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There are only a few beers in the super tall format but I noticed my fridge had a couple and thought it would be interesting to review the first sip and last sip of these beers. First up is Modern Times with their new Double Dry Hopped version of their Booming Rollers IPA.
1st Sip
Creamy. Vanilla. Grassy. Tea like. Lupulin cone dust.
Last Sip
Orange creamsicle. Woodsy.
Sometimes when you look at a Modern Times label design or even just the name, you don’t really know what might be inside. Pretty, yes but not greatly informative.
All you really need to know about Tentbier is the name of Heater-Allen from McMinnville, Oregon. You know this is going to be a traditional beer. A 16oz can of Festbier that collaborates the Portland Arm of the Modern Times empire with a well-loved Oregon brewery.
Say what you will about the naming conventions used by Modern Times or the large expansion they have undertaken but in the end it comes down to the beer and the experience in your spaces. And I felt it was time to re-visit the Dankness Dojo in DTLA to answer those two essential questions.
I finally got a day when it was not super packed. The small amount of bar stools means that unless you get there at the stroke of 11am, you probably won’t find a seat there is similar to finding parking in the DTLA central core.
There has never been a shortage of beers on offer here which I truly like. If you want to go IPA, well you will be busy but sours and stouts and even a dopplebock were also on offer. There is also a goodly number of collaborations from Wayfinder in Portland and Automatic in San Diego. Of all the beers, my absolute favorite was the Old Economy Oak Aged Dopplebock. Straightforward with a lovely burnished brown color. This is a big ABV beer that toed the line of sweetness and also was one you had to watch how fast you drank. The IPA’s all differentiated themselves though I was underwhelmed by the Max Single Hop IPA. This version was with Strata which I have been really digging lately. But this one fell flat for me. Wasn’t as bad as the Pastry Stout, Shadow Temple which was just a coconut conveyor belt.
I like the art, the ambience and though I wish the space was a touch larger, they have put in as much seating as possible and the beers were uniformly well made (if not to my taste).
Money. You need it to grow and to pay off how big you have grown. Two California beer brands have taken different paths in many different ways and have done so again when it comes to raising cash in 2019.
Cerveceria Calidad who I have interviewed in the past have one beer, they contract brew and they are in the starting phase of getting their beer out into distribution. They have gone the investor route. Bringing in 20+ new people from former Dodgers to restaurant founders to an internet underwear CEO to bring in money to increase production and fund more sales and marketing.
On the other side is San Diego’s (Anaheim, Portland and LA’s) Modern Times which has turned to crowdfunding to raise more than $1 million. Expansion to multiple locations probably being one reason for looking to the internet and fans for funding. The money received would be earmarked for operations, “minor efficiency projects” and equipment purchases.
I am on record as saying that crowdfunding has lust the luster. It was fun in the beginning to get a shirt or pint glass for a small donation but then I heard that some of the funding was done as a form of advertising (as well as operational money). And as a growing niche, craft beer needed to get moving by all sorts of financial means. But craft beer is grown up now, it is not easy but raising the cash for your brewery can be done via the traditional route of banks, or financial partners (silent or loud).
Finding an equity partner for a secondary, tertiary round of funding may not have the ESOP cache for Modern Times but it would have brought much less scrutiny from the internet for sure.
Calidad has always been a puzzle to me. It seems to be a piece of a beverage company profile but it seems built for the Fyre / Coachella influencer set as opposed to beer geeks. Personally, I think the beer is good enough to be set in front of beer geeks but now more marketing seems to be where the money is going even though for a well branded beer, a tap room or bar would seem the play to make. Putting them next to the Alfred coffee shops might be one idea.
How this money gathering plays out is part of the fascinating economic portrait being drawn.
It will not come as a shock that the Modern Times 5th Anniversary beer is a DIPA and the jazzy, minimalist art telegraphs the brewery style too…
The coastal march of Modern Times continues as the San Diego brewery is now working on a branch in Santa Barbara on the main drag of State Street. As with all things Modern Times, the name is long and flowery and most will just call it MT – Santa Barbara.
