Beer in the News

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Beer in the News

Postby lob » Thursday Nov 24, 2011 4:03 pm

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Re: Beer in the News

Postby lob » Friday Dec 02, 2011 12:53 pm

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Re: Beer in the News

Postby lob » Sunday Dec 11, 2011 6:11 am

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/wine-soars-as-beer-goes-flat-20111210-1ooli.html

Quote: "Overall, the number of beer brands available in Australia has increased from 500 a decade ago to 1500 today.

''That growth has been dramatic,'' Mr Ovadia said. ''All these new beer offerings in the craft beer category are just breathing life into beer in general.''

Sometimes I wish reporters could write the real story. 1500 brands? Really?

How many of these brands are new beers from small independent breweries?

How many are just marketing exercises by the big multinationals?

how many are beers made in Australia with overseas labels stamped on them?

How many are pretend small microbrewery beers made under licence in Sydney?

How many establishments exclude competitor beer from being on tap. - A Bowling club in WA was recently told to stop
serving a local microbreweries beer for example.

Could this "reporter" make a trip down to Canberra and go into any of the clubs and mega pubs and find for me ONE beer that's from a small microbrewery. With the exception of two venues (Wig & Pen and Zierholz) if you're lucky you might find a single tap of Zierholz in the odd club. (Where you can relax and drink a good beer surrounded by obese people, strangely coloured/patterned carpet, and the sweet sounds and bright lights of money (pokies.) The real reason beer consumption has declined is what's on offer is sh** (New/Carlton/etc) or over priced sh** (BUL Peroni etc). There are no interesting Pales or IPAs or wheats or something new/different to try from local independent breweries in your typical Australian pub/bar/club. It's about time reporters stopped writing stories based on media releases, got off their fat asses, and investigated the real story behind the decline in beer sales. How this might contribute to the decline in tourism is probably worthwhile investigating also.
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Re: Beer in the News

Postby lob » Wednesday Dec 14, 2011 5:52 pm

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Re: Beer in the News

Postby Oliver » Tuesday Dec 20, 2011 1:27 pm

Foster's loses BUL contract for Stella Artois to Lion.

According to another report I read, production will move to Sydney or Brisbane. I'm sure it will still taste just as crap as the stuff currently coming out of Foster's Abbotsford brewery.

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A record year for Coopers

Postby Oliver » Thursday Dec 22, 2011 8:17 am

Coopers' market share up and beer production at a record, but revenue and profit down:

http://www.news.com.au/business/coopers ... 6228144546

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/busines ... 6227971379
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Re: Beer in the News

Postby lob » Tuesday Dec 27, 2011 6:34 am

I saw this online at the Chicago Tribune about 6 months ago. Timely, as they're brewing a beer for Summer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ElySrgYZdQ

If only it was this easy to setup a small brewery here in Oz and sell your product direct to the public : (


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Re: Beer in the News

Postby Oliver » Thursday Dec 29, 2011 11:57 am

Interesting article from the Wall Street Journal (I saw it reproduced in The Australian today) about the rise and rise of craft breweries in the US:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 61070.html

Cheers,

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Re: Beer in the News

Postby lob » Thursday Dec 29, 2011 12:43 pm

Oliver, can you copy n paste the article, the wsj blocks most of the article unless you subscribe. Murdoch strikes again : )
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Re: Beer in the News

Postby Oliver » Friday Dec 30, 2011 9:22 am

That's strange. I found it doing a Google search and can still see the entire article via Google, but linking directly to it you only get the summary.

Anyway, here's the whole thing, including a great pic (not sure about the caption though!):

Craft Brewers Tap Big Expansion
Niche Market Is Bucking the Broader U.S. Beer Industry

By MIKE ESTERL

Craft brewers are making a big bet on their small-label beers.

As sales of specialty craft beers increasingly encroach on established U.S. brands, dozens of regional brewers are pouring millions of dollars into new brew kettles, fermenting tanks and bottling lines, while others are buying land and erecting facilities to meet growing demand.

Image
An employee inspected oak barrels at a Sierra Nevada
Pale Ale brewery in Chico, Calif., in August.


Two craft brewers, Chico, Calif.-based Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. and New Belgium Brewing Co. of Fort Collins, Colo., have a combined U.S. beer-market share of less than 1%, but each is planning to invest at least $75 million next year in their first plants east of the Mississippi River to broaden their production footprint.

The smaller brewers' activity is a bright spot in an economy still struggling to kick manufacturing and construction into higher gear. The niche market is also bucking the broader U.S. beer industry, which has sold fewer barrels for the third year in a row, according to industry trackers.

