Sierra Nevada Chooses Asheville North Carolina Site For New Brewery

January 25, 2012 By Jay Brooks

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After scouting numerous sites in North Carolina and neighboring states, Sierra Nevada Brewing announced today they have selected a location near Asheville, North Carolina to build a new brewery to supply their beer throughout the east coast.

From the press release:

The site, approximately 90 acres in the Henderson County town of Mills River — along the French Broad River, 12 miles south of Asheville — will be home to the new production facility, as well as a proposed restaurant and gift shop.
“We are thrilled to have found an ideal location in western North Carolina for our second brewery,” says Ken Grossman, founder of Sierra Nevada. “The beer culture, water quality and quality of life are excellent. We feel lucky to be a part of this community.”
The new facility will add much needed capacity for Sierra Nevada, and will allow for the quick shipment of brewery-fresh beer to consumers in the east. The East Coast brewery will start with a capacity around 300,000 barrels, with room to grow. The added barrelage will accommodate wider production of the myriad of seasonal beers and bottled specialties Sierra Nevada has produced in recent years, as well as an expansion of the brewery’s well-known flagship product: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
Sierra Nevada began the search for a new location several years ago. The brewery looked at hundreds of potential sites, eventually narrowing the search down to a handful of locations. The list of criteria was long and included quantifiable factors such as ease of shipping and water quality, as well as quality of life issues for its employees. Sierra Nevada has a reputation for a laid-back brewery culture and a love of the outdoors, and the new facility will retain this same tone. The Asheville area offers Sierra Nevada Brewing the perfect confluence of community, recreation and craft beer culture.
Sierra Nevada’s eastern brewery site is expected to employ approximately 90 workers, with additional staff in the restaurant to follow. The brewery anticipates being operational by early 2014.

That’s one more great reason to visit Asheville. I took a family vacation there a couple of years ago and it’s one of the best places I’ve been to for beer, food and culture. They have an amazing beer community. I’m sure not everyone will be thrilled by the news, but it’s been my experience that Sierra Nevada has been a good steward to the beer community as a whole, and has acted honorably in every instance I’m aware of, and I wouldn’t expect that to change as they expand their operations.

UPDATE: Asheville’s Mountain Xpress had photos and a report of the ceremony today at the site of the brewery that included North Carolina governor Bev Perdue and Ken and Brian Grossman, from Sierra Nevada.

Ken Grossman, Governor Perdue and Brian Grossman raise a glass of Sierra Nevada beer at today’s ceremony in Mills River.

A drawing of the proposed site.

Danny Williams R.I.P. 1959-2012

January 24, 2012 By Jay Brooks

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It was with a heavy heart that I received the news this morning that Danny Williams lost his battle with cancer last night, and passed away peacefully in his sleep. Ben Spencer sent me the word, and had this to say about his friend. “Danny was a great man. He was loved by many. This is a sad day for his family and friends. He will be missed.”

Ben added that “all Danny wanted out of his friends and family in his remembrance was no teary ceremonies, just ‘good people drinking good beers and smiling.'” There will be some sort of gathering of people to remember Danny, though the details, of course, are still being worked out. There was already a fundraiser scheduled for February 11 at Back Country Pizza in Boulder, and that will go forward as planned.

Danny’s family and friends want to thank everyone who donated generously to help make his remaining time more comfortable. Great progress was made toward saving the mine and keeping Danny’s home in the family, but additional donations are necessary to complete that work. If you haven’t already done so, please consider helping out Danny’s family as they struggle through this difficult time. As before, PayPal makes it easy to make a donation, and for larger amounts, there is a fund set up at First Bank in Boulder, Colorado under the name the “Danny Williams Fund,” where anyone can make a deposit. Their phone number is 450-120-3112.

Danny Williams: March 1, 1959-January 23, 2012

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Danny was rare person, passionate and giving, especially when it came to beer. Dip into your own beer cellar tonight and pull out a rare beer to toast the memory of Danny Williams.

Anchor Zymaster #1 To Be A California Lager

January 24, 2012 By Jay Brooks

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Yesterday Anchor Brewing announced their new line of beers under the “Zymaster Series,” with the first to debut during SF Beer Week in February.

This morning I spoke to the Zymaster himself — Mark Carpenter — who told me a bit more about the beer. It sounds like it will be a pretty interesting beer, and one I’m definitely looking forward to trying.

