Hello, my beautiful Mutants 😍!

With the 4th anniversary of Mutantis officially behind me now, I wanted to talk a little bit about the future. Y’all know things have been challenging and uncertain, so I’m sure some are curious about what’s coming.

Current State of Things

First, let me be honest about something: up until the election, I was taking my first steps toward trying to sell the brewery.

Things are…not good. It’s taking everything I can give just to keep hanging on by my fingernails. I work 7 days a week with basically no life, and I make so little money that I am constantly behind on bills. I am also dangerously behind on various regulatory compliance tasks. With the current economic environment unlikely to improve, I don’t see a way to make things better. Even a big cash infusion would do little more than slow the bleeding.

The “savvy business move” would be to cut my losses and try to find a better career.

HOWEVER–the incoming administration poses a MASSIVE threat to the transgender community, even here in Portland. The It Could Happen Here podcast episode from November 10th can give you a better idea of what I’m talking about, if you don’t know. Community organization for mutual aid and support is going to be crucial for survival in the coming years, particularly in offline spaces.

I see an opportunity to use this brewery to facilitate that.

As one of the only (maybe THE only) fully trans-owned-and-operated “3rd places” in Portland, Mutantis is just about the safest place for trans folks to get together. Maybe not the most accessible, being tucked away in a quiet neighborhood in NE, but nowhere’s perfect!

Rather than taking the gamble of trying to sell the business at a massive loss, then look for a new career at a time when job opportunities are likely to be even scarcer, I’m going to try to stick it out! I may fail–things are going to get much worse and much harder–but this captain is committed to going down with her ship.

Plan for 2025

I am shifting the mission of Mutantis. Brewing great gluten-free, oat-free, vegan beer is still my main activity here, but supporting my queer and trans community is the reason to keep it going. No more “never brew the same recipe twice” model–I’m switching to a permanent year-round lineup of past favorites. I am updating the can artwork, changing a few names, and tweaking a few recipes, but these are all beers people have loved and asked about bringing back. They are:

• Hop Gloss Silk IPA
• Mango Hazy IPA
• Disco Italiano Pilsner
• Funnel Cake Cream Ale (2023 version)
• Piña Colada Sour Chicha (inspired by my most popular smoothie sour)
• Luna Lagoon Tropical Stout
• Light ‘Em Up Light Beer (an unhopped version of Doom Loop Light, with hibiscus to make it a pretty pink)
• Gender Fluid Sour Saison (I couldn’t resist the name; it’s a variation on 2023’s Acid Test Sour Saison)

This will make it easier for me to plan my raw material orders, eliminate waste, and improve the regular availability of my beers. The “one and done” approach has often led to wasted cans if a beer sells more on draft than in cans, or running out of cans while draft remains available.

There are still a couple of limited releases in the pipeline, because I got REALLY ahead of myself ordering printed cans. A new hard seltzer, Saturation Point: Golden Plum, and WHAT?! Double IPA will be coming near the end of this year. So it will be a gradual transition to the new permanent lineup, most likely being complete by April of 2025.

Community Building

Aside from the change in brewing, I am going to be putting as much energy as I can toward organizing or supporting other organizations that are focused on protecting trans rights and access to gender-affirming care. I will be planning more events specifically geared toward building LGBTQIA2S+ community, and working to create opportunities for those outside the community to support, contribute resources, and learn about the struggles that we queer and trans folks are facing (and what they can do to help).

Presently, there are a couple queer/trans-centric recurring events/programs here:

• Kinky Cult Bingo every Friday starting at 6:30, $5 suggested donation but NOTAFLOF, and late arrivals welcome
• Queer & Trans Community Meetup on the 1st and 3rd Thursday of every month, starting at 5:30 PM (active allies are welcome, too)
• 4th Sunday Trans Socials organized by Greater Portland Trans Unity, 1-4 PM on the 4th Sunday of every month. Note: the future of these for 2025 is in question, but I will likely keep them going myself even if the organizers decide to go a different direction!
• Free Clothes for Queer & Trans People are available during all my open hours! Donations are welcome! For (clean and sanitary) items beyond clothes, donations will be accepted on a case-by-case basis. Any excess donations beyond what I can keep organized will be distributed to other local charitable organizations.

I continue to welcome any and all other event organizers looking for a modestly-sized space to host LGBTQIA2S+ events!

Concluding Thoughts

Let me be clear that anyone who supports LGBTQIA2S+ rights is welcome here at Mutantis, whether you belong to the community or not, but this is absolutely not a politically-neutral space. Anyone who supports politicians or policies threatening our rights and access to care is explicitly not welcome. Mutantis is already the most visibly-queer brewery in Portland (if not the entire country), and the more our rights are attacked, the louder and queerer I intend to make this brewery!

Thanks for reading if you made it this far! Here’s to hanging in there and surviving the struggles to come!

Hello, dear beer friends! It’s been a few years since I fired up this blog, but after the traction I’ve gotten on recent social media posts about financial struggles, I wanted to go into more depth than a social media post can really handle. Apologies in advance that this is going to be a wall of text, but I hope you’ll read it if you want to see Mutantis Cult Brewery continue to exist!

