| FLASH NEWS |
Asia-Pacific Leads According to just released statistics Asia-Pacific is the largest and one of the fastest-growing markets for beer consumption, which accounts for about one- third of the global market share. The regional beer market growth can be attributed to the expanding young population, and increasing number of middle class and their rising disposable income. Europe is the second-largest consumer of beer, which accounts for a steady growth rate. However, North America has been recording a drop in the overall beer consumption rate, annually. South America and Africa are the other developing regions witnessing significant growth rates of beer consumption First Ever Beer Reality App Great Notion brewery in Portand, Oregon is releasing the beer industry’s first augmented reality app. It will serve as Great Notion’s primary virtual location, providing consumers a way to order beer, earn rewards, and engage with the brand. The owners were surprised to learn no one else had such an app but realize it will soon be copied. The brewery is currently selling out of product at their physical locations and are installing four new 90bbl tanks as well as a whirlpool and centrifuge. |
| Mexico Out of Beer Hoping their stocks would last through to the end of the quarantine, beer companies in Mexico began halting production in early April in response to the government’s classification of alcohol as a nonessential agro-industrial product.But now that the emergency period has been extended to the end of June, Mexico is running out of beer. “We’re now seeing what was more or less obvious. The inventories in the warehouses are running out and there’s no new production,” said Cuauhtémoc Rivera, president of the National Alliance of Small Business Owners.The alliance urged the federal government to classify beer as an essential product in early May to avoid the very situation small shop and convenience store owners now face.The scarcity is being felt at the cash register, as beer prices have risen around 30%.Before,the shutdown a case spld for for 380 pesos (US $15.40). Now it's 600 pesos (US $24.32),” The Statistics Institute reported that around 65 million Mexicans drink beer, and that each of those consumes an average of 68 liters of the brew annually. That however is no longer true. |
| June 2020 |
| QUICK HITS Want to help breweries/bars reopen? Victory Brewing is sponsoring a short 22 question survey to find out what they can do to help you return when they reopen. Here’s the survey www.surveymonkey.com/r/G2F6GR3 -------------------- The volume of beer being produced by many small, local breweries hasn’t been impacted because of Covid restriction as take out and delivery sales are strong. However the margins are way lower. Before, a brewery might be selling beer by the pint for $6.50 in its tasting room, it is now available for curbside pickup in four packs (64 ounces) for roughly $15. ------------------ The Genesee Brewery *8th largest in USA) has been around since 1878and just completed on a $50 million modernization plan..However they decided early on to shutter the Genesee Brew House to the public. The Brew House was closed, “because we made a deliberate choice not to offer take out/curbside sales that might take away business from smaller breweries struggling right now.” ----------------- File under unique marketing during shutdown- Goose Island Brewing has dispatched a black van to roam the streets of Chicago playing ice cream truck music. If customers call the phone number displayed on the van, the van will deliver beer to them. .-------------------- Many breweries are suing unsold beer to make hand sanitizers. A pallet of expired beer can yield about 11 gallons of virus killer sanitizers ----------------------- |
Edited by Jim Attacap
| Change Beer Into Whiskey In the $29.3 billion craft beer industry, the near-overnight collapse of on-premise con- sumption has wreaked havoc on the supply chain, equating to hundreds of thousands of kegs log-jammed in distribution warehouses and going stale in brewhouses across the country. It’s the liquid equivalent of the $8.5 billion flower trade: all this beer with nowhere to go, except down the drain. In New England, at least, brewers now have an option, thanks to Jeff Kozak, WhistlePig Brewery’s chief executive officer . “We are tentatively calling the project the ‘Great Beer Rescue,’” he says of the plan to distill the swill into high-end whiskey. “And we’ve already had significant interest from brewers and distributors.” Notable neighbors, including Harpoon, Lawson’s, Long Trail, and Hill Farmstead, have already shipped Kozak product, free of cost. To them, it’s actually a bargain, saving them the per-gallon waste fees they’d incur from simply dumping it. Equally vital is the valuable space it affords their facilities, where kegs can be supplanted by the cans and bottles necessary for a full pivot to off-premise sales and subscription boxes, much as what’s happening with struggling restaurants and wineries. Kegged beer, particularly the highly hopped IPAs that craft fans crave, can lose its identity within a few weeks. Even then, it remains fermented grain—the basic building block of whiskey. So, once it is shuttled on-site, distillery manager Emily Harrison can run the skunked liquid through towering copper stills, resurrecting it as a 160-proof spirit suitable for oak aging. This long shot isn’t without precedents. For generations, farmers have turned to distillation as a way to repurpose crops that would otherwise spoil with the seasons. The main problem in using beer this way is its carbon dioxide: If you don’t tease the CO2 out of the solution prior to distilling, a regrettable side effect can blow up your still. For Karakasevic, it’s always been worth the risk: “The more flavor you have in your beer, the more flavor you end up with in your whiskey.”He’s been hauling in beer from nearby Bear Republic Brewing Co., turning 6,200 gallons of Racer 5 IPA into 600 gallons of 140-proof distillate that he then ages for at least three years, some up to 10, for his R5 line of whiskey |