In a nation where the $106 billion beer market has long been dominated by corporate brands such as Budweiser, Miller and Coors, it’s the craft-beer sensation that has been generating all the brewing buzz.
Craft beer now makes up more than 12 percent of beer sales in the United States, according to data from the Brewers Association. The country is now home to several thousand craft breweries, roughly half of which are considered “microbreweries.”
Craft beers are the indie music of the beer industry: small and independently owned, with extra emphasis on the creation process and quality of the flavor.
“As far as we feel what craft is, it does have a lot to do with size, but it also has a lot to do with paying attention to detail and knowing where your ingredients are coming from and how your beer is produced and how you decide to make those beers,” said Kady Fleckenstein, brand director at Figueroa Mountain Brewing Co.
As an increasingly millennial-oriented city with the capital to embrace the somewhat pricier product, craft beer has found a comfortable home in Santa Barbara.
“You can’t read a newspaper or a magazine these days without reading another article about how craft beer is driving all the growth in the beer industry and how the millennial generation is a craft-beer generation,” said Brian Thompson, founder and president of Telegraph Brewing Co., a local craft brewer with a Santa Barbara tasting room at 418 N. Salsipuedes St.
“A lot of twenty-somethings have never even tasted a Budweiser, and they think of beer as being craft beer — (India pale ale) in particular.”
For many members of Generation Y, craft beer represents a fresh break from the grip traditional beer corporations have had on the industry — a break many would say has more character and flavor.
Craft beer’s prominence has quickly grown to the point of making it mainstream, and its presence in Santa Barbara can hardly be avoided.
Figueroa Mountain Brewing, with a taproom at 137 Anacapa St., was founded in 2010 by father and son Jim and Jaime Dietenhofer and now has four taprooms in the county and two beyond.
Telegraph Brewing was founded in 2006 and now has a handful of distributors across the country.
Paso Robles-based Firestone Walker’s “805” is present in virtually every store’s beer section and every bar’s tap line, and the Funk Zone’s new Lama Dog – Tap Room + Bottle Shop carries craft beers from Santa Barbara and from throughout California.
Thompson said Telegraph’s interest in Santa Barbara is simple.
“We wanted to be some place where there was passion for local products,” he said. “Santa Barbara certainly has that.”
Fleckenstein said the same was true for Figueroa Mountain Brewing.
“We love working with Santa Barbara County beer lovers because they’re so passionate about craft, and we feel like they really appreciate the fact that we are local and family-owned,” she said.
Showcasing Telegraph, Firestone, Fig Mountain and many more are a burgeoning crop of independent beer festivals, attended in hordes by millennials and the South Coast’s growing yuppie crowd.
“Santa Barbara has always been a great tourist destination, so I think that’s one reason why beer festivals are common here,” Thompson said. “It’s a pretty easy pitch to someone who loves beer to say, ‘Hey, come spend the weekend in Santa Barbara and drink some great beer.’”
The Santa Barbara Beer Festival at Elings Park hosts dozens of Central Coast microbreweries, and next month’s Zoo Brew sold out within minutes of tickets going on sale. Immensely popular cultural festivals like April’s Earth Day and June’s Summer Solstice Celebration host beer gardens dominated by local craft brewers.
“Five years ago, we could probably count all the festivals within, say, 100 miles of Santa Barbara on a couple of hands,” Thompson said. “We did probably all of them. Now we could literally, I think, do a festival every single weekend during the summer because it’s not just big festivals — the ones that have been around for a long time.”
The festivals, brewers say, are another means of anchoring themselves in the community.
“Going to the different festivals that are in town is really important to us because, as we expand, we want to make sure we’re still staying close to home and taking care of the locals,” Fleckenstein said.
For the festival-throwers themselves, beer fests present a variety of opportunities to promote both themselves and the community.
“This is a unique way to bring in a new demographic,” Stefanie Coleman, the Santa Barbara Zoo’s assistant director of marketing, said of Zoo Brew. “A lot of twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings who don’t necessarily have kids haven’t been to the zoo in years. … This is a great way to get them in the door. And we’ve seen that it works, and they can see our conservation programs that are happening just by coming here.
“I think we’re really lucky here on the Central Coast — a lot of microbreweries are popping up — as well as in California in general.
“San Diego seems to be a hub, and so does Central California. The fact that you can get all these unique beers and also be supporting local businesses is really a great opportunity. Why not be able to showcase other local companies and be able to promote how cool Santa Barbara is?”
— Noozhawk staff writer Sam Goldman can be reached at sgoldman@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.