Here are the details on the Academy of Recreational Science:
Located on South State Street in downtown SB
Restaurant will include an indoor bar and table seating
2,500-square-foot outdoor area
Pickup location for online special release sales
To keep a tally, MT has their San Diego locations, Encinitas (in the works), Anaheim (in the works), Los Angeles, Santa Barbara (in the works) and Portland.
Olive is now Dank. Modern Times has opened their L.A. outpost, The Dankness Dojo.
Here is my initial take on the beer that I drank amidst the large crowd and the space, cause the MT crew rolls with big words and a lot of decor.
Don’t believe me?….
…or…
The space is thin with the coffee counter in the front and your left as you walk in. The bar is at the back with the brewing tanks partially obscured in front of you. You can get seating in the restaurant portion or try to snag a bar stool.
The menu board wasn’t the most easy to read and seemed to be the least designed part of the Dojo. Not to mention, on my visit, it was almost nearly all saison and saison variants. Not much “dank” to be had.
I visited after a visit to Boomtown Brewery and all the things that I like about that space, muted tones, couches, space to move were absent in the Dojo which felt just too constricted to me.
I will visit again and do a full beer write-up since I there was not elbow room or a table to put a taster flight on, I went for the Havnor IPA which was only so-so. Not bad, but it didn’t have a shine to it that other recent beers have had.
Instead of talking about the final score of yesterday’s really good game, instead let’s talk about the score of bottles and cans that were had while waiting for play to resume on the field….
Beer buddy Richard and I started with Bell’s seasonal Hopslam. Go big or go home. The smoothness of the honey really works with the hops. It’s been a while since I had this beer and it was really good.
That was followed by KSA from Fort Point. You can’t drink big hops all game long especially a game with so many interruptions (though this year, not too many flags from the officials) and KSA was a good palate cleanser.
On to the third can of the day, this one from Pizza Port, their new Surf Stop Pale Ale, which seemed more IPA, maybe session IPA.
Next came yet another can, this the first cans ever from Brewyard Beer of Glendale. They put their Blonde Common Lager, Sunday Morning into 16oz cans and it was probably the winner of the day by a field goal over the crowler of Fortunate Islands that I had picked up from the DTLA Dankness Dojo earlier in the day. This was the grapefruit version and it was brewed here in Los Angeles.
As confetti rained on the Eagles, the final beer was opened from Yo-Ho Sorry Umami IPA made with bonito flakes. It wasn’t super savory. Was actually more like a saison and though not an IPA it was quite good.
P.S. Thanks to the Metro Expo line for getting me to the party and back in one piece!
The northward march of Modern Times just took a big leap as they announced their upcoming Belmont Fermentorium. In this instance, the Commons Brewery will give up their space to the growing San Diego employee-owned company as the Portland brewer, who started in his garage as Beetje Brewing will consider his next steps.
Mike Wright, founder of The Commons Brewery, who also owns the 10,000 sq. ft. site where his beer company is currently located, will turn the keys over for the premises at 630 Southeast Belmont Street at the end of the year. New brewery equipment and rebrand the location as “The Belmont Fermentorium.”
To be crystal clear, Modern Times is not acquiring The Commons Brewery. Though the future of Commons is uncertain.
Matt Sandoval will go from the cellar at Modern Times to running the brewing operations in Portland. The Belmont Fermentorium will also include a coffee roaster and eventually food will be part of the project as well . As of now, Modern Times has two locations in San Diego. Is building out locations in Anaheim and Los Angeles and is working on a possible Encinitas location as well.
I have a feeling that more statements like the one below from Mike Wright of The Commons will be seen in the coming years…
“What Happened?
Unfortunately, this is a classic small business cash flow story. Sure, there is plenty of industry nuance and hindsight that can be evaluated, but this boiled down to simple debits and credits. That’s the sinister simplicity of a cash flow problem. Your debt is clearly defined, but revenue is a rollercoaster. The belief was that we’d eventually break out and get past those challenges. We did not.”
The question is, how many breweries can take over for those that have decided to pause or quit?
Man, the people at Modern Times know how to market and they do it with a design style and beer name moxie that probably causes jealousy.
And I think that Ice, the San Diego breweries’s first pils, might be a can you see more of in the future. It has been on draft but if they can get this can that is hopped with Czech Saaz and Australian Summer hops into high circulation, it could be a big seller.