Top Features

Brewbound’s 2021 award winners and class of rising stars were announced today during the multimedia trade publication’s annual business conference in Santa Monica, California.

The Brewers Collective West (BC West) — the western division of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s (A-B) craft business unit — will continue to focus on innovation as it transforms into more of a “beverage company” in 2022, Christine Perich, general manager of BC West, detailed to Brewbound.

Sierra Nevada Brewing company has hired Ellie Preslar as its new vice president of sales.

Pabst Brewing Company has tapped Anheuser-Busch InBev alum Paul Chibe to succeed Eugene Kashper as CEO. Kashper, who acquired Pabst with TSG Consumer Partners in 2014, will remain with the company as chairman of the board of directors.

After more than a year away, Julia Herz will return to the Brewers Association (BA) as the executive director of the the trade group’s homebrewing division, the American Homebrewers Association (AHA).

Bump Williams Consulting shared the results of the firm’s annual 3 Tier Growth Strategies Survey, and there were “multiple aligned growth plans” across the tiers unlike in past years.

We’re excited to reveal the Brewbound Pitch Slam 13 semi-finalists and judges. We’ve narrowed down the semi-final pool to 12 companies. The chosen semi-finalists produce a wide range of alcoholic beverages.

After decades of steady increases, the U.S. beer industry’s volume has plateaued for the last 10 years, Beer Marketer’s Insights senior editor Christopher Shepard reported during the trade publication’s seminar last week. “In the 1970s, U.S. beer volume grew by almost 50% — 56 million barrels,” he said. “That’s almost two-thirds of the growth between 1970 and 2020, [and it] happened in 10 years right at the beginning.”

The rumored interest in a deal between Constellation Brands and energy drinks maker Monster has led to Wall Street analysts hypothesizing scenarios in which the two companies could potentially come together. The latest analyst to run through the hypothetical tie-up scenarios comes from RBC Capital Markets’ Nik Modi.

After a one-year hiatus due to the pandemic, Russian River Brewing Company is reviving its in-person Pliny the Younger celebration in February 2022. “The entire RRBC team missed seeing our many repeat and first-time visitors from around the world this past year after cancelling the in-person release due to COVID,” the company wrote on its… Read more »

Craft Beverage Warehouse (CBW), a Milwaukee-based beverage packaging distributor, is making a $4 million investment to begin offering digital can printing to craft beverage companies in 2022.

The lines between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages continue to blur. Bloomberg broke the news Sunday evening that Constellation Brands and energy drink maker Monster Beverage Corp. are considering a deal.

The world’s largest can manufacturer, Ball Corp., alerted clients that it will increase the minimum order for printed cans to five truckloads per SKU starting January 1, and the company will no longer offer warehousing for orders. Brewers Association chief economist Bart Watson joins the Brewbound Podcast to provide context on the fallout for craft brewers.

The fallout from Ball Corporation’s updates to craft brewers and other small customers about increased minimum order quantities continues to reverberate. In addition to Ball raising minimum order quantities for printed cans from one truckload (204,000 cans) to five (1,020,000 cans), the price of 12 oz. cans will increase nearly 28%, from $93.23 to $119.11 per 1,000 cans, according to an updated pricing sheet obtained by Brewbound.