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RBPMail 2.01, January 1996
Real Beer Page Mail (RBPMail) began as a modest update to craft-brew events on the WWW. It evolved into a news digest and sometimes editorial forum. We present its contents here much as they were emailed to subscribers. Often, links you will see are out of date, and businesses referred to may also be long gone.
In this issue:
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WHAT'S NEW IN BREWING
* U.S. GOVERNMENT APPROVES DRINKING MODERATELY
Drink moderately and live healthier. That's the word from the government,
which Tuesday released the fourth edition of "Nutrition and Your Health:
Dietary Guidelines for Americans," through the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The guidelines
dropped wording that alcohol consumption in general is not recommended, and took
out a statement from the 1990 guidelines that alcohol consumption has no health
benefits, since some health benefits of moderate drinking have been documented.
"If you drink alcoholic beverages, do so in moderation, with meals and
when consumption does not put you or others at risk," the report said.
Moderation is defined as no more than one drink per day for women and no more
than two drinks per day for men. Count as a drink-
- - 12 ounces of regular beer (150 calories)
- - 5 ounces of wine (100 calories)
- - 1.5 ounces of 80-proof distilled spirits(100 calories).
The Real Beer Page feels the report favors craft-brewers in these
recommendations. After all, if you had to choose one beer to consume, would you
pick an industrial beer? And craft beers are more tailored to enhance and enrich
meals. The report goes on to strongly discourage drinking from under-aged
persons, pregnant mothers, recovering alcoholics and those who can not contain
drinking moderately. For more about the realities rather than the myths being
perpetuated about drinking by neo-prohibitionists, read Dr. Morris Schafetz's
book, "Drink Moderately, Live Longer." Dr. Schafetz is President of
the Health Education Foundation and Founding Director of National Institute on
Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
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* TAKING STOCK OF 1995
In the December/January issue of the print version of The Celebrator
(http://Celebrator.com/celebrator/)
on newsstands or available by subscription online now, Jack Erickson describes
1995 Brewery IPOs as "bricks & mortar" or "balloons &
bands." The former are offerings where breweries plan to use the money
raised to build breweries or brewpubs for expanded production. The latter uses
money raised to expand sales, marketing and advertising of a brand of contract
brew. Erickson offers the following stocks as examples; we've added some of our
own mentions to his list:
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** Bricks & Mortar **
Fish Brewing Company (800) 544.4942, Regulation A direct public offering,
seeking to raise funds for draft sales expansion in Washington, Oregon, Alaska
and Idaho and to begin bottling. Franconia Brewing Company, 800-367-2348,
Regulation A direct public offering, seeking to raise capital for a new
microbrewery in Wilkes-Barre, PA headed by award-winning brewer .
Hart Brewing (coming to the web in two weeks), HOPS, NASDAQ, seeking $44
million to build a new brewpub/brewery in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1996 and
a South-east or -west site TBA in 1997. Last Price: 16 1/4 at closing on 01/02;
52-Week High: 22 1/2; 52-Week Low: 14 Lang Creek Brewing Company (406.858.2200),
Regulation A direct public offering, seeks to raise nearly $1 million to add
bottling and increase production.
Mendocino Brewing, MBR, Pacific Stock Exchange; raised $3.6 million,
building 100- barrel brewery in Ukiah, CA. Last Price: 7 at closing on 01/02;
52-Week High: 13 1/2; 52- Week Low: 7
Nor'Wester Brewing (http://www.norwester.com/)
raised $15 million in several Regulation A direct public offerings, building
breweries in Denver, CO; Seattle, WA; Orange County, CA; Portland and Salem ,
OR.
Portland Brewing (http://realbeer.com/portland/),
Regulation A direct public offering, raised $3.2 million to expand new brewery
in Portland, OR.
Redhook Brewery, HOOK, NASDAQ, raised $33 million, pay off Woodinville, WA
brewery and build Portsmouth, NH brewery. Anticipate a Midwest brewery in the
future. Last Price: 26 1/8 at closing on 01/02; 52-Week High: 35; 52-Week Low:
24 3/4
Rock Bottom Brewpubs (http://realbeer.com/rockbottom/),
BREW, NASDAQ, raised $50 million from 1994 & 1995 offerings, built brewpubs
in Portland, Minneapolis, Houston, Denver, Chicago, Cleveland and other major
urban markets. Last Price: 13 at closing on 01/02; 52-Week High: 29 3/4; 52-Week
Low: 11 3/4
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** Balloons & Bands **
Boston Beer, SAM, NASDAQ, seeks to raise $55 million, spent $46 million in
advertising in 1994 and had 780,000-barrels contract brewed, about $6.00/barrel.
