Like the rest of the nation’s federal workers, operations at the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), have stalled. This means that no new breweries, products or labels can be approved by the TTB, preventing them from legally entering the marketplace, and the slowdown has the potential to sap the novelty-based trials that an ever-expanding suite of products and brands have engendered within the industry’s consumer base.
Napa Smith Brewery & Winery produced fewer than 500 barrels when Smoke Wallin started there in 2010. In 18 months, Wallin took Napa Smith from distribution in California alone to placements in 32 states. Soon into the expansion, Wallin realized that the brewery’s quick growth couldn’t match its infrastructure.
American craft brewers, especially some of the founding fathers at Boston Beer Company and Redhook, for example, have culled and modernized recipes from the Germans, Belgians, English and Irish, to name a few. As a result, many forms of the faraway beer styles can be found in the U.S. In certain cases, American brewers seem to have digested the influence and gone their own way.
Last Friday, Josh Noel and Paul Sullivan of The Chicago Tribune reported that the Cubs made Anheuser-Busch (A-B) their exclusive beer sponsor in 2014 and beyond. The Cubs also plan to install a 650-square-foot Budweiser sign in the right-field bleachers.
“That’s bad new for Old Style,” Noel and Sullivan write, “which has had an affiliation with the team for more than 60 years, as well as for Wrigleyville rooftop owners.”
Toho Co., Ltd., a Japanese entertainment company, recently filed a lawsuit against New Orleans Lager & Ale Brewing Company, claiming that the brewer’s “Mechahopzilla” beer violates Toho’s copyrights for Mechagodzilla, the mechanized enemy of Godzilla, according to Law 360.
Months away from beginning construction on a multi-million dollar brewery in San Antonio, Alamo Beer Company has added to its executive team.
From brewery expansions to surging competition to Hollywood, the craft beer industry continues to prove its arrival in a variety of fashions.
Boulder Beer Company, Colorado’s first craft brewery, will begin distributing in Iowa this September. The brewery has partnered with local wholesaler Johnson Brothers of Iowa to enact statewide distribution.
Oskar Blues, which has experienced 198 percent growth from 2010 to 2012, according to the company, has blossomed into the second largest craft brewery in Colorado. This rapid growth has landed the brewery a spot on the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies list for the fourth year.
Craft consumers are beginning to learn more about the contract brewing model and leading some to question the integrity of so-called “local” brands. But are there valid reasons as to why some craft beer isn’t brewed close to home?
The gang of four — Andy Thomas, Luis Duran, Ken Kunze and Willem van der Hoeven — sat around a table and listened to the pitch by Euro RSCG. The marketing firm had this idea for Heineken-owned Dos Equis, previously marketed as a Mexican beer for young people. But their idea didn’t rely on Mexican… Read more »
As the craft beer industry keeps growing, the domestic beer industry continues to show ominous signs. Gallup, a global analytics provider, doesn’t separate the two industries in its latest statistical breakdown, but with all of the numbers pointing toward craft’s ascension, these numbers seem especially ominous for big brewers.
Craft has a significant following in California, as evidenced by the craft beer markets in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco, but there’s untapped potential remaining. Meanwhile, Sacramento, a city commonly known for what’s not there compared to what is, has started catching onto what the other major Californian cities have so heartily embraced.
A report from research firm Consumer Edge Insight indicates the ballooning preference of consumers for heavier beers. That’s shown not through a lineup of even more craft beer style holidays, like IPA Day, but through a decline in consumers’ taste for light beer, long the best-selling premium style.
