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Tim Dennis: Welcome to the Beer Guys Radio Show. We are happy to be here. We're happy to have you with us. We love to get together, have a beer, have a good time. Always a lot of fun. I am Tim Dennis. Mo Mic Nate, how are you doing?
Nate ‘Mo Mic Nate’ Ellingson: Doing well, Tim. How are you?
Dennis: Good. I knew that would throw Brian. I got a look. I knew I would. I knew I would, but we have Brian Hewitt. Brian, how are you doing?
Brian Hewitt: I'm doing well. And this week we're joined by Daniel Kopman. He's a professorial lecturer at American University's Kogod School of Business, and I hope I said that right. I'm not familiar with that school of business. But anyway, and also a senior policy advisor to the Worldwide Brewing Alliance, both of them very important topics for today. And we're going to discuss beer trends in the industry and laws and policy and a whole lot more. We've got a bunch of stuff. And Dan's got a long resume in the beer industry. We're going to have to touch on that, too. Thanks for joining us, Dan.
Dan Kopman: Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.
Hewitt: Absolutely. You know, we love talking to people that know much, much more than we do. We know a good bit within our narrow gauge, Dan. You know, within our narrow gauge. And when it comes to world beer policy, world trends and all of that, and it makes me think of some of the other folks that we know that you realize how little you know when you talk to someone that knows a ton. And like Stan Heronimus comes to mind. You know, Mitch Stills. Sitting down with those guys and talking, you're just like there's such so much knowledge there and we suck up all we can. So we appreciate it, Dan. And for those that may not be familiar with Dan by name, tell you a little bit about some places you may know him from. Dan was with, he was export manager at Young & Company Brewery in the UK. He was a Brewer's Association board member. He's been on a voting board member of the Beer Institute, CEO of Heavy Seas Beer Company, co-founder and CEO of Schlafly. And then senior policy I think is Brian Mitch and senior policy advisor for the World Brewing Alliance and a professor lecturer. So Dan, you've done a thing or two in your time here on this planet, correct, sir?
Kopman: I was lucky. I was in the right place at the right time. On a few occasions, doors opened up. I walked through them. That helped.
Dennis: It's a good place to be.
Hewitt: Yeah, absolutely.
Kopman: I've been very, very fortunate, very lucky. So no complaints.
Dennis: Awesome. And we're keeping Dan up late today. He's actually in Edinburgh. So we appreciate you staying up here to chat with us. But so much to cover, so much to cover. And you know, the World Brewing Alliance, I'm going to start there, Dan. Can you tell us what that is and what the purpose there is?
Kopman: So think of the World Brewing Alliance as the trade association of trade associations. We support all brewers around the world. And we support all the association. So we don't engage in national policy efforts, advocacy efforts, but we fill some space where there isn't a trade association. So if there's a country in the world where there isn't a brewing trade association, we fill that void. Our primary focus is on what we would call multilateral organizations. So the UN network, including the WHO, the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, the OECD, the UN network for want of a better way to describe it, in which a lot of policy that ends up being enacted by countries around the world, that policy finds its start in a lot of these places. So for example, something I'm sure we're going to talk about tonight, no safe level of consumption of ethanol. That's probably something you're familiar with. You've seen it in the press. That started at the WHO. So a change in public health policy recommended best buys for want of a better way to describe it that come from the WHO and two member states. And our job at the World Brewing Alliance is to educate both the folks that work in these multilateral organizations and the country missions that are partners, that are members of the UN network. So wherever there's a UN network office like the WHO and Geneva, they are essentially, they call them missions as opposed to embassies, but they essentially perform the same function. So member states meet and discuss policy, they all contribute to the budgets. And different people have different opinions of the work they do. But ultimately a lot of the policy ideas that are generated at these organizations end up in legislation in different member countries. Our job at the World Brewing Alliance is to tell beer story and to see where we can influence policymakers and other thought leaders to understand why beer is different. And that's really why the World Brewing Alliance exists is that we're all on the same team essentially with our friends and wines and spirits. I'm talking about moderation. We want consumers to consume moderately, both in an occasion and over a lifetime, but beer is different. And we firmly believe that if you can steer consumers towards lower alcohol content beverages like beer, that you're going to reduce the harmful effects of alcohol consumption, whether that's in an occasion or whether that's over a lifetime. So that's our belief.
And so my role essentially in this small group is to provide support, generating economic research. So we have an economic research agenda that covers about 77 countries, about 80 percent of global beer production. And we track ethanol consumption per capita. We track share of ethanol consumption by beverage type. We track a number of other data points and other information that we then share with our trade association members and member brewers so that they have the information they need. The other part of my role is to ensure that we're communicating with all brewers, not just the largest brewers around the world, but also the small brewers, the craft brewers that I am so familiar with. And make sure that they're part of the advocacy effort. And we also then I spend a lot of time with our agricultural supplier partners. So we want to engage the whole value chain to advocate for beer. And if we can help them, whether that's maltsters or hop merchants with trade issues or other problems they're having, then we're available to help them as well. I never really thought about... I hope that helps a little bit.
Dennis: It does and I think it's fascinating because to be honest, I never really thought about a brewing group being... brewing in general being represented to the who or the UN at that level. Going into that and you mentioned the no ethanol consumption is safe. As consumers, we get such mixed signals depending on who's sending us those signals. You'll see an article, it's like, have you a nice piece of dark chocolate and a couple of glasses of red wine if you want to live 100 years? And you see the videos where it is a case of this lady just turned 140 years old and her secret is to have a cigar and a couple of Miller lights every day, things like that. So set the policies in... I like to know factual. I don't do this going to surprise a lot of people with everything I do in my life is not healthy or not the best thing for me. But I like being aware of what the risks are and I do try and mitigate that, you know, if it's something along those lines. So yeah, interesting. Thanks, Dan. Yeah, that was very fascinating to hear about.