“Why don’t you just distribute your beer to a wider area?”

One of the most common responses I’ve been seeing to the news that Mutantis is struggling is, “you should sell your beer in [insert place that is an inconvenient distance from the brewery].” Washington, California, eastern Oregon, Canada, places on the east coast, etc. It seems sensible on the surface–if there aren’t enough people in Portland who want to drink my beer, then bring the beer to other places, right?

It’s, um, a bit more complicated than that, so I’d like to take some time to explain why that is not a viable solution for my struggling lil brewery.

Been there, done that, don’t EVER want to go back.

Before I opened Mutantis, I was a co-owner and the founding head brewer at a MUCH bigger gluten-free brewery. That brewery’s vision was basically to become the biggest and most widely-available GF beer brand in the USA, and achieving it took a devastating toll on me–emotionally and financially!

Running a low-margin, high-volume, super-corporate beer factory turned out to be poison to my neurodivergent artist’s spirit. It was all spreadsheets, deadlines, meetings-that-should-have-been-emails, and grueling 80-hour work weeks. The pay was just above poverty level. There was constant drama between the other owners and employees. I had no life, no money, a severe drinking problem, and no hope: no matter how much beer we sold (and we sold TONS), thing only seemed to get worse for me.

Being the head brewer at a big, fast-growing brewery was basically Hell for me.

After 5 years, I sold out my stake in the company for a little bit more than I put in. Getting out literally saved my life–I am certain I would have unalived myself if I had tried to stick it out.

So WHY, in G’Broagran’s sweet name, would I turn around and start another brewery? Because I had a plan for one that was to be the exact opposite in every way!

My original plan for Mutantis was to be a small neighborhood gluten-free brewpub, with NO plans to EVER expand beyond Portland.

That business plan involved no canning at all(!), and only the occasional limited bottle release. No wholesale(!) beyond selling kegs to a few influential bars and restaurants around town. Just 7 days a week of being a quirky fun gathering place for folks to drink beer on draft, and geek out about all things gluten-free. All my energy would go into brewing the best and most diverse selection of gluten-free beer in the world, and organizing fun stuff for the community–NOT working on a canning line 20 hours a week and constantly looking for ways to cut costs and improve efficiency.

I thought it was a beautiful vision, and so did my bank and the SBA, since they were all too happy to fund me with a low-interest small business loan. My projections were thoroughly-vetted, supported by industry data, and looked sustainable even under very pessimistic (pre-pandemic) assumptions.

Then COVID redefined “pessimistic”.

COVID hit when I was in the final stages of my build-out. By the time I realized my entire model was going to have to shift to an all-packaging model, I’d already spent my startup capital, and had no funds left for things like a canning line or a walk-in cooler. I figured out a no-budget solution vis a vis those “big gold screw-top crowlers” that some of you may remember, and then eventually crowdfunded the very slow, very manual canning machine I currently use. The hope was always that it would just a temporary solution until the pandemic “ended” (lol), and I could return to the original model of a draft-only, taproom-centric brewpub.

I think y’all know how that’s worked out 🙃.

Here in 2024, canned beer makes up about 75% of my sales, and more than half of that is wholesale.

The margins on it are razor-thin, and the amount of time it takes me is absurd: at least 3 full days of my 7-day workweek is spent dealing with canning and delivering beer to my wholesale customers!

My scrappy canning machine takes about 1.5 minutes to fill a single can, which is ridiculously slow compared to a “real” canning line that fills 30-50 cans per minute. If I work really hard and don’t have any brewing or maintenance or taxes (etc.) to work on, I can barely fill and deliver even 30 cases (of 12 cans each) in a week. That is the absolute ceiling.

It does not take much demand before my ability to fulfill orders is maxed out.

“So hire help,” I hear you say. Great idea! Except that I can presently barely afford to pay myself enough to keep my bills paid, and I would have to more than TRIPLE the amount of beer I sell in cans if I wanted to afford even one employee at 30 hours per week. That increased volume would do nothing more than cover the cost of that employee, and I would have to somehow work even more than the 7-days-a-week I already do, just to keep up with the brewing, delivering, and sales calls to maintain the increased volume. Just to make the same subsistence-level wage I currently do.

Even if I could afford better canning equipment (which I can’t), the shift to a wholesale-driven business model would defeat the entire purpose I had in starting Mutantis in the first place–and would put me right back in the equally-untenable situation I had at my first brewery.

If the choice was between pivoting to a high-volume wholesale-driven business, or closing, then closing is what I’d choose.

But is that the choice I have to make? I’d like to think not!

If I could simply get the taproom back to the sales numbers it was doing in the summer of 2023, that would be just about sustainable now that I don’t have any employees. A little bit more and I could afford to hire someone part-time and actually take a day off every week (instead of only on major holidays or due to sickness/injury/weather disasters, like I do currently).

