| Belgians Buy U.S. Beer U.S. beer makers exported nearly 160,000 gallons to this kingdom of 10 million people in the last 12 months according to the latest figures from Belgian Brewers Trade Group. Although impressive, those sales are still dwarfed by the more-than-50-million gallons of Belgian beer heading the other way across the Atlantic. However it shows how new American brewers are gaining a toehold in the country that was an inspiration for many of them. To the surprise of some American beers have beaten many Belgium offerings on their home turf in serious competitions. Last year, Hopvine India Pale Ale — a beer "brewed in a post-modern Northwest IPA fashion" by Seattle’s Schooner Exact Brewery — clinched the top award at the annual Brussels Beer Challenge which purports to find the world's best brews as selected by blue ribbon panels. U.S. beers also won 15 category gold medals for the likes of Baltic porters, strong bitter and brown ale. That's five more than the host nation picked up, a fact bemoaned by the local news media while still giving due respect to the American winners. |
Dangers In The Big Deal $107 billion bid by the world’s biggest beer company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, to buy the world’s second-biggest beer company, SABMiller, received the federal government’s blessing recently. The question now is whether American beer lovers ought to be concerned. And the answer is unsatisfying: nobody’s sure yet.While a can of Bud will likely cost about the same next summer as it does today, beer insiders say the real impact of this acquisition—nicknamed the Megabrew deal on Wall Street—on the robust American industry could come in the form of fewer locally-owned breweries, and therefore fewer consumer choices: fewer craft brews, fewer imports, and less innovation on tasty new products. In order for the deal to go through, the Justice Department has required that ABI sell its U.S. stake in one, giant U.S.-based beer conglomerate, MillerCoors, to another company that meets the same description: Molson Coors. (By the end of 2016, Molson Coors is expected to control Coors Light and Millers Light, two of the top-four best-selling beers in America.) In the wake of that corporate shuffle, ABI’s total U.S. market share, post-merger, will remain at roughly 44%—more or less where it is now. But market share is only part of the problem facing small brewers. How beer makers actually get their product to market—to bars and restaurants, and onto store shelves—is the real the challenge behind the scenes. According to most state alcohol laws, brewers are required to sell their product to a middle man, an independent distributor. Those distributors then act as liaisons to consumer-facing sellers—bars, restaurants and stores—which then sell the products to consumers. This unique, three-tier system has been remarkably effective at preventing any single brewery from gaining total control of the market. (By contrast, just two companies, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, have cornered the vast majority of the soft drink market.) As a result, there’s been explosion of small breweries, micro-breweries, and locally-owned restaurants selling their own beer. But this distribution tier is also vulnerable to exploitation. In recent years, the ever-more-giant brewers, including ABI, SABMiller, and Molson Coors, have used access to an independent distribution network as a tool to keep competitors at bay. For example, most of the big companies use special “incentive programs” to extract favorable terms from an independent distributor or force it to drop competitors’ products. To further up the stakes they have used their own prices to ace-out any distributor who doesn’t play along. At the same time, a handful of the biggest beer makers have also begun to blur the once-bright lines in that three-tier system, quietly becoming small, wholly-owned distributors themselves in about ten states. ABI, for instance, which is both the biggest brewer and the biggest distributor by volume in the U.S., now owns roughly 9% of its own distribution network. Most craft brewers, meanwhile, can’t begin afford the refrigerated trucks, warehouses, drivers, and regional expenses necessary to distribute their own product. |
| Feature News from beernexus.com |
Edited by Jim Attacap
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| Wanted: Beer Historian The world’s largest research and museum complex is looking for scholars who know their beer. And you don't even have to drink it. From America’s earliest days, beer has had a place in cultural history. Now, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History wants to make sure that history is well documented through a new position: official beer historian. It’s a three-year position, funded by the Brewers Association and equipped with a $64,000 salary plus benefits, according to the job posting, which also notes a specific desire for those involved in the trendy industry of craft breweries. But make no mistake. The Smithsonian is not looking for just any beer drinker -- applicants are en- couraged to come prepared with an “advanced degree” in American business, brewing, food or history, and must have “proven experience in scholarly research, organizing and conducting oral history, interviews, writing for both scholarly and general audiences, and knowledge of material culture and archival materials,” according to the job posting. |
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