Tag: sale

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Ducks and Bears

Beer business news broke earlier this month that I thought I should make at least a brief comment on….

A little twist on the acquisition front as Drakes Beer is the new owner of the brands only of Bear Republic Brewing famous for their Racer 5 IPA.  (which I now need to find to compare one version to the upcoming new one)

Rich Norgrove the leader of Bear Republic will join the Drake’s organization which bodes well for continuity. How many recipes will make the trip is a question.

I guess that means that Drakes must be doing OK or have brewing capacity and secondly, that there is now a brewing space open for a new brewery. Which is why I am usually only momentarily sad when a brewery shuts down, because I feel it is an opportunity for a new owner to make new beers.

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The Logsdon Shuffle

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Looks like another sale is rockin’ the beer world.  Logsdon and their crazy good farmhouse ales like Peche N Brett has agreed to sell a significant stake in his brewery to three new partners.

I first saw this over at the New School Beer Blog which has all the details and spoke with the players in the drama which will include the departure of brewer Charles Porter who was a founding partner and brewmaster of the company.

My usual response holds true here.  It is time to re-judge the beer now, in a few months and in a year to chart the progress.  That is where the proof of whether a sale has done good or harm can be found.  Not in petty quick judgements.

If it comes as consolation, the namesake Logsdon will be doing quality control and there is no lack of brewing candidates out there who can take over the kettles and maybe push the beer into new and unforeseen directions.

Plus, as I read on The Full Pint, they were approached by ABInBev and found it to be non-workable.  So the hysteria could have been worse.

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FW + DM = New & Improved Paso

After I put this week’s L.A. Beer Blast to bed, I started rifling through my e-mail and came upon one from Firestone Walker.

I reflexively smiled thinking about some barrel-aged beer or new sour surprise from Barrelworks. But when I clicked the link, this is what I saw:
Announcement_Letter
My first thought was “Oh no, I now have to see a bunch of ill-informed beer snobs posting about how they won’t drink FW beer because they aren’t independent anymore.”

Then I calmed down and realized that this might just be the straw that breaks the beer snobs anti-consolidation back. How can they use their copy/paste rant here? The near universal love of Firestone and the stewardship of Duvel with Boulevard and Ommegang will pretty much lay to rest any qualms that the auto-haters have.

I will post more about this next week over on Food GPS as I process the news with some pithy answers from the David Walker himself to my hasty questions that I e-mailed last night.