State of Craft Beer Address 2015

Dear comrades!

We are fifteen years into this new century of craft beer. Fifteen years that dawned before 1,300 new breweries opened upon our shores; that unfolded with a new generation of many and costly bottle releases; that saw a vicious BMC recession spread across our nation and the world. It has been, and still is, a hard time for many neckbeards.

But tonight, we turn the label.

Tonight, after a breakthrough year for America, our craft beer industry is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since Prince released 1999. Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before Rogue was popular and hangovers are at an all-time low. More of our neighbors are consuming wild ales than ever before; more of our people are insured of quality beer than ever before; we are as free from the mighty grip of the Belgians as we've been in almost 30 years (APLAUZE).

Tonight, for the first time since Hunaphu Day, our mission in Florida is nearly over. 10 months ago, nearly 180,000 craft beer drinkers were served at Hunaphu Day. Today, fewer than 2,000 tickets were sold. And we salute the courage and sacrifice of every man and woman in this Generation who has served to keep us safe from duplicate tickets.

America, for all that we've endured; for all the grit and hard work required to acquire every weekly insta-whale; for all the tedious thread monitoring that lie ahead, know this:The shadow of hastily re-waxed Assassins has passed, and the State of the Beer Trade is strong (APLAUZE).

At this moment -- with growing shelf space, shrinking hop yields, bustling bright tanks, and booming energy usage -- we have risen from the BMC recession freer to write our own future than any other bunch of adult children in the Galaxy. It's now up to us to choose who we want to be over the next fifteen years, and for decades to come.

Will we accept a muling economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well and only increases butthurt for others? Or will we commit ourselves to a $4$ economy that generates rising porch bombs for everyone who makes the effort?

Will we approach the world fearful of international trades, even though we may be dragged into costly European shipping charges that strain our wallets and set back our understanding of how hard it is to actually obtain Fou Foune? Or will we trade wisely, using all the maple syrup barrels in our power to defeat the Eurozone and protect our brewery only releases here at home?

Will we allow ourselves to be sorted into factions and turned against one another -- or will we recapture the sense of common high ABV consumption that has always helped to propel American marriages off a cliff?

In two weeks, I will send to each of you a box filled with practical, non partisan, fizzy yellow wheat beer. And in the months ahead, I'll crisscross the country making a case for you to drink the fizzy yellow wheat beer that I sent you.

So tonight, I want to focus less on a checklist of whalez, and focus more on the values at stake in the shelf choices before us.

It begins with cease and desist letters.

Today, thanks to exponential growth in the number of new breweries in America, the once forgotten cease and desist letter is touching more and more lives. Legal fees are finally starting to rise again. We know that more small brewery owners plan to raise their legal advisers pay than at any time since 2007. But here's the thing -- those of us here tonight, we need to set our sights higher than just making sure copyright infringement doesn't halt the progress we're making. We need to do more than just do no harm. Tonight, together, let's do more to restore the link between similar hop puns and ethnically or gender insensitive beer labels for every brewer in America.

So what does poverty-class beer economics require in our time? 

First, poverty-class beer economics means helping working families feel more secure in a world of increasing barrel aged releases and one-off collaborations. That means helping more folks afford flashy, yet modest, overpriced shelf beer like La Folie, Rum Barrel Pumking, Black Ops, pretty much all of the Eclipse series and Barrel Aged Narwhal -- and my plan will address each of these issues by lowering the sin taxes on drinking families and putting thousands of dollars back into their beer cellars each year.

Second, to everyone who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this: If you truly believe you could work full-time and drink craft beer on less than $15,000 a year, go try it, you’ll be sucking dick for Black Note by June.
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Third, to make sure folks can cellar beer for down the road, we have to do more to help Americans upgrade their trading skills. In a 21st century economy that rewards pricing transparency and bottle count knowledge like never before, we need to do more. By the end of this decade, two in three beer trades will require some higher understanding of acronyms to even decipher what is even being offered. Two in three. And yet, we still live in a country where too many bright, striving Americans have no idea what GM, BVDL, KBBS and BAMC even mean. It's not fair to them, and it's not smart for our future. That's why I am proposing a new plan to lower the cost of community college -- to zero. The next generation will understand beer acronyms and how to spell Pliny.

Finally, the third part of poverty-class beer economics is about 21st century infrastructure – no more hand bottling, stronger forklifts, faster conveyer belts and the fastest internet draft list refresh available on Earth. As we better train our palates, we need the new beer economy to keep churning out high-wage jobs. Since 2010, brewery equipment manufacturers have added almost 800,000 new fermenters across America. Some of our bedrock sectors, like hop backs, are booming. But there are also millions of Americans who work in brewery jobs that didn't even exist ten or twenty years ago – like manager of tank scrubbing, paperwork adjuster and chalkboard artist.
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My fellow beer drinking Americans, we too are a strong, hyper-critical family. We, too, have made it through some pretty drunk times and multiple infected batches. Fifteen years into this new century, we have picked ourselves up some grain, dusted ourselves off, and have begun mashing and sparging once again. We've boiled a familiar wort, but pitched a new yeast. A hoppier future is ours to drink. Let's begin this new chapter -- together -- and let's start the work right now.

Thank you, may Sean Hill bless you, and may Mitch Steele bless this country we love…

and FUCK ALL THE HERBYS OUT THERE!