Anticipated production from contract brewers in 1995 is around 1 million
barrels. Last Price: 24 at closing on 01/02; 52-Week High: 33; 52-Week Low: 21
1/2
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Pete's Brewing, WIKD, NASDAQ, seeks to raise $51 million, original SEC
registration to expand contract brewing; an amended filing said that Pete's
would seek to build a brewery of an unspecified destination and capacity on the
West Coast. Pete's spent $10.6 million in advertising with contract production
at 180,000 barrels in 1994, about $6.00/barrel. Last Price: 15 1/2 at closing on
01/02; 52-Week High: 27 3/4; 52-Week Low: 14.
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Spring Street Brewing Company, Regulation A direct public offering, sought to
raise $5 million to expand sales and marketing efforts, raised $2 million with
two weeks left in the offering (closes January 15). In 1994, the company spent
$350,000 in sales and marketing with contract production of 2,700 barrels for
their WIT! brand, nearly $130/barrel. Spring Street gained prominence and press
attention by being the first brewery to announce their offering on the WWW. Andy
Klien, President, wants to offer online trading of the shares among share
holders on their web site.
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1995 BUY INS AND OUTS
The private investment buy ins and buy outs signal for many experts a
consolidation in the craft-brew market. The diversity of beers in the brutal
retail shelf-wars may continue to expand, but the companies producing them may
narrow. Here's a brief list of buy-ins or outs:
- Celis Brewery, Austin, TX - Miller Brewing Company
- Bridgeport Brewery, Portland, OR - Shiner Brewing
- Grant's Ales, Yakima, WA - Stimson Lane, Ltd., a division of U.S.T.,
Greenwich, CT
- Shipyard Brewing
(http://realbeer.com/shipyard/), Portland, ME - Miller Brewing Company
- Gordon Biersch, Palo Alto, CA - Fertitta Enterprises, Las Vegas
If you would like to find out more about Shipyard Brewing and their award
winning beers, check out their new site on The Real Beer Page at
http://realbeer.com/shipyard/
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* NEW BEER RESOLUTIONS
* BrewTravels
Mark Silva, CEO and co-founder of Real Beer Inc., publishers of this newsletter
and the Real Beer Page, has been traveling across the U.S. like a Johnny
Appleseed of the Web, meeting with breweries and brew-enthusiasts in each state.
The travels have included a month in Oregon, two weeks in Washington, several in
Montana, three weeks through the Midwest, a couple of months in Pennsylvania
that included excursions throughout New England and Maine and then a quick drop
down to Florida a hop ahead of winter. In the next several months, you are going
to be able to hop aboard vicariously in a new section we're calling BrewTravels.
We have over 3000 digital pictures awaiting editorial completion. You can get a
preview of the travels at our Oregon Brewer's Festival site. Check out America's
largest beer festival in America at
http://realbeer.com/rbp/obf/ It is
our New Beer Resolution to add at least one BrewTravels section per week.
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* Home Brew Info
If you haven't seen it yet, we've been rapidly expanding our homebrew offerings.
If you're a homebrewer or their hostage, make sure you visit:
It's our New Beer Resolution to add more content depth and robust tools for
home and professional brewer's alike.
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* New 'Zine for the Rockies
Midwest Beer Notes proudly rolls out a sister publication, Rocky Mountain Beer
Notes, in Colorado and eventually Montana and Idaho.. The expansion doesn't stop
with the Rockies, however. Publisher and Iron Man, Mike Urseth, has his eye on
creating a web presence in conjunction with the Real Beer Page. Additional Brew
'Zines on the web include:
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Coming Soon: Yankee Brew News, Brew Hawaii and more.
It's our New Beer Resolution to build ever more powerful and qualified content
resources to make every search successful. Look forward to some major design
changes to our pages as we seek to bring more functionality and tools to the
Real Beer Page.
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* BrewTour Expansion
We've added dozens of new breweries to our database in the last month, thanks in
part to contributions from readers everywhere. We invite you to try our Brew
Tour database and see if there are any breweries in your area that are omitted
(http://realbeer.com/rbp/rbp.brewtour.php).