Hewitt: What I really want to know is when you hear from the WHO that no amount of ethanol is safe and they're saying, hey, this is our new stance on it, what's your response from the World Brewing Alliance when you hear that? Because that's basically saying no beer is safe either. I'm like, how do you take that and how do you work with that? What do you do?
Kopman: Well, we started from the premise that prohibition doesn't work.
Hewitt: Fair enough.
Kopman: In many countries, you know, illicit alcohol still remains a big problem. And there are huge dangers with illicit spirits, especially illicit distilled products. So we start from that premise. So there's going to be consumption. And our view therefore is that we want to therefore encourage consumers to do so in a way that protects essentially all the social and economic benefits of beer, while at the same time ensuring that both policymakers and ultimately consumers have the information they need to make good choices, right? To make choices just like you were saying earlier. We want to make informed decisions about what we consume. And so understanding, making sure that the research that's available is being broadly transferred, whether that shows harmful effects or economic research or other social research that shows benefit. So, you know, we're not advocating for health benefits for ethanol. But there are other really important benefits, societal benefits that need to be taken into consideration when member, when countries are setting both regulatory policy and tax policy. Ultimately, that's what we're trying to call it influence. What we're trying to ensure that brewers have the best possible chance of success in the market. That's our job, right? And if beer is growing share vis-a-vis other alcoholic beverages, then we're probably doing a good job. If non-alcoholic beer, for example, which is a huge opportunity for brewers. If non-alcoholic beer sales are growing globally, then we're doing our job.
Dennis: Yeah, very interesting. Again, you know, I'm going to ask a question here that we've got from one of our viewers here, Dan. So Patrick's asking is there any move to be concise when saying something about like have a beer but only X amount per day? And like here in Georgia, we've got, you know, up to 14 percent ABV cap on that. So is there any kind of move for consistency and messaging with that?
Kopman: You know, I think you have to follow the dietary guidelines that are set by the USDA in the US. And those guidelines haven't changed for a very long time. And, you know, they're based on, you know, a known amount of ethanol per serving, right? So four to 5 percent ABV for beer, right?
So my recommendation always to consumers is follow the dietary guidelines and also, you know, speak to your own clinician because everyone's different.”
Dan Kopman
Professor of Management, Kogod School of Business
Kopman: And, you know, you need to consult those healthcare experts when asking that question.
Dennis: Not the guy from the World Brewing Alliance to ask your health questions, right? Okay, fair enough.
Hewitt: We're the Beer Guys. I know we look like doctors. We're totally not doctors.
Dennis: Yeah, Dan, talking about like…
Kopman: Yeah, what I see going on, you know, there's been a lot of discussion around the change in behavior amongst younger consumers, right? There's been a lot of discussion about that. And I think that is important. And what I do see happening is a desire amongst younger consumers to stay in control on occasions, right? So, you know, that seems to be something... You know, when someone asked me recently, this was actually in South Africa, we were talking about what does moderation mean? What does moderation mean to some people? I just want to stay in control while I'm consuming, you know, an alcoholic beverage, right? So, you know, and again, as I've said, you know, from the outset, you know, we firmly believe that if we can steer consumers to lower alcohol content beverages, then on any occasion, a consumer is going to be able to stay in control, whatever, however you want to define that. And also over a lifetime, if you're consuming lower ABV beverages, right? And you're consuming in moderation at the...You know, all these ideas, it's no different when you're sort of consuming calories, for example, and you want to watch the number of calories you're consuming. You know, you're going to consume less ethanol. That's just intuitively... It's just science. It's just the numbers. Right. That just makes sense. And so that's our belief. And we are also seeing data that, you know, helps support that premise.
Dennis: You know, that's something you mentioned, Dan, talk to your clinician. It's been, I guess, about five years ago now. I'm getting older and I'm not in the peak physical condition I should be. So there's some health issues there that I need to address and some things, some changes I need to make. And in speaking with my doctor, you know, and they knew...I'm like, hey, I host a beer podcast at the time. We were on the radio. I'm like, hey, I'm a talk radio host and my focus is beer here. You know, so it's around me. And they... The doctor basically said, well, take it easy. You know, you don't have to quit. Just take it easy. And at that time was when Brian... Well, Brian right now is drinking a Bitburger 00. You know, and that's the time when we started experimenting and exploring, I guess, I should say some of the non-alcoholic beers. It was early days of athletic brewing, which I just saw they just landed another $50 million in funding and they're growing insanely fast. And related to what you're saying about responsible drinking and brewers, you know, bringing some of the responsibility to the table of that. There's been some discussions on social media, tons of discussions around non-alcoholic beer, of course, but some discourse recently saying the opinion that lower alcohol beers will become more of a thing than necessarily the non-alcoholic beer. And it sounds like you're speaking on that with brewers that are you seeing any trends? Or is there a movement globally to offer up lower alcohol ops?
