Category Archives: Brewers

Brewers, Craft Breweries, Small Breweries

Seeking Great Beer in San Diego

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I was in San Diego last week giving a guest lecture to students in the Craft Beer and Urban Economies class at the University of California-San Diego. The course is taught by my friend and colleague, Julie Wartell. As part of the class, students get the opportunity to visit and tour a local brewery. I was fortunate enough that my trip to San Diego coincided with a visit the class made to Seek Beer Co.

Julie, myself, and about 25 students descended on Seek Brewery early on a Sunday afternoon. The brewery is located in the city’s North Park neighborhood, described by some locals as “the best beer neighborhood in the nation,“

The brewery was established in 2022. Like most craft breweries, it is relatively small. According to data provided to the Brewers Association, Seek produced 411 barrels of beer in 2023. It does have capacity for growth, however.

Our group was met at the brewery by founder and owner, Dave Ohmer. As with any brewery tour I go on, what interests me the most is hearing the owner talk about their background, their passion for brewing, and the opportunities and challenges that they see for their brewery and the industry more broadly.

Dave grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. His emotional ties to this marvelous Midwest city are still evident in the Bengals banner that has pride of place in his production space. A interesting feature of Dave’s journey to brewer and brewery owner is that he never home brewed. This highly unusual in the brewing industry. Data show that approximately 90% of today’s commercial craft brewers started on their professional journey as home homebrewers. During college, where he studied music, Dave waited tables at Downtown Grill and Brewery in Knoxville, TN. One day he asked the owners if he could volunteer in the brewhouse. His volunteer position transitioned to a paid position and from scrubbing floors and cleaning kegs he worked his way up to full-time brewer. Additional positions at Saw Works Brewing in Knoxville and Whole Foods Brewing Co. and Urban South Brewery in Houston, TX allowed Dave to expand his knowledge base and hone his brewing skills.

With a Bengals bag in the background, Dave Ohmer tells us about the brewing process

Seek has a relatively small taproom. A sign on the wall indicates that the space, legally, play host to 43 people. There is, however, an outdoor space, share with a neighboring brewery. This is vital to Seek’s success as it allows the brewery to serve more customers from its taproom. Currently, the taproom is responsible for 70% of Seek’s sales. The other 30% is self-distributed to local bars and restaurants. Going forward, Dave would like to increase the percentage of his sales that come from the taproom. Simply put, the profit margins on a taproom keg are just so much more generous than one that is distributed. During our visit, Dave mentioned that there had been rumblings of the outdoor space being converted to half-a-dozen parking spaces – this would not be a good development from Seek’s perspective.

When I was there Seek had about a dozen different beers on offer, including a Vienna Lager, a Coffee Stout, a Fruited Sour, a West Coast IPA, and a Hazy IPA. One thing that I noticed about the beers available was that all but one (an Imperial Coffee Stout) had ABS of under 7%. I asked Dave about this, and he said that this simply reflected market demand. Higher ABV beers had not been selling fast enough. This preference for lower ABV beers (although many would consider 6.9% to be quite high; its relative guess) is consistent with a broad market shift towards lower alcohol beers that has been observed. As a beer drinker who prefers beer to be under 7% ABV, I appreciated the wide choice of such brews on offer at Seek.

While a relative newcome to the San Diego beer scene, Seek has made a big impact. At the 2025 San Diego Beer News Awards (SDBNA), Seek won in six categories (Best Customer Service, Best Hazy IPA, Best Imperial IPA, Best Pilsner, Best Collaboration Beer and the inaugural Best Alternative Beverage award). What struck me about this list of awards was that not only does Seek produce great beer, but they also provide fantastic customer service. Behind the bar at Seek when I visited was Taproom Manager, Tyler Hamman. Along with Beertender, Savanah Marshall, Hamman is key to the great service that Seek’s customer’s experience. This was not the first time Seek had won the Best Customer Service Award – they had previously done so in 2023.

