The best home brewers are never satisfied with their recipe and processes; they’re always making subtle tweaks and improvements to refine their beers. The best craft breweries operate the same way: shifting, evolving and refining their beers and their brand. San Francisco’s Speakeasy Ales & Lagers is an example of how a veteran brewery can change their image and refine their beers. After 18 years of making craft beer, Speakeasy is hitting a new stride thanks to a big brewery expansion, a steady stream of interesting new beers, and some evocative design.
Speakeasy has been ubiquitous in the Bay Area and throughout California for years, but it’s never been terribly exciting. While their de facto flagship Big Daddy is a fine IPA in the vein of other stalwart classics from the West Coast chock full of the pine-and-citrus notes of Columbus, Cascade and Centennial hops, it was more of a safe-choice than something to get jazzed about seeing on tap. The other brews in the “Usual Suspects” series were similarly solid but forgettable (though to be fair, the newer seasonal releases have been more exciting). But Speakeasy refined their branding in 2011 and just this year fired up a new 60-barrel brewhouse and attendant canning line, and the first wide releases from the new system have sparked a new interest from beer fans.
Baby Daddy Session IPA was the first release from the new line of canned session brews, called the “Session 47 Series,” and Suds Session Ale followed a few weeks later (the third style — Pop Gun Pilsner — was just released this week). All three of these session-friendly, 4.7% alcohol brews get packaged in eye-catching black cans with some slick graphics that really help tell the brand’s story. The pulpy iconography that identifies each style (brass knuckles for Baby Daddy, a cork-firing revolver for Pop Gun, and a hardboiled thug blowing bubbles for Suds) is the kind of fun detail that helps move six packs off the crowded beer shelves. All the neat design in the world, however, won’t be worth the redemption value on the can if the beer inside is forgettable. Fortunately, the copper-hued Suds Session Ale manages to find a marketplace niche that Baby Daddy couldn’t.