Category: Beer Industry

my occasional rants and raves about what is going on in the industry.

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Want this? Stop That.

For the mega-brew merger to go forward, along with divesting certain properties, it looks like the Federal Government also added some much needed assistance for smaller brewers. Whether it will be enough is another question.

1. The “Voluntary” AB Incentive for Performance plan is now shelved. This plan incentivized distributors who shut out brands that ABInBev did not want competing. The Department of Justice, in the settlement, wrote that it “prohibits ABI from instituting or continuing practices and programs that disincentivize distributors from selling and promoting the beers of ABI’s high-end and other rivals.”

2. Buying distributors is now capped as well. With ABInBev owning somewhere in the neighborhood of 7%, they will be barred from going over 10%. Which they more than likely will do.
Rest assured that the Brewers Association will be closely monitoring the situation. The group has been opposed to the merger of ABInBev with SABMiller from the get-go but, at least, there was some help given by the DOJ.

I have been of the opinion that if any of the industrial foreign owned breweries wanted to buy up little craft ones that it was sad to me personally but also part of the evolution into a new world of craft beer business. They could buy a brewery a month for years and not dent the overall numbers.

What I was worried about was that the beer that I wanted could be blocked from shelves or poorly handled by a distributor who was beholden to ABInBev or SABMiller. That blockage could seriously hamper the growth of a brewery.

Now we will see how well the rules are followed.

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4,656


Here are the latest stats from the Brewer’s Association : “As of June 30, a record high of 4,656 breweries were operating in the U.S, an increase of 917 breweries over the same time period of the previous year. Additionally, there were approximately 2,200 breweries in planning.”

917 breweries in a year! That is a big number for a maturing marketplace. If my scratchpad math is right, that is right around 20% more.

The other positive number is that there are still way more openings than closings. Even with a decrease in growth to 8%, there hasn’t been any major bloodletting.

Next, onto the “in planning” number. I would like to know specifically the criteria for this one. Are there tiers to it? Long-term in planners who have been on the list for years or are these all new since the last number? I would like to see a breakout of this category because closing numbers are one negative indicator but the first one will be the drying up of the pipeline. But if the pipeline numbers are wonky, well then we may not know till later that the tide has turned.

Anyhoo, check out the video. If nothing else, with Bart Watson on board, we are getting a steady stream of data to parse.

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Resignation

When breweries get sold, it raises red flags. But in the short term, those changes (though galvanic) don’t really affect day-to-day operations. You will still be getting Sculpin and it’s various variants even though Constellation bought them.

What does impact craft beer levels is on a more micro-level. Much like the Mayor of your city being more impactful than the President on your daily life.

In Los Angeles there have been a pair of resignations/moves that are important to understand. Brewer/Cellarman Tim McDonnel from Highland Park will be departing as will Noble Ale Works CEO Brian Rauso. Two totally different positions that are sometimes lost in the adoration (well-deserved) of brewmasters Bob Kunz and Evan Price.

Beer, unless it is some garage project of limited resources and supply, is a group project. That’s why brewers seem to move in entourages. Those are the people cleaning the kettles and slapping labels on cans and manning(wo-manning) the bar.

This post is partially to say thanks to those like Brian and Time but also to let you fans know that it takes a village to brew a beer. Thank all the villagers.

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Advance Warning – GABF16

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Set your alarms for 10am on August 3rd, that is when tickets for the 35th Great American Beer Festival become available for purchase.

Just a little gathering in Denver and their Convention Center for more than 800 breweries and somewhere close to 3,800 beers. This year the fest runs from Thursday, October 6th to Saturday, October 8th.

This year the general session tickets are $80. They will go quickly.

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Pour PDX

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How many times have you been at a wedding and needed a good beer to drink while the weird DJ spins Brickhouse so that Grandma can dance. Usually the choices are slim. Same for backyard BBQ’s, you just have to accept mediocre beer or look like that beer snob of the party.

What if you could get beer, cider and wine on tap though. Options that fits budgets while also being, well, good.

When you hire the newly formed, Pour PDX they will roll in self-contained with (5) craft (or domestic) beer options, plus either one wine or one cider draft option and non-alcoholic selections too.

