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Advice From The Trail: Creature Comforts On Building A Brewery Brand

We’re excited to continue our RadCrafter series! Each volume of Craft Marketing showcases a Featured Crafter – a craft marketing professional who is crafting content, telling stories, and curating resources about the beer industry. For this edition we reached out to Chris Herron, co-founder and CEO at Creature Comforts and picked his brain about beer, brewing, and what it takes to build a strong brand that resonates with consumers in today’s craft beer market.

Via mybeerbuzz.blogspot.com

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The Unbelievable Story of Stephen Foster, Craft Beer Con Man

Since at least 2007, craft breweries in both the U.S.A. and Europe/Africa have apparently been scammed by a man named Stephen Foster, who just so happens to possess the same name as the famous songwriter, although there’s evidence he has at various points worked with the first name “Scott” and the last name “Sala.” He has been connected to a dozen or more breweries, working in various places for a few months at a time (up to several years) before disappearing when things turn sour. He seems to target brewmaster positions especially, but primarily at young breweries with less-than-robust hiring practices where he can win jobs through force of personality alone, covering up a seemingly obvious disqualifier: He’s not very good at making beer.

Via Paste

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Brewers Association Launches Supporter Seal and Website

The Brewers Association (BA), the not-for-profit trade association dedicated to small and independent American brewers, and publishers of CraftBeer.com, is introducing the independent craft brewer supporter seal. The BA is rolling out the new supporter seal for retailers, homebrew shops, state brewers guilds, festivals, websites, etc. — any champions of independent craft breweries.

Via Craftbeer.comm

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State of Beer Communication Call for Survey Takers

Zephyr Conferences is once again conducting an exhaustive survey of the state of beer communications. It’s been two years since our last survey of this type. With our recent re-branding to Beer Now (formerly Beer Bloggers and Writers Conference) we have already identified the need to provide information and value to all the types of beer communicators working to promote beer advocacy.

This means this survey is open to all types of beer communicators: beer bloggers, beer writers (professional and freelance), beer publication editors, beer podcast producers and hosts, Instagram Influencers, corporate beer bloggers/marketers, beer “vloggers,” and anyone else actively promoting beer.

Please help us by setting aside 7-10 minutes to take this anonymous survey. Anyone who provides contact information will be sent a recap of our results.

SURVEY CLOSES FRIDAY FEBRUARY 1, 2019

Via: beernow.org

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World’s Biggest Pub Quiz attracts close to 1,000 pubs – and counting!

Fundraising packs for the World’s Biggest Pub Quiz will be arriving over the next few weeks at the 970 pubs, bars and clubs across the UK who have already registered for this popular event, running between 3-7 March.

Organisers PubAid are urging more licensees to sign up now for the quiz, which is completely free of charge and offers a great way to attract customers into the pub, as well as supporting charities, including official charity partner Prostate Cancer UK. Pubs who register will receive a fundraising pack containing two sets of quiz questions, posters and social media assets to encourage customers to come along and join in. To sign up, visit: www.worldsbiggestquiz.pubaid.com.

Via www.beerguild.co.uk

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What We’re Drinking: The Great Cheap Beer Debate – February 2019

Here at the Growler, we believe there’s a time and place for every drink. Wine, liquor, N/A options, hard seltzer—even macro beers. Sure, we don’t talk about it much, but sometimes life calls for a basic beer to wash down whatever B.S. happened that day. And what better time to pay homage to our go-to macros than in our Great Debates issue? We invite you to do the same and share your favorite big-name beer with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Let us know if you loathe this idea, too; it is meant to be a debate, after all.

Via growlermag.com

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Yuengling Marks 190th Anniversary With Year-Long Celebration

D.G. Yuengling & Son, Inc., America’s Oldest Brewery®, is celebrating 190 years and six generations of family brewing. In 2019, Yuengling will commemorate its 190th anniversary by offering fans exciting packaging, promotions, special beers, and celebratory events throughout the year.

Since it was founded in 1829, America’s Oldest Brewery has remained fiercely independent, family-owned and continuously operated by the Yuengling family for six generations. Yuengling can now be enjoyed in 22 states with core beer brands: Yuengling® Traditional Lager, Light Lager, Black & Tan, and Golden Pilsner – the first new core product in 17 years and introduced in 2018 by the 6th generation – Jen, Wendy, Debbie and Sheryl Yuengling.

Via: Yuengling

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London’s Fuller’s Sells to Asahi

Surprising news came down late Friday that Fuller, Smith & Turner Brewing, better known as just Fuller’s had agreed to sell it’s brewery and brands (but not pubs) to Asahi UK.

Roger Protz takes a look at some of the business issues that may have led to the sale:

The second burning question is: Why did Fuller’s want to sell? It’s a highly successful business with profits of around £43 million a year.
But 90 per cent of the profits come from retailing. Profits from brewing have been falling for several years and this has led Fuller’s to join the well-worn path of brewers selling their production plants and becoming pub retailers. As some critics of Fuller’s have suggested, the writing has been on the wall for some time as the company busily built its retail side. As a result, it now owns more hotels than pubs.

While Boak & Bailey take a look at the more personal feelings the come around when a well respected and trusted brewery “sells out” and disappoints long loving fans:

And we worry about whether this means Fuller’s, as a brewery, will stagnate. What will motivate disenfranchised staff to try new things, or throw themselves into reviving old recipes? It’s been hard to find London Porter in any format for a couple of years – will this finally kill it off for good, along with poor old Chiswick? Look at Meantime: the quality or the core beer may be good, but the breadth of the offer is now distressingly bland.

and

We don’t know how this will turn out. We’re not going to boycott Fuller’s. We’re not ‘butthurt’. But something in the relationship has changed, and we will probably end up drinking less Fuller’s beer without thinking much about it.

Even Fuller’s own head brewer seemed a bit distressed:

All in all it’s a key turning point for London’s most storied brewery. I, personally a huge fan of Fuller’s, am hoping it’s be beginning of a fantastic new chapter.

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Boak & Bailey – Watney’s Red Barrel – how bad could it have been?

Watney’s (or Watney Mann, or Watney Combe Reid) was the Evil Corporation which sought to crush plucky small brewers and impose its own terrible beer on the drinking public. It acquired and closed beloved local breweries, and it closed pubs, or ruined them with clumsy makeovers.

Its Red Barrel was particularly vile – a symbol of all that was wrong with industrial brewing and national brands pushed through cynical marketing campaigns.

This, at least, was the accepted narrative for a long time, formed by the propaganda of the Campaign for Real Ale in its early years, and set hard through years of repetition.

But does it stand up to scrutiny? What if, contrary to everything we’ve heard, Red Barrel was actually kind of OK?

Via: Boak & Bailey

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Creature Comforts Announces Collaboration with Russian River for Get Comfortable 2019

Creature Comforts Brewing Company will launch the 2019 campaign of its flagship community outreach program, Get Comfortable, on February 6. Starting with the 2019 campaign, the program will begin partnering with another brewery each year to release a collaborative beer to generate funds for the campaign. In the 2019 Get Comfortable season, Creature Comforts will partner with Russian River Brewing Company.

Via craftbeer.com

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Canning Allagash White

Classics can stay classics while still getting a refresh. Such is the case for Allagash White, one of the staple Belgian beers in the United States. Allagash announced last week that they’ll be canning Allagash White, as well as a new beer in their core lineup: River Trip. I got in touch with Brett Willis, marketing specialist at Allagash, to learn more about the announcement.

Via www.porchdrinking.com

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