Carpenter told me they wanted to do something distinctly Californian, and they searched brewing logs and records that they could find from early California brewers. Reasoning that as soon as brewers had the technological ability to brew lagers, that’s what they did, so they turned their attention to lagers. In California, Boca Brewing is believed to have made the first lager in the state, around 1875 (according to American Breweries II). The town of Boca was located in northeast California, roughy 6.5 miles from Truckee. In 1880 it had a population of around 200 people, though today it’s literally a ghost town. The brewery was founded in 1875 and closed in 1892, four years before the Anchor Brewery opened.

So Anchor set about to recreate the first lager brewed in California. They used California-grown malt and California cluster hops. Clusters were the first hop variety grown in the United States. Though their origin is unknown, it has been “suggested that they arose from hybridization of varieties, imported by Dutch and English settlers and indigenous male hops.” They weren’t able to find enough cluster hops actually grown commercially in the state, but they did find cluster hops growing in Washington using the same bines that used to grow in California, before the hop-growing family took their rhizomes with them when they moved north from California to Washington.

So the first Zymaster Series beer from Anchor is also the first true lager they’ve made (with Steam beer being essentially a hybrid) and was brewed to try as best they could to replicate the first lagers brewed in California. It’s 5% a.b.v. and is a single-hop beer, using only Cluster hops. Because of quality issues in the late 19th century, lagers here tended to be more highly hopped then they are today, and Anchor’s new beer will also reflect that, though they have not yet calculated the IBUs, so no one can yet how hoppy the lager will be. Only one thing is certain, I can’t wait to see what it tastes like.

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Big Changes At A-B InBev

January 23, 2012 By Jay Brooks

Wow, there’s a lot going over at Anheuser-Busch InBev, and besides the slip in sales of their core brands. Last week, rumors abounded that ABI was planning to roll out some version of 100% Share of Mind, which had been the “unofficial” policy until a few years ago, when it became unworkable. I wrote about it four years ago as it started to wane in Losing Their Share of Mind, and you can get the history and background of the policy there, assuming you’re unfamiliar with it. In a nutshell, A-B insisted that their distributors focus ONLY on A-B and A-B-related brands, and there were ways they had for dealing with those distributors that didn’t toe the line. And it worked well enough while A-B brands were selling well, but when they began to slip, it became harder to enforce and harder for distributors to remain profitable without taking on non-A-B brands, especially craft brands.

According to Beer Business Daily, ABI “is again turning up the leverage with Sales Opportunity Teams starting next week.” Apparently “Sales Opportunity Teams” (SOT) is the new buzzword for it this time around. They continued:

The SOTs, which A-B chief Dave Peacock has repeatedly said are not punitive in nature, will certainly be uncomfortable for distributors with growing competing brands in the house, as they try to explain this or that competing display or tap handle on the floor.

It’s got to be even harder this time, with craft beer riding a wave, with great growth, higher rings and consequently more profits. Sell less, make more. Hard to walk away from that, but of course having the best-selling brands is also pretty attractive, too. So what’s a distributor to do?

Today, the other shoe dropped, as Anheuser-Busch President Dave Peacock — and the last of the pre-InBev top executives — resigned effective today. According to ProBrewer

Peacock was one of the few remaining high-level holdovers who had stayed with the company after it was acquired in 2008 by InBev. He was only one of two non-Busch family members to hold the title of CEO.
Peacock is well liked by wholesalers and is known as reasonable, fair and an advocate for the second tier. The latest pressure on wholesalers by InBevAB may certainly have prompted Peacocks departure.
Peacock began his career at A-B in 1992 and was promoted to president in 2008 in the wake of the acquisition after serving as VP-marketing since late 2007. Many U.S. executives departed after the InBev takeover, but Peacock was handpicked by the new owners to lead the U.S. operation.

Harry Schuhmacher, in his Beer Business Daily, broke the news this morning, calling it “a watershed moment in the history of A-B since its acquisition by InBev.”

Coincidence? Hard to imagine the two developments are completely unrelated, especially since Beer Business Daily, presumably working from a press release, states he’s leaving “to spend more time with his family and pursue other business interests.” I’m always more than a little suspicious when that’s the official reason for leaving, as it so often is in circumstances like this one.

Peacock is succeeded by Luiz Fernando Edmond, who until today was the Zone President of North America. Oh, and Bud Light Platinum is coming soon, in the cobalt blue bottle, and should be on store shelves as early as this week. They’re calling it a “game changer,” but I tend to think these other two developments will change the beer landscape far more than a Bud Light line extension.

