Justin Kendall provides daily coverage of the beer industry on Brewbound.com, conducts live-streamed interviews during Brewbound’s events and co-produces the Brewbound podcast. Kendall is a nearly 20-year career journalist who led alt-weekly newspapers in Kansas City, Missouri, and Des Moines, Iowa.
Night Shift Brewing has brewed its last batch of beer at New Hampshire’s Smuttynose Brewing Company. The Massachusetts-based craft brewery, which partnered with Smuttynose last November for expanded production of some of its more popular offerings, has begun contract brewing with Isle Brewers Guild (IBG) in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, following news that Smuttynose would be sold at an auction.
As Sunday’s Super Bowl matchup between the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles unfolds on the field, Anheuser-Busch InBev will be attempting to capture viewers’ attention by running six ads during the commercial breaks.
2017 was historically bad for U.S. brewers, who shipped 3.8 million fewer barrels of beer than the previous year, according to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau’s (TTB) unofficial estimate of domestic tax paid shipments. According to industry trade association the Beer Institute (BI) — which represents the interests of all brewers and importers and publishes the TTB’s monthly estimates — U.S. beer companies shipped about 170 million barrels of beer in 2017, compared to nearly 174 million barrels in 2016.
Following last year’s sale of Asheville’s Wicked Weed to Anheuser-Busch InBev, 23 North Carolina breweries have banded together to form the Charlotte Independent Brewers Alliance (CIBA), a non-profit membership group aimed at distinguishing local beer and cider makers from their competitors.
In this week’s Press Clips: Buffalo Wild Wings tests alcohol delivery in California; Old Town settles its trademark dispute with the city of Portland; a new study says alcohol sales lag in medical marijuana states; and more.
San Diego’s Ballast Point Brewing will open the first on-site brewery in Anaheim’s downtown Disney District at Disneyland Resort this fall. The Disney taproom is the seventh Ballast Point location in Southern California — and first in Orange County — for the Constellation Brands-owned craft brewery. The move is part of the beer company’s ongoing strategy to grow the Ballast Point brand through local outposts both in California and across the country.
In an effort to combat the influence Texas wholesalers wield with local lawmakers, the state’s craft brewers guild has launched its own political action committee, called CraftPAC. In a press release, the Texas Craft Brewers Guild said the goal of CraftPAC would be to overturn “archaic, anti-competitive beer laws” that have “had a chilling effect on the industry’s growth.”
After two decades of steady growth, Upland Brewing is taking a two-pronged approach to expansion in 2018. The brewery, ranked by the Brewers Association as the third largest beer company in Indiana, not only plans to dig deeper in its home state, but also expand distribution of its wood-aged and sour beers to a handful of new U.S. markets this year.
In this week’s Last Call: Smuttynose’s owners comment on their brewery’s pending auction; the FBI investigates an Ohio equipment supplier accused of defrauding several breweries; Southern Tier announces plans for a downtown Cleveland brewery and taproom; and more.
California’s Mendocino Brewing Co. and New York’s Olde Saratoga Brewing Co. have shuttered, impacting the operations of several other small companies who also produced beer at those facilities. The shutdown comes as the Indian government moves to extradite billionaire Vijay Mallya, who owns the two breweries, from London on fraud and money laundering charges in excess of $1 billion.
New Hampshire’s Smuttynose Brewing, citing overleveraging of investments and missed growth projections amidst increased competition from fellow craft brewers, is scheduled to be sold March 9 at a bank auction.
U.S. beer volume sales were roughly flat in 2017, according to retail data provider IRI Worldwide. The market research firm, which tracks category-wide sales trends at off-premise retailers, reported that total U.S. beer dollar sales topped $34 billion in the firm’s multi-outlet and convenience (MULC) universe of stores (grocery, drug, club, dollar, mass-merchandiser and military).
Facing increased competition from more than 6,000 U.S. craft breweries, Green Flash Brewing today announced plans to pull distribution from 33 states in a move that will also include a 15 percent reduction of its workforce.