Southern Tier Hires New Director of Brewing

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Southern Tier Brewing has hired Sean Lavery, a former Anheuser-Busch (A-B) brewmaster, to serve as its newest director of brewing, the company announced this week.

Lavery, who held a variety of brewing positions during his time with Anheuser-Busch, officially joined Southern Tier earlier this week.

“Supplementing the outstanding talent already at Southern Tier with world class operators like Sean is a critical part of our long term plan,” Southern Tier CEO John Coleman said in the release. “Sean has run a highly efficient macro brewery, achieving great things in the areas of innovation, quality and operational excellence.”

Most recently, Lavery served as senior resident brewmaster at A-B’s Los Angeles facility, where he led a brewing staff of more than 100 people in managing a 10 million-barrel brewery, according to the statement. Lavery also held several corporate positions at A-B and was responsible for driving innovation and monitoring quality control on a global scale.

“I was blown away when I first visited Southern Tier, this is an incredibly impressive facility,” said Lavery in the release. “The commitment to quality is so clearly evident in everything they do, from state of the art equipment to the caliber of the brewing staff.”

Southern Tier has made a string of executive hires since selling a partial stake in the business to New York investment firm Ulysses Management LLC. in September. At the time of the deal, the company hired Coleman, a former president of Pabst, as its new CEO. And in November, Southern Tier hired Brendan Smith, a 17-year A-B sales veteran who joined the New York brewery as its new vice president of marketing.

In 2013, Southern Tier sold 84,636 barrels, up 37 percent over the year prior, according to industry trade group the Brewers Association. Last year’s production numbers were unavailable as of press time, but in September, Southern Tier co-founder Phineas DeMink told Brewbound that the company was on pace to produce more than 100,000 barrels in 2014.