Who makes your beer

[BmillsSkier]

I actually had no idea Terrapin was owned by MC. That's a damned shame.

I didn't know that either. Interesting, but not a damned shame. The beer still tastes the same.

I don't understand why it's a shame...?

Me neither.

...because they own stuff? I'm not understanding the moral outrage. What did they do to deserve your approbrium?

Because it's all the rage these days? If the beer tastes the same I'll keep drinking it.

microbeer nazis

This is why a successful beer renaissance is becoming intolerable at the same time.

Like Tipp, I don't get the moral outrage. These micros are taking investment from AB, MC, InBev, etc to gain broader regional distribution than they can accomplish on their own. They continue to brew the way they always have.

Are y'all saying it's not ok for a small brewer to be successful enough to outgrow their local market?

Exactly. It's all, "stay small enough so I can brag to my friends at Whole Foods how I only drink local and fuck the corporate giants" as I get out of my mass produced car with an iphone, Chinese made shoes, and North Face jacket.

Fuck that shit, I wish my favorite micro would grow so I could get it in my market.

Oh, and to the OP:

AB-Inbev, Heineken, and Great Lakes Brewing Company make my swill.

[Tippster]

Like Tipp, I don't get the moral outrage. These micros are taking investment from AB, MC, InBev, etc to gain broader regional distribution than they can accomplish on their own. They continue to brew the way they always have.

Are y'all saying it's not ok for a small brewer to be successful enough to outgrow their local market?

Thank you. The beer is still made by the brewer, not their employer.

[TBS]

Just heard about the 10 Barrel/ AB deal 2 weeks ago, that one surprised me. Good on the starters of these breweries...pay day and more often than not they just keep on doing what they're doing. Being in the beverage business my experience with these acquisitions result in a short term increase in resources for the small brewer, increased distribution and the culture stays the same. Long term, if the parent company doesn't influence the small brewer good things happen. Sometimes though the corporation roles it into the fold of the other brands, the small brewer loses it's identification, people leave and it becomes another brand in a massive portfolio. Prefect example is what's happening to Lienenkuegals, time will tell if it will fail or not.

There was no big payday for 10(million) Barrel. ABs money will be used to build the business, not buy out the existing owners.

The principals spoke at a regional economic forum a couple of weeks ago. They flat out said There will be no changes other than building another brewery in town so they can ship more beer through ABs channels. They also declined to apologize for taking investment that creates a bunch of new local family-wage jobs.

IMO, 10 Barrel puts out the best beer in an area loaded with outstanding beer. Corporate overlord or no, I'll be slurping up their Pray for Snow and Sinistor Black as long as they make it.

[Name Redacted]

Thank you. The beer is still made by the brewer, not their employer.

No, that is exactly where you are wrong. The brewer now brews recipes that are handed to them. In the short term, they'll still be brewing those same great recipes. But in the long term, those same great recipes will turn to watered down profit makers. It depends on your definition of a brewer. Is he a robot who can follow a recipe? Or is he/she an artist who is constantly tweaking and coming up with new recipes? Dick Cantwell will surely be taking a back seat, or a retirement in a few years, so good for him.

I still drink swill, it has it's time and place, like on the Abasin beach around noon. I traded a chocolate pumpkin something or other for a PBR the other day. It was great.

[Tippster]

Huh - I can't name a micro-brew that tastes totally different now than before the company got bought by a Beverage conglomerate.

[MagnificentUnicorn]

I never cared for redhook 20 years ago. Elysian Men's Room Red is one of my favorite beers though, don't care if they're owned by MC.

[dtown]

There was no big payday for 10(million) Barrel. ABs money will be used to build the business, not buy out the existing owners.

The principals spoke at a regional economic forum a couple of weeks ago. They flat out said There will be no changes other than building another brewery in town so they can ship more beer through ABs channels. They also declined to apologize for taking investment that creates a bunch of new local family-wage jobs.

IMO, 10 Barrel puts out the best beer in an area loaded with outstanding beer. Corporate overlord or no, I'll be slurping up their Pray for Snow and Sinistor Black as long as they make it.

More distribution and resources = a bigger pay day for the guys who started it, especially because they probably/ should have worked some sort of profit sharing relationship into the buy out. Those types of things are behind the scenes and the former owners probably wouldn't share that publicly, may even be contractual not to discuss. Love their beer and AB buying them it wouldn't make me think twice about going there.

[Tuckerman]

Dan makes my beer.

[sb]

It all depends, there have been many small breweries bought up and promptly killed off. Friend of mine had the sad duty of transporting the entire equipment load to Texas from WV when the owners sold out to AB.

