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Shiner headed to Chicago

Posted in Beers, Breweries on   

What’s to happen to The Gambrinus Co. now that is is no longer importing Corona or Moosehead beers?

Well, for one thing, expect to see the Texas-based company put more resources behind the Shiner brand. Shiner beers will roll out in Chicago in April,director of marketing Charlie Paulette told the San Antonio Express-News.

“This is huge. We’ve had people asking for it there for years,” Paulette said.

Paulette also reported that BridgePort Brewing sales climbed 10% in 2006 and Trumer Pils skyrocketed 60%.

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Strong Beer Month in San Francisco

Posted in Beers, Breweries on   

Strong Beer Month is underway at Magnolia Pub and Brewery and 21st Amendment in San Francisco, blending nicely with Toronado’s Barleywine Festival and Celebrator’s Beerapalooza.

For Strong Beer Month, beer are served in a commemorative 13.5 ounce glasses. Drink all twelve strong ales (six at each brewery) and the glass is yours. Commemorative 2007 Strong Beer Month T-shirts are also available. The brewpubs will also have special library strong beers from years past presented throughout the month and special food dishes paired with the strong beers.

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Mad River learns to pay the toll

Posted in Breweries on   

Mad River Brewing founder Bob Smith loves living in Humboldt County, but it does pose unique challenges for his brewery.

With restrictions on the length of trucks that can travel in and out of the county, Mad River is forced to ship its products out on 48-foot trucks, only to have the loads re-packed onto the 54- or 56-footers that serve the rest of the country. These changeovers add dramatically to shipping costs, limiting the microbrewery’s ability to reach other markets.

”It’s like being the shortest guy in a basketball game,” Smith said.

The Times-Standard in Eureka profiles Smith and the brewery. He started homebrewing in high school and was inspired to open Mad River after buying homebrew supplies from Ken Grossman when Grossman was still operating Chico Home Brew Shop and working on the business plan for Sierra Nevada Brewing.

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Has Sam Calagione heard about this?

Posted in Breweries, Just for fun on   

A Japanese brewery makes a beer using milk and calls it Bilk.

Does this qualify as an extreme beer? Dogfish Head Brewery founder Sam Calagione provides this definition in Extreme Brewing: “Extreme beers are brewed with more amounts of the traditional ingredients or non-traditional ingredients.”

Although several American microbreweries have brought back the almost extinct British-style milk stout we’re pretty sure most would consider milk a non-traditional ingredient.

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German beer sales up – for how long?

Posted in Breweries, Trends on   

German beer consumption rose 1.4% in 2006, the largest gain – and, in fact, only the second – in 12 years.

Increases sales are credited to the month-long World Cup football tournament and don’t necessarily indicate the slide of the last decade is over. Sales have declined 15% in the last dozen years. Only in 2004, when weather was unusually warm most of the summer, were brewers able to increase in production.

[Via Reuters.]

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Herz new craft beer marketing director

Posted in Breweries, Trends on   

The Brewers Association has hired Julia Herz as director of craft beer marketing. Herz replaces Ray Daniels, who remains with the Brewers Association as the director of Brewers Publications.

“Julia has a passion and a vision for craft beer,” Bob Pease, Brewers Association vice president, said in a press release. “We are excited to utilize Herz’s knowledge of the beer and wine industry coupled with her sales and PR experience to further the ever growing craft beer market.”

Most recently Herz was the vice president of Redstone Meadery in Boulder, Colo. She is also one of the founding members of the International Mead Association, organizer of the International Mead Festival.

Prior to working at Redstone Meadery, Herz served as the sales manager for the Brewers Association (known then as Association of Brewers) for three years.

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Bud may ‘lighten up’ for Super Bowl

Posted in Breweries, Trends on   

Just so you know what the biggest brewing companies are thinking.

– Earlier this week we had Miller shelving its Man Laws commercials in favor of emphasizing the taste and heritage of Miller Lite. So you can expect to see more of the spots with Miller workers hanging banners show off Lite’s awards.

– Today the Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required) previews what to expect from Budweiser during the Super Bowl. “In the past couple of years, Bud has largely focused on ads promoting the quality of its brew, leaving the funny spots to its sibling brand, Bud Light, which is targeted at a younger audience,” the Journal reports, explainingg there will likely be a change, with lighter, funnier Bud spots as well.

Bob Lachky, executive vice president, global industry development, said “the humor of the two brands is different, reflecting their different target audiences. Budweiser, which targets a 28-plus, predominantly male and blue-collar crowd, uses humorous ads that aim to put a ‘smile’ on people’s faces, he adds. Bud Light, which targets the 21-to-27-year-old age group, uses a more slapstick or sophomoric approach.”

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Jim Koch Q & A

Posted in Beer culture, Breweries on   

Wine & Spirits Jobs has an interview with Boston Beer founder Jim Koch. Among the questions: “Is it true that every employee in the company knows how to brew beer?”

Koch’s answer:

“Every year we have a company-wide homebrew contest, and yes, finance, mailroom, sales – everybody has a fair shot at winning. This year, one of our top sales trainers, Ken Smith, won the contest, and we’re going to distribute his beer nationally along with the winners of the American Homebrew Contest under the brand name Longshot. We can provide our people with a great education about beer, but when you have a big pot of boiling, frothing malt overflowing on your stove, you really understand brewing.”