Kopman: There's definitely a move by certain governments to try to steer consumers to lower ABV products, notably beer. For example, there was a tax reduction here in the UK on beer at 3.5 percent ABV. And so there was some reformulation. Some beers were reduced from, say, 3.8 to 3.5. So we are seeing both brewers and policymakers sort of working and, you know, they're not necessarily talking to each other, but they're both seeing the data and they're taking considerate action related to that. We don't specifically track anything that we define as low alcohol beer because that can be very different culturally in different countries. What is low in one country might be different in another country. And if you think about American Light Lager at 4.2 versus standard American Lagers at 5, many craft beers between, say, 4 and 7 percent seems to be a range that's always been a very, where the bulk of the craft business has been. And I know there's been a lot of talk about growth at higher ABVs, imperial IPAs. But I think the bulk of the volume, my guess is the bulk of craft and I don't have the data in front of me. But the bulk of that volume is probably still in the 5 percent to 6 percent range. The bulk of craft beer if you take craft altogether. And you're talking globally, you're not just saying that it's a low. So the US craft market, yeah, it would be higher. But we do track non-alcoholic and I think what's important for your American audience is to understand that regionally, if we look at global regions, so Europe, the Gulf Cooperation Council, an African country, so Middle East and Africa, Latin America, and then what we call APAC, the Asia Pacific region, and then North America. The region of the world that is least developed for non-alcoholic beer is North America. So North America has what I would call the lowest amount of penetration in terms of the number of consumers and the smallest volume base.
So to put it in perspective, we're at a little over 50 million hectoliters globally of non-alcoholic beer. And a hectoliter is not identical to a US barrel, but it's pretty close. So 50 million barrels in US terms globally. Half that volume is Europe, 25 million hectoliters. About 15 percent of it is the Middle East and North Africa and Africa. And a lot of that has been there for a long time and it's religious based. Much of that volume is religious based. Third biggest region I believe is Latin America, then APAC, and then the US and Canada, North America. So if it's 50 million hectoliters or 50 million barrels, it's less than 2 million barrels in the US, just approaching 2 million barrels. Now the good news is it grew at about 18 percent last year in the US, whereas global growth continued at about 5 percent to 6 percent. And I would expect that same level of growth for the next three to five years, about 5 percent a year globally, which is going to put us in the next few years at about 75 million and getting on for 100 million barrels. And remember, that's globally. And the US beer market is about 200 million hectoliters and the global beer market is about 2 billion hectoliters. So it will be at about 100 million hectoliters out of a billion. So a long way to go. The most developed markets are Spain and Germany, where non-alcoholic beer is approaching 10 percent.
Dennis: I wouldn't have thought it got up that high. That's an impressive number. Yeah.
Hewitt: I had heard that we're somewhere in the neighborhood of like 20 years behind Germany in terms of non-alcoholic beer like the Bitburger can. I'm not actually drinking it. It's one I've had on the side. I was going to use it, take a picture of it for social media later. But yeah, they've been doing beer like that, this quality non-alcoholic beer for a quarter of a century or more. I don't even know.
Kopman: 20 years.
Hewitt: 20 years. Yeah.
Kopman: So the trends in Europe, the volume has been growing for 20 years. And it dates back to the 1980s. And it does date back to the drink drive restrictions. That's where it starts. But it has taken on a whole sort of...The market there has developed well beyond that, where it's now very culturally acceptable for younger consumers and older consumers say in Spain, they call it ‘sin’, without alcohol is what that means. And it's a very...It would be very normal to see younger and older consumers alike in cafes in Spain, in small bars, restaurants drinking non-alcoholic beer. It's a very common... Somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of consumption in Spain.
Dennis: I think we're seeing growth. It's nice to see the growth in the US because we actually have some good options now. And we've had several conversations around this. Back in my pre-drinking days, we had sharps and O’Doul’s.. And I remember there's one I still...I'll never forget Texas Select that I think I bought a can at a health food store when I was like 12 years old or something. But now we've got better choices. You've got Athletic and others coming on the scene. But we also go at breweries like Deschutes, Untitled Arts here in Nevada, putting out NA beers. And we just actually very timely discussion on this topic. We were chatting on our Discord server with a little earlier, with our Patreon supporters about some NA trends. And you hear...You hear, hey, they've doubled, they've tripled, you know, whatever the growth they've had each year. But a lot of the quote-unquote beer media kind of scoffs at that. They're like, yeah, well, there's still only 1 percent of the overall beer market. And I've always been of the opinion of...I don't know that we want to compare them to the beer market. I know they're part of it, but I think just looking at their growth in and of itself is impressive. You know, if you look at them as the drop in the bucket they are, they're still a small drop in the bucket. But that doesn't mean that that segment has not had very strong growth.
Kopman: Tim, there's two things to talk about. First is, in the past 20 years, the technological change that has happened that have allowed brewers to make really good non-alcoholic beers. So that's something we can get into because there has been huge improvements to the mechanical processes to remove alcohol and preserve the flavor, great flavor of a beer. But there's also now biological methods that allow us to essentially ferment work without producing ethanol. And that's very new. So a lot of the supplier community working with the brewers have really responded over the past 10 to 15 years to deliver technological improvements that have allowed us to make really great beers. And so that is definitely something that we should talk about.
Brewers have a real competitive advantage over our wine and spirit friends. Because those processes that we can use to produce great non-alcoholic beer are not available to them.”
Dan Kopman
Professor of Management, Kogod School of Business
Hewitt: Oh, so the yeast that you can use that's really new that can ferment without producing ethanol. They can't make, they can't, I guess when it comes to distillation, but I would think with grapes wouldn't it still be able to ferment that to a certain amount?