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Anchor Announces New Zymaster Series

January 23, 2012 By Jay Brooks

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As promised on Friday, Anchor Brewing announced today a new series of beers they’ll be debuting during SF Beer Week. The new beers will be under the series designation “Zymaster,” which Anchor describes like this:

Zymaster n [Gk zyme leaven + master – more at ZYMURGY]
1: a new word coined by Anchor Brewing to describe a brewmaster with hands-on experience throughout the a-to-z process of creating a new beer, from the research and selection of the raw materials and development of a recipe to brewing, fermentation, cellaring, and finishing
2: a unique series of beers from Anchor Brewing, rooted in its exceptional respect for the ancient art and noble traditions of brewing and featuring extraordinary ingredients, innovative techniques, and unusual flavors

anchor-zymaster

The first Zymaster Series beer will be released at select events during SF Beer Week, which this year is February 10-19. The initial offering will be “available on draught only in 13.2 gallon and 5.16 gallon kegs,” and “[i]nitial distribution will be focused in California.”

No word yet on what the first beer will taste like, whether it will hew closely to any recognizable style, what ingredients were used to brew it, or how often we can expect subsequent offerings in the Zymaster series. Updates as they emerge.

Alaska Barleywine Festival 2012 Winners

January 22, 2012 By Jay Brooks

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Here are the winners from this weekend’s Great Alaska Beer & Barley Wine Festival in Anchorage, Alaska.

Black Raven Brewing, Redmond, Washington
Firestone Walker Brewing, Paso Robles, California
Silver Gulch Brewing & Bottling, Fairbanks, Alaska

And the Best Winter Beer:

Kodiak Island Brewing, Kodiak, Alaska

Congratulations to all the winners. Thanks to Tom Dalldorf from the Celebrator Beer News, for sending me the winners.

Anchor Teases About New Beer Series

January 20, 2012 By Jay Brooks

anchor-new
Anchor Brewery is teasing us. Earlier today they tweeted this enigmatic photo that vaguely hints at a new series of beers from the oldest craft brewery in America. All the tweet says is that we have to wait until Monday. “We’re brewing up a special announcement for Monday, January 23. Here’s a little taste…” Can’t wait.

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Paper or Plastic & Beer

January 18, 2012 By Jay Brooks

paper-or-plastic
Here’s an odd little story from Virginia, sent in by an alert reader (thanks Jeff). In many places, there’s a growing debate about plastic bags, paper bags or no bags at the grocery store. In Virginia, there currently is no law regarding them, but that hasn’t stopped stores all along the southeastern coast of Virginia — an area known as Hampton Roads — from insisting that customers get a plastic bag, if they’re buying beer, that is. It’s not the law, of course, as confirmed by Kathleen Shaw, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

According to a story in the local Daily Press, apparently “[c]ashiers are either erroneously told by their employer that Virginia requires them to bag alcohol or they mistakenly equate store policy to state law. Either way, beer is bagged at nearly every supermarket and convenience store in Hampton Roads.” As the article, entitled The ABCs of plastic bags and beer shopping in Virginia, points out, in many places outside the area, stores are actually prohibited from using plastic bags, while still others champion their use.

But whether you think plastic, paper or your own bag is the way to go at the grocery store, that’s not what caught my eye. It’s the notion that it’s “beer” that has to be covered before it leaves the store. As for why that might be the case, multiple 7-11 franchise owner Raj Gupta, had this to say: “it’s convenient for the customer [and] it deters customers from drinking alcohol in the store parking lot.” Uh-huh. Whether it’s more “convenient” is debatable, and a bit beside the point if it’s mandatory at all of his stores. And as for deterring customers from ripping open the thin plastic bag and starting to drink in the parking lot, I can’t believe placing the six-pack into a bag is really going to do much good. Gupta certainly doesn’t care about the environment, as he also states. “If they don’t want the bag, they can throw it out in the trash can when they leave the store.” And then start drinking it, one presumes, which is what he was claiming the bag prevented.

But since those reasons are as flimsy as the plastic the bags are made out of, it seems more likely it’s his third reason why “he requires cashiers to bag six-packs, bottles of wine, and single cans and bottles of alcohol.” And it’s a doozy. “[I]t prevents minors from seeing people carrying alcohol.” Holy crime wave, Batman, thank goodness Gupta’s on the scene. We wouldn’t want the little kiddies “seeing people carrying alcohol.” Goodness knows what untold harm that might cause. He doesn’t mind selling alcohol, but he doesn’t want children seeing it. If parents bring their children into his stores, do employees have to cover the kid’s eyes? Or is alcohol on a shelf safe; it’s only dangerous when an adult is carrying it? Or when it’s outside the sanctuary of the store.

