Three craft brewers and one ‘big beer’ executive walk into a room of beer distributors at 9:00 a.m. One of them pulls out a vaporizer. I forget how the rest of that joke goes, but everyone ends up laughing. That was the scene this morning at the 77th annual National Beer Wholesalers convention, being held in New Orleans.
A couple years ago, Ballast Point foresaw a distribution footprint that would include 35 states. In the words of chief commercial officer Earl Kight, however, the company is “still stuck” at 26. It’s not that the San Diego brewery hasn’t grown: Ballast Point made the Brewers Association’s list of the 50 largest craft brewers for the first time this year, having sold 88,204 barrels in 2013, up 86 percent over the previous year.
Another top-50 craft brewery has sold a piece of its business to private equity. Atlanta’s SweetWater Brewing today announced that it has sold minority interest to TSG Consumer partners, a private equity firm that invests in middle-market consumer brands.
Attention beer geeks! Your next pint of Pliny could be coming from Paso Robles. Russian River Brewing, the award-winning craft brewery from Santa Rosa, Calif. today announced that it will produce a limited amount of its acclaimed flagship, Pliny the Elder, under an exclusive contract partnership with Firestone Walker Brewing.
Highland Brewing is investing $5 million into a facility expansion that will enable the company, which is based in Asheville, N.C., to boost annual capacity by 60,000 barrels and create additional jobs. Backed by bank loans and some gradual tax incentives offered up by the Economic Development Coalition for Asheville-Buncombe County (EDC), the brewery plans to occupy an additional 30,000 sq. ft. of its current building with new tanks and a bottling line.
With Canadian barley crops marred by frigid temperatures and wet weather, brewers and maltsters alike to dig a little deeper in their pockets for key ingredients, something that could cause prices to surge in the coming year.
The world’s largest brewer today announced a set of global management changes, scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2015. Anheuser-Busch InBev said it will transition current North America zone president, Luiz Edmond, into a global role as Chief Sales Officer. Taking over for Edmond will be current Latin America zone president, Jo├úo Castro Neves.
We’re pleased to announce that video playback from this week’s Brew Talks Chicago meetup is now available for video playback. Included below — and also available on the Brewbound YouTube channel — are three entertaining discussions on the business of craft beer with notable Chicago-area beer industry professionals.
Tony Magee, the thoughtful and outspoken founder of Lagunitas Brewing, sounded off on a variety of beer industry topics and trends during Tuesday’s Brew Talks meetup in Chicago. With the inner workings of his own second facility serving as the backdrop to the talk, Magee expounded on mergers and acquisitions, building second breweries, and other issues that have driven much of the national conversation surrounding craft beer of late.
The stage is set for a mega-merger between two of New York City’s largest beer distributors. A tentative agreement between Bronx-based Manhattan Beer Distributors — which will sell and deliver more than 35 million cases of beer in 2014 — and Brooklyn-based Windmill Distributing (d/b/a Phoenix\Beehive Beverage Distributors) is expected to close in the first quarter of 2015, according to Mike Mazzoni, an advisor on the transaction.
Victory has announced plans to install a canning line in its recently opened Parkesburg, Pa. facility beginning in 2015. Victory’s seasonal Summer Love offering will be the first in its portfolio to be canned, the company said. No further decisions have been made about what other varieties will go into the package, according to a company spokesperson.
Michael Kiser, a brand strategist who’s worked for companies as large as Anheuser-Busch InBev and as small as yet-to-launch craft startups, believes there’s a distinct difference between the craft of brewing a quality product and the task of running a brewery business. “You are not a brewer until you know how to sell a beer,” he said during Tuesday’s Brew Talks industry meetup.
A number of craft brewers, including stalwarts Sierra Nevada and New Belgium, are rallying behind new regulation put forth by the Environmental Protection Agency they say will ensure the availability of clean water for their beers.
Brewbound.com is pleased to announce live video streaming of Brew Talks Chicago, a traveling meetup series for craft beer industry professionals. The event, which will be hosted, at the Lagunitas Brewery taproom on Tuesday, will feature two discussions on the business of craft beer.