"It's like Silicon Valley right now, or Florence during the Renaissance,'' says Jim Koch, chairman and founder of Boston Beer Co., which makes Samuel Adams and is the largest craft brewer in the U.S.

Craft sales jumped 14% to 5.1 million barrels in the first half of 2011 after rising 11% last year, putting them on course to log their fastest annual growth rate since 1996, according to the Brewers Association. The Boulder, Colo.-based industry-trade group defines a craft brewery as "small, independent and traditional'' and counted 1,740 of them as of the end of June, with another 725 in planning stages.

Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, which brews Budweiser, and MillerCoors LLC, maker of Miller and Coors, boast a combined U.S. market share of more than 75%. But their dominance is slipping as consumers branch out from light lager to experiment with bolder-tasting brews such as India Pale Ale, or IPA, and fruit-flavored wheat beer served up by local brewers.

Boston Beer, with roughly a 1% share of the U.S. beer market, expects to spend as much as $35 million in capital investments next year at its brew-houses in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. The company's shipments rose 6% to 1.8 million barrels in the first nine months of 2011.

Ken Grossman, Sierra Nevada's founder and owner, hopes to settle on an East Coast brewing site this winter and break ground next summer. North Carolina and Virginia are two possible landing spots, with initial plans to add 300,000 barrels of annual capacity and bank financing in place. Capacity "will be a little tight" before the second plant is completed, says Mr. Grossman, whose Chico brewery produced about 850,000 barrels this year, up 8% from 2010, and is quickly nearing its one-million-barrel ceiling.

New Belgium, maker of Fat Tire Amber Ale, also expects to decide in the coming weeks on a mid-Atlantic location to build a 300,000-barrel plant. It shipped roughly 700,000 barrels to 28 states this year from its Colorado plant. A second facility would cut transportation fuel costs and relieve bottlenecks at the squeezed Fort Collins site, says Kim Jordan, the company's co-founder and chief executive.

Craft brewer Larry Bell, owner of Kalamazoo, Mich.-based Bell's Brewery Inc., is in the midst of a $20 million expansion project including a new warehouse and brewing facility after sales rose 19% this year to 180,000 barrels. Mr. Bell, who began brewing beer in a 15-gallon soup pot in the early 1980s, says the expansion, with enough space to eventually brew 700,000 barrels, was financed with tax-free bonds from a federal government program to spur construction. He said he is hiring 30 more workers, increasing staff to 175.

Output at Surly Brewing Co. in Brooklyn Center, Minn., has jumped to 17,000 barrels from 11,500 barrels last year. Omar Ansari, the owner, says he used a small section of his family's industrial abrasives plant to brew beer in 2006, making 800 barrels that year, before gradually taking over the entire space as the abrasives business "got smaller and smaller." Surly is searching for a second local site to build a brewing facility that would more than double output after pulling out of markets in Illinois, Wisconsin and South Dakota because it couldn't fill orders, according to Mr. Ansari.

But some in the industry are questioning whether the craft business will return to the bubble it experienced in the 1990s, when hundreds of small brewers opened their doors and enjoyed rapid growth before craft beer sales slowed.

"The pie isn't growing enough," says David Peacock, president of Anheuser-Busch's U.S. operations. "You're going to have some level of shakeout.''

Even so, Anheuser-Busch, which sells nearly half the beer in the U.S., isn't standing idle. Earlier this year it acquired Goose Island, a Chicago-based craft brewery, for $38.8 million. It also ramped up distribution of Shock Top, an in-house wheat brand that sits next to craft brews on store shelves but doesn't mention its owner on the label.

MillerCoors, the No. 2 brewer in the U.S., owns Blue Moon and Leinenkugel's, two specialty brands that compete with craft. This year, it acquired a minority stake in Terrapin, a craft brewer in Athens, Ga., for an undisclosed amount. John Cochran, Terrapin's president and co-founder, says the outside money will help it boost capacity to 45,000 barrels by the end of next year after producing 18,000 barrels in 2011.

Some craft brewers are contracting out production to keep up with demand. One contract brewer, Minnesota's Cold Spring Brewing Co., is spending $13 million to double its capacity to 250,000 barrels. "I would guess 100% of [the new capacity] will be going to craft,'' says Doug Degeest, the general manager.

But many are sticking to old-fashioned bank loans to expand their own facilities.SweetWater Brewing Co. recently bought a DHL sorting facility next to its Atlanta brewery and has spent this year connecting the two buildings. The closely held brewer hopes to have a new bottling line running by February, its 15-year anniversary, and boost output 25% next year to 125,000 barrels, with enough space to eventually expand to half a million barrels.

