Kings & Convicts Brewing Co., a tiny Illinois firm, on Tuesday announced an agreement to buy Ballast Point from New York-based Constellations Brands, Inc. Terms of the sale were not disclosed, but includes Ballast Point’s four California brewpubs - at the main brewery in Miramar; Little Italy; Anaheim’s Downtown Disney; and Long Beach - plus one in Chicago.
-- Peter Rowe, San Diego Union-Tribune
Tag: Beer
I love craft beer!
Fat Tire goes Aussie
After nearly 30 years as one of Fort Collins' locally owned, homegrown breweries, New Belgium Brewing Co. is being sold to a global craft beverage company with ties to Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
-- Erin Udell, Fort Collins Coloradoan
Congrats to the 300+ New Belgium employees who own the company! They still have to vote on the buyout, but I'm sure that Lion has taken that vote into consideration, and made them a sweet offer.
-- Scrib
Texas beer wars
The battlefield is Shiner, the home of Shiner Bock, where signs at a recent music festival blared, rather indiscreetly, "There’s a new Bock in town." Billboards around the tiny town (pop. 2,171) also showed up to promote Crawford Bock, a beer launched by Karbach Brewing, a once-independent Houston brewer now owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev, or ABInBev.
-- Erin Douglas, Houson Chronicle
Was ist los?
By most historical accounts, lager beer first appeared in Bavaria in the 1400s, perfected by monks who would store their suds in icy alpine caves over the summer. But a new find on the Chile-Argentine border, suggests that isn't the case.
-- Jason Daley, Smithsonian.com
Printing beer labels directly on bottles
Ink and varnish are applied directly to the glass with a “no-label” look, which wraps around the entire bottle. It also is digitally embossed, giving it a tactile effect.
-- Rupert Steiner, MarketWatch
Boulder Beer to go taproom-only
Our friends will still be able to enjoy our beers in the brewpub, and by brewing in small batches, have a wider variety of options on the ever-rotating specialty taps. We’re celebrating our milestone 40th anniversary this year and look forward to furthering our legacy in Boulder and the industry.
-- Gina Day
Judge orders Anheuser-Busch to remove icon from packaging
The cardboard packaging on Bud Light six-packs, 12-packs and 24-packs says "No Corn Syrup" in bold letters and invites customers to visit a website where it lists its ingredients. A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Anheuser-Busch to stop using Bud Light packaging that implies rival brews made by MillerCoors contain corn syrup.
-- 9News.com
More NC beer label fun
Another rejected beer label, Kissing Cousins, is particularly tough to justify. As News & Observer reporter Andy Specht pointed out on Twitter, North Carolina allows first cousins to marry. You can attend a cousins’ wedding in our state, but you can’t toast the newlyweds with an aptly named brew.
-- The Daily Record
Surprise at Alternative Newsmedia Awards
Salt Lake City just won a national award for booze coverage. Let's all take a moment to soak that in.
-- Enrique Limón, SLC Weekly
How American Brewers Employed Fine Art to Sell Beer
It was 1945 and the United States Brewers Foundation, an advocacy group for the beer industry, sought out the artist, Doris Lee, to paint something for an advertising campaign they called “Beer Belongs.” The ads, which ran in popular women’s magazines like McCall’s and Collier’s featured works of art that equated beer drinking with scenes of wholesome American life. The artworks positioned beer as a natural beverage to serve and to drink in the home.
-- Melissa Hendrickson, Smithsonian.com