[Captain Awesome]

No, that is exactly where you are wrong. The brewer now brews recipes that are handed to them. In the short term, they'll still be brewing those same great recipes. But in the long term, those same great recipes will turn to watered down profit makers. It depends on your definition of a brewer. Is he a robot who can follow a recipe? Or is he/she an artist who is constantly tweaking and coming up with new recipes? Dick Cantwell will surely be taking a back seat, or a retirement in a few years, so good for him.

Pre-emptive TLDR: AB may trigger changes to the business of the brewery, but it won't necessarily mean that the beer is any different, better, or worse. But then again, it might.

My former local, Old Dominion Brewing Company, was purchased by a partnership between another regional brewer (Fordham...yuck) and AB, in a partnership called Coastal Brewing. One of the first things they did was close the brewpub, and then eventually pack things up and move to Delaware. A lot of my friends lost jobs when the brewpub closed, and some brewer friends lost theirs when the brewery moved (they were given the option to move to DE, but chose not to go). When Coastal purchased ODBC, they stopped making the "original" Oak Barrel Stout (as in, the one that was actually aged in oak barrels), because it was made only for the brewpub. No brewpub, no barrels. At that point, OBS became the same version that ODBC had been making for distribution, which used oak staves and vanilla to recreate the oak barrel-ness. That's how they'd been making it for bottling for a long time, but it became the only draft version as well. This was a decision that had been in effect for a long time at the Jerry Bailey-owned version of the brewery, but a lot of the regulars chalked that up to Coastal messing with things.

Coastal/AB didn't change the recipe (as far as I know) of the recipes to any of the existing lineup. At least, not any more than OD used to monkey with their own recipes based on the current pricing/availability of ingredients in an attempt to maintain price point. This sort of tweaking happens all the time at many small(er) breweries. Prices on hops can fluctuate wildly from season to season, especially for smaller breweries who don't have iron-clad pricing contracts with the hops brokers, so from year to year or batch to batch, the brewery may make minor changes to the recipe, subbing one bittering hop for another. Sometimes they'll sub one maltster's malt for another if their supplier can't get the product they usually use. It's just part of the business, and hopefully the brewers are good/knowledgeable enough to make those swaps in a way that 99% of the customers won't notice or care.

Now, almost 8 years later, the "Dominion" brand is just one line in the portfolio of Coastal. At one point Old Dominion regularly had 20+ beers available (many of them were contract brews that were on draft at the brewpub), now the lineup is much smaller, and they killed off the original flagship beers (Dominion Ale and Dominion Lager). The beers they do still brew (Millennium, OBS, Oktoberfest) are pretty damn close to what they've always been. The new beers (Double-D, Hop Mountain, Baltic Porter) may be more profitable than the beers they replaced, but they didn't actually change recipes of existing beers to make them noticeably different/cheaper.

Of course, it's not local anymore. The brewers aren't the same as they were, but I've kept up with and drink the beer now being made by a bunch of the old guard. (In fact, one of them is the head brewer at Old Ox, which has been all over the news the past few days for their beef with Red Bull.) I really don't drink Dominion beer anymore, but it's not directly because of the AB involvement, it's because they're not making the beers I loved (including contract options like the Tupper's Hop Pocket beers).

But, like Tipp and others are saying, AB getting involved doesn't have to mean any changes for the beer (as far as I know, Goose Island is still Goose Island, right? Those barrel-aged beers would be on the chopping block from a cost/profitability perspective), but it may mean changes to the business. If those changes, like moving the brewery or killing off half the roster of beers, result in changes to who's brewing the beer or the disappearance of a favorite beer, well, that's business.

FWIW, I heard that Cigar City may be the next one to go. I expect that the craft beer cognoscenti would lose their collective mind if that happens...

I traded a chocolate pumpkin something or other for a PBR the other day.

That sounds like it was probably the right choice.

[Name Redacted]

"The Brewers still make the beer" is such a naive statement. With millions of dollars at stake, you think these breweries will retain autonomy?

As soon as the craft beer craze cools off, and it will, who do you think will be on the chopping block first? How many people do Terrapin, Elysian, 10 Barrel employ? Ask how the folks at Rolling Rock were treated when their new corporate overlords decided they could just make it themselves. And if you think a 15bbl batch of your favorite beer will taste exactly the same as a 1000bbl batch, you are mistaken.

Inbev bought AB for their distribution network. Now they are buying up "Brands" not "Breweries" and will increase their production and distribute them far and wide. They'll do whatever it takes to increase the bottom line, and if that means closing down the original brewery and brewing it in St Louis or Fort Collins, that's what they'll do to save a buck.

[Name Redacted]

FWIW, I heard that Cigar City may be the next one to go. I expect that the craft beer cognoscenti would lose their collective mind if that happens...

I heard that was just a nasty rumor but who knows these days. I'm guessing Sweetwater might be in that line though.