Sam Calagione, founder of Milton, Del.-based Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, says he has turned down approaches from venture capitalists, private-equity firms and one large brewer. He is relying on a traditional bank to finance a five-year, $45 million expansion to more than double the brewery's 200,000-barrel capacity. That included the recent purchase of a 40-acre neighboring lot, where a 75,000 square foot warehouse will be built next year.

"We care a lot more about IPAs than IPOs,'' says Mr. Calagione of his family-owned brewery, which produced more than 140,000 barrels this year, up about 20% from 2010.

Some small brewers, fearful of losing control, are slamming on the brakes.

Output at Santa Rosa, Calif.-based Russian River Brewing Co. has grown to roughly 12,000 barrels from 2,000 barrels in 2004, partly bankrolled by a $2 million small business loan. After it ran out of brewing space in early 2011, it decided to pay off existing debts rather than take on more. Russian River's website warns customers it cannot meet all orders.

"It's a lot of work to basically say no. If you look at our FAQ, everything is no,'' says founding co-owner Vinnie Cilurzo.

Write to Mike Esterl at mike.esterl@wsj.com
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Re: Beer in the News

Postby lob » Thursday Jan 19, 2012 1:07 pm

All Bar Nun in canberra is closing down : ) or : ( ???????

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/lo ... spx?page=1

I genuinely don't know if this is good or bad news. Because Canberra is 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 % f---ing Clubs, I guess it's bad news.

But then again, the owners did, like Harvey Norman selling computers, rip you off for anything other than Carlton. And they'd do it all with a nice smile from their poorly paid barmaids behind the counter.

If Coopers costs you as the pub owner the same as VB/Carlton/New to buy, then charge the same. Stop ripping us consumers off just because you know - with the complete lack of competition in Australia - you can get away with it. Just because you haven't had an actual meeting, and actually colluded together to over-charge for anything other than piss-water for Plumbers/electricians/etc/"not that I'm stereotyping : )", i.e. Carlton, New, VB, probably means that what you're doing isn't illegal, but I does mean that you're an asshole.
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Re: Beer in the News

Postby emnpaul » Thursday Jan 19, 2012 4:41 pm

I'm an electrician and you're stereotyping. Pisswater is the preserve on bricklayers, concretors and the Beachcomber Hotel. :lol:
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Beer in the News

Postby bullfrog » Friday Jan 20, 2012 8:03 am

emnpaul wrote:... and the Beachcomber Hotel. :lol:

At least the entertainment is good there, though.

Watched two blokes who were off their respective trees on pisswater, and apparently brothers, on the verge of punching on with each other for probably the better part of an hour and a half. They were still going when we left. There just wasn't that level of entertainment at the sports club we kicked on to!
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Re: Beer in the News

Postby emnpaul » Friday Jan 20, 2012 9:37 am

Gold.

This is getting even more off topic but on the subject of entertainment, Guttermouth are playing there this Sunday. Unfortunately I have plans already.
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Re: Beer in the News

Postby lob » Sunday Sep 02, 2012 12:35 pm

Obama finally releases Beer Recipes:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/09/ ... eer-recipe

(In separate news, the "other" homebrew website forum erupts in much laughter with "jokes" about the Hoodz, etc, etc all over again. Hilarious. )
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Re: Beer in the News

Postby Oliver » Tuesday Jan 01, 2013 2:52 pm

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Re: Beer in the News

Postby warra48 » Tuesday Jan 01, 2013 3:24 pm



What do they expect when you have deep deep cold cold winter for 9 months of the year, and a barely adequate excuse for a summer?
I too would want to drown my sorrows every moment of the day.
Peoples, feel happy, glad, exalted, delighted, and thrilled we live in Australia, where only the Victorians and Tasmanians know what a real winter feels like.
By the way, I'm really enjoying my latest batch of APA, inspired by Trough Lolly.
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Asahi buys Cricketers Arms

Postby Oliver » Thursday Apr 25, 2013 11:03 am

Another Aussie brewer falls into the hands to one of the international big boys:

http://www.smh.com.au/business/asahi-sn ... 2ie1s.html
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Re: Beer in the News

Postby lob » Sunday Jun 01, 2014 12:30 pm

Broome Pale Ale. WA's Finest Craft Beer.
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Re: Beer in the News

Postby Guru » Sunday Jun 01, 2014 1:20 pm

Thanks for sharing lob, eye opening article. This is probably why I make my own beer... it's too hard to get a decent beer in a pub.
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