Yes, I’m making fun of him, but only because he deserves it. Yes, he’s free to run his stores any way he sees fit, just as anyone is free to not shop at any of his stores. But it points out a deeper issue, which is that he has some weird, unhealthy issues with alcohol. They’re obviously deep enough that he believes that children seeing adults carrying alcohol is such a problem that he’d make it his “company policy” to avoid it happening. As I pointed out, not enough of an issue that he’d voluntarily stop selling alcohol, but still. Why that might be, I can’t fathom, but I’m curious enough to want to know. It has to have something to with the way alcohol is demonized by certain factions of our society. It has to have something to do with our society only hearing one side of the story, with neo-prohibitionist groups spreading their biased propaganda, and doing everything in their power to prevent anyone else from having their say, telling the opposite side of that tale. How else to explain a businessman who sells alcohol believing it’s in his best interests to make sure that children don’t get the idea that people buy alcohol. What possible benefit could he derive from that “company policy?” Frankly, I’m stumped. I can’t think of one reason that’s not fanatical, based on erroneous information or just plain looney.

Beer At/Is Fancy Food

January 17, 2012 By Jay Brooks

fancy-food-show
For the third straight year, beer had a bigger presence at the Winter Fancy Food Show, held each January in San Francisco. The Brewers Association once again had a booth pouring beer from a variety of craft brewers, through their Export Development Program (EDP). I went the first year, too, and this year it again appeared to be one of the most popular booths at the giant food show that features high-end, specialty foods. Hopefully not by coincidence, the BA’s craft beer booth was located next to most of the cheese, which made finding divine pairings quite easy. There are few things better than great beer and cheese together.

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In talking with Bob Pease, COO of the BA and head of EDP, it was clear this was the right crowd to help build craft beer. Attendees were by and large retailers who carry not just ordinary grocery fare, but high-end, specialty foods. Craft beer, of course, is a high-end, specialty food and these days, any specialty food retailer carrying better cheese, bread, chocolate, charcuterie, etc. but not craft beer, is missing out. And many people there seemed to understand that.

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People lined up to try the beers, and unlike your average beer festival, most asked good questions not just about the beer, but what foods it went with, how to market it, etc. In several conversations I eavesdropped on, retailers admitted not knowing much about craft beer, but seemed to understand it was now part of the specialty food world and were eager to learn more and understand how it could fit into their own businesses.

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Nancy Johnson, Event Director for the BA, sampling people on Dogfish Head’s beer.

Having had most of the beers from the dozen breweries at the BA’s booth, I wanted to see what else was being featured at the show, so I spent a few hours walking the aisles and stuffing my face with countless delicious samples being offered at nearly every booth.

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I was in heaven with all the different cheese available for sampling. I must have eaten at least a pound or more of cheese in the aggregate.

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There was an entire area devoted to Japan’s cuisine, and among those booths I discovered that Hitachino Nest Beer was sampling people on three of their beers.

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I also noticed this clever carrying-case to transport a twelve-pack to your next tasting.

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Not surprisingly, they were also pouring beer — Spaten — in the German cuisine area.

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And last, though in this case possibly least, there was also a booth featuring beer salt. Though I suppose if you’re stuck drinking Corona, with a wedge of lime and some beer salt, you’d have the makings of a beer margarita.

Anyway, the Fancy Food Show was great fun, and it was amazing to see so many innovative foods, and the way they were being presented. There was food from a dizzying number of countries, and many new ways of eating more traditional fare. But what was really terrific to witness, is how many people were so accepting of beer as a part of the great panoply of food. I don’t so much like the word “fancy” as a way of describing either craft beer or most of the foods at the show, and I suspect that’s a name with a history that they’re somewhat stuck with now. The Fancy Food Show is put on by the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade, and that’s a much better way of looking at it. Because none of the food there could be considered ordinary, it was all pretty special. And that’s one way to look at beer, too. There’s ordinary beer — well-made but fairly bland without much flavor — and then there’s craft beer — loaded with flavor and in endless variety. Give me the specialty beer every time. Life’s just too short to settle for the ordinary.

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