From flickr user michaelallroy under a CC license

Beers like Natty Lite, Miller Lite, Bud Light, and PBR are getting a price increase to drive cheap-beer lovers toward more expensive brands.  Macrobrewers expect this will mean a transition to beers like Budweiser or other brands they own, but I can’t help but think it will also drive them to craft brewers.

I’d expect breweries like Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada to be beneficiaries of the move, mostly because they’re on many of the same shelves.  Also, in states where you can actually get it, Yuengling will probably also see a nice boost in sales.

From AdAge:

As brand manager for Keystone Light, Elina Vives would seem to be in a tough spot these days. The below-premium beer made big gains in the past few years as the economy tanked. But with trends improving, MillerCoors, along with Anheuser Busch, is raising prices on budget beers in a move to get drinkers to trade up to more-expensive brews such as Miller Lite and Bud Light, which struggled in the recession.

“What they’re really trying to do, both of them, is drive business to the premium brands where they make more money,” said Benj Steinman, president of Beer Marketer’s Insights. But for Keystone, which is owned by MillerCoors, that could mean losing momentum that made it one of the fastest share gainers in all of beer. So what’s a brand manager to do?

Also, as a side note, I had no idea Bud Light was so much more popular than Miller Lite.  It’s all bad, but when I’m somewhere and don’t have much of a choice, I always grab Miller Lite first.

From flickr user iandavid

Yesterday, brewery president Steve Hindy and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg opened a long-planned expansion of Brooklyn Brewery.  The expansion is absolutely huge, going from 12,000 barrels of beer per year to 120,000.

Less newsworthy was something Bloomberg said while he cutting the ribbon — he puts ice in his beer.

Standing inside the just-expanded Brooklyn Brewery yesterday, the mayor revealed that his unorthodox approach to drinking beer requires ice.

“I actually put ice in my beer,” the mayor said. “Most people don’t.”

Hearing a gasp from the crowd, he explained: “I know. I’ve always done it. I don’t think it comes from Boston.”

Brewery President Steve Hindy was too polite to set the mayor straight on the correct way to savor his popular suds.

From flickr user Raymond Barlow

Word is that your favorite hoppy beers could be in for some recipe changes if their brewers didn’t plan ahead and contract for the right amount of hops this year.  Rogue points to some news from Beer Business Daily warning that a 30% drop in the American hop harvest could have a negative impact.

The explosive popularity of hoppy beer has become bittersweet as the total American harvest was off 30% for the year, according to December’s USDA hop harvest report. Especially screwed now are those brewers relying on smaller-yield, aroma-centric American hops to make mainstream-barreling IPAs, since Simcoe, Citra and Amarillo are largely (if not totally) sold for the year.

IT SHOULDN’T BE A SURPRISE.  Unlike 2007’s sneak-attack, this scarcity was established back in June, according to the BA’s Chris Swersey.  That’s when members learned that both acreage and years were significantly down. It’s just now coming to a head, however, as brewers wonder if they’ll have enough of specific varieties.

They point out that Sierra Nevada is already looking toward whole-leaf hops to help fill the gap from a potential pellet shortage.  I’m also curious as to what this means for the average homebrewer looking for something like Simcoe hops at their local hombrew shop — probably nothing too terrible, but it’s possible we could see small price increases for the average 5-gallon batch of Joe Homebrewer’s IPA.

From flickr user Thomas Hawk

It’s obvious that the folks at the Brewers Association have an enviable job when one of the organization’s biggest “problems” is that craft breweries are outgrowing the definition of what it means to be a craft brewer.

Last week the Association announced that it was tripling the size of breweries that were considered “small” by craft brewery standards.  The previous limit, 2 million barrels per year, was sure to be eclipsed by the makers of Sam Adams and because of its ongoing success.

The industry’s largest craft brewer, The Boston Beer Company, is poised to become the first craft brewer to surpass 2 million barrels of traditional beer within the next few years. Loss of The Boston Beer Company’s production in craft brewing industry statistics would inaccurately reflect on the craft brewing industry’s market share.

In addition to Boston Beer, the current growth trajectory of other sizable BA member breweries places them on a course approaching the 2 million barrel threshold in the coming years.

Nick Matt, chair of the Brewers Association board of directors correctly summarized: “Rather than removing members due to their success, the craft brewing industry should be celebrating our growth.”

Great news, and a wonderful problem to have to solve.

From flickr user jon starbuck

Travel writer Doug Lansky highlights a survey of 3,400 beer drinkers from around the world, asking them which country makes the world’s worst beer.  The winner?  The United States, by a lot.

According to Lansky, 36.2% of beer drinkers from 99 countries ranked the U.S. as the worst beer producing country, which dwarfed the 6.9% who said China.  The American rating was actually 7% worse than last year.

The full list is below, but don’t panic.  Even considering Germany or Belgium, the reality is that American beer drinkers enjoy what is probably the best beer selection anywhere in the world, and those beers are produced by other Americans.    What this survey seems to show is that American craft brewers aren’t distributing — and more than that, it means is that they’re not marketing — overseas.

For now, that’s just fine.  The American craft beer market still has plenty of room to grow (even though the overall beer market has been drug down by the dead weight of the major macrobreweries), and when that market has been satisfied, I think you’ll see plenty of craft brewers distributing much more widely.  Most craft breweries don’t even distribute nationally yet — a frustration that keeps someone like me from enjoying a New Belgium’s Fat Tire on a regular basis.

