A subsidiary of Boston Beer Co. has acquired Los Angeles-based Angel City Brewing, making Angel City the first brewery for the portfolio of Alchemy & Science, a “craft beer collaboration” funded by Jim Koch’s Boston Beer Co.
Alchemy & Science was launched in October by Alan Newman, founder of Vermont’s Magic Hat Brewing Co.
Michael Bowe founded Angel City Brewing in 1997, then in 2010 relocated the brewery in the historic John A. Roebling Building in LA’s Downtown Arts District. At the time he said, “My vision for Angel City Brewing is about being located in Downtown Los Angeles. I think this great city deserves a great brewery and we hope to become that.â€
For a press release about the deal, Newman said, “I’ve known Michael Bowe for many years, and I’ve followed his career as a brewer with great admiration — though it never occurred to me that I would become involved with Angel City. Michael’s vision for a thriving and robust brewery for the City of Los Angeles resonated with me from our initial conversations. We are very excited to have this opportunity to become part of the renaissance of the LA downtown area.”
According to a Boston Beer Co. regulatory filing, Bowe will remain with Angel City for two years as an adviser.
Alchemy & Science is a craft beer collaboration, led by Newman and Stacey Steinmetz and funded by Boston Beer, brewer of Samuel Adams beers. Its mission is “to increase awareness of craft brewed beers by exploring and managing a broad range of opportunities, from creating and/or incubating new breweries to providing legacy solutions to craft beer/brewery founders.”
Interesting. I haven’t really seen this reported elsewhere. Should be interesting to see what the craft beer supporters that believe that Sam Adams are the nice guy craft brewers but believe any brewery acquisition is evil. Some don’t understand that business is business no matter what industry you’re in. Sam Adams as a publicly traded company has to do what needs to be done to produce a return on shareholder value and buying up competition and expanding the company and it’s value is one of those things. It will be interesting to see as time goes on if they continue to snatch up smaller brewers much the way InBev and MillerCoors have been in the craft market too.