In 2013, New Belgium CEO Kim Jordan told Brewbound that the Colorado brewery would sell its products in all 50 states by 2018. It looks like her company’s goal of becoming a nationally distributed craft beer brand will happen slightly ahead of schedule.
Sierra Nevada has announced a 36-state voluntary recall of several of its year-round and seasonal beers bottled at the company’s North Carolina brewery.
Massachusetts beer wholesalers are going on the offensive. After several years of fighting small craft brewers’ efforts to change state franchise laws, the Beer Distributors of Massachusetts today filed a bill that would enable beer companies making less than 30,000 barrels annually to sever relationships with wholesalers for no cause.
Small businesses can now raise a maximum of $1 million annually from non-accredited investors through Securities and Exchange Commission-approved third-party crowdfunding portals such as WeFunder. Two breweries have already maxed out their campaigns.
Craft canned beer pioneers Oskar Blues Brewery led the aluminum revolution in 2002, so it’s no surprise that the Colorado-based brewery’s flagship release, Dale’s Pale Ale, finished 2016 as the nation’s top-selling craft can six-pack at U.S. supermarkets, according to market research firm IRI Worldwide.
A pair of transactions in the Pacific Northwest will see the coming together of three wholesalers and the creation of a new jointly owned entity by two prominent beer distribution companies. Click Wholesale Distributing — a craft beer, spirits and wine wholesaler with operations in Renton, Wash., Spokane, Wash., and Hayden, Idaho — today announced its pending sale to Craig Stein Beverage.
In an effort to halt a sales slide for one of its most popular flagship brands, Boston Beer Company today unveiled a reformulated recipe for Samuel Adams Rebel IPA that now features the popular Mosaic hop variety as well as a new grain bill void of caramel malt. It’s the first time in Boston Beer’s 32-year history that the company has “significantly changed” the recipe of a flagship beer, according to founder Jim Koch, and it comes just three years after the product was first introduced nationally.
In this week’s edition of press clips: A Massachusetts task force has been assembled and is set to review the state’s alcohol laws; Great Divide production dips 16 percent in 2016; Washington’s Big Al Brewing closes its doors and a boutique beer distributor launches in Colorado.
For the third straight year, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau issued more than 1,000 new brewery permits, bringing the total number of permitted U.S. breweries to a record high of 7,190 in 2016. The government agency issued 1,110 new permits in 2016, down slightly from the 1,142 new permits issued in 2015.
Neil Witte has seen the nastiest of the behind-the-scenes beer business — moldy couplers, walk-in coolers that smell like acetic acid and musty puddles teeming with draft spoilers.
Florida-based Cigar City Brewing will expand its distribution footprint for the first time in four years when it enters Tennessee next week, the company announced Thursday. The entry marks the beginning of an ambitious expansion plan for Cigar City that will include forays into North Carolina, South Carolina, New Jersey, Colorado and Utah, chief operating officer Justin Clark told Brewbound.