It seems like it should be achievable, since I’ve technically already achieved it (for at least a few months), but no matter what I try to get more people in the door, I have been getting significantly fewer instead. 😣

I’ve tried all kinds of events–comedy open mics, art markets, book releases, craft nights, networking events, and social meetups for trans folks as well as celiacs. I’ve tried advertising, donating beer and/or gift certificates to local charities and events, and partnering/collaborating with other local businesses. I’ve experimented with different open hours, offering discounts, happy hours, and sought-after taproom-exclusive beers (like my Piña Colada Smoothie Sour).

All this effort, and my 2024 June-Sept sales are still down almost 20% compared to 2023.

I don’t want to close, but I honestly don’t know how much longer I can keep going like this. Working 7 days a week, doing things I specifically sought to avoid doing, and still barely scraping by financially is hard to sustain when things are trending in a POSITIVE direction. When things are trending DOWN, it starts getting hard even to fake a smile.

The good news is, YOU can help!

Aside from visiting the Mutantis taproom more often (which I know isn’t an option for many people), there are lots of no-cost things y’all can do to help:

• Spread the word about Mutantis to friends and family.
• Help me get some media attention in the local press.
• Help me connect with groups or organizations that are looking for a place to host events.
• Throw a party of your own here.

Also, if my limited hours aren’t convenient for you to plan a visit, I do offer off-hours appointments! Or if you have any other ideas about how to attract more folks to the taproom, holler at me–I will try ANYTHING at this point!

I do appreciate the offers for volunteer labor, and the suggestions of other places to sell beer to–these things can help for a bit in the short-term. But the only thing that will ensure the long-term survival of Mutantis is getting more people into the taproom to drink draft beer.

Thank you for reading, thank you for supporting my weird gay lil gluten-free brewery, and sorry for being a downer. Cheers to brighter days ahead, friends!

Here at Mutantis, we generally aren’t interested in beer competitions.

Competing in the gluten-free category means that beers of all different styles are judged against each other, and that’s pretty absurd. Imagine a barley beer competition like that–is the world’s best pilsner better or worse than the world’s best hazy IPA, or the world’s best imperial stout? It’s a silly question, and no beer geek in their right mind would take it seriously. But when you’re a gluten-free brewer, you’re expected to be grateful just to be given the opportunity to compete at all.

We usually aren’t willing to accept that, so we usually ignore those competitions.

However, this year, the Oregon Beer Awards decided to add a gluten-free category for the first time ever. Some of our fellow dedicated gluten-free brewers asked us if we’d be willing to enter to ensure that there were enough entries to make the category viable, and we agreed. We figured even if the judging isn’t meaningful to us, it’s still an opportunity to put the spotlight on our state’s uniquely-vibrant community of dedicated gluten-free breweries. Or so we thought!

Long story short, the OBA chose to merge the gluten-free category with the non-alcoholic category, and allow gluten-free beers from non-dedicated breweries to enter. Uh oh.

Wouldn’t you know it, but the gold and silver in “our” category both went to beers from Deschutes Brewing! Gold for a one-off gluten-free IPA only available in their Bend brewpub, and silver for their Non-Alcoholic Black Butte Porter. Mutantis was the only dedicated gluten-free brewery to take a medal: bronze, for our Extra Terrestrial Pub Ale.

This was disappointing enough, but to make matters worse, that silver medal was swiftly retracted, after we notified the OBA that Non-Alcoholic Black Butte Porter is actually brewed and packaged in Denver, Colorado, and wasn’t eligible to compete! Apparently the folks at the OBA didn’t bother to look at the label for that beer, which clearly states where it’s brewed, and apparently the folks at Deschutes didn’t bother to read the competition rules that state that ONLY beer brewed in Oregon is eligible. Whoops!

So now only two medals are awarded for the category, despite several dozens of entries from dedicated gluten-free brewers. Could they reallocate the medals so that a runner-up would get one? Nope! Their judging format “doesn’t work that way”.

Due to Deschutes muscling in on the ONLY category we dedicated gluten-free brewers can compete in, and the OBA allowing them to, the whole point of having a gluten-free category was lost. Oregon’s community of dedicated gluten-free brewers got snubbed, and collectively wasted hundreds of dollars on entry fees (and a lot of beer).

Because of this fiasco, Mutantis does not feel good about our bronze medal. We have asked the OBA to disqualify us (we did miss the entry deadline, and despite requesting a refund instead of an exception, were told to enter anyway). They have refused our request to disqualify us and rescind our medal. So here we are, having to make a public statement renouncing our medal and expressing our regret for competing at all.

We’ll say it again, louder for the people in the back: WE RENOUNCE OUR BRONZE MEDAL. We stand in solidarity with our dedicated peers. Gluten-free breweries deserve better from competitions, and we deserve to be taken seriously by the craft brewing industry.

Check out our January newsletter at MailChimp if you missed it! New beers, new hours, new merch, and new website features!

We finally got around to setting up a MailChimp account! If you missed the December edition of our newsletter, you can find it here:

https://mailchi.mp/e035edfba33c/mutantis-december-news

In this month’s newsletter, you’ll find info on some upcoming new beers, and a preview of the crowdfunding campaign we will be launching early in 2022!