The Resiliency of Hudson Valley Breweries

Raphael Beretta - 5/15/2020

Advisors: Prof. Jeff Bass and Dr. Kevin Lerner

DUTCHESS COUNTY—The immensely successful craft brewing industry in New York, put to its biggest test since the craft beverage boom began, shows signs of resiliency against the many challenges posed by COVID-19. 

In early March, many taproom-dependent breweries vied to remain open. Even larger breweries with statewide or national distribution assured customers of cleaning procedures, limited attendance to half capacity, and took other measures to protect onsite business—an integral component of microbrew sales.

Though breweries were deemed an essential service by Governor Andrew Cuomo in Executive Order 2026, a majority had to close their taproom doors. According to an impact poll conducted by the New York State Brewers Association (NYSBA) from April 3 to April 15, sales declined by nearly three-fourths immediately. Almost half of New York breweries ceased production in the face of plummeting demand, while many more teetered on a fulcrum of economic uncertainty. 

Those that could facilitate takeout orders, curbside pickup, or even local deliveries would not be able to last forever. More than 70% of breweries in New York State have taken out loans under the Payment Protection Program, and another 63% benefited from emergency Small Business Association grants. Nearly half of brewers that participated in the survey stated they could remain open no more than three months under the present circumstances. Some small-scale independent breweries without canning lines or distribution channels did not expect to last another three weeks. 

Implications to Hudson Valley Craft Brewing

Anywhere from 75 to 90 of New York State’s 416 breweries reside in the Hudson Valley region, depending on which counties you include. Spanning from Westchester to Albany, almost 980 jobs in the Hudson Valley brewing industry are taproom-specific, posing grave implications to employment during the pandemic.

However, not all of the news is grim for brewing. Low-contact services have spiked during the pandemic; according to Nielsen CGA data, 60-70% of consumers had ordered takeout multiple times in the first two weeks of April. Alcohol sales specifically were 15-20% higher during the period of March 16 to April 26 than 2019’s numbers. Nationwide, packaged craft has risen 7.9% and 18.3% in total volume according to the Brewer’s Association (BA) over the last three weeks. This accounts for onsite takeout. Online alcohol sales have exploded, peaking with a 243% increase in the final week of March.

A New York craft beverage industry with two-thirds of its sales through onsite draught purchases is poised to change forever. While alcohol shipping within the state has always been legal for businesses with a retail permit, UPS and FedEx are now much more open to shipping craft beverages. The New York State Liquor authority has also temporarily allowed for home delivery of alcohol.

“It was great forethought on the New York State Liquor authority,” said Hutch Kugeman, Hudson Valley representative and Board Member to the New York State Brewers Association. Krugeman ran Crossroads Brewing Co. for five years, and became the head brewer for the Culinary Institute of America’s beverage program in 2015. “I think we’d see a lot more people out of business right now without the ability to both deliver and direct ship.”

A world of E-commerce opportunities suddenly became available to not only national distributors, but farmstand breweries. Creative marketing and social media engagement alongside this new channel for sales opened up a lifeline for breweries large and small in the Hudson Valley.

“Juicy” Opportunities for Larger Operations

Sloop Brewing’s meteoric rise from farmers-market-favorite to national distributor is well-documented. Adam Watson and Justin Taylor co-founded the brewery in 2011, and the flagship Juice Bomb IPA has skyrocketed in popularity. “The hazy New England style of IPA became the definitive style in the industry,” Taylor said. The once home-brew operation suddenly had national demand. Nearly two years ago they outgrew their Elizaville Dutch-barn brewhouse and moved to IBM’s former East Fishkill campus, now called iParks.

The New England style of India Pale Ales, in typical New England fashion, symbolizes a revolution in craft brewing. For many, the traditional West Coast style of IPA was not accessible. Craft beer was a competition to see who could withstand the dryest, bitterest onslaught of hops. 

The NEIPA declared: no more. Brewers embracing this new style began incorporating fruit-forward hops in their beers. Mango, stonefruit, pineapple, you name it, there’s a hop varietal with that flavor profile. The result was a style of beer with a creamy, orange juice consistency and an abundance of citrus sensations. The buzz-word used around NEIPAs is “hazy”, describing the almost murky visibility of the golden liquid. 

