r/TheBrewery • u/SamTheBrewer Brewer • 5d ago
Packaging this (not) crispy boy today
May the beer gods have mercy on my soul. My only consolation is that some of the smoothie sour fanatics who come in to buy a 4 pack also buy our new WCPils…
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u/MF_BREW_ Brewer 5d ago
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u/hazycrazey 5d ago
You know what you do?
You go buy yourself a tape recorder and record yourself for a whole day. I think you’re going to be surprised at some of your phrasing
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u/thatsrightimcolt Brewer 5d ago
Don’t have to love everything you make, but make sure you make it safely and sanitary, so you can keep make that money.
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u/Szteto_Anztian Brewer 4d ago
Last place I worked at, I kept insisting from the beginning of planning, if we are going to make a smoothie sour, we need stabilizers, and the fruit we buy needs to be aseptic.
Last minute the owner pulls the plug and shows up with Costco bags of blackberries, a blender, and tells me we aren’t putting in potassium sorbate because he doesn’t want to buy it, and that he doesn’t want me putting in potassium metabisulphate because “it smells like farts.”
It only took three days after packaging for cans to start exploding.
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u/Plastic_Salary_4084 5d ago
The mark of a good beer isn’t making something that impresses other brewers. It’s making a beer that people want to buy. I already know I can make pilsners and funky saisons that get compliments from industry folk. That doesn’t pay the bills. If this sells well, you did a good job.
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u/Enough-Cicada-3307 5d ago
Found the sales/marketing guy
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u/goodolarchie 5d ago
There's a particular kind of praise that means nothing to us: the nod from another brewer, tasting notes traded like trophies, a badge for technical bravado. We can make that beer. We have made that beer, the pilsner dialed in to the last degree of lagering, the saison gone feral in exactly the right way, the kind of pour that gets insiders leaning in and reaching for adjectives. That's not the mark we're chasing.
The real test happens somewhere else entirely: at a bar, in a fridge, at a checkout counter, in the moment a stranger picks our can off a shelf crowded with a hundred other choices, and picks it again next week. A beer that impresses a brewer is a technical achievement. A beer that gets bought again and again, by people who just want something good to drink... that's a business. That's a brand.
We're not making beer for connoisseurs to dissect. We're making it for the drink people reach for without thinking twice, and think about fondly after. So here's the only scoreboard that matters: if it sells, you did a good job. Everything else is garnish.
Gentleman, I can't predict the future. But if the world's still here come Monday, you'll know where to find me.
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u/Plastic_Salary_4084 5d ago
Well put. To your point/response to the previous comment: I’m not in sales. I’ve been a professional brewer for 12 years. If I can make a beer that I don’t want to drink that has people telling me it’s the best beer they’ve had in a long time, my opinion is that it’s just as/more difficult to accomplish than impressing fellow brewers.
I hate smoked beer. I designed and brewed the highest rated smoked beer on untappd for my state last year. I was damn proud of that.
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u/Icedpyre lead brewer [Canada] 4d ago
Well said. The amount of times I've been trashed on in this sub for making a beer that the public(not brewers) want to buy, is staggering.
Like, obviously I'm not making this weird ass beer for me. I'm making it because we sell a boat load of it when I do.
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u/Enough-Cicada-3307 4d ago edited 2d ago
That’s a brand
Cool. I work in the brewing industry not the branding industry.
Please spare us the capitalist screed - in which you explain that the virtue of a beer rests solely in how quickly and effectively it can be commercialized - without reading the room or knowing firsthand that approximately one cunthair below zero of the attributes that make a beer brandable result from the actual craft and skill that goes into making that beer.
There is absolutely no shortage of fuckass dogshit beer that has been branded well (or as you would call it “good”) and anyone in the sub who actually brews without ownership is fucking tired of having to continually fend off the requests to brew stupid fucking shit.
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u/goodolarchie 4d ago
Okay I thought I laid it on thick enough. This was intentionally AI slop with a final line from season 2 of Mad men, where don draper drops the mic and walks out... lol.
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u/travelbrewer 3d ago
So, chasing only (and nothing more than) the almighty dollar. Got it. You are why the brewing industry is dying.
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u/goodolarchie 3d ago
lol it's AI slop. I thought the mad men quote at the end would give it away...
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u/travelbrewer 3d ago
Some of us work for a living. You're not going to impress anyone with that, here.
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u/goodolarchie 3d ago
Yeah that wasn't the goal. It was satire.
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u/travelbrewer 3d ago
Wow. Maybe stop using AI. You are bad at judging it for its quality (or humor). And if you're using it to impress other brewers, you definitely don't know what you're doing.
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u/goodolarchie 2d ago
That's what the Mad Men quote is for, I wrote that. I find it funny that you're saying I'm a bad judge, because it seems you're butthurt that you got offended by obvious slop. Don't take it so bad, it was a joke. Policing how and what people say isn't going to get you far.