Kopman: So it all starts with the sugar. It all starts with the mix of sugars you're producing. So with beer, we're producing maltose, sucrose and dextran. Our wine friends, it's all fructose. Oh. Okay. It's almost all fructose. So what we can now do, it's a combination of both work in the brew house and then the maltose negative yeast strains. But essentially what we do now is produce a word that minimizes glucose and maximizes dextran because that maltose negative yeast strain will not ferment that. It will, it will, we have, in layman's terms, we still have a fermentation that removes the wordy flavors. We're still going to do some stop fermentation. We're going to turn the cooling on and slow that fermentation down or stop it earlier than we would a normal fermentation. But effectively now we're producing of, we're almost turning the clock back centuries to produce a word that isn't very fermentable. Okay.
Hewitt: Oh, okay.
Kopman: And then we're adding a yeast strain that doesn't ferment very well. Well, if you see what I, if you, in terms of, in terms of producing ethanol. So unfortunately for our wine friends, they have yet to figure out a yeast strain that will not ferment fructose.
Dennis: Fascinating.
Kopman: So we're pretty much going to rip through fructose.
Hewitt: Oh, okay.
Kopman: And so that's the tricky part. So what they're left with is vacuum distillation, which is an improvement. So if we go way back, what I would describe in some respects, I have disagreements with others about this, but brewers for many, many, many years have been producing products. There are some in some countries that call Malta.
Hewitt: Oh yeah.
Kopman: Or Malta Guinness in Nigeria. There's, there's various Malta products, which is basically work that then is stabilized and packaged. Okay, brewers work as a drink, right? And it's high in vitamins. It's high in nutrients, right? It's very healthy. It's a real calorie booster in many countries. So it's very popular again in Nigeria and other parts of West Africa. It's very popular in Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean. You'd find it in your grocery store in the U.S., right? High malt is another brand that sometimes is seen. So that, that's essentially work that hasn't been fermented. Then when we started to produce non-alcoholic beer, what we had available to us was call it straightforward distillation. But that introduced a ton of heat and that's what destroyed the product. Right? It was, we heated it up to remove the ethanol and that made a mess of the beer itself and we couldn't recover from that. So Tim, what you were talking about earlier with the products that you might have tried when you were younger, we weren't making very good non-alcoholic beer. Right. It's what they could do at the time, right? It was a product where we were producing beer and then removing it. The next step in terms of mechanical process that improved what we're doing is vacuum distillation because now we're doing something under cooler temperatures and we're not destroying the, call it the basic product, the beer itself. What we're able to remove the ethanol. That process vacuum distillation is used by a lot of large, for production of large brands, large NA brands. So it's a very reliable, it's been around now for probably a decade and you can do it at scale, right? And scale gets, is really important. The next step on from that in terms of a mechanical process is a more recent process which is membrane filtration, literally filtering ethanol out of beer. Right? It's, we use membrane filtration in other filtration processes within the brewery, but that's the process whereby you end up with two streams. You end up with beer without ethanol and you end up essentially with a water base that has ethanol, that has the ethanol in it, right? So you basically put a stream of beer with ethanol through a membrane filter and you end up with beer without ethanol along the beer without ethanol and you end up with that stream of water with ethanol that then can be used in other products. So that's happening in some breweries because we actually now have a use for that ethanol, right? That ethanol base, right? You can make an FMB, you can do all sorts of things with it.
And then we have, and now we have the biological processes as well. So we have two different ways, two different fundamental ways. One is mechanical, one is biological. These are, certain breweries could even combine the two process, right? So there's a myriad of options now available to brewers to make really great tasting non-alcoholic beers. So now we really have a competitive advantage over others, right? Right now the way we view the market as brewers, we see it as a substitute, right? We market non-alcoholic beer as a substitute for occasions in which consumers would, for the most part, be consuming beer, wine and spirits with ethanol, right? But you hear now, now the question comes up, well, is that really the only space we're competing in? Or now are we competing in a broader beverage market as brewers? And so in the same way, there's been a lot of talk in the US about, you know, brewers and winemakers and distillers, the blurring of the lines, right? I think what you're seeing globally is brewers now really thinking about themselves, not just as alcohol beverage producers but as beverage producers, right? On a global basis, one of the things that makes the beer industry unique is that we have huge economic capacity in all countries, right? Production, warehousing, distribution, right? That's not, you know, the wine and spirits industry doesn't, that's not how they operate, right? They don't have breweries, they don't have distilleries in every country, right? You know, we do two different pieces of global economic research and we'll release an update of our economic impact study in January, probably January, February of 2025. So we're doing that work at the moment, looking at the economic impact of beer across 77 countries. What we found last time we did this work was that 95 percent of the economic value of beer stays in country. So if I was just in South Africa, 95 percent of the revenue that is generated from the sale of beer in South Africa stays in South Africa, meaning most of that value chain in terms of agricultural products, in terms of packaging, is all sourced locally.
Dennis: Okay. You know, you've mentioned Africa a few times and as soon as I hear about beer in Africa, I have to ask if you have thoughts, if you've encountered the quote-unquote super grain from Africa. Brian, hold that thought man before we move on to another topic here. We don't want to get too deep into that. We want to thank our sponsors and let's talk real quick about the beers that we're enjoying here this week. So Dan, I know we got you late there. I think I saw you sipping a glass of water. Are you having a frosty beverage over there? Little H2O tonight, right? Okay.
Kopman: I played a little tennis earlier. I had a little beer on the terrace after tennis, but yeah.