“Haze is an example of consumers demanding something, and [brewers] responding. The hazy IPA 10 years ago would have been seen as a deeply flawed product, or shoddy workmanship. That has completely changed,” Kugeman said. The first few batches evoking this style emerged around 2016, and the first barrels of Juice Bomb arrived that February. 

In this way, Sloop’s motto of Grounded Roots, Open Waters is perfectly representative. They are grounded in brewing traditions, but open to new trends and innovations.

Juice Bomb has become a staple, distributed in 16 states. Even though Sloop’s 25,000 square-foot facility has enormous 120-barrel tanks, true to open waters, they still experiment in 30-barrel batches. “We are doing thinks like reusing graham crackers in the mash, then kettle souring it, adding lactose, and just punishing the beer with a lot of fruit...you get an idea of what takes off, how to make our draught list diverse enough for people to return multiple times. The first batch of Juice Bomb was 30 barrels. Maybe the next great thing is 30 barrels away,” Taylor said.

Preserving the aesthetic roots of an industrial plant, Sloop adopted “the Factory” as a moniker for its large open-plan taproom.  With bright colors and 80s nostalgia, Juice Bomb garnered its own cultish fanaticism. Bi-weekly beer releases, vintage arcade games, monthly “Sloopflix and Chill” movie nights and other attractions consistently drew a few hundred people at a time during the weekend rush. Nearly overnight, those several hundred visitors were unable to step foot inside in compliance with the state government.

“Price Choppers, Trader Joes, Costcos, all of these big, big guns are essentially keeping us in business,” Director of Sales and Marketing Joe Turco said. Turco’s creativity is only outdone by his work ethic. Before the stay-at-home order, he practically lived on the road, constantly striving to expand Sloop’s domestic market. A frequent flyer, Turco would have only been home seven days in the month of April; suddenly his travel slate was wiped clean. 

Maintaining the same production schedule with a few slight modifications, Sloop shifted to canning only. “We haven’t dialed back production at all,” Turco said. According to head brewer Justin Taylor, that production schedule operates on a four-day rotation, filling twelve 120-barrel tanks.

Within a 15-mile radius, Sloop began delivering beer seven days a week, right to local doorsteps. Partnering with UPS, the sales department at Sloop put together “care packages” for sale all over New York state. Hoodies, tshirts, four-packs of new beer releases, stickers and other items catered to distant Sloop fans. “It goes a long way. Let’s say we have a limited release with only about 150 cans. We might only send that to the local distributor, or only we carry it. Now, someone in Buffalo can try something specific. It’s absolutely on fire,” Turco said.

Curbside pickup for food, in addition to the beer, has been another outlet for keeping employees busy. In addition to pizza and salad takeout options, Chef Adam Slamon curated a Friday evening “DATE NIGHT” dinner special, offering themed dishes like shrimp po-boys and Mediterranean mezze platters. 

Other breweries and brewpubs in the Hudson Valley have taken advantage of the off-premise alcohol delivery currently permitted. As part of a promotion, Mill House Brewery temporarily rebranded their takeout as “Mill House Panda”, a call-back to the Chinese restaurant that occupied the building before the brewery. Industrial Arts Brewing, based in Garnerville with a Beacon taproom, delivers to Orange, Putnam, Rockland, and Westchester counties, and ships orders everywhere else in the state. 

In New City, the District 96 Beer Factory has offered burger and beer deliveries to Rockland and parts of Westchester. “It’s myself doing the deliveries, so it’s a one-man-show and there is only so much I can fit in my car,” co-owner John Potenza said. “I’ll go anywhere if people want beer.” A true Butch-Cassidy-and-the-Sundance-Kid-moment, Potenza and his brewers ramped up production while demand was still there, brewing even more than their regular output.

Giving Back: the Golden Rule

Newburgh Brewing Company is home to the very popular Boss series, stemming from the classic American style IPA MegaBoss. Its “little brother” NanoBoss, a Session NEIPA, is a spiritual cousin to the Juice Bomb—a “bouquet of tropical fruit aromas” and hazy straw in color. Though a booming distributor, taproom and restaurant sales are important, and the beginning of the pandemic was tough.

“When things hit hard, they had to lay off everyone but the vital brewing staff...one of the owners and two or three other people,” Kugeman said, “But then found ways to very quickly pivot to the regulations. They got into delivery, opened the kitchen up for food, and were able to hire a significant portion of their employees back.” In order to be eligible for off-premise alcohol delivery, businesses must offer food—but even “a bag of chips” would legally qualify as food.

