Small Bytes: Modern Times, Tilray Not Done, Glass or Plastic, TRI 21, and a Bronze Medal 🥉
I love thinking of Beer Crunchers as a blog because that’s how it started, with no e-mail functionality. The addition of the newsletter function was necessary though as I became completely reliant on fighting through an increasingly tricky algorithm, just to tell people about a new post. As much as I’d love for you all to visit the Substack site, the reality is that ~97% of you consume it as a newsletter. Rather than fight that, let’s try out an actual newsletter-style post because frankly, they’re easy to layer in and simple for you to breeze through and see what interests you.
Byte Sized
A few things that made me hit favorite button on social media this week:
Modern Times Creeping Toward Zombie Status 🧟
San Diego’s Modern Times has experienced one of the more frustrating falls from grace in all of craft beer. We learned this week that Maui Brewing would be looking hand off the job of restoring the brand to it’s former glory, but isn’t it too late? Can a brewery trade hands this many times and ever get it’s mojo back? Or does it have enough mainstream fans outside the craft beer zeitgeist to re-catch fire? Here’s a timeline of headlines:
April 2019: Modern Times Beer sells shares to fans, hopes to raise $1M at an over $260M valuation.
May 2021: Modern Times Founder Jacob McKean Resigns From CEO Role Amid Allegations of a Toxic Work Environment
February 2022: Modern Times to Close Portland, Oakland, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles Taprooms
April 2022: Modern Times Expects to be Sold Via ‘Court-Ordered Receivership Sale, Modern Times Expects to be Sold Via ‘Court-Ordered Receivership Sale
July 2022: Modern Times Sale: Brewery X Bows Out; Maui Next in Line to Acquire San Diego Craft Brewery, Maui Moves Forward with Modern Times Acquisition
November 2022: Modern Times’ Anaheim Taproom Closes; Merger with Maui Done; Former CEO Jennifer Briggs Exits
September 2024: Craft ‘Ohana Shifting Modern Times Production to AleSmith; 57 Jobs to be Cut
October 2024: Craft ‘Ohana selects partners to oversee Modern Times operations
Now the future of Modern Times Beer lands in the hands of former Saint Archer founder Josh Landan who exited the brewery in a 2015 sale to MillerCoors, who shut it down 6 years later. Josh would go on to co-found Harlan Brewing in 2018 before I’m told he exited that partnership. He’s currently running the brand Wings & Arrows, which is part of the collective Great Frontier Holdings with Ninkasi, most notably.
Breweries rose to prominence during a time where their people were the faces of the brewery. Every city had their own version of “The First Name Club” of people so influential in their scene that if you referred to them by their first time, everyone knew who you were talking about. As breweries trade hands and combine with others, “brand” gets prioritized over the innovation and rotation that made these breweries special. In most cases, I don’t see any path to salvaging their value, but I’ll be watching to see if any exceptions can prove me wrong.
Speaking of Which…Tilray Not Finished…Cutting Costs
Tilray is not the white knight of craft beer here to save breweries who were once local favorites. They’re purchasing abandoned brands, cutting innovation, streamlining sales reps, and stripping them down to their core in search of growth through M&A. It sounded like they’re not finished in a recent Q3 earnings call where their Chief Irwin Simon said in response to underperforming beverage sales expectations:
“The other big thing that’s not in here is a lot of the costs that we’re still taking out of this business with the integration of the ABI brands.”
Many including myself have speculated that these acquired beer brands would be used to create THC beverage spin-offs, leveraging whatever brand equity remains. If so, Tilray won’t be relying on those alone as they’ve recently shared four unique brands that they’ll be rolling targeting different audiences within the THC realm. I imagine having so many production facilities around the country makes produces these incredibly easy.
Glass or Plastic?!
The news of Troy Aikman’s beer EIGHT and its recent addition of bottles served as an excuse for me to pose the question to TikTok and Instagram:
Could bottles ever regain their lead over cans, despite all the practical and economical pros of aluminum?
I use the rising BPA concerns as one potential catalyst, but even more fascinating to me, bottles simply becoming cool again. I wrote about this in early 2020, lumping it into a concept that I called “The Art of the Zag”, opportunities to zag while others are zigging. The reactions couldn’t be more equally divided with strong, definitive opinions on both sides. The comments are fascinating and vary significantly between:
Many will point to the capital cost of adding a bottling line to existing craft breweries as the reason this won’t happen. I would counter that point with the fact that most new beer brand launches are about to be contract brewed, thanks to all the availability capacity online. A lot of the more sophisticated contract brewers are equipped with the ability to deliver on both bottles and cans. So while this may not be an immediate play for the long tail of independent craft, it could be for all the new brands that have a more-CPG feel to them.
On a Positive Note: TRI21 !
One time I did a Silent Auction on my Instagram account to raise money for Lurie Childrens Hospital by raffling off the chance to collaborate with Is / Was Brewing on a collaborative Saison release. The winning bidder at $2,000 (!!!) was Pat Craddock, the CFO of Michigan’s Griffin Claw Brewing, who has gone on to become a close industry friend. Pat is one of the special people who are in my personal first name club.
In 2015, Pat’s son, Ian, was born with Down syndrome. Unsure of what the future held, the family connected with GiGi’s Playhouse, a Midwest-based nonprofit that provides programming and support for thousands of people with Down syndrome and their families. “It was a crucial support network for Ian, our son Keegan, my wife and myself,” Pat said.
He went on to start TRI21 Project, an on-going beer collaboration that helps raise awareness and funds to support individuals impacted by Down syndrome. The initiative has provided a meaningful way to give back to the organization that helped his family so much, inviting breweries to craft a beer using an open-source, flexible recipe and customizable label artwork, with a portion of proceeds donated to GiGi’s Playhouse. These funds can either support a local GiGi’s Playhouse (there are 60 branches in the U.S. and Mexico) or the organization’s virtual program for areas without a brick-and-mortar location.
If you didn’t need any more reasons to participate, the recipe this year is a West Coast 🤩 (Full Press Release)
Beer Crunchers Takes Bronze 🥉
Last week was the annual awards ceremony for the North American Guild of Beer Writers where Beer Crunchers has previously been the proud recipient of two golds and one silver for individual blog posts. This year marks the first time that the totality of the years work took down a medal, finishing third to two of the best in the business with
’s and Jeff Alworth’s Bervana for Best Blog or Newsletter. Thank you to everyone who has passed on words of encouragement regarding these e-mails and to those who upgraded to a premium subscription. These actions are where all of the motivation stems from.
The Latest…
It was a super active week for Beer Crunchers. Here’s what you missed:
Pat and Griffin Glaw are great peeps! Cheers
Bronze??? You’re gold, Doug! Great post as always!