Dennis: There you go. Sounds good. Awesome. Well, I have got one from a brewery out in Nashville that I really enjoyed. They're doing some really fun stuff. We've seen them at a couple of beer fest here, but Barrique Brewing and Blending. And I have to be cautious saying that because I'll stumble all over it. But I have their Arianna Barrel Aged Wild L and it notes that is a mixed culture Saison. Brian, Nate, I think both of you guys will appreciate this. It shows the package date as well as a batch number. Wonderful. And you know, so we've talked about, we've talked about how they, we get these best buy dates or things like that. Just let me know when and when in the package. We'll see what's going on from there. This is, I haven't drank these kinds of beers as much lately as I used to, but man, they're still just beautiful. These mixed fermentation beers. So always enjoy getting down with one of those. Dan, like you're talking, I've been on the lower alcohol trend here lately. I would love Pilsner's, you know, go, go, go. We've got a few breweries here that are logger focused, you know, and our keep them solid drink a lot of those. But Brian, what are you getting into this week?
Hewitt: When I was getting ready for the show, I drank a sweet water hammer red amber ale and I, every time I drink an amber ale, I think, man, I love an amber ale. And this was a good one. And the neat thing about this hammer red, it's, it’s, I think it's a play in words of hammer head is on the can. It has a hammer head. All the proceeds for that go to the Georgia aquariums, their research and their conservation efforts. So it's a cool thing. It's still out there. It's a great amber ale. If you get nostalgia for the style or you just like the style still like I do. I recommend going out and getting some of that. I am currently sipping on a, a cool ship blood bath from Chester King. And that's a farmhouse ale with coffee and beets. And when I saw that, I'm like, well, I have to try that. And I'm not sure if I'm getting a lot of the, definitely getting the red color of the beats. I'm not sure how much of the coffee I'm really getting, but I've been a little distracted. But this is a cool, cool concept anyway. I'm enjoying it. And I will follow that up with if I have time, a Terrapin rice squared imperial pale ale with twice the vault, twice the hops and twice the flavor and not at all relevant to our current conversations because it's going the exact opposite direction in terms of, in terms of ABV. So that's what I'm up to.
Dennis: Well, what are you getting into, Mic Nate?
Ellingson: So I started the night. This is actually my first week back from my dry, June-uary. I took the month of June off from drinking. So I started out with from Paris brewing. They did a collaboration release last month with horse aged ales called Scala Hawk. And so I had one of those. It was a double New England IPA really tasty, really bright hop taste to it. And then I just poured into my glass out of Edmund's host brewing. I poured their leather jacket, which is American Porter, quite the dichotomy of beer styles tonight, but we had a Patreon supporter in discord recently visit the brewery and was, I was reminded of how great their beers are. And so when I grabbed myself a can of it and now I'm enjoying a crisp American Porter.
Dennis: Good ol’ Edmund's host man. Good stuff. Good stuff. You know, if you want to try some of the beers that we're drinking here, Brian mentioned his Terrapin Rye squared. You know where you should go? You should head to the battery Atlanta and visit our friends at Terrapin Brewery Atlanta right there connected to the brave stadium. Catch you a baseball game. Have you a beer? Those guys are awesome. They're always putting something new on tap there. Brian, they recently did a collaboration with Andrew Jones, brave legend there. They've done a lot of, a lot of Braves collaborations. They've done one with Chipper Jones. They've done one with Jeff Franco and they integrate some interesting ingredients. I think they did Frenchies blues with Franco and I believe his family is in blueberry farm. So I think that there was some connection there with the beer that they did, but always something new on their trying to, their experiment with yeast and hops. Dan, like we're talking about these new yeast that come out and there's just so much to go on out there. Also, if you're hungry, they got you covered. Fox Brothers barbecue right there in the tap room. It's going to be a good time. So going out to the battery Atlanta, check out Terrapin Brewery and make sure to tell them the beer guy sent you.
Hewitt: Yeah, you know, all of this, this heat that we've got going on, the summer is happening. It’s mid 90s, upper 90s actually for the rest of the week, I think it's got me thinking about like Tiki drinks and everything like that. And as luck would have it, truck and tap is throwing some luau parties this month and they're going to have cocktail specials, live music to get you in the island move, all that neat stuff. So my beer picks are the week for truck and tap or going on that theme beers that would fit in a luau. So at truck and tap Woodstock, my pick is New Belgians Dominga, which is a Mimosa inspired fooder. I always have trouble with that fooder aged sour with calamansi oranges. It seems like a no brainer even though I don't know what a calamansi orange is at the Duluth location. I'm going with Firewaters Tropical Retreat. It's a kettle sour with pink prickly pear, pink guava, mango papaya and pineapple basically every single tropical food that is known to exist. When you order it, you should ask to get a little umbrella to go with it. See if they'll do that for you. I think they will. And Alpharetta, it's another kettle sour this time from Beard and Iris. It's called Flamingo Road and it's made with raspberries and strawberries. I've had this one before. I like it a lot. And finally, I'm going to go with something a little different at the truck and tap in Lawrenceville. My pick is Three Tavern Sour Asylum Basilis, which is a kettle sour made with cucumber and basil. I like both of those ingredients. I find them very refreshing in the heat. I like them at a cocktail as well. And I think you'll be well served to go with my picks if you choose to. And a lot of them are on topic with what we're doing today with the lower alcohol and higher fruits. It's arguably, I'm not going to say better for you because that might get me in trouble, but maybe less bad for you in general. Less bad. There you go. Make sure you check out the Truck and Tap website, truckandtap.com. Check it out before you head out. That is my theme for the every week. Check it out before you head out. Thank you to Truck and Tap for your support.
