Tag Archives: Boulevard Brewing Company

Craft Breweries, International, Neolocalism

Made in Honduras

January 21, 2019 The Beer Professor Leave a comment

Craft breweries typically have strong connections with their local communities. These connections are manifest in a number of ways. The owners usually live in town. The brewery provides space for activities such as a local yoga club, and several times a year they brew a special beer, part of the profits of which are donated to local charitable causes. In discussing craft breweries, George Homewood, Norfolk, Virginia’s director of planning and community development, notes:

“there is a different food truck outside nightly. Depending upon the brewery, there may be yoga on Sundays, trivia on Wednesdays, retro video games on Thursdays, and music on Saturdays as well as neighborhood block parties, a monthly pet adoption day or a free community meal.”

Regardless of where we live, all of us know local breweries who support their communities in these types of way. Some breweries are so proud of their local community that they name beers after local landmarks, historical figures, or important events in the community’s past. A growing number of breweries are even trying to source more of their ingredients, particularly hops, from the local region. For some breweries, one of their major contributions to the community is simply to provide a gathering place for locals; a refuge of sorts where neighborhood residents can come, meet up with a few friends, and enjoy a couple of beers.

And craft beer drinkers seem to appreciate this commitment to local communities and are very happy to support the locally-owned brewery, rather than the faceless multinational corporation (e.g., AB InBev or Heineken). There’s even a name or this preference for the local – it’s called “neolocalism”. The geographer, Steven M. Schnell defines neolocalism as a “conscious attempt of individuals and groups to establish, rebuild, and cultivate local ties, local identities, and increasingly, local economies.” Writing specifically about craft breweries, Schnell and his co-author Joseph Reese, stated that craft breweries represent a desire on the part of increasing numbers of people to “reestablish connections with local communities, settings, and economies”.

There is no doubt that buying a locally brewed beer supports a local business. Advocates of purchasing locally produced food are quick to point out the economic, social, and environmental benefits of doing so – keeping more money in the local community, encouraging cultural diversity, preserving genetic diversity etc. On the other hand, economists Jason Winfred and Philip Watson point out buying local conflicts with Ricardo’s two hundred year old principle of comparative advantage. Of course, there is the whole issue of what constitutes “local”, a topic I discussed in a previous blog entry.

Many breweries are rightly proud of the contributions they make to their local communities. And on their websites, they are not hesitant to articulate their community commitment. Crazy Mountain Brewing Company of Denver, CO, for example, state that, “although beer is our passion, one of Crazy Mountain’s core values is our commitment to community involvement”. According to Fairport Brewing Company in Fairport, NY, “our commitment to the local community run deep”, while Roadhouse Brewery of Jackson Hole, WY is “committed to supporting the local community of Jackson Hole”.

I got to thinking about craft breweries and their connections to the local economies the other day, when I was putting away a t-shirt that my oldest daughter had gave me as a Christmas gift. It was a t-shirt from Boulevard Brewing Company in Kansas City, MO. My daughter had been to Boulevard recently, while visiting a friend in Kansas City. I visited Boulevard myself while attending a conference in Kansas City in June of last year. Anyway, as I picked up the t-shirt I looked at the label just inside the collar. I was curious as to where the t-shirt was made. The label said, “Made in Honduras”. That got me wondering – where were all my other brewery t-shirts made? How many were made in the United States? I took each of them from the closet and examined them. Here is what I found:

Bare Arms Brewing, Waco, TX – Nicaragua
Black Cloister Brewing Company, Toledo, OH – Nicaragua
Boulevard Brewing Company, Kansas City, MO – Honduras
Church Brew Works, Pittsburgh, PA – Nicaragua
Dogfish Head, Milton, DE – USA
Earnest Brew Works, Toledo, OH – USA
Elevator Brewing, Columbus, OH – Mexico
Grapevine Brewery, Grapevine, TX – Nicaragua
Kona Brewing Company, Kona, HI – Mexico
Lansing Brewing Company, Lansing, MI – Mexico
Market Garden Brewery, Cleveland, OH – Nicaragua
Maumee Bay Brewing Company, Toledo, OH – Nicaragua
Pike Brewing Company, Seattle, WA – Honduras
Rhinegeist Brewery, Cincinnati, OH – USA
Round Barn Brewery, Baroda, MI – Honduras

First off, I own fifteen t-shirts from breweries. I never knew that. Of the fifteen t-shirts, seven were made in Nicaragua, three in Mexico, three in the United States, and two in Honduras. Now I fully realize that my fifteen t-shirts do not constitute a scientifically valid sample, so I am not going to make any generalizations regarding the larger population of American breweries. Thinking scientifically, I thought that it might be interesting to have a control group. So, I randomly selected fifteen of my non-brewery t-shirts that I had purchased in the United States, and examined their labels. All of them were manufactured in Latin America – five in Mexico, four in Nicaragua, and three each in Honduras and El Salvador. These, albeit non-scientific, findings do hint at the possibility that American craft breweries may be more prone to purchase American made t-shirts than the average retailer.