Read the entire interview

.

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America beers head for Australia

Posted in Beers, Breweries on   

How do American beers stack up against others in the world?

Sure they do well in the World Beer Cup, but that’s on American soil. What if you put them on a boat first? We’ll find out in April, because the Brewers Association Export Development Program (EDP) announced today that 19 BA members and EDP subscribers will particpate in the Australian International Beer Awards.

Several American breweries have entered the AIBA in the past, and won awards, but not a group like this. In 2006, the Australian International Beer Awards attracted 974 entries from 31 countries. AIBA uses the Brewers Association’s Beer Style Guidelines.

The Brewers Association’s Export Development Program, in an effort to help promote the image of American craft beer as a world class beverage, pays for entry fees and transportation into select international beer shows for its program subscribers, such as the AIBA.

The breweries entered:
21st Amendament Brewery Cafe, San Francisco
Blue Point Brewing, Patchogue, New York
Deschutes Brewery, Bend, Oregon
Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Milton, Delaware
Eugene City Brewer, Eugene, Oregon
Flying Dog Brewery, Denver
Full Sail Brewing, Hood River, Oregon
Great Divide Brewing, Denver
Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, Dexter, Michigan
Kona Brewery, Kailua-Kona, Hawaii
Rogue Ales Issaquah Brewhouse, Issaquah, Washington
Left Hand Brewing, Longmont, Colorado
Matt Brewing, Utica, N.Y.
Odell Brewing, Fort Collins, Colorado
Rogue Ales, Newport, Oregon
Shipyard Brewing, Portland, Maine
Sprecher Brewing, Glendale, Wisconsin
Stone Brewing, Escondido, California
Widmer Brothers, Portland, Oregon

Judging takes place in March in Melbourne with winners announced April 19.

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Monday morning beer news

Posted in Beers, Breweries on   

Stuff to talk about around the water cooler today:

– Deschutes Brewery is about to announce it will operate a pub in Portland.

– Miller is shelving its broadcast Man Law commercials.

Faced with an increasingly competitive light beer market, Miller Brewing Company is introducing new television ads that focus on the taste and heritage of its flagship brand. The spots will replace the popular Man Law campaign, which Miller said will continue on-line and may return to the airwaves opportunistically in the future.

The first wave of the new episodic advertising approach broke over the weekend. The “GHT” ads featured a guy preventing people from drinking light beers with “GHT” and instead giving them Miller Lite. The ads position Miller Lite as ‘the light beer that invented light beer’, the original light beer that’s always been brewed to be great.

Nothing like leaning on tradition.

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Higher taxes for Michigan beer?

Posted in Breweries, Trends on   

John Bebow, executive director of the Center for Michigan, a self-styled centrist think tank in Ann Arbor, says raising the beer tax should be an option to address the state’s looming budget deficit.

He suggests boosting the tax on a 12-ounce package 10 cents, a pretty sizable boost.

Does he have another agenda? Well he does say raising taxes on beer has the added benefit of helping “curb irresponsible behavior” by reducing consumption of alcohol.

Mike Lashbrook, president of the Michigan Beer & Wine Wholesalers Association, points out that Michigan’s excise tax on beer is already higher than many neighboring states, he said, and consumers still pay the 6% state sales tax on beer.

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CAMRA expands Cyclops campaign

Posted in Beer culture, Breweries on   

Britain’s Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) has extended its Cyclops campaign, which uses symbols indicate what to beers look, smell and taste like. Everard Brewery started the campaign last March, and CAMRA made it official in August.

More breweries continue to show interest in participating and CAMRA has produced a Cyclops information leaflet which it hopes will increase real ale sales for all partcipating breweries. The leaflet will be distributed to thousands of pubs across Britain by CAMRA members.

David Bremner, Head of Marketing for Everards, pointed out the campaign needs to reach a tipping point. “For Cyclops to continue having an impact on the real ale market, more Cyclops partners need to produce eye catching Point of Sale material and distribute to the pubs across Britain,” he said. “CAMRA’s new Cyclops leaflet, and more breweries supporting the scheme, will help to increase the consumer awareness of this initiative and lead to more people understanding and drinking real ale.”

Tony Jerome of CAMRA added: “There has been a large number of pubs that have contacted CAMRA in the last year telling us that they would like to promote their real ales but do not know how to. These Word templates that have been created will be accessible to most licensees that own a PC. The templates will allow licensees to create their own Cyclops material and promote their own range of real ales to their customers. Hopefully this will encourage pubs to become more marketing led and help see their real ale sales increase.”

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Czech Bud wins brand battle in Portugal

Posted in Breweries on   

When Anheuser-Busch and Czech brewer Budejovicky Budvar last week announced a deal where A-B would distribute Budvar, called Czechvar in the U.S., they also noted this would not prejudice their ongoing legal battles over the use of the brand names Budweiser, Bud, etc. around the world.

So here’s the news:

American brewer Anheuser-Busch cannot sell beer under the brand name Budweiser in Portugal, the highest chamber of Europe’s human rights court ruled Thursday, in the latest round of a global legal battle between the U.S. beer giant and Czech brewery Budejovicky Budvar.

The U.S. brewery lost its fight against a 2001 decision by Portugal’s Supreme Court, which ruled that Budejovicky Budvar had the right to use the brand name under a 1986 treaty between the Czech Republic and Portugal.

The beat goes on.