I don’t know which Portland breweries they pull from but having that taken care of and not having to hump a keg from the brewery to car to party and back again might mitigate a smaller portfolio of beers.

Let’s end with my usual plea for someone in LA with the money, bartending skills and tap knowledge to bring this concept to Los Angeles.

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A Central Addition to LA

The name and logo seem just like any other….
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…but underneath the hood, it is not one brewery but a contract brewery for start-ups. Instead of sneaking in a batch inbetween others. This Chicago facility brews exclusively for others. And the key component is that it will also feature a tap room for those beers to be sold at.

It would be great if each major beer city had an establishment like this. Not only would it prospectively weed out the brewers who are not up to snuff but it would also alleviate the out-of-town drive to the Bay Area or parts way east of the city for LA brewers who want to brew beer before they have a facility.

Just re-name it Grand Central.

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BrewDad’s got a Beer Store!

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I met the illustrious and boisterous BrewDad at the first Beer Bloggers Conference and I have met up with him every twice in a while through the years since and now he has parlayed a job at Top Rung Brewing into owning his own beer bar & bottle shop.

In early July, he will take over NW Caps & Taps of Bonney Lake and it will become the shorter and sweeter named, BrewDad’s of Bonney Lake.

Next time you are in the upper part of Washington set Siri, Waze, Google Maps to Bonney Lake and WA-410 to get some BrewDad hospitality and a beer of course.

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Clean Beer Project

As part of my continuing (and probably annoying) series, Why is This NOT a Thing in L.A., we head to New York City to highlight the Clean Beer Project.
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The mission statement: “Your Beer Deserves Better. We’re here to let consumers know what they’re consuming. Let’s make sure that the beer you’re drinking is just as the brewer intended and praise the NYC bars that serve through clean lines into clean glassware.”

And Sean Lynch is not just proselytizing, he is actually doing it. He comes to bars and cleans out the gunk and residue from not only the lines but the faucets as well. He breaks it all down and gives it a deep clean and then in a really savvy move, tweets about the bar when he is done. That way you can head to the bars that care knowing that your Saison won’t taste of schwarzbier. Unless that was the goal of the brewer.

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The Ag Desk

From the Agriculture Desk comes a couple pieces of news. We start in the Hill Country of Texas where Jester King has bought up land around their brewery (58 acres to be exact) to supply them with fruits, grains and generally make their farmhouse beers even more authentic by adding a farm.

Peaches, blackberries and melons along with a test plot of wheat have been started and will eventuallygrow to be larger parts of the beers they make. It also fits with their eco-ethos tha values the terroir over uniformity and very local over long distance shipping. What caught my eye more is that it puts the control of a percentage of their ingredients in their hands. They won’t have to vet each piece of fruit. They know the chain of travel that it took.

Stone tried and stepped away from farming but I hope this works and I hope more take it up or at least create brewery co-ops as it were to supply a portion of the ingredient list.

The 2nd news brief comes from the fine folks at the National Agricultural Statistics Service. Their hop report for Washington, Oregon and Idaho shows acres harvested in 2015 and acres strung for harvest in 2016 and it is a good barometer for what hops are being used and what is coming.

Starting negative, it Columbus/Tomahawk took the biggest dive in acres more than doubling the decreases for Nugget and Super Galena. Predictably Citra surged again, adding over 1,400 acres. Other non-surprises include large growth for Equinox and Simcoe as well as Mosaic. All adding over 900 additional acres.

Overall acreage crowns go to Cascade which is up to 7,371 approximately with Centennial in 2nd place with just over 5K. The numbers that jumped out for me was that Experimental hops had a healthy leap upwards as did Azacca. Plus Cashmere hop is now out of the other/experimental category and on it’s own along with Tahoma and Pekko.

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Hawaiian Re-Brand

Looks like the re-brand bug is more infectious than Zika. Maui Brewing is now unveiling a new look to their cans and while they are cleaner and easier to read, they seem much more generic now. Less Island and more about color coordination.
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I like the band across the neck of the can and the easy to find ounces and ABV area near the bottom but instead of a generic whirly pattern, I would have kept the logos and designs of the beers already there so that people could see what they have bought before and not have to stop and think about it.

Thumbs down from this blogger.