The team launched a new site, newburgbrewingdelivers.com, offering delivery within 25 miles as well as in-state shipping. Like Sloop, Newburgh Brewing is selling care packages of their own: “The Newburgh Classic” and “The Newburgh Hoppy Hops” combine curated beer collections with merchandise.

“There have been a couple different breweries locally that have done a lot to help bring everyone together—and get the communication flowing—to create a cohesive environment for all of us to provide information to the state via the Brewers Association,” said Chris Woolston, one of three partners running Obercreek Brewing Company. “Two of them are Sloop and Newburgh [Brewing].”

A larger-scale brewery can have an enormous impact on colleagues in the industry. The impact a larger-scale brewery can have on colleagues in the industry is enormous. A younger brewery located in Poughkeepsie, Zeus Brewing, was caught without the ability to can beer when COVID-19 reached New York. Justin Taylor and Joe Turco of Sloop are longtime fans of Schatzi’s Pub; when Zeus opened up next door, they started hanging out over there.

“We had been going to Schatzi’s forever, and we actually have a very close relationship with Amit [Ram, head brewer at Zeus]. I’ve known him for about 10 years,” Turco said. The brewing teams at Sloop and Zeus previously collaborated on a pineapple and coconut-filled NEIPA called BRO SO HARD.

Ram called the Sloop team toward the beginning of stay-at-home orders, worried about selling the quantity of draught beer in stock. “We still had our canning line from Elizaville, and said, ‘Why don’t you take it during this time’. Amit was blown away, and jumped at the chance. We know they just opened up and how stressful it is,” Turco said. 

With that canning line Zeus produced PK’s BRAVEST, a crisp Mexican Lager honoring the fifth anniversary of Poughkeepsie firefighter Tim Gunther’s tragic death. Part of the proceeds went to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. According to Zeus’s own Instagram account, they were sold out of PK’s BRAVEST by May 4.

Sloop has also provided crowler machines to a few brewery and bar owners they know well, including Peekskill Brewery. Crowlers—32oz aluminum cans that bridge the gap between reusable glass growlers and regular 12oz cans—are an effective method of selling excess draught beer without having to acquire an expensive canning line. The machine necessary to fill crowler cans with draught beer from kegs became rare during the pandemic, as brewers scrambled to salvage their draught inventory. A majority of Mid-Hudson breweries are small and dependent on taproom sales

In an effort to assist members of the hospitality industry that lost their jobs, Sloop worked with the Craft Beer Guild of NY on the Hospitality Relief Bomb project. A double-edged charitable sword, kegs of a limited-run IPA titled Forever Rotating were sold to restaurants and bars at an enormous discount to serve as a revenue stream for them, while the proceeds made went into the Golden Rule’s COVID-19 relief fund. 

As Chairman of the Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce Bill Francis said, addressing business owners on precautions to take: “The Dutchess business community remains united under these challenges, and dependent on one another.”

From France to the Farmstand, and from the Farmstand to China: Creative Solutions for Small-Scale Brewers

According to the survey conducted by the NYSBA, a large portion of this region’s breweries are small—businesses with less than seven employees. “Out of that 75 to 90 breweries in the Hudson Valley, about 15 are big. 20 are midsize. The rest are the small taprooms and farm breweries,” Kugeman said. 

A quaint and cozy three-floor 1830’s barn sits on 25 acres of scenic farmland in Poughkeepsie. In 2018, Evan Watson of Captain Lawrence Brewing Co. and Emily Watson opened up the taproom of Plan Bee Farm Brewery on the ground floor of that barn. The couple had been operating with a brewers license since 2013 and brewing for friends as a hobby before that. 

Emily brought her years of farming experience in Ohio to the fertile Hudson Valley to grow fresh produce for their beer. Some grains used in batches are grown onsite, like buckwheat and rye. The Watsons regularly produce strawberries, apples, herbs and edible flowers, and the raw honey that gives Plan Bee its name. “The year we did a ‘Bloody Mary’ beer, we grew all the tomatoes, the celery, the horseradish. What we grow is on a rotation,” Emily Watson said. 

Most beers produced at Plan Bee are barrel-aged in local oak fermenters, and all are made with ingredients exclusively grown in New York.