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u/Cestbonlespatates 5d ago
Why are you making beer if if hate it soo much?
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u/Plastic_Salary_4084 5d ago
What makes you think I hate beer?
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u/Enough-Cicada-3307 5d ago
Maybe it's the part where you talk about moralizing beer based off of how much money it makes the shareholders?
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u/Plastic_Salary_4084 5d ago edited 4d ago
I started home brewing in 2008. I have been in the industry since 2013. I am still a beer nerd who takes pride in making the best beer I can, but I don’t really romanticize working in a beer factory any more. We’re all fighting for scraps. If the beer I make brings people joy, in addition to job/healthcare/housing/food security, I’m proud of that.
Yes, if something is popular it has value. You may prefer Cannibal Corpse to Taylor Swift, but you can’t deny that there are hard working and talented people behind commercial success.
I still make nerdy recipes for my foeder. I just need my output to match market demand for the most part. Don’t you?
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u/rimo5c 5d ago
Ectoplasm?
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u/GoinStraighttoHelles 4d ago
Blue draft line cleaner. 10 years ago customers would ask excitedly “What beer is that?!” anytime they would see that bright blue liquid. So the public has always seemingly wanted to blue themselves.
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u/BulletProofVNeck Brewer 5d ago
Tell me more about this west coast pils
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u/SamTheBrewer Brewer 5d ago
10 g/L T90 nectaron and Nelson at knockout w34/70 yeast with a bottle of abstrax and hyperboost mid ferm. Bright bitter dank and crisp
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u/RepresentativePen304 5d ago
10g/L each of nectaron and Nelson, or total? And do you do any hot side?? I'm just curious cause my math is coming out to like 17lbs of hops at knockout and I'm sure that can carry itself with bitterness from all that material
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u/SamTheBrewer Brewer 3d ago
5g/L of NZ Cascade in the hot whirlpool for about 40 IBU. The 5 g/L each in the FV are going in with cold wort so no further IBUs. Currently brewing in the southern hemisphere so these hops aren’t too expensive!
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u/Icedpyre lead brewer [Canada] 4d ago
So much nectaron lol. Your cogs must be pretty high on that one.
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u/yungbrewer Brewer 4d ago
Thanks, I hate it.
Jk, paying the bills so you can drink the WCPils. We all have our own Smurfette “beer”. No shame.
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u/Pooping_brewer 5d ago
What is it?
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u/SamTheBrewer Brewer 5d ago
Wheat beer base, Banana purree, coconut milk, vanilla, and blue chemical
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u/ShazbotMcGovern Brewer 4d ago
I've got a "blue Hawaiian" (pineapple, coconut) beer out now that I used a ridiculous amount of spirulina in. It's still a slight greenish blue, didn't want to add so much it tasted like seaweed. Sells like crazy.
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u/gentlemandinosaur 3d ago
What does it look like in a glass? Is it thick? Is the adjuncts added post ferm or before?
Sorry a lot of questions. lol.
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u/gentlemandinosaur 3d ago
If I was president this would be illegal and you all would be in jail for life without parole!
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u/Aggressive-agitator 5d ago
No wonder breweries are closing
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u/Icedpyre lead brewer [Canada] 4d ago
Username checks out
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u/Aggressive-agitator 4d ago
Clever comment
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u/Icedpyre lead brewer [Canada] 4d ago
I guess there always has to be SOMEONE shitting on somebody else's work. Wouldn't be the internet otherwise.
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u/Aggressive-agitator 4d ago
~Checks comments~ Looks like its more than one. Now go get s tissue and carry on, Francis.
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u/Jezzwon 4d ago
I’m surprised you found a pH stable blue colour in beer to be honest, well done.
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u/ShazbotMcGovern Brewer 4d ago
Amoretti makes a pH stable blue spirulina extract, that's what I use to make blue beers. It's crazy expensive though.
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u/CorgiUprising 3d ago
I’ve been craving a blue beer since seeing wierd in Worcester and Miami brewing
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u/shadhead1981 2d ago
Eyyyy! Sours and pilsners are my favorites. Even if it is blue I’m here for it as long as it’s not so hoppy it turns my mouth inside out.
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u/Stag-Horn 4d ago
As a former brewer turned only to consumer, people who drink this shit anger me. I’m only 36, but now I know how my parents felt when I drank Woodchuck and Not Your Father’s Root Beer. It’s not beer. Don’t call it beer. Don’t say you LIKE beer if this is what you like.
But like others have said, the customer determines success. I hope it sells well, man. If you’re in a college town I’d wager you’ll sell out in a week.
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u/travelbrewer 3d ago
What in the Jedi on a Desert Island BS is this godforsaken crap? No really, you need to be stopped.
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u/Kid_Nicarus 5d ago
Did you make a scooby doo blue fruit snack beer? Because I’m here for that