What the hell happened to Stone?

Still see Arrogant Bastard in gas stations, Safeway and mom and pop convenience stores. But not much else

 

Ah ya, the little grocery had arrogant bastard stovepipes too.

But ya, they're a serious non presence these days otherwise

 

Isn't it weird that a brewery like Sierra Nevada can adapt to new customers , yet still keep us old ass holes happy? But Stone, and to be honest most other old craft beer companies, have not? Deschutes does a good job too.

 

Ya Sierra Nevada and Deschutes have done a great job. Lagunitas seems to still hold a decent presence, even though they're a very rare presence in my fridge. Northcoast is also chugging along, amazingly with hardly any perceptible changes, and at least in norcal Anderson Valley seems to have adapted well enough.

North of Sonoma County in California is a weird beer scene though, I'd wager that circa 1999 it was among the very best beer scenes in the country. And its hardly changed since then. Sacramento area is finally seeing a boom in modern craft breweries in the last few years, but once you get north of there or north of Santa Rosa on the 101 there's not a lot of new blood and a lot of the old dogs are still getting by with their 90s brewpub vibes

 

I love Nor Cal, but you are mostly correct, its still 1999..which is OK with me. But maybe needs a bit of a shake up.
Anderson Valley seem to be trying. I had their new Crisp IPA the other night up here on tap, and it was a very good Cold IPA.
EDIT..in Nor Cal i also put most of South West Oregon in there to. Some lovely breweries,..Chetco, Misty Mountain, Arch Rock and Wild River ( in Cave Junction only, the Brookings location is a mess). Good 90s beers but never gonna set the heather on fire.

 

Missed Sea Quake and Port O Pints. Like both but do nothing to dispel the 1999 thing.
Shit they are Nor Cal..when i am in Crescent City ..it just feels like Oregon!

 

Oh I'll keep an eye out for that. I enjoy their beers generally but their IPA is a bit maltier than I prefer. I'd be interested in their take on a cold ipa

Well, they've got traffic moving well enough along the 101 cliffs south of town currently but it might as well be southern oregon up there.

I always consider us the southern frontier of cascadia, the redwood curtain is the proper border for that mythical state. Once you pass through Richardson Grove near the humboldt/mendocino county lines you might as well be in southern oregon at that point

 

This struck me funny but...

Well, I'd imagine that they were "kicked out" rather than "pulled out" - stuff stopped selling so retailers stopped ordering it. There's always something new to take the shelf space and likely the same distributor will gladly supply that something.

Kinda late on this one, but since the incident itself was half a century ago...... the Burgemeister brand (not the SF brewery itself) ownership chronology in the late 1960-1980s was Schlitz > Meister Brau > Hamm > Pabst > Heileman.

When Meister Brau closed the old Burgermeister SF brewery in '71 they sold the brand to Hamm, which closed their SF a few years later (1975) after Olympia purchased the company, selling the Burgermeister brand to Pabst, which brewed it at their soon-to-close L.A. brewery. It moved to Pabst's Blitz-Weinhard brewery and then wound up as Heileman product (after the infamous 3-way deal in '84), brewed in AZ at their Carling-National plant.

In a separate deal a few months later Falstaff bought the then-empty old Burgermeister brewery and soon closed their smaller San Jose facility, by which time Hamm's was already brewing the old flagship Burgie! brand a few blocks away. Falstaff said they needed the extra capacity because they anticipated increased west coast sales after buying the Ballantine ales and beer labels... That didn't quite work out that way for them, of course.

I once stopped into a tiny bar in central PA (where you'd hope to find some local beer on tap at least, since at the time PA had more local breweries than any other state) and the only draught beer was Old Milwaukee, which the bartender referred to multiple times as "Old Mildew".

 

Thanks for the thorough description of the west coast beer market. We frequented El Sombrero in San Diego (La Jolla) in the early 70s, generally to watch the weekend bluegrass outfit "Avery Pitts", with fiddler Ray Beirl (https://raybierl.com/bio/). The new owner/bartender would complain to us about the lousy performance of his Falstaff stock as he poured pitchers of Coors. The band always signed off at 1:30 with an a cappella Amazing Grace.

 

Can we talk about how Stone owes their investor $464M? That seems like a number that can never be paid back unless they sell the business.

 

It looks like they have a combination of investments and loans: https://thefullpint.com/dans-blog/stone-brewing-wishes-for-act-iii/. The lenders will want their loans repaid and the investors will want a return on investment. It's a challenging situation, but I'm pretty sure they don't owe $464M.

 

Where are you getting that info from?

 

Found this from a Google search but it's behind a paywall: https://www.brewbound.com/news/last...boston-beer-seeks-investor-lawsuit-dismissal/

Scratch that, here's their source: https://www.courthousenews.com/stone-brewing-ceo-testifies-on-craft-beer-slowdown-in-2010s/

 

Damn, that's rough. Seems more apparent than ever that the ceo was put there to prepare a brand sale.

I loved this little tidbit

This drunk ass judge is just like, "well wouldn't some dumb hipster brand like yours appreciate being tied to a fine American beverage like keystone lite?"

I got real big Bret Kavanaugh vibes
"I like beer"

 

The investor is VMG/Hillhouse, a private equity firm. https://thefullpint.com/dans-blog/stone-brewing-wishes-for-act-iii/. We still don't know the terms of the investment.

 

We used to call it “Old Mud”.

 

I think the issue is Deschutes and Sierra kept a lot their flagship and beloved beers and Stone didn't. I saw Pale Ale on tap recently and it was fantastic. SSR and the Green Tea collabs being redone was also great. Not really sure why their goal is to be all IPA all the time, but it must be the $$$. Which is funny given the whole "mythos" of Stone.

 

I'm still upset I can't get SN Kellerweis regularly

 

While I hear you and understand, unless you live in SoCal, this is not an option. I used to like Stone's offerings, but I can't go from Eugene, Oregon to SD Cali on a whim for stuff they make that I might actually like. I get that they won't send out these great offerings to my local Safeway, but there is no reason I go to one of the high rated bottleshops in my area and still can't find anything decent from them.

 

Exactly! I had to stop in some random gas station off the road in NorCal to get some on the way back from moving my sister up here with us. I steal the yeast from a 6 pack of Keller to brew my Hefe.