By Ian Cheesman
When the year begins to draw to a close, I normally start pondering what type of beery retrospective I would like to write. This is far more difficult when faced with a year that virtually nobody wants to remember.
Few could have guessed the way 2020 would play out. The closest prediction I’ve come across was from director Guillermo del Toro in his 2013 sci-fi epic Pacific Rim, in which he prophesied that humanity would spend this year deadlocked in a war with interdimensional Godzilla-adjacent monstrosities. Granted it’s more of an unintentional metaphor than a prediction (and a stretch at that), but popular media was seriously off its game in seeing this coming. I’m not trying to give coronavirus any ideas, but if it would just zombify a few people, I’d have a lot more to draw upon here.
Thankfully, as apocalypses go, this one seems more manageable than most. In fact, from the outlook of Darrel Brown, owner and head brewer of Scripps Ranch’s Savagewood Brewing, it’s just one of innumerable challenges he’s faced in nearly three years of business. In that light, I invited him to share his mercifully COVID-free outlook on what he’s learned since first opening his doors and some exclusive details on an incredibly star-studded anniversary collaboration beer (provided you’re a San Diego Beer News super fan, but hey, who isn’t?).
There’s an all-too-common piece of advice that veteran brewery owners dispense to others looking to open their own concern: “Don’t.” It sounds more than a little defeatist until you come to learn it is a cheeky bit of shorthand for a laundry list of caveats, including: don’t unless you’re willing to put in very long hours, don’t if you have thin skin, and definitely don’t do it expecting to get rich. The last bit has proven especially true for Brown, who learned, as so many others have, that any new brewery should just preemptively double the expenses they’ve carefully plotted out in their business plan.
“Cash is king,” Brown notes. “For a brewery in a beer-saturated area like San Diego, you definitely need the capital to spend to keep up with the ever-changing landscape.”
Since such advice seldom succeeds in turning away eager entrepreneurial entrants to the “brewconomy,” I pressed Brown to offer a more optimistic take on what is needed to succeed in this market. He urges, above all else, to “be a part of the community” rather than simply serve it. Brown has inextricably linked his neighborhood brewery to its home neighborhood by participating in fundraising for local schools, sponsoring nearby Little League teams (without even stipulating they must be called the Scripps Ranch Brewers, which is a tragic oversight if I’ve ever seen one) and brewing a pale ale in honor of local civil and philanthropic organization, the Scripps Ranch Old Pros. “This is how you build your beer family,” he says.
Brown’s focus on community is not only borne of altruism, but an appreciation of what the term means in a broader sense. His genesis in San Diego beer doesn’t begin with a lengthy apprenticeship on a local brew deck of note or a considerable tenure in one of the county’s nationally renowned homebrewing clubs. He landed in San Diego in 2014 as an avid homebrewer with quiet aspirations for something more, but with too many career and familiar commitments to make outreach for a second profession a priority. When opening Savagewood, he was very aware he was entering the industry, as he puts it, “a newbie…a nothing.” Finding community was as much a personal quest as a business strategy.
The keystone in that strategy has been embracing the world of collaborations in a way that few others have. It’s entirely commonplace these days to have two or more breweries of note put their stamp on a singular beer, but Brown’s approach to collaborations is more akin to Open Mic Night at the Chuckle Hut—all ideas are welcome. Homebrewers with professional aspirations, nomad brewers, charity organizations, local business or any of the affectionately designated “Savages” that frequent the tasting room are welcome to offer a novel beer idea.
There is certainly an element of marketing to this, but for Brown these methods mean considerably more. They are an acknowledgement that his passion project wasn’t forged in a vacuum. Professional brewers, homebrewers and homebrew-shop expertise have all contributed to the “piece of heaven” he calls Savagewood. Collaborations with less established or less experienced folks not only pay his gratitude forward but offer an opportunity for inspiration that a younger version of himself would have found formative.
“If I had had the opportunity to make a beer on a commercial scale and release it to the public early on, it would have shaped my path a lot sooner,” says Brown.
Three years of collaborations later, Savagewood was readying an anniversary celebration as festive as the restrictions of a purple-tiered backdrop would allow. To quote SNL’s long-gone but always-in-our-hearts Stefon, that party had everything—Tamarind Hard Agua Fresca, a low-carb Rosé Brut IPA, a Pumpkin Cheesecake Stout, human coasters (it’s that thing where kindly grandmothers with unaccountably chilly hands hold your beer for you*), chairs and a San Diego Beer News collaboration beer that in no way motivated this article. I wasn’t going to highlight chairs when I first wrote this, but in the light of a second COVID-19-based shutdown, they have somehow become the most controversial part of the plan.
The good news is that the plan for the party is more or less intact, apart from not being able to attend it. The aforementioned beers will hit online pre-sale on December 9 and will have a staggered in-person release through the weekend of December 11 to 13. The food vendors scheduled for each day of the party will still be onsite to offer To Go options with release-specific pairings. The toasts may have gone virtual, but the beer will be all too real.
Among those pre-sale offerings will be So Wild Oats, an incredibly limited brew that marks San Diego Beer News ‘ first entry into the collab game. This beast is an imperial oatmeal stout made with borderline obscene amounts of pure, organic cacao. It’s like a hot cocoa with dark chocolate, but more ecological because the 11% alcohol-by-volume delivers the heat your stovetop ordinarily provides. So, it’s the perfect beer for anyone that loves our (sea-monster-less) home planet as much as they hate sobriety.
Whether or not you opt to join in this weekend’s festivities and taste the beer one immensely biased beer columnist calls “the apex of all fermentation since the dawn of humanity,” consider this anniversary a broader call to action. Take a moment to celebrate any and all of the many other breweries that have found a way to make things work despite the deluge of inconsistent standards and pivots asked of them during these chaotic times. Support a business you’ll mourn on social media when it can’t manage to weather this storm any longer. Remember what welcomed—if not cherished—members of the community our local breweries are and treat them as such.
* Providing grandmother-based beverage insulation is pending review from the local health board, but we’re optimistic.