Southern California’s Golden Road Brewing has announced plans to expand distribution throughout Arizona next month, bringing its full line of beers to consumers outside its home state for the first time. The brewery has signed with Golden Eagles Distributors, which will sell the company’s core line and seasonal offerings to retailers for both on- and off-premise consumption. The rollout is scheduled for early May.
Oskar Blues has agreed to purchase Michigan’s Perrin Brewing Company, a smaller craft operation founded in 2011. The pickup may be the first in a series of investments for Oskar Blues, a top-25 craft brewery. The acquisition is backed by investments from Fireman Capital Partners and former West Side Distributing owner, Keith Klopcic, according to Oskar Blues’ founder, Dale Katechis. He said the transaction is expected to close within the next 60 days.
Traveler Beer, the three-year-old shandy/fruit beer line operated by Boston Beer’s Alchemy & Science subsidiary, debuted its first national ad this week, a 30-second spot dubbed “The Road to Refreshment.” Starring Traveler president Alan Newman (and his yellow spectacles), the ad coincides with the national launch of the brand, which Boston Beer president and CEO Martin Roper detailed earlier this year during a fourth quarter earnings call. “I’ve been fired by every company I’ve ever worked for,” says Newman at the start of the ad. “The only things I was ever good at were traveling and beer.”
Brewbound is excited to announce a special edition of its traveling Brew Talks meetup series, happening on Thursday, April 16 during the 2015 Craft Brewers Conference in Portland, Ore. In partnership with Anheuser-Busch InBev and 10 Barrel Brewing, Brewbound will host two exclusive conversations with the founders of every A-B-owned U.S. craft brewery and Andy… Read more »
The Brazilian billionaires behind the Anheuser-Busch InBev merger have negotiated another blockbuster deal, this time involving two huge U.S. food companies – Kraft Foods and H.J. Heinz Co. The tieup, valued at $40 billion, is backed by global investment firm 3G Capital and Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
International interest in American craft beer is surging, according to new data from the Brewers Association. In a press statement, the BA – which represents the interests of small and independent U.S. craft brewers – said American craft beer exports grew 35.7 percent in 2014, to more than 383,000 barrels and a retail value of nearly $100 million.
Brewbound Chicago ’15 – a one-day conference focused on the business of craft beer – will be held on June 1th in Chicago, IL at Moonlight Studios. You can save up to $100 by signing up now with the early registration discount.
Oskar Blues is one state closer to becoming the next nationally distributed craft beer brand. The craft brewery – which operates production facilities in Lyons, Colo. and Brevard, N.C. – today announced plans to expand into Louisiana, the 42nd state where its products are now sold. Building on an existing partnership with the 28-million case Crescent Crown Distributing in Arizona, Oskar Blues signed an agreement with the wholesaler’s Louisiana outfit for coverage throughout the southern part of the state.
Left Hand Brewing has announced plans to expand distribution to Southern California with a pair of L. Knife & Son wholesalers this spring. The brewery, which brews in Longmont, Colo., has inked deals with Craft Beer Guild Distributing of San Diego and Craft Beer Guild of Los Angeles for coverage throughout San Diego, Orange County, and greater Los Angeles, specifically in Ventura and Santa Barbara.
Diageo has announced plans to supply serving facts information on its alcohol beverage products and voluntarily provide consumers with additional caloric and nutritional information. After years of asking the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) for permission to label its beer, wine and spirits products with serving facts information, Diageo finally convinced the TTB to temporarily approve the request in 2013.
A four-alarm fire that tore through and reduced a massive Rhode Island property to a mess of charred support columns and twisted steel had the unintended result of revealing Narragansett Beer’s plans for a new brewery. The 93,000 sq. ft. property in Providence that was reportedly gutted by the blaze last Tuesday, it turns out, was to be the shared home of Isle Brewers Guild, an upstart contract brewing company, and Narragansett, which has been on the hunt for its own facility for the past decade.
The first dedicated contract brewing company west of the Mississippi, Sleeping Giant Brewing Company is the brainchild of Matthew Osterman, a former compliance and operations manager for Boulder-based New Planet Beer. Now the president of Sleeping Giant, which launched in January, Osterman is at the helm of the country’s latest contract brewing outfit hoping to cash in on the growth of craft and the entrepreneurial exuberance of startup beer brands without a home base.
North Carolina’s Wicked Weed Brewing broke ground this morning on its third facility in the Asheville area, a 40,000 sq. ft. production brewery that’s expected to create 82 new jobs. Set on the western edge of town in a building the company purchased from the county, the facility will enable Wicked Weed to boost capacity by an additional 50,000 barrels.
Across the country, it seems like the craft beer industry is growing at a rate faster than the rules of the game can evolve. In a number of states, regulations dating back to Prohibition and beyond linger, and producers complain they are hindering the growth of an industry that’s booming elsewhere. To keep up, a number of lawmakers from all over the country are looking to rewrite the rules to foster growth and make their states more competitive, while some are working to make current laws even more restrictive.
