How the story of Cleveland’s Platform brewery—which launched, exploded in popularity, sold out to AB InBev, collapsed and folded—is the inverse corollary to last week’s Anchor Brewing news. In this case, how optimism can be a bad thing indeed.
Read MoreIf you look closely at your beer industry news feed, you see a lot of downsizing, consolidation, and renewed focus on core lines. The expectation of inevitable growth has given way to a new pessimism in beer—especially craft beer. But that’s probably good news.
Read MoreBud Light did a great thing: the company reached out to a winsome young woman with a massive social media following. Everything since then has been a disgrace.
Read MoreHeineken has a new product aimed at an American audience, but everything about the rollout suggests Heineken doesn’t really get Americans.
Read MoreIn the oscillating cycle of innovation and retrenchment, breweries focus on different things. People aren’t clamoring for the newest, most exotic beer anymore, and breweries will contend with this new normal by training their creativity on their business structures instead.
Read MoreTechnology is disrupting not just how but what we pay, and has the whole enterprise of tipping teetering near collapse. Perhaps it’s time to say good riddance.
Read MoreFor years and years, you could count on the craft segment to grow. Light beer, FMBs, cider—they might bounce around, but craft beer was sure and steady. That is, until the past year. Now craft looks like the anchor dragging down the industry.
Read MoreThe beer industry news has been fairly bleak as we head into the new year. But how does it feel at the brewery level? I spoke to more than a dozen breweries, and got more individual, personal—and enlightening—responses.
Read MoreFor decades, Yorkshire’s Samuel Smith Brewery managed to do things their own, very weird way, seemingly flouting the rules of business, if not physics. But a three-year pandemic may have changed the calculus.
Read MoreForty percent of America’s breweries are small neighborhood affairs that, prior to 2020, were fun and rewarding little businesses. With Covid, inflation, supply-chain issues, and difficulties getting to market, how many still are? In Portland, one of them just called it quits.
Read MoreA massively over-spiced bottle of holiday ale from one of America’s grand old craft breweries, not to mention a cringey line extension at odds with the brand, have me worried.
Read MoreIt appears Elon Musk has actually acquired Twitter after all. But whether that’s good news or bad, the major social media sites are in big trouble. Now that legacy media is good and truly gutted, the troubling question is this: what comes next?
Read MoreIn 2017, the Brewers Association launched the “independent brewer” seal as a way of making customers aware of who makes their beer. Looking back after five years, has it made a difference?
Read MoreThree Washington-state breweries have sued Oregon over the right to self-distribute to the Beaver State as well as ship beer to Oregon consumers directly. They have a really good case.
Read MoreOn July 1, New Jersey’s alcohol regulatory issued rules limiting what breweries could do in their own taprooms. They were comically draconian, and outraged New Jerseyans have been filling the internet with disgusted memes. Is it really the case that NJ wants these taprooms to fail, and if so, who benefits? I spoke to one man with some answers.
Read MoreIn the lifecycle of any successful brewery, there are phases of growth and cultural currency—but also stumbling and mistakes. Stone’s sale to Sapporo gives us one of the most potent cases in point.
Read MoreMassachusetts-based Spencer Brewing, America’s only Trappist brewery, abruptly announced its closure a couple weeks back. The causes tell us a lot about how challenging the brewing business has become.
Read MoreThe Brewers Association released preliminary numbers on how breweries did in 2021 today. It includes some good news, some surprises, and very little bad news. I have the highlight findings, and a nice list of how this year’s top-50 breweries fared over the past year.
Read More"We humans are very sensory-driven and start making assumptions as soon as we see something. The beer business is closer to being in the entertainment business." Josh Pfriem, describing the newly-designed cans that replace the brewery’s 500 ml bottles.
Read MoreA few hours apart, longtime stalwart Hair of the Dog and relative newcomer Modern Times announced they would close the respective breweries that sat a quarter mile apart in industrial Southeast Portland.
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