[TBS]

More distribution and resources = a bigger pay day for the guys who started it, especially because they probably/ should have worked some sort of profit sharing relationship into the buy out. Those types of things are behind the scenes and the former owners probably wouldn't share that publicly, may even be contractual not to discuss. Love their beer and AB buying them it wouldn't make me think twice about going there.

One more time -all of ABs investment went into the business, none into principals pockets. Yes, Chris & Jeremy now have big-boy employment agreements but not a lot more current comp, their ability to approve themselves bonuses and dividend distributions are now gone, and they can now get fired.

So no big payday anytime soon.

[BmillsSkier]

I heard that was just a nasty rumor but who knows these days. I'm guessing Sweetwater might be in that line though.

Sweetwater seems to be humming along just fine.

Speaking of people getting in a twist over microbreweries getting big; Sweetwater was the target of other micro' ire when they landed the "premier craft brewery" distinction for Turner field last year which means that their taps are right next to all the macro taps all over the ballpark and not with all the other craft taps at designated booths.

The collective outcry that they were using their "big clout" (remember big = evil) to secure the deal and was hilarious since they're the only local brewery with the capacity to make such a deal happen. It's like they were all bitching to keep them held down at the other breweries levels just out of fairness. And fairness kids is the weakest argument of all.

Oh and never mind you can find all kinds of craft all over that ballpark. It's quite impressive. /angrycraftnazirant

[Name Redacted]

Sweetwater seems to be humming along just fine.

Ripe for the picking one might say. The biggest craft brewery in an underserved market, just made a major expansion (which may or may not have left them over leveraged), has built a sizable brand portfolio with a loyal following. I'm assuming a lot here, and really have no clue as to the inner workings of their business, but I would identify them as a brewery that AB might be interested in. And the SE market is full of people who would say "as long as it tastes the same, I'll still buy it". The kind of well trained consumers only decades of heavy investment in marketing campaigns could produce.

[BmillsSkier]

No argument with what you said, I know lots of people in Ohio are happy they can get it now.

Now when will Great Lakes Brewing Company expand!?!

[strawjack]

I don't really care who makes the beer as long as its good, it was just something interesting that caught my eye, but in classic tgr fashion it turns into a battle.

Do I prefer to support Pete (the brewer of my local) then a bigger corp...yes, I do because I can. Many other things in life I cannot do that as easily.

Sure it's a world economy and the big corp breweries provide many jobs in more than just the beer industry. It's all good.

Cheers!

[TBS]

As soon as the craft beer craze cools off, and it will

So true. Guys like Harpoon, Deschutes, Widmer, Full Sail, Sierra Nevada, Gordon Biersch and Red Hook have only been around for what, 30+ years? Just another fad, like skis with lotsa sidecut!

[Name Redacted]

So true. Guys like Harpoon, Deschutes, Widmer, Full Sail, Sierra Nevada, Gordon Biersch and Red Hook have only been around for what, 30+ years? Just another fad, like skis with lotsa sidecut!

I said cool off, not nosedive into oblivion. It's a cycle, just like any other industry, eventually, it'll cool down, and some breweries will go out of business.

[Captain Awesome]

It's a cycle, just like any other industry, eventually, it'll cool down, and some breweries SHOULD go out of business.

FIFY.

There's a lot of really bad "micro" beer out there right now. While I don't relish the thought of anyone's business/dream going down the tubes, there are definitely people selling beer that have no business making it at all. Hopefully, the market forces them out, and the good places grab their share.

Not that it really has anything to do with the topic at hand, but it's something I've been discussing with a lot of local brewers lately, since we just had the first closure of one of the new wave breweries (Chocolate City, in DC, which was not good beer).

[Name Redacted]

There's a lot of really bad "nano" beer out there right now.

FIFY

You have no idea how many nanos have popped up with homebrewers making a go at it. No clue as to even the basics of industrial cleaning and brewing. They treat off flavors as nuances that they enjoy "Mmmm! Popcorn and cardboard pair really work to balance out the sour apple!" . Brewing in plastic fermenters and frankenbrew equipment. Filtering is out of the question, even with lagers etc. If anything, there'll be a consolidation phase, which is already getting started.

[sb]

There was already a cycle of breweries closing back in the 1990's, further along now and overdue for another round me thinks.

[Tippster]

Not that it really has anything to do with the topic at hand, but it's something I've been discussing with a lot of local brewers lately, since we just had the first closure of one of the new wave breweries (Chocolate City, in DC, which was not good beer).

Good. They were terrible. DC Brau = much mo better.

[Tye 1on]

Good. They were terrible. DC Brau = much mo better.

How's Capital City doing? Have you tried Denizens?

[Kied]

Newcastle. I prefer cancer-causing artificial coloring.