The real problem with this is that the rest of the world sees American macrobreweries the same way American beer lovers do — not positively.  With their marketing budgets, distribution networks, and business deals, they have absolutely decimated the reputation of American beer across the world.  In 10 or 20 years, should Sam Adams or Sierra Nevada want to seriously market and distribute in China, India, or across Europe, what kind of negative preconceptions will they be up against?  How badly will it hurt their ability to sell and expand?

Clearly, American craft breweries have shown an admirable tenacity while battling the macros on their own turf.  And by all accounts, they’re winning.  Can they do that across the globe when the time comes, if it comes?

As promised, the list of nine is below.  It’s actually not a terrible list, with the exception of the US and UK.

The Worst Beer Producing Countries in the World (from Dough Lansky)

1. United States, 36.2%
2. China, 6.9%
3. Italy, 6.9%
4. France, 3.5%
5. Mexico, 3.5%
6. United Kingdom, 2.8%
7. Australia, 2.4%
8. India, 2.4%

From flickr user Travlr

When we last checked in with Tampa, Florida’s Cigar City Brewing, they were fighting the good fight against distributor monopolization.

They’re back in the news again, and after fighting the good fight for the permanence of their own tasting room, they have a victory to show for it.  From the St. Petersburg Times…

The Tampa City Council Thursday gave initial approval to a controversial wet-zoning that pitted an award-winning local brewery against neighbors who opposed the business’ beer-tasting room.

Council members voted 4-3 in favor of Cigar City Brewing’s request to make the temporary approval for its tasting room on W Spruce Street permanent.

What swayed the city council weren’t threats from prudish constituents or dollars from big-brewer lobbyists, but jobs.

Thursday’s vote came after more than two dozen people, most of them supporting the brewery, said the council should allow the tasting room to stay. They said the tasting room was an integral part of how the brewery markets its beers. Taking the tasting room away, they said, would hurt the business.

“I’m asking the City Council to let me keep my job,” Cigar City production manager Doug Dozark said.

The line of supporters also included patrons, other business owners and even competitors who said Cigar City’s ability to thrive in the recession, going from two to 23 employees, is something the city should support.

Craft beer is good for the economy, plain and simple.  The more we can argue that, the more we can change draconian and outdated policies across the country, leading to more beer and more jobs.

From flickr user smohundro

Sorry, Four Loko, your ride is over.  The FDA has decided to ban seven types of caffeinated alcohol — some of which bear a distant resemblance to beer  — effectively forcing manufacturers to significantly alter their recipes or pull the products completely.

From CNN…

The move follows a year-long review by the FDA, which gave the companies 15 days to either reformulate their products or face possible seizure under federal law, said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, the agency’s principal deputy commissioner. Experts have said the caffeine used in the beverages can mask the effects of alcohol, leaving drinkers unaware of how intoxicated they are.

“FDA does not find support for the claim that the addition of caffeine to these alcoholic beverages is ‘generally recognized as safe,’ which is the legal standard,” Sharfstein told reporters. “To the contrary, there is evidence that the combinations of caffeine and alcohol in these products pose a public health concern.”

One familiar name was impacted by the decision: Rhonda Kallman, brewer of now-banned Moonshot, played a very significant role at Sam Adams and was an early force in the craft beer world.

Tampa ABC affiliate WFTS ran a great story about Cigar City Brewery’s uphill fight against big distributors in Florida.  It’s a fight that involves big business and members of Congress all trying to shut them out of the market in the Tampa area.

From flickr user t3hWIT

Good news for all of you who want a casual beer to go with your heftier craft brews: Yuengling, a brewery that has frustrated many beer lovers with their slow and meticulous expansion along the east coast, is taking a very big step.  The brewery has announced that they’ve purchased an old Coors plant in Memphis, TN, which means you have an alternative if you’re looking for an American light lager.

From the Wall Street Journal…

Yuengling, the oldest brewer in the U.S., has signed a letter of intent to buy the Memphis facility from Hardy Bottling Co., which purchased it from Molson Coors Brewing Co. in 2006.

Acquiring the facility would give the Pottsville, Pa., company—the seventh-largest U.S. beer supplier by sales volume—a fourth manufacturing facility and help it expand distribution beyond its current 13 states in the eastern U.S.

“Memphis is an ideal location,” said David Casinelli, chief operating officer of Yuengling, in a phone interview. “At some point we’re going to run out of room” at its existing plants in Pennsylvania and Florida.

Budweiser

USA Today reports on the latest ad strategy for faltering Budweiser: giving their beer away and hoping people buy it later.

To appeal to the under-30 set that has ignored the brand — but is a prime consumer group for beer — Budweiser will unleash its biggest-ever national free-sample effort in trendy bars and eateries. The campaign begins Monday, with the slogan “Grab some Buds.”

The hype culminates on Sept. 29, when the brand hosts the “Budweiser National Happy Hour,” a bid by Bud to nudge folks to at least try a free brewski. The free samples for those 21 and up range from 6 ounces to 12 ounces, depending on state and local rules.

They know how things have changed in the last 10 years, and craft beer is a major problem for them.

The promotion comes as upscale consumers are turning to craft beers, the price-conscious are trading down, and others switched to light beers. “It’s a triple whammy,” says Michael Bellas, CEO at Beverage Marketing.

Executives at Anheuser-Busch, a wholly owned subsidiary of Belgium-based Anheuser–Busch InBev, insist they can reignite interest from younger drinkers with an image upgrade and a reintroduction via sampling.

I’m not sure which “trendy bars” they’re referring to, but trendy has meant craft beