SingleCut Buys Shmaltz's Brewing Facility

Lots of overlap and transition and time stamp talk. It didnt seem too clear. What does this really mean?

Shmaltz will eventually be only contract brewed at various facilities, while Singlecut breaks into their own at the former Shmaltz facility?

Feels like Shmaltz feels like they can succeed without a true brewhouse, and just a Troy tasting room and bottle shop, while having their beers brewed everywhere but their home base following the 2018 transition. Sounds like an easy way to say they sold out. Its also an easy way to say that Singlecut will help transition this brewery for a couple months then completely cut them off.

Sounds like consolidation with contract brewing in mind for one of the two

 

The brewbound article is much clearer
After selling their Coney island brand to SA for a cool $3 mil, which helped fund the Clifton park facility, sales at Shmaltz are down. Why not sell to a local brewery on the up and up. The Shmaltz owner seems perfectly okay with being 100% contract brewed from here on out. Its all about branding, right?
As far as I can see, Shmaltz may want to to continue but they very well may be done in a year or two. Unless contract brew is truly profitaible, we can call the $3.25 million dollar expansion of Shmaltz a disaster (unless they got most of that back in the sale to SingleCut).

That's the scoop of the story that I saw from my perspective. Let that be a lesson learned. The strong are scooping up the weak for mere pennies from my view

 

Schmaltz = super gimmicky
SingleCut = good, but WAY too expensive, and always hearing about infection issues


maybe this will help them both step (back?) into relevancy!

 

Singlecut is a brewery I would try, but currently they are just one of the breweries that I skip due to their bottle pricing
If that changes because they move upstate then I'll give them a shot

 

Agreed. Although they seem to be backing off the 'He-Brew' routine a bit, maybe running out of Judaic puns. But still always a gimmick... radio station beer, local area code beer. etc. Their labels tend to be cluttered, and I don't always have the patience to read them in the store, to figure out what's in the bottle. I do really enjoy their Hop Manna IPA, but the proposition of a buying a 4-pack for the price of a 6-pack is not a big grabber for me.

On the other hand, they also brew High Cliff IPA which is the propriety store brand for Stewart's Shops convenience stores ($8.99 a sixer), a good deal and I generally grab one whenever I am at a Stewart's store (which are located pretty much everywhere around here).

 

Does Foreign Objects still brew at Shmaltzs facility? Wonder if/how this impacts their brewing operation.

 

Wonder if this will bring 4pack pricing for Singlecut to less than $25 in VT.

 

The Brewbound article states that Shmaltz will continue to operate its new tasting room in Troy under a farm brewers license. I haven't been to the space in Troy, but do they have a brewhouse there? How can you be a farm brewer, and get tax breaks, without a brewery?

 

Though I like Singlecut's IPA's and drink them on draft around town when I see them, I won't pay their ridiculous high prices for bombers and 4-packs. I'm with you, hopefully this can make their packaged beer more affordable.

 

Are people buying those beers or are they just sitting on the shelves collecting dust?

Cheers!

 

Twice I've purchased a single can at $6 or $7 rationalizing that's what I'd pay for a pint at a bar. I believe they were 'Softly Spoken Magic Spells' and 'The Workers are Going Home'. While both were good I do not see myself making future purchases at that price.

 

In addition to the pricing (agreed) and infection (both of the BA Heavy Boots bottles I've bought) issues you noted, they also have enormous consistency problems, both between and within batches. I gave them several tries to win me over, largely because of their responsive customer service, but I've given up on them and stopped buying their product.

 

Can't keep their stuff on the shelves at the shop I work at in western MA. Usually sells out the same day we receive it.

 

Especially since walking into a VT bottle shop there's tons of great local options that are much cheaper and probably more consistent. I've been to a couple of those VT bottle shops and said who here would actually purchase singlecut? Maybe just to try it once. For the record, I do enjoy most of singlecut's offerings, but the consistency issues and price tag make it a hard sell.

 

Wow, that's honestly surprising.

 

Surprised as well. If you don't mind sharing, what other beers move that quickly in your store?

In any event, I hope this expansion helps them lower prices, improve consistency, and produce more lagers. I used to go to Singlecut on the regular, but these three issues have turned me away.

 

Beers from the same distributor (Craft Collective) have the same sell-out rate, for the most part. Finback, Common Roots, Fiddlehead, Aeronaut, and Four Quarters to name a few from that distributor. For the record, we (and other stores near us) do not receive much more than a few cases of these beers a week.