Asheville, North Carolina-based Green Man Brewing and Boone-based Appalachian Mountain Brewery’s (AMB) announced a joint venture today in which Green Man will produce AMB’s beers for distribution.
In May, AMB co-founders Nathan Kelischek and Chris Zieber struck a deal to reacquire the business from Anheuser-Busch InBev (A-B). Much of AMB’s packaged beer for distribution had been produced at A-B facilities, leading to the duo needing to form a contract brewing partnership.
“As soon as we signed the papers, we started making phone calls, knowing that we wanted to act fast and bring our production back to North Carolina,” Kelischek and Zieber said in the announcement. “When we spoke with Green Man, their team and [the owners] the Thieses, we knew we found the right home.”
AMB’s Boone brewery will continue to produce beer and cider, while supplementing its production for distribution at Green Man’s Asheville facility. Green Man has already produced two batches of beer for Green Man.
Green Man co-owner Dennis Thies told Brewbound that both companies will remain independent of each other with no equity exchanged. He called it a “cool Asheville collaboration” that will see AMB produce all of its distributed beers at Green Man’s facility and use the company’s high-speed-canning line. Both share many of the same distributors in North Carolina and South Carolina, creating some go-to-market efficiencies.
Thies told Brewbound that if projects are accurate, the partnership will “nearly double” Green Man’s non-taproom volume.
“We can handle it,” he said. “We build this thing out for speed.”
Thies expects to offer AMB’s cider and Honeydew Honeysuckle Wheat beer in Green Man’s taprooms.
To celebrate the partnership, Green Man and AMB will collaborate on a limited-release Breakfast Porter that will be exclusively sold in each brewery’s taprooms beginning October 19.
As for Green Man, the brewery’s local distribution is up nearly +20% this year and up around +8% in the Carolinas, Thies shared. However, tourism in Asheville has lagged.