The business is changing quickly as you can see, and there are new openings and
some closings every week. We have also made our search database available from
personal home pages. If you would like to host a brew-tour search right from
your home page, email us at
realbeer@realbeer.com.
It's our New Beer Resolution to expand this database to include breweries all
across the U.S. and by spring time, all around the world. In return, we hope
that you'll visit our retailers and patronize their projects. The only way we
can afford to bring you a full-time resource is by accepting industry support.
Here are a few that come to mind.
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* SUPERBOWL BEER FEST
If you are going to be in the San Francisco Bay Area during Superbowl weekend,
you should definitely check out the first annual Big Brew Bowl sponsored by Big
98.1 FM. It will be held at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco on January 28th at
1:00pm. There will be samplings from many microbreweries, big screen tv's, and
lots of prizes to win. For up-to- date info on the breweries participating and
admission info, check out their web page at
http://realbeer.com/big98 or look in
our what's new section.
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* NIPPING IT IN THE BUD - EDITORIAL
Over the past year, we've taken the industrial beers to task for bully tactics
in marketing and for creating bland, boring beers. All this is changing - slowly
- as we see Miller buying into excellent regional craft-brewers and leaving the
recipes intact. A-B produced a dark holiday beer that unfortunately fizzed to
the last drop. They also produce Elk Mountain and introduced a line of "specialty"
beer that were favorably received at the 1995 Great American Beer Festival
(http://realbeer.com/rbp/gabf/).
Coors, in our opinion, is pulling a fast one with a line of beers called "Blue
Moon" that they are marketing without identifying themselves as the
brewers, trying to create brand distance from their legacy fizzy beers (why do
you think they want you to disassociate from those products?). Other virtual
beers include Plank Road and anything that says it was produced in Debuque.
These are contract brews with varying levels of craft-quality and materials to
them, but certainly nothing "micro" about them.
We'll continue to watch dog these developments with a critical but fair eye.
And it's in this spirit that we get into the heart of this month's editorial.
Despite the fun we can have at the industrial beer's expense (favorite alt.beer
bromide: what does Bud, Coors, Miller, Pabst, etc. have in common with
lovemaking in a canoe? Both are f**ing close to water), The Real Beer Page has
to nip some of the rumors of quality and tampering in the bud. During December
there was a flurry of news group and online chat inquiries about "bad bud."
We want to set the record straight and go on record with saying that we can
disagree with the qualitative aspects of industrial beer, but not with its
quality. No one has more stake in creating consistently, high-quality beverages
than a mass-produced brand. From product to product, consistency and quality
must be identical.
The synopsis of the incident goes as follows:
Ronaldo Dela Cruz Ciriaco, 35, was drinking a bottle of beer at the Jewel City
Bowl bar Monday night when he felt a burning sensation in his stomach and throat
and suddenly became violently ill, according to police reports. It turns out
that in a rare combination of unusual circumstances involving a bottle line jam,
an electronic inspection failure and a wad of paper gummed up in a returned
bottle, one bottle of Bud Light from the Los Angeles Brewery went out with
cleaning solution in it. This was a isolated incident and A-B has taken quick
and sweeping steps to ensure that it will not happen again. A-B acted out of an
"abundance of caution" in recalling all trade returnable bottles
produced at the Los Angeles brewery on the same day. That beer was destroyed.
For a period immediately following the incident only new bottles were used
rather than filling those that had been returned. Wholesalers conducted survey
samplings of returnable bottles at accounts through out the country. Although
these situations should never occur, when you consider the quantity of beer that
A-B produces, over 29 billion 12 oz. servings per year, their consistent quality
record speaks for itself. For the full press release and story, see our what's
new section on the Real Beer Page at
http://realbeer.com/rbp/rbp.whatsnew.php
The reason we're setting the record straight? Ultimately, we're all in this
together. One love. One beer. Get the marketing folks and the lawyers out of the
business and you'd have brewers who for the most part get a long and respect
each other's craft and talents. With the convergence of the industry, we may
soon find lines between real beer and industrial beer blurring. At that point
we'll feel a bit like the emperor sans clothes if we don't temper our lambasting
of corporate beer with journalistic integrity. For the concerned, however, you
should be able to tell your canoe jokes for several more years -- the giants
won't change overnight.
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