As Dave Ohlmer builds his brewery’s brand, and hopefully its taproom sales, providing good customer service is critical. In a research paper published in 2023 in the journal Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, researchers from Cornell University examined the relationship between various taproom characteristics and customer satisfaction. They found that the two most important contributors to customer satisfaction were the taproom’s interior ambience and the friendliness and knowledge of servers. And, perhaps not surprisingly, customers who were more satisfied with their taproom experience tended to stay longer, buy more beer, and spend more money.

Seek is also a brewery that is very engaged with its community. I experienced this on a previous visit in 2024. On that trip, Julie took me to Seek on a Monday evening. This happened to coincide with the weekly meeting of the Seek Run Club. Every Monday at 6pm, a group of folks meet up and have an at-your-own-pace walk/jog/run around the North Park neighborhood, at the end ow which everyone meets back at Seek for a beer (or two) and an opportunity to socialize. This activity is an indicative of a larger trend of breweries becoming the focus of what is generally known as Leisure Time Physical Activity (LPTA). The LPTA can be yoga, running, cycling, or any other activity that involves some level of physical exertion. The Run Club has become such a part of the identity of the brewery that one of the beer’s produced by Seek is called “On a Monday” a Light Lager with an ABV of 4.2% and has been dubbed as the “official beer of the Seek Run Club”.

The Seek Run Club meets every Monday
Seek Beer Run Club members enjoy a post-run beer
“On a Monday” – the official beer of the Seek Run Club

Further Reading:

Li, Jie, Sara M. WagneR, Miguel I. Gomez, and Anna Katharine Mansfield. 2023. Customer satisfaction and sale performance in New York State brewery tasting rooms. Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Volume 52, Pages 132–150.

Seaman, Alana N, Lindsey Schroeder, Laura Morris, Kayla Hines, and Michele Abee. 2024. “Ten bucks for yoga and a beer in a cool vibey spot”: Exploring motivations for LTPA at craft breweries. Leisure Studies.

Brewers, Craft Beer, Craft Breweries, Female Brewers, International

Brewed By The Birds

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Polly James (left) and Nerys Hughes (right) as The Liver Birds

 

The two sculptured birds atop Liverpool’s Royal Liver Building

The British can take credit for the creation of some wonderful situation comedies. Growing up in Scotland during the 1970s and 1980s I was a regular viewer of a number of these. Some of my favorites included Only Fools and Horses, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, and Porridge. Recently I was reminded of another – The Liver Birds. The Liver Birds ran for ten seasons on BBC from 1969 and 1979. Set in Liverpool the storyline focused on the lives of two women (Sandra played by Nerys Hughes and Beryl played by Polly James) who shared an apartment. The title for the series was inspired by two sculptured birds that are perched on top of Liverpool’s Royal Liver Building. The building, opened in 1911, was built to house the offices of the Royal Liver Assurance Group. The “bird” reference in the show’s title, however, is also a nod to the British slang word “bird”, which refers to a young woman. The American equivalent would be the word “chick”.

In Melbourne I enjoyed this Sunset Ale by Two Birds Brewing Company

Melbourne’s Hairy Little Sista Bar/Restaurant where I enjoyed a Sunset Ale

The show popped into my head, a few weeks ago, when I was in Melbourne, Australia. This was my fifth visit to Australia, but my first to Melbourne. I first visited Australia in 2006. While not much has changed since my first visit ten years ago one change that I have observed is the growing popularity of craft beer. Like Americans, increasing numbers of Australians, are demanding better quality and more flavorful beer than that which is offered by the large macro-brewers. I sampled quite a number of these Australian craft beers on my eight day trip there. One that I sampled was called Sunset Ale by Two Birds Brewing Company. It was recommended to by a bartender in Hairy Little Sista, a bar/restaurant in Melbourne’s CBD. I was with a colleague and we went into the Sista to get a beer. It was my round so I went up to the bar to see what was on offer. The bartender saw me perusing the selection of beers on tap and before I could make a decision she said “You should try the Sunset Ale by Two Birds Brewery. The brewery is owned by two women, that’s why it’s called Two Birds, and they make some really good beer. It’s brewed here in Melbourne”. This particular bird, the bartender, had a sweet smile – I couldn’t refuse her recommendation. And I was not disappointed. Sunset Ale is a tasty amber ale that comes in at an ABV of 4.6%. In fact I enjoyed it so much that I had another the next day in another bar; this time from a bottle.