My t-shirt from Church Brew Works in Pittsburgh, PA was made in Nicaragua

That most of the brewery t-shirts I own are made in Latin American countries did not surprise me. I teach this stuff in my Industrial Geography course at The University of Toledo. By and large, it comes down to labor costs. Manufacturing labor costs are significantly cheaper in Latin America than in the United States. For example, according to IVEMSA, a company that assists U.S. companies interested in establishing manufacturing facilities in Mexico, American manufacturers who locate in Mexico will pay 20-30% less in labor costs. Add to that a forty-eight hour work week (before requiring overtime pay) and the advantages of manufacturing in Mexico soon become apparent.

Three breweries in my non-scientific sample do sell t-shirts manufactured in the United States. They are Dogfish Head in Milton, DE, Earnest Brew Works in Toledo, OH, and Rhinegeist Brewery in Cincinnati, OH. The t-shirts sold by Earnest Brew Works and Rhinegeist Brewery are made by American Apparel, who are based in Los Angeles, CA. The company makes apparel in countries all over the world, including Bangladesh, Honduras, and the United States. Interestingly, one of American Apparel’s commitments is supporting the economies in which they are located. They do this by “using local suppliers for transportation, food services and raw materials and accessories for our production facilities such as dyes, buttons, zippers, boxes and office supplies.” The two American Apparel t-shirts I have were as I mentioned above, made in the USA. The components used to manufacture these two t-shirts came both from the United States and other countries

My t-shirt from Rhinegeist Brewery was made in the USA, with US and imported components

The t-shirt sold by Dogfish Head Brewery is manufactured by a company called TS Designs, who are based in Burlington, NC. Not only are TS Designs’ t-shirts made in North Carolina, the cotton that they are made from is grown in North Carolina.

It would be nice if more breweries who sold t-shirts, baseball caps, wool hats and other souvenir items sourced those from inside the United States. If these items came from inside or close to the community in which they reside it would be another indication that the breweries are committed to supporting their local and/or regional economy.

2018 Year in Review

December 30, 2018 The Beer Professor Leave a comment

So another year is about to draw to a close. And with that, it is time to look back on my brewery visits for the year. This year, I visited a record sixty-six breweries. At the start of the year, I set myself a goal of fifty-two breweries, an average of one per week. So I more than met my target.

Of the breweries that I visited, twenty were in my home state of Ohio, forty-one were in states other than Ohio, and five were outside of the United States. In addition to Ohio, I had the opportunity to visit breweries in five other states – Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Oregon, and Texas. Outside of the United States, I visited breweries in Italy, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

Of the sixty-six breweries that I visited, I had been to thirteen of them at least once before (indicated in italics in the lists below), which means there were fifty-three breweries that I visited for the first time.

This year, I also kept track of the craft beer bars that I visited. Throughout the year, I visited nine craft beer bars – three in Austin, TX, and one each in Toledo, OH and Ann Arbor, MI. I also visited craft beer bars in Rome (Italy), Lisbon (Portugal), Zurich (Switzerland), and Innsbruck (Austria).

Creating a list of craft beer bars visited did raise some interesting definitional questions. To qualify as a craft beer bar, does that mean that all beer that it sells must be craft beer? If not, what proportion of the beer must be craft beer? Does a bar that sells predominantly macro-beer, but has a couple of craft beers on tap, qualify as a craft beer bar? I did give this some thought as I set out to create this list. Here is where I ended up, from a definition perspective. To qualify as a craft beer bar, the beers available must be predominantly craft beers. It is ok to have one or two macro-beers, but no more than that. Also, it must have craft beers from more than one brewery. For example, while most of the beers available at the Brewdog bar in Rome are brewed by Brewdog, the bar does have a nice, albeit, small selection of other craft beers. While you may debate the criteria I used to define a craft beer bar, it worked for me.

Below you will find a list of all the craft breweries and craft beer bars that I visited during 2018. Following this list, you will find one photograph from each of the places that I visited. I hope that you enjoy these. They are intended to capture the beauty and diversity of craft beer.

For 2019, I will once again set a target of fifty-two craft breweries. While I am tempted to try to beat my 2018 total of sixty-six breweries, I want to keep this a fun, non-stressful, venture – fifty-two seems a reasonable target.

Ohio Breweries (20)