Beer of Tomorrow

Where Is Los Angeles in The List of the 50 Biggest Craft Brewers?

5

By on April 17th, 2012

The Brewer’s Association released their list of the Top 50 Breweries in 2011, and as expected Los Angeles is no where on the list. The top three are the big-boys of the craft beer world; Boston Beer Co, Sierra Nevada, and New Belgium respectively with Shiner Bock-producing The Gambrinus Co. and Deschutes rounding out the top 5. California breweries make up another 12 spots on the top-50, but only Escondido’s giant, Stone Brewing, and Huntington Beach-based brew-pub chain BJ’s are anywhere near the city of angels. Los Angeles is the second most populous city in the country; why are no equally large craft brewing operations located in the city to support that population, and is brewery size even a useful metric for evaluating the strength of the craft beer culture in a city?

Looking at other major American city’s breweries we see that New York has one entry on the list (Brooklyn Brewery at #13) while Chicago, Houston, and Philly account for a single spot in the top-50 (Houston’s St. Arnold Brewing at #43). According to Meg Gill, co-founder of Los Angeles’ largest craft brewery, it is notoriously hard to work with the city of LA when launching a brewing operation, and these political roadblocks need to be reduced before the city can attract more, and larger, breweries.

Do you think that it is more breweries, and not necessarily larger breweries, that is key to creating a thriving craft beer scene? Or would Los Angeles be better served by one or two larger brewing operations?

5 Comments

  1. Iason says:
    April 17, 2012 at 4:03 pm

    IMHO, bigger is only better when it comes to flavor, not size of operation. Keeping quality consisent is notoriously more difficult at larger scales, particularly when you take into account the eventual necessity of attempting to produce what is ostensibly the same beer at numerous facilities. Stone makes a point of saying that they know there’s a market for more of their beer, but they’re happy to be making what they’re making because they know they can effectively quality-control what they do.

    I can think of lots of better metrics (matricies?) of the craft beer culture in a city. How many craft breweries does it have? How many awards have breweries there won? How much craft beer is consumed there? How many awesome blogs about beer are focused there?

    Also, the Brewer’s Association list would be a lot more interesting if it included numbers and not just rankings. What’s the scale? The Shiner guys may be only one step above Deschutes, but something tells me we’re talking about leaps and bounds with regard to volume. Particularly in comparison to A-B and Coors, just how much beer are we talking about, here?

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  2. Iason says:
    April 17, 2012 at 4:09 pm

    I guess I should’ve drilled down a little further before I started criticizing the list:

    “The Association’s full 2011 industry analysis, which shows regional trends and sales by individual breweries, will be published in the May/June issue of The New Brewer, available May 22, 2012.”

    I, for one, will be picking that up. Lesson of the day: Don’t get me started on my economics of beer nerditry.

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  3. Iason says:
    April 18, 2012 at 11:20 am

    Great article, I loved this part:

    “Fritz Maytag, the washing machine scion who revived San Francisco’s Anchor Steam Beer, said the beer market ultimately will become more like the wine market, where hundreds of boutique wineries compete with industry giants such as Gallo.”

    The same holds true today. But while this story is “old news” it’s interesting (to me, at least) to watch the big and little pictures about how the industry and consumer habits are developing and growing.

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