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Billion Bottles of Beer |
Every year, Pennsylvania brews enough craft beer to get the entire nation drunk. Twice. It was just announced that over a billion bottles of beer was produced in the state last year according to data from Brewers Association. That's enough to give every American over the age of 21 over six drinks. In a niche industry — which still only accounts for about 12 percent of U.S. beer sales, — that's a lot of beer. How do they do it? Pennsylvania produces beer for two of the "big" players in the industry: Yuengling and Boston Beer, the maker of Samuel Adams.Those two companies make up a the maority of PA's craft beer output. Yuengling is well known nationally, claiming the title of "America's oldest brewery." In addition to Yuengling and Boston Beer, Troegs is now one of the five largest craft brewers in the state. It's joined by Downingtown's Victory Brewing and Philadelphia's Yards. |
Traditional hotbed states with the most breweries include #1 California — home of pioneering breweries such as Anchor Brewing Co., and Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. — leading the way with 520. Colorado holds the No. 2 spot (252) and is home to New Belgium and Oskar Blues, and Pennsylvania, is No. 3 (236). But other states have the most breweries per person with Oregon, which has 191 breweries including Deschutes and Rogue, boasts 4.7 breweries for every 100,000, followed by Vermont(No. 2 at 4.6 per person), and Colorado and Montana tied at No. 3 (4.5). Craft beer sales at retail, including supermarkets, mass market chains and convenience stores, have risen 6% over the past 52 weeks, amounting to $4 billion, And in its 2017's half-year report, the Brewers Association says the amount of craft beer sold is continuing to bubble up at a rate of 5% . The city with the most breweries, based on CircleUp's analysis: Portland, with 78, followed by Denver (63), San Diego (61), Seattle (49), and Chicago (43). |
Number 1 and More- IPAs have become even more trendy going from 21 percent to 30 percent of the craft beer market iso far this year. Five years ago IPAs were only 8% of craft sales. Pay to Work- Forking out cash to pick grapes, apples and hops…working side by side with employees who are being paid for the same job is a new vacation fad. The priciest is at the singer Sting’s Italian Tuscan villa. This year the star is charging $264 a day for fans to come and pick grapes and olives on his 900-acre property . Profit Margin- Brewers pouring, selling cans or filling growlers at their own tasting/ taprooms make 40 to 50 percent more than they would if they sold their beer wholesale to a distributor. They've cut out the middleman. Lambic Combo - Geuze which is made by combining a young lambic and an older one in a bottle and allowing a second fermentation to occur, is the fastest growing Belgium beer style in the past 12 months according to BeerMarketing.org. Goose Island Pubs- Anheuser-Busch has launched Goose Island pubs in London, Toronto, Sao Paolo, Shanghai, Seoul and Monterrey, Mexico. Needless to say all are owned by Goose Island’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch. |
The Hottest Cold Beer Sour beer is the hottest cold drink of 2017. Thirty years ago we would have thrown these brews away, saying they were bad, now, brrewers are purposely putting dedicated tanks in their breweries to sour beer. Sour beer has become a go-to for craft breweries across the country, as sales have spiked. Just 45,000 cases of sour beer were sold in the U.S. in 2015, a that more than quintupled to over 245,000 cases in 2016 and is set to rise an additional 9% this year, The drink gets its tart taste from bacteria like Lactobacillus and Pediococcus, which produce acids that cause it to sour. While sour beer’s flavor is old, American brewers have only learned how to safely produce it en masse over the past five years. Conventional beers are brewed with a single strain of yeast to yield the same taste in every batch. Sour beer, in contrast, uses a variety of bacteria and wild yeast, which can produce a different mix of flavors each time, ranging from spicy and leathery to fruity and floral. The process is tricky to perfect — one rogue microbe could potentially infect an already-sterilized beer, causing it to ferment further than intended. Most American brewers avoided sours for fear of losing money on the fickle brew After years of experimenting and sharing tactics, though, many brewers have now perfected the processes to produce enough of the brew to keep up with growing demand. Across breweries that produce it, sour beer is quickly outselling other forms of craft beer like pilsner, stout and lager, with sales second only to IPAs. Sour beer comes in many varieties, which have been refined over the decades in Germany and Belgium, where sour beer has long been popular. There’s the light and tart Lambic beer, the fruity Flanders brew, the sea salt and coriander-influenced Gose and the lemony wheat beer Berliner Weisse. In the U.S., beer makers often put an American twist on the traditional recipes, with the addition of fruit or other ingredients to draw out tart and sweet flavors. Sours have drawn wine drinkers to beer since it's a whole new spectrum of beers they might not have thought existed before. Send contributions for On Tap to webmaster@beernexus.com |
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