Welcome to Ballard, Lagunitas...

that was my thought, as well. make born yesterday, but better.

 

A known weakness, or, if I'm being kind, idiosyncrasy. It's just that I cannot help but love a certain antiquated literary style (eg., Hume, David), which tends to creep into my own writing, and which I see no reason not to embrace--the exasperation of some on this forum (and a few old college professors) notwithstanding.

If the beer and medicine were more equivalent, I honestly think I'd have been better off having lived in the 18th Century than the 21st. This world of ours does not entirely suit me.

 

I like where your head's at.

 

I just like to throw in a fair amount of em dashes as well. Throws people off the scent.

 

And don't forget the granddaddy of all punctuation: the ellipsis. One never sounds more profound than when one strongly implies all that one is leaving unsaid...

 

Hey, welcome to Seattle, Heinekin. Good beer is always welcome and the Lagunitas brand has made some great beer. However, Seattle has amazing Independent breweries doing stuff already. Now, we have INBEV, Heinekin and some equity group running Redhook. It is what it is, but it still is.

Craft beer is going mainstream and Seattle is a forward unit in this battle for market share...for some, Independent breweries will be important, for others, maybe not.

Either way, the beer will be the judge and the rest of us will just have to keep up with the deep pockets. Craft beer is not immune from the realities of hard business.

I look forward to meeting our new friends, and welcome them to our small town, but I can't look away from the reality of what this move means. I'm sure Tony would agree.

 

Nor is it exempt from the undying love and support of the local communities which nurtured it in the first place. We've got your back, and that of all your brethren in the 'neighborhood'.

 

I'm ambivalent. On one hand, I don't drink much Lagunitas stuff these days, there's a weird flavor in all their beers that developed maybe 6-8 years ago. I used to drink a lot of things like Brown Shugga and Hairy Eyeball. So them moving into the area doesn't really have a direct effect on me. On the other hand, perhaps a place like this will draw in some of the visitors and more "casual" beer folks, taking pressure off places I do want hit when I go down.

 

Me either. Except Sucks. When I find it in six-packs hard to pass up. Wet hop Sucks? I like that idea.

 

Drink and support local, everyone.

 

Paraphrasing Tony's quote: "we're not selling out, we're buying in".

 

Speaking about AB InBev in 2015, Tony said, "What they really want to do is disrupt this whole craft thing so they can go back to the business that they’d like to be in, which is making lighter beer with inexpensive ingredients."

 

I'm happy for Tony and hope his team is being rewarded. They deserve it.

My only sore point is that Tony was such a dick to so many other breweries that it is hard to swallow his "opportunity" attitude. Hypocrisy is a thing.

I don't mind him selling to Heinekin at all and welcome them to our small world, I just wish he and his management team didn't have such sharp elbows and helped more of the smaller guys that he trashed along the way...craft beer is a community of fans AND Brewer's that deserve respect and help along the path to their dreams, at least to me.

I love helping good people start breweries and have done so since day one of Fremont. The Lagunitas deal will be judged by their beer and how they help others realize their dreams...by me at least

 

... And here I thought Lagunitas was tough to justify buying at 50% Heineken ownership ...

 

When I finish my last 2 bottles of High West-ified, I will be finishing my last Lagunitas beers.

"we're not selling out, we're buying in" -Sure you are. Not even I am optimistic enough to think that he's going to start changing anything about the way Heineken brews or conducts business once he's "inside." Hell, I don't think even @EdwardAbbey is that optimistic.

 

i'm curious about how he plans to tackle the obvious hurdle of distributing IPA globally and having it taste good. i just don't see lagunitas showing up on shelves across the globe and being a product worth buying.

how is heineken's distribution? if it's anything like ABI, it'll be months before IPAs are put on the shelves.

 

Well, Heineken has plants all over the world, so they would probably just brew in those existing facilities, instead of trying to ship from Petaluma to Johannesburg.

 

Just spoke with him, and you’re on the money......There was a lot of turd polishing going on in Msgr. Magee’s post, and even I couldn’t bring myself to like the look or smell of it.

It’s not that I think their beer is likely to suffer, and perhaps not even their employees. I sincerely hope not, anyway. Nor do I deny anyone their right to sell their company after decades of toil and with the purpose, as they have worked it out, of making it bigger and better. That may be dubious, but these are complicated questions, and I haven’t walked in those shoes.

For me, it’s all the other stuff. Like Tex, I’m not too keen on hypocrisy, or sharp elbows. I’ve also got a healthy distrust of Capitalism, which, unlike the world of craft beer, is not exactly known for its beneficience. The trend of Big Beer acquiring Big Craft strikes me as a worrisome development. When you keep increasing the size of the largest boats, at some point their intent and their nature ceases to matter: you can clog a shipping lane and swamp a smaller vessel just by your existence. But when you throw in the character and methods of these behemoths—which did not grow to their stature by a record of kindness and giving and always doing what is in the best interest of the consumer or their industry—the amount of havoc they can wreak is cause for genuine alarm. Too often, and by design, this is a zero-sum game, and people we should and do care for end up getting hurt. We do, too.

I’ve got a few Waldos’ left in the fridge, and when I’m done with them, it’s going to be some time, and a fair bit of soul-searching, before I pick up another Lagunitas 6-er. If I pick up another. Would that it were otherwise...