New Riff is primarily a bourbon distillery company. We opened a microbrewery thinking we might be supplying some wort to the distillery. It grew past that and we were having fun with it. But my perspective is that the only breweries that are either very small or very large can succeed now. The choice was either to go big or be gone, and I chose to be gone and focus on the distillery.

I absolutely think a shakeout is coming. I do not believe that you can be anywhere in the middle in terms of size. You have to be small, local, owner-operator with minimal distribution, or you need to be really big and able to afford the dramatic marketing efforts that are going to be necessary in the upcoming battle for shelf space.

As a former retailer, I clearly see that we’re in a period of what is commonly referred to as SKUmageddon. The dogfight—or the war—for shelf space and attention in a world with 5,000-plus breweries is only going to get more brutal. You’re seeing a slowdown in the growth curve that’s almost nonexistent, and that’s already creating incredible competition for space.

The sizing was wrong. We were a 1500-barrel brewery, which is fine for a small, local brewery, but not for a side project to a larger operation like we were. There’s a very bright future for very small, local breweries. I think it’s a dismal future for anyone else.”

Steve Jones, owner of Pateros Creek Brewing Co. in Fort Collins, Colorado (opened 2011; closed April 2017)

“When we opened in 2011, I think we were the eighth brewery to open in Fort Collins, and we were the first ones to come into our block, to really make it something. There wasn’t any real nightlife or a lot of activities happening here. But our current landlord bought block in 2015 and decided they wanted to change the look of the place. As we went down the road, the rent was never negotiable. It was always going to get higher for us. And we’d always struggled with rent already, so to have it go higher wasn’t an option.

Fort Collins has been going through some transitions as well, the entire city. We’re downtown, and downtown has become too big for its britches in a way. There are a lot of bigger companies moving in paying higher rents that us smaller guys just can’t do. We’ve also had a massive growth in breweries just like every other place.

My original business plan was this way, and I changed it all because of the way things were moving. It was more of a nano-style brewery that was open on the weekends and when I needed a bigger batch I’d contract with the bigger brewers. The taproom would be this small neighborhood taproom where people hang out, drink beer, play darts.

We’re selling all of our equipment in order to erase debts and recapitalize. The way we’re going to move forward is to look for contract brewing and keep our beers around in places that sell well for us and try to expand from there.”

Richard Erickson, managing partner of River Mile 38 Brewing Co. in Cathlamet, Washington (opened 2014; put up for sale March 2017)

“We’re in a unique situation. A lot of breweries started with making a profit in mind, growing, distributing beer and cans and all that. Not this one. A bunch of us got together in this small town, in a small county of 4,000 people. Two of my friends were homebrewers, and I talked to them and 12 other people and said, let’s open a brewery at the marina and see if we can bring tourists in. We wanted it to be a cool place to drink beer, hang out and treat it like a clubhouse.

The brewery’s three years old now, and I’m 74, and another investor is 70, and most of the others are 60, and it’s just killing us. This needs to be owned by younger people.

Now there’s a huge following for this brewery in our local area. We’ve had several prospective buyers. And we’ve told them we won’t sell this brewery if it doesn’t stay in the community.

The brewing business is young, but there’s no young people with money. The guys who have the money are old, but they’re not going to be the ones doing the brewing. We actually have several fathers looking at buying this for their sons.

There’s been a trend change. When we opened, there were 185 breweries in the state of Washington; now there’s over 300. There’s plenty of room to grow in beer sales, because craft beer is still capturing the big beer market. The biggest problem is in your distribution channels, and that this whole trend of what’s new and what’s different has taken over. You used to have permanent handles; those days are gone now, because the young drinkers come in and go, ‘What’s new?’ Even in grocery stores. It’s so crazy right now. What we’ve found is that you need a salesman to go out to these bars and restaurants, and give them a little service. It’s a little more difficult to sell out in the market. But taproom sales are as good as they’ve ever been.

You want it? You can walk in and have all the beer that’s in the tanks. You can even have the $250 that’s in the cash register.”

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