The flagship Barn Beer is a shining example. Stone House Farms from Hudson, NY contributes the red wheat and 6-row barley. Poughquag’s Crooked Creek provides Perle hops and Chimney Bluff from Walcott adds Chinook hops. The barley is malted at Hudson Valley Malt (located in Germantown). This concoction is fermented in oak with a house-mixed culture made from raw honey and honeycomb, products harvested right on the farm. Barn Beer Wild Ale is a New York product, inside and out.

The term “wild” refers to the residual yeast left in each batch. The fermentation process actually continues after bottling. Residual sugars combined with yeast allow for carbonation to occur right in the bottle. A wild ale’s distinct finish separates it from a sour, but both feature a similar “bite”. Wild ales and sours are relatively new as well; in many ways, Plan Bee is where Sloop was nine years ago, except the Watsons have no intention of growing larger.

“We’re lucky that our business model was always to be small, to never grow past producing 500 barrels a year,” Emily Watson said. Plan Bee’s 10-barrel operation is representative of a majority of farm breweries: tiny, especially when compared to a facility the size of Sloop that houses 12 120-barrel tanks. She and her husband are the only full-time employees, so no layoffs.

Obercreek Brewing shares similar business practices with Plan Bee, sourcing ingredients—and even their barrels—from lower New York State. Chris Woolston, Phil Shaw, and Kyle Miller are equal partners in the venture, and keep the operation small. Utilizing produce and hops harvested from the adjacent Obercreek Farm, right around the corner from New Hamburg train station, the trio specializes in wild sours and farmhouse saisons (a European style of pale ale).

“Farmhouse as a style historically has Belgian and French origins,” Miller said. “Americans have adapted that style and created a bigger umbrella for it. As a brewer, you figure out what works and try to craft it.”

Miller experiments with many types of fruit. It all comes down to timing. When a beer is finished fermenting and ready to “sit” on the fruit, only certain types of fruit might be ripe. Others will only hold for so long after being harvested. Tart cherries, black currants, donut peaches—the barrels at Obercreek are cauldrons of craft-beverage-chemistry. Miller even has particular strains of bacteria he is fond of using. 

Brewing at Obercreek slowed at the start of the pandemic, a weary precaution. As returning customers have continued to support them, Woolston, Miller, and Shaw have started stockpiling their “funky” beers that would normally sell in the taproom. There is no canning line, and bottling is a rare occurrence. Obercreek is a tasting site first and foremost. 

“We have a great atmosphere on the farm, with microfauna that both helps us with different beer styles and allow customers to relax, enjoy the scenery, and try new types of beer,” Woolston said. 

State regulations combatting COVID-19 prohibit the on-site consumption of alcohol, so Obercreek’s only method of sales is currently through glass growlers. Friday afternoons, the weekend’s growler selections are announced. Luckily, they’re being sold.

Plan Bee, conversely, is bottling everything. Due to diminished taproom activity and declining carry-out sales amidst social-distancing measures, the Watsons ceased brewing in late March. Their typical brewing cycle is longer due to barrel-aging, so the last batch wasn’t bottled until April 24. 

Even before they had a taproom they sold their beer in bottles. In 2013 the couple sold bottled sours and wild ales through something called Hive Memberships.

The Hive Membership resembles a CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture. A traditional CSA is a farm. People pay a set amount of money, like buying a share of the farm, and receive a portion of the harvest as a repayment for their investment.

“We tried to do the same kind of thing here. You can’t legally buy shares of a brewery, so our members invest in us and in turn we ship them a box of whatever has come out of the taproom and been bottled,” Emily Watson said.

Online orders for pickup were instituted. They even had a “drive-through” event for beer takeout with a lobster-roll food truck in mid-March. Requests for fresh bottles were frequent at first, then slowly dwindled. As doors for local sales were closing, however, new doors for distribution were opening.

“We actually started exporting our beer internationally...exporting to China, Japan, and Korea,” Emily Watson said. “As things are opening up again in China, people are going back to restaurants and bars, and there is a serious lack of beer available.”

China’s beer market has grown to be the largest in the world. According to research from the EU SME Centre, Chinese beer consumption is twice that of the U.S. and five times more than Germany, the largest market in the EU.