Dennis: Awesome. Good stuff. Dan, I'm going to ask you a quick question before we get back to Brian, South Africa. Malta, is it categorized as an NA beverage for the purpose of statistic tracking? Or an NA beer?
Kopman: Yes.
Dennis: OK. I wondered if it was in that category. OK. I see them a lot at the Cuban restaurants here. A lot of the Cuban places have Malta. Yeah.
Kopman: Yeah. A lot of the sort of global data tracking organizations do count it in.
Dennis: Ok. I was curious. Cool. Different, yeah.
Kopman: Some folks, you know, I do track it separately, but I count it into the total number.
Dennis: OK. Gotcha. And if you are a home brewer and you've ever, you know, drained your wort out of your mash and tasted some of it, it's delicious. It's grainy and rich and sweet. And yeah. So I could see, you know, I don't think I've ever had an actual, you know, can or bottle of Malta. Yeah. But I know from, you know, home brewing and sampling the goods there that it's tasty. My dog used to love getting a little bit of the runoff there.
Kopman: When I was training as a brewer in the early 1980s at Young's in London, we would take runoff, first runnings off the first, you know, the first mash ton of the morning. And that was in place of tea or coffee. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Speaking of that. So if you want my recommendation for the weekend, right, you want to get on a plane and you want to come to London where the weather is going to be a little cooler.
Dennis: Let's go.
Kopman: Find yourself a good Young's pub generally south of the river, but you'll find many in central London. And Sunday is just going to be an epic day. It's the Wimbledon men's final along with the Euro championship.
Dennis: Oh, wow. Okay.
Kopman: England versus Spain. So England beat Holland tonight. I'm sitting in Scotland. Many Scots have, you know, they have different views of the English, their English friends in terms of football support, soccer support. But it's going to be, there's going to be some beer sold. The pubs will be doing just fine this weekend. Good stuff. Good. So I have a co-worker or actually not co-worker. He's our executive VP. He's from England and one of my co-workers on my team is from Spain. So there's been all kinds of. It's going to be a rough week for you.
Dennis: Dan, another off the wall question. Do you know Owen Ogletree?
Kopman: No.
Dennis: OK. So I thought, you know, with the, Owen's one of our local guys, but he does a lot of beer tours, very, very, very big fan of, you know, the European pubs, English pubs and that. And he gets over that way. He was just down in South Africa of all places. He took a tour of people down there. So he, he goes to some of the same places you're investigating and studying and involved with. So yeah. Interesting. Good stuff. Sorry, Brian. Thanks for allowing me to sidebar there.
Hewitt: Yeah. Yeah. You know what? I'm going to get back to it because I do want to get back to the point that I think you're going to have a question about the area where you would find it. I'm not sure if you've ever, ever since we first started reading about it, but that South African super grain fonio and you've spent a fair amount of time recently in South Africa. I don't know if that's exactly the area where you would find it. But is it a thing?
Kopman: Fonio is more West Africa and parts of sub-Saharan Africa. So fonio fits into a group of small grains. Sometimes they're referred to as pulses. Okay. So small, but think of them as small grain. Sorghum, fonio, there are a number of others. They fit into this group. They are generally subsistence crops in Africa. And so what's exciting is if as brewers we can use them in the brewing process from an economic development standpoint, now we're taking a subsistence crop and we're turning it into a cash crop. Okay. So from an economic development standpoint, that is really important. And it is definitely a goal of the industry to source as much of our raw materials in country, in markets as possible. So what's exciting about both sorghum and fonio, now we currently as brewers use sorghum. We malt it because you can actually malt sorghum. And that's important because if you're using sorghum or millet or other small grains on their own, right, just without any modification, right, then you don't have the enzyme. So you still need malted barley or you need some other enzyme source to get conversion of starch to sugar, right? So then they would just be an adjunct. But in Nigeria, for example, we malt sorghum, brewers malt sorghum. And therefore we're getting enzymatic activity from that local grain. So I'm really excited. I went to the launch of the first commercial fonio beer that was produced. Garrett was involved in it, but it was produced here in the UK, here in Scotland. And it was produced for brew gutter, which is a not-for-profit brewer here in Scotland that sells throughout the UK. And it's a fonio session pale ale. And that was launched last June through one of the major UK grocers and very successful. So I believe either in, I think Brooklyn is doing something on their own in the US, but they have a global partnership also with Carlsberg. So Carlsberg is definitely involved in doing some of that research as well. But what we see happening in throughout Africa now is an effort to either establish barley production, whether that's in South Africa. I mean, there's been a longstanding production of barley by farmers and malt by South African breweries. And so that has been established for many years. Heineken is committed to doing the same as part of an acquisition they made in South Africa sort of how that's all going to evolve in terms of timing is yet to be determined. There's new malting capacity that's opened up Ethiopia for barley.
But it's getting harder and harder around the world to get barley in the ground. Barley is not a GMO crop. It's not the easiest crop to grow. And so there are challenges for brewers to get farmers to plant barley.”
Dan Kopman
Professor of Management, Kogod School of Business
Kopman: But we still have, we're not running out and farmers are still willing to grow it. But it's definitely something that we have to work at as an industry. So to answer your question, Brian, Fonio is one of a group of small grains that offers a lot of potential for brewers both as an adjunct but potentially as something that we could also malt and therefore use almost as a primary grain in beer production. But local sourcing is a goal. And so while I think it'd be great to see Fonio as a grain travel more around the world, the focus of Fonio in production, the larger countries I think are Senegal, probably Nigeria, and then some other parts of West Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. But it's not something we would use in South Africa. In other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, the other starch that we're using is cassava, which is a root starch. And that's been used very successfully in a couple of countries. So that's another local starch that we're experimenting with and actually making beer quite successfully.