The two birds behind Two Birds Brewing are Jayne Lewis and Danielle Allen. They both grew up in the city of Perth, in Western Australia and met there while teenagers. Throughout the course of their friendship they both developed a love and appreciation for  beer. Lewis eventually entered the brewing industry where she gained valuable experience working  for a number of Australian breweries, including as head brewer at Mountain Goat Brewery in Richmond, a Melbourne suburb. Allen, meanwhile, was putting her Marketing and Public Relations degree to work. Her passion was the food and beverage industry and she worked for a number of private sector firms following graduation. These included some time spent as Product Development Manager with the Australian retail giant, Woolworths, where she worked on the company’s private label brand of food products, ‘Select’.

In 2011 Lewis and Allen decided to enter the world of commercial brewing. At that point they were not ready to invest in a bricks-and-mortar brewery; instead they contracted with other  breweries to brew their beers. This allowed them to concentrate on other aspects of the business, including recipe development, establishing a distribution network, getting their brand known in the market, and also raising the financing to build an actual brewery. The latter they did in 2014 when they opened Two Birds Brewery in the Melbourne suburb of Spotswood. Within the Australian context Lewis and Allen are pioneers – they are the country’s first female brewery owners. As part of the process of establishing their brewery the Two Birds made several pilgrimages to the United States, one in 2010 and one in 2013. They did so to immerse themselves in the American craft beer scene, to see what they could learn, and to draw inspiration – the fact that they made not one, but two visits to the United States is  a testimony to the cutting edge nature of the American craft beer industry.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have covered the topic of female Brewers in previous entries. In March 2016 I interviewed Shannon Fink, Head Brewer at the Black Cloister Brewing Company in Toledo, OH. In July 2016 I wrote an entry about female-owned High Heel Brewing of Lakeland, FL. Historically, before beer became an industrialized product, the role of brewer was a predominantly female one.

After I returned from Australia I came across an article about two women, Aida Musulmankulova and Arzu Kurbanova. Musulmankulova and Kurbanova are the owners of Save the Ales, the first craft brewery to be established in the central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan. The brewery is located in Bishkek, the country’s capital city. Not only are the owners (who also happen to be the Brewers) female but they made the decision to hire an all-female staff.

While female brewers are still heavily outnumbered numerically by their male counterparts there is no question that the number of female brewers is on the rise. And here in the United States we have, I believe, reached the point where female brewers are no longer regarded as a curiosity or an oddity. And while there is still a ways to go female breweres are slowly, but surely, becoming mainstream. And that, surely, is a good thing.

Beer Styles, Brewers, Craft Beer, Craft Breweries

Eight Beer Bottles Sitting On A Sill

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My view of University Hall from my office

I have two windows in my office at The University of Toledo, one of which overlooks the university’s Centennial Mall. From that window I can watch students and faculty crisis-cross the mall as they move from one Continue reading Eight Beer Bottles Sitting On A Sill →

Brewers, Female Brewers, Ohio, Toledo

Rose of Shannon: A Conversation with Shannon Fink

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While archaeologists are confident that the brewing of beer occurred in ancient Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) around 3,500 BC there is some evidence that people living in the same region were quite possibly brewing beer as early as 10,000 BC. In these
ancient societies brewing was a task performed by women. In medieval Europe and colonial America much of the beer that was consumed was produced in the home, with Continue reading Rose of Shannon: A Conversation with Shannon Fink →