Most of this consumption has consisted of predominantly light beers, like lagers, for decades. Popular name brands like Tsingtao dominated, being cheaper than bottled water in most cities. However, tastes are changing. Craft beer has surged recently: since 2016, craft imports have increased by two-thirds (according to Mersol and Lou, a Chinese business advisory LLC).

Craft brewpubs and microbreweries have emerged around even lower-tier cities in China over the last five years. In order to stop the spread of COVID-19 these operations were suspended, causing a craft shortage, and a new market for American brewers.

Not all brewers have this opportunity. Many beer styles cannot survive the long journey to China and other east Asian countries. Hoppy beers have to be flown and refrigerated to remain fresh, a costly endeavor. Plan Bee’s particular style of wild ale can survive at room temperature for a long time—much longer than the three-to-four weeks it takes to send a boat to China.

“To make it worthwhile to ship beer internationally, [the exporter] needs to send around 22 pallets. He works with many different [brewers] to make it work, and I happen to be one of them,” Emily Watson said.

International distribution started with Canada, through an importer that bought in bulk and sold beer to individual clients. For countries like Denmark and Australia, Plan Bee sold to regular distribution companies. One pallet at a time, a 10-barrel farm brewery is reaching several continents.

Domestic sales are still vital to the survival of small breweries. Online sales have never been more essential. “I think that's been incredibly important during all this to have strong social media that you can engage with your customers and keep them interested. Those who didn't have good social media, struggled a little more,” Kugeman said.

Better than the Bodega: Going Digital

To manage their Hive Memberships and ship direct-to-customer within New York State, the Watsons of Plan Bee Brewery enlisted the services of TapRm, an online beer distributor and e-commerce solutions company.

“If you go to your favorite chocolate company’s website, the first thing you’ll see is ‘buy now for delivery’. It’s funny, no brands or beer websites were really doing that, forever,” said Jason Sherman, founder and CEO of TapRm.

Before TapRm, Sherman worked with Anheuser-Buch Inbev’s legal team. He was one of the first to be recruited to develop what is now ZX Ventures, AB Inbev’s venture capital disruptive growth organization. “What happened with taxicab companies and Uber, or hotel chains and Airbnb, Anheuser-Busch Inbev was afraid of what would happen globally to Budweiser, Stella, Corona, if something else popped up,” Sherman said. Representing AB Inbev, Sherman helped acquire and invest in craft breweries all over the world.

The second component was global e-commerce. They worked with every country’s “Amazon of beer”: Beer Hawk in the U.K., Stop Your Beer in France, Beer House in Mexico, Debbie Bar in Brazil, and many others. These were models for on-demand delivery.

Sherman and other members of the team brought insights from those models back to the U.S. The task of putting a “BUY NOW” button on Bud Light’s website still seemed impossible, largely due to reliance on the three-tier system. This system tracks the movement of beer from the producer (the brewer or manufacturer), to a distributor (or wholesale), and lastly to retailers. “BUY NOW” does not exist in that system.

“With the Anheuser-Busch legal team I went state-by-state, figuring out which partners we would need,” Sherman said. “That was the birth of TapRm—the New York partner that we needed didn’t exist.”

TapRm started with a bodega. “A nice little old lady in Rochester was retiring, so we acquired her bodega in September of 2018,” Sherman said. That bodega turned into a sizable distributor and e-commerce fulfillment arm. In May 2019 they moved to Brooklyn and within a year, TapRm was the first distributor in the country that enabled brands to sell online.

What was a business model containing four or five brands in distribution, and 30 or 40 sold online grew exponentially. Part of TapRm’s success comes with the e-commerce advisory. Older farm brewers or business owners that were new to the digital sphere are now tracking impressions and investing in Google search engine optimization.

By early March 2020, TapRm was the third or fourth largest distributor in New York City, and the largest e-commerce company for beer on the East Coast. “We now well surpassed both of those milestones. With COVID-19 happening, our model came to light: we are the largest e-commerce player in the U.S. that’s doing direct shipping right now, and we’re the number one account in New York City,” Sherman said. “We’re buying more beer from other distributors and breweries than Madison Square Garden or Yankee Stadium [during peak season.]”

Restrictions during the pandemic have forced consumers to take a new look at how they buy alcohol. According to a survey TapRm conducted in January 2020, 80% of consumers in New York thought it was illegal to purchase beer online, a “mind-blowing” statistic for Sherman.

