Eric McKay and Patrick Murtaugh, founders of Virginia’s Hardywood Park Craft Brewery, talk about their motivation for offering low calorie, low alcohol beers under a new brand.
According to the Brewers Association, self-distribution in some shape or form is allowed in 37 states and the District of Columbia. This is how growth begins for many craft brewers.
Whether reporting on international beer mergers or just gently poking fun at American-style light lagers, it’s clear that Kai Ryssdal, host of public radio program Marketplace, possesses a passion for beer.
For 20 years, Sam Calagione steered Dogfish Head according to his gut, addicted to the buzz that comes with risk and uncertainty. In this book, he explains why he’s changing his ways.
A look at the beer industry post-2015, the year that Big Beer acquired successful craft breweries left and right and infused mind-boggling amounts of money into the business. Their plan? Buy more shelf space.
Tim Annis is an MBS student and a beer geek who couldn’t believe his luck when his professor at the Wisconsin School of Business announced their assignment: develop a branding strategy to revive Capital Brewery in Madison.
Buyouts and ownership restructurings in 2014 and 2015 have removed some of the bigger players—and their bigger production numbers—from the “craft market share” calculation publicized by the Brewers Association.
Beginning with the Boston launch of Drizly in late 2012, more than a dozen beer delivery services have popped up, from hyper-local Brewber, serving just one neighborhood in Baltimore, to those serving a region or cities across the US.
In 2007, when BeerAdvocate became the country’s first monthly beer magazine, the combined output of 1,406 craft breweries represented less than four percent of the total market in the US.
Amid the introduction of hundreds and thousands of new brewers—some small, some unbelievably large—we are witnessing a massive changing of the guard. America’s oldest breweries face a host of challenges ranging from demographics to succession.
Brewery owners sell for different reasons. They want to retire or need cash from their brand equity. More and more, the ESOP is emerging as both a viable alternative to a corporate or equity buy-out and a way to reward a loyal workforce if a sale is made.
Longmont, Colo., canned-beer pioneer Oskar Blues Brewery has acquired Perrin Brewing Company in Comstock Park, Mich. While the exact terms of the deal were not specified, Perrin will remain locally owned and operated.
Of the 836 new breweries that opened between 2010 and 2013, approximately 350 will close by 2016. It’s a shocking number that makes sense after asking the people behind recently shuttered breweries about the challenges they faced.
On July 9, Harpoon Brewery introduced its employees to the new owners of the company: themselves. Harpoon’s shareholder group transferred 48 percent of its stock to an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, effective August 1.
Founded by several former Anheuser-Busch InBev executives, Brew Hub’s plans include opening five facilities throughout the United States, and with more than $100 million of venture capital being poured into the company, many beer advocates are questioning just how craft-oriented Brew Hub will be.
Breweries are starting to realize that it’s time to rethink the standard tour they’ve been offering unchanged for years. As breweries remain in a near constant state of expansion, designers are starting to integrate expanded taprooms, beer gardens and community meeting spaces.
Lucrece Borrego started The Kitchen Incubator intending to help aspiring foodmakers find the missing pieces required to start businesses. Then she and her boyfriend/business partner, Jesus Acosta, got into homebrewing, and the Brewery Incubator seemed like a natural next step.
Take a good, long last look at the world of craft beer. In five years, 10 years, the craft beer industry won’t look anything like it does now. With the close of the “Extreme Beer Era,” we’re now entering craft beer’s fourth age, one that will be defined by striking sobriety and grownup decision-making.
If the last 10 years have been marked by limit-pushing and attention-seeking behavior, craft brewers have overachieved. The next five years will be defined by simply trying to make enough beer to satisfy the pent-up demand.
We do not hear much about a middle class, those mainly regional brewers slogging it out in the trenches day after day. These mid-sized breweries, which make 15 to 20,000 barrels or more and distribute in only a small number of states, are the bishops and knights of the craft beer chess game, crucial to the industry’s performance.
Increasing sales don’t necessarily translate into easy times for brewery owners. As the craft beer segment grows, many brewers are finding it just as hard to expand, as it was to initially get the doors open.
Chicago’s Baderbräu Pilsner resurrected after 10 years; Wyoming breweries collaborate on official state beer; Molson Coors purchase of StarBev approved by EEC; and new legislation in Alabama, New York and Virginia.
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