Using the crowdfunding platform Bolstr, an online marketplace where entrepreneurs can access capital from accredited investors, the San Francisco brewery raised $150,000 in less than 24 hours. With the money, Magnolia will purchase additional brewing, packaging and laboratory equipment to expand production, and to roll out a line of packaged beers. To date, Magnolia products have been available only on draft and in growlers.
Featured in this week’s edition of press clips: Boston Magazine suggests craft is moving on without Jim Koch; NPR tackles trend of trademark disputes; Gary Fish, Widmer Brothers opine on the state of the industry and New England Brewing apologizes for ‘Gandhi-Bot.’
To welcome the New Year, Oskar Blues will expand distribution throughout a number of untapped markets in both the Midwest and Northeast. The brewery began shipping its products this week from its flagship facility in Longmont, Colo. to Iowa, Nebraska and downstate Illinois. The brewery will also soon send beer from its second facility in Brevard, N.C. for distribution throughout Maine and Vermont.
Georgia’s craft brewers may have found a couple of allies in the state house. The Georgia Craft Brewers Guild has secured five sponsors for a bill that, if passed, would repeal a number of restrictive, Prohibition-era regulations. Guild members contend that current state laws are stifling the growth of the craft sector and, in an effort to help educate legislators, the guild recently hired Thrash-Haliburton to lobby on behalf of the state’s growing craft beer industry.
Surly Brewing’s new $34 million facility in Minneapolis will be fully operational within a couple weeks, pending the installation of its packaging equipment, according to a report from MPR News. The facility, the article adds, will enable the Minnesota-based brewery to quadruple capacity from 42,000 barrels per year. Additionally, the new brewery will feature a restaurant that has room for 90 people, a main beer hall that seats 216 more, and an event center.
Central States Beverage Co. has announced year-end sales of 1 million cases of Boulevard beers throughout the greater Kansas City area alone, the most ever by one of the brewery’s distributors in one year. The MillerCoors-affiliated wholesaler has more than doubled sales of the Boulevard brand since first acquiring it in 2007, when it launched with sales of 497,000 cases. In 2013, Central States fell just 40,000 cases short of the 1 million case benchmark.
One truth made abundantly clear in 2014: Not all cash is created equal. On one side of the equation sit companies like Founders (Mich.), 10 Barrel (Ore.), and Blue Point (NY), all of which were bought out by larger, international beer companies. While those three brands will now be able to use the money and the distribution reach of their new investors and owners to grow, there’s a definitional downside: they’ve left the ranks of the craft realm.
Bell’s Brewery has issued a voluntary recall of its beer, Mercury: The Winged Messenger, in 43 Michigan counties, citing a glass defect on the lip of certain bottles, which could cause small pieces to become dislodged. The recall, according to a statement from the company, applies only to bottles purchased in specific counties in its home state of Michigan, “not the entire packaging run.”
Baxter Brewing has announced plans to expand distribution to New York per two partnerships with a pair of L. Knife and Son wholesalers. Having just rounded out its presence in New England, the 4-year-old Maine brewery, which produces an all-canned lineup of beers, has inked deals with Union Beer Distributors and Craft Beer Guild Distributing for coverage throughout New York City and the Hudson River Valley respectively.
Effective the first day of the New Year, Craft Beer Cellar, a small chain of craft-centric retailers headquartered in Massachusetts, will no longer exclude beers from its shelves based solely on who owns the brand. Since its inception in 2010, the company has sold only beer that fits the Brewers Association’s (BA) definition of craft beer.
Bell’s Brewery has announced plans to expand its presence in southern California in early 2015 per a partnership with Craft Brewer’s Guild of Los Angeles, a wing of L. Knife and Son’s national craft wholesale network. Beginning Feb. 23, all of Bell’s products will be available throughout Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura counties, depending on their release dates.
Two of the largest beer wholesalers in New York City are working to consolidate, creating one company that will control approximately half of the city’s beer market — but not everyone is happy about it. In a note to suppliers, Manhattan Beer Distributors announced Tuesday that it has entered into a formal agreement with Windmill Distributing (PhoenixBeehive Beverage Distributors), to acquire the company’s beer brand distribution rights.
SweetWater Brewing has announced plans to expand distribution throughout Chicago in early 2015, the first in a slew of new markets the Atlanta brewery plans to launch in the first quarter of the New Year. The brewery has partnered with Lakeshore Beverage for coverage in the area, which, beginning in the spring, will distribute draft and packaged offerings — including flagships 420 Extra Pale Ale and SweetWater IPA — throughout the city.
Three Texas craft breweries have filed a lawsuit against the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission in hopes of repealing a 2013 law that made it illegal for brewers to sell their own territorial distribution rights. Prior to the law’s passage, brewers “could negotiate payment from distributors for the exclusive rights to deliver their beverages in a certain area.”