Pre-stay-at-home-orders, 0.2% of total beer sales were made online. Online sales of wine and spirits were five times that amount, and groceries sales twenty times. For TapRm, Governor Cuomo and the State Liquor Authority loosening the rules for alcohol delivery was the “best thing possible for beer in the online space”. TapRm lowered its free-shipping minimum to $25, eliminating any possible consumer hesitation. In Sherman’s view, education is the only barrier in between beer lovers and the convenience of buying beer online.

“This is the only thing people will still carry 50lbs of home with them...They are starting to say ‘I don’t need to go to my supermarket or a bodega for this’ and ‘My favorite brewery is doing it, that means other breweries must be doing it’....with home consumption channels being the only one for brand building, we’ve been helping hundreds and hundreds of brands get online,” Sherman said. 

Since early April, TapRm has received requests for e-commerce assistance from about 30 new brands a day. Luckily for Plan Bee, they partnered with TapRm for their Hive Memberships a year ago. “It’ll be a year in May. I just drove a bunch of beer down to Brooklyn for them to ship all over the state,” Emily Watson said. “We also have worked with a company called Tavour for three years, they’re based out of Washington, and they ship to about 20 states for us on the West Coast [and in the middle of the country] for distribution.”

Barn Beer and a few other releases sold out quickly on TapRm. With business booming, every $50 of beer sold on TapRm puts $10 into a fund for displaced members of the brewing industry. Upon entering the game, other local producers have had great success shipping online.

“Hudson Valley Brewery put out one of their really popular beers Ultra Sphere online, and it sold out within five minutes,”  said Joshua Galow, the Director of Business Services for the Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce.

A virtual beer tasting and brewery tour held by the NYSBA and GrowlerWerks on May 2 took advantage of the relaxed laws. With the purchase of a ticket, participants had 64oz of beer delivered right to their doorsteps. During the event, they connected with the people behind that beer on a Zoom call, and were treated to a 90-minute tour of their brewery. Industrial Arts was one of the four breweries featured at this event, the first of its kind. 

“Our biggest events of the year just got shut down, like everybody else. We’ve had to find new ways to raise capital in order to fight on behalf of the brewers,” Kugeman said. 

An Uncertain Future

The CARES Act provided some relief measures for smaller businesses, but the real lifeline has been support from customers. Breweries reestablished connections with long-term fan bases and engaged with consumers in new ways. 

“Most of the breweries I frequent are still open. I am grateful to be able to go and pick up [beer], from places like Sloop, Hudson Valley Brewery, and Zeus,” said Galow. The Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce hosted a virtual webinar on May 6 to advise business owners on how to properly reopen.

Customers consuming alcohol on-premise at restaurants and bars was outlined in Phase 3 of Governor Cuomo’s four-phase plan to reopen businesses. Brewery taprooms weren’t specifically mentioned, but according to Kugeman and the rest of the NYSBA, they’ll be lumped in with this group. 

Dutchess County’s placement in the Mid-Hudson alongside COVID-hotspots like Westchester limits its chances of reaching eligibility for reopening, but currently, no region in New York State has met the seven-point criteria to enter Phase 1. The Mid-Hudson region has yet to acquire enough contact tracers or curb new hospitalizations and deaths to fulfill Governor Cuomo’s metrics, according to state government information. 

“I’d be surprised if you walk through downtown Poughkeepsie or Beacon and don’t see some businesses remain closed, and that may include some breweries,” Kugeman said, “however, I can tell you for sure breweries that were not shipping a month ago are now. People are adjusting as they go and learning what works... I haven’t heard from any [brewer] that they’re about to close. I’m actually not aware of a single place on the verge.”

As for the future of local deliveries and direct shipping through FedEx and UPS, things are uncertain but hopeful. Information from the Chamber indicates that the recent uptick in revenue may influence change in legislation long-term.

Like the hazy New England style IPA or wild sour trends that came before it, changes to the way people purchase their beer will be completely in the hands of consumers. If they demand it, businesses—and the Liquor Authority—will respond. It may determine the viability of brewers staying in business.

“You have to keep them around and survive in the same way you would your favorite Chinese Restaurant or Indian take-out place. This is the lifeblood of what they do,” Sherman said. “Honestly, every ale you buy really goes a long way.”