Dennis: Very mildly related, but I got some grain-free crackers recently that used almond flour mixed with cassava flour to make them. So just substituting. And because a lot of times you get things like that and the textures off, the flavors off of that, this was pretty close to a regular cracker, I guess for lack of a better term. It still had the right consistency and flavor and such. Interesting.
Hewitt: Brooklyn Brewing's, I think their current offering, because it's still up on their website, is called Yolele. It's made with Fonio. It's a white beer, 5.6 percent, and 16-ounce cans. So apparently that's available. I thought it was Western Africa. I wasn’t 100 percent sure, but there's a continent of Africa on the can. It doesn't indicate the areas that it's growing in, but I thought it was Western Africa.
Kopman: The exciting thing for me will be when we're actually using Fonio at scale in Africa to produce beer for Africa. The one other factor I think that I look at a lot, both from an academic perspective and from a global perspective, I'm a big fan of American culture. I teach in teaching, I teach a global entrepreneurship class at American University. I am fascinated and spend a lot of time looking at demographic data. Partly because in my lifetime, I was born in 1961, in my lifetime the world's population has gone from 4 billion to 8 billion. And in my grandparents' and parents' lifetimes, we went from say 1 billion to 4, and then just in my lifetime 4 to 8. But we're starting to see some pretty significant change going on. We're still seeing significant growth in population in India and throughout Africa. Five of the largest cities in the world will be in Africa in 10 to 15 years. So that's something to watch out for. So as a brewing industry, when we look for growth for beer, just coming from more consumers, right? I think to myself, I've had it pretty easy from a business perspective over the past six of my lifetime because we've gone, you know, we've had 4 billion more consumers around the world to consume whatever we're making. So now we're facing population declines in most parts of the world. So the US, Europe, most parts of Asia now. So China peaked at about 1.6 billion but is projected to fall back to a billion by the end of the century. So this is going to have a huge impact on brewers globally and locally. The US is unique in what drives partially what is driving, you know, maintaining consumption levels or purchasing levels, revenue levels in terms of consumers is not only premiumization in terms of trading people up to more expensive products but our population continues to grow because of immigration, right? So irrespective of one's political thoughts about immigration. That's not really not an issue here in the US. We never discussed that. Yeah, never. The number of non-US born citizens, I'm talking about legal immigrants, non-US born citizen, is at its highest level today than it has been since the late 1800s. So if we think of all the immigration that came from Europe primarily in the late 1800s, right? We're seeing similar numbers, it's about 25 percent, of American citizens that were not born in the US. And where that immigration is now coming from is also very interesting. We tend to think that it's all coming from Mexico and other parts of Latin America. And Mexico was still one of the largest places where people migrated into the US, immigrated into the US. But equal numbers came from India last year and China. So when we think about the US beer market, right? What's happened to the US beer market over the past 10 years? We've seen huge growth in imports from Mexico, Modelo brands. We've seen American light logger brands maintain or lose volume but not really grow a lot of volume. Craft has essentially met the law of large numbers. Craft got to a scale now where if the whole beer market is declining, it's really hard for craft to keep growing. So if overall the US beer market is either flat or declining slightly, it's really hard for craft having such a large share now to continue to find volume growth. So we're at a really interesting time. So the reason that say we spend a lot of time focused from a WBA perspective on Africa, we've just stood up a new trade association in India. It's potentially a huge growth market for beer. Again, it's demographics are driving that. And it's not just population growth, it's growth of the middle class. It's significant growth. The next billion in the middle class billion people coming into the middle class will come from parts of Asia including India.
Dennis: I've seen a lot on the Indian craft beer scene. I started following a couple groups on Facebook and I don't remember what first kind of piqued my interest with it, but someone had, you know what? I think we got a message on Instagram that basically said, hey, India is a growing market, you ought to look into it. So I looked, I started following some groups there and they do bottle shares just like we were. I don't think they happen as often as here is they used to, but it sure was interesting having that and following their groups, I like seeing their pictures. They meet up at a brewery, they meet up at a beer bar. They do this and that. And I guess I shouldn't... Actually, I'm a little surprised. I wouldn't have pictured that being a thing in India really.
Kopman: Their population passed China last year. I think it was last year before for the first time. 1.6 billion people. There's a lot of, as is the case in Africa, a lot of income inequality. So that maybe the target group of consumers, the market for premium beers might be smaller, but they're still a sizable market. And yeah, there is definitely craft brewers in India that are very active. And it's a market that is as complex and messy as the US. 20, I think it's 23 or 27 states. They all have different regulations. They all have different tax rates. Well, it's like…
Dennis: And just like us, our own cultural beliefs and divisions and all of that stuff.
Kopman: It's a fascinating market. And one that brewers, both large brewers and small brewers around the world are taking notice of and devoting a lot of resources to it.
Hewitt: I wish we got a better representation of Indian beer than just like basically Kingfisher. And what else is Hayward's? I don't even know if we still get that. There's like one other one that we get. And that's it. And they're all basically very light loggers. They go great with Indian food, and they have a craft scene there. They've got to be making some interesting beer. None of that makes it over here. We get like one or two or three Indian beers are always large format bottles, and it's usually something you get at an Indian restaurant. I don't even see Kingfisher on shelves anymore. Like it's only restaurants.
Dennis: Yeah. Yeah. I do enjoy getting in with my curry though. Yeah.
Kopman: And I think what you're going to see more and more is what I would call on-shoring of foreign brands. Exporting beer, I learned the hard way in the 1980s trying to do it. It's a heavy product. You're talking 90-plus percent water moving that, and it's perishable. So moving something like that large long distances is really problematic. And so moving production closer to the consumer, that's what beer is all about. And we're good enough as brewers these days to be able to match the flavor of beers, to be able to match a product brewed in one country to another country. We can do that.
Dennis: Guinness does it. Budweiser does it so they can get it matched up there. Some good skills with that. We have water chemistry. We can do that.
Kopman: Yeah. Especially for the global brewers, there's a huge risk now because of the world is messy and trade issues. And if trade barriers go up or disputes, we end up with disputes between countries, it can really make exporting and importing difficult. What we want to do is make sure that that doesn't happen with our raw material supply chain. We had some issues. We've had issues with hops in Europe. We've had issues with barley moving from, say, Australia into China over the past couple years. So that's a headache. That's enough of a headache to deal with that. So hopefully we can avoid these trade issues.
Dennis: We've seen a little bit in Russia what happens, can happen to brewing companies there. So was it Carlsberg that they basically seized the brewer? Was that Carlsberg?
Hewitt: I think it was Heineken.
Dennis: And Heineken, I think so, yeah.
Kopman: Carlsberg owned the Baltica brand, which was the largest brewer in Russia. Not just one brewery, multiple plants. And yes, you know, hopefully things resolve themselves and Carlsberg and others can one day re-enter that market. But yeah, there was a nationalization of the assets.
Dennis: I'm absolutely not going to remember the story, but I think it was in Africa. Brian, wasn't there a Russian brewery firebombing another brewery or something? What? You know the story, but I can't remember the details. But it had to do, Dan, like what you're talking about, these breweries, whatever the brewery was, there was one in Africa. I'm going to mangle this, but I think I'll get the essence of it. This brewery was very embedded in the local culture. It was that country's brewery, that country's beer and a big Russian brewing company was establishing in the market. And I think it had to do with more than beer. I think it was like a conglomerate industry kind of thing. But with one of the angles, one of the industries being beer and they basically threw molotovs over a fence into a brewery, you know, kind of thing.
Hewitt: That's not right. It was a play to get other resources. I think it was the idea was to ingratiate Russia to the local populace, so it would be easier for them to get contracts to get valuable access to valuable resources. And it involved there was some sort of a skirmish between the local beer brand, like you said. I don't remember the specifics of it. But yeah, espionage and people breaking into firebombing breweries to try to put them out of business. They're trying to take over the business from the brewery and use that as a platform to push all the Russian agenda in the local, that country. I don't remember the country. I don't remember the brewery. We think it gets crazy here. Yes.
Dennis: Dan, we appreciate you spending some time chatting with us today. I think we've got tons more stuff we could cover. You know, one thing I do want to mention, we've talked focused on beer, but you're not just about beer, Dan. A lot of business in general. And you've got... I'm going to assume this on YouTube, you had a TEDx talk, correct? That did Beyond Small Business. Is that correct?
Kopman: There was something along the way.
Hewitt: That's on me. I was referencing because I found you did a TEDx thing, but I think it's from like 13 years ago back when you were with... Okay. Yeah, well, you were back when you were still doing Schlafly the... Oh, I get the St. Louis Brewery, right? Yeah, that's the official name of the brewery that did Schlafly. So I think it was back in those days. I put it on the list because, hey, he did a TEDx. That's pretty cool. Yeah.
Kopman: We had a great run. That... Yeah. And I remember when we...Before the term craft existed in the late 80s, early 90s, we opened the doors in December 91. And we sort of knew every consumer. Now, we were opening a small brewery a mile from Anheuser-Busch. So it was a unique place to open a new brewery. Yeah, we were like 200th brewery in the United States and now there's what, 10,000?
Hewitt: Wow.
Dennis: Yeah. I think you were one of the originators of the pumpkin beer, weren't you? Yeah. I remember one of the... At least one of the early ones, right?
Kopman: We were one of the early ones, yes. We definitely... We definitely got into that. That was good.
Hewitt: Do you feel a tingle about this time of year? Because I've seen people talking about brewing their pumpkin beers already for this, for releasing. Like, I saw one on social media this week, somebody making a pumpkin beer. I'm like, don't even show me that. Don't even show me that. The Oktoberfest is out, pumpkin beer is coming.
Kopman: So... Yeah. The whole supply chain and how it wants to front load things is often frustrating.
Dennis: Season of creep. I do my small part and I refuse to have any Marzins until September 1st. That's my small part of the fight there. But Dan, thank you so much. Dan Kopman, huge, huge impact on the beer industry. He has done quite a lot. We thank you for taking the time and really a lot of stuff we had not talked about before. So I appreciate that very much.
Kopman: Yeah. Happy to help anytime.
Dennis: Thank you, sir. Well, y'all, thank you so much for joining us for the show. We appreciate it. If you enjoy what we're doing here, you know what? Share it with a friend. Tell someone to give it a listen. If you really enjoy what we're doing, we'd love you to support us on Patreon. Just go to patreon.com slash beer guys. We'll get you some swag. We'll get you in our Discord chat and it will be a good time. But thanks again for tuning in. Have a great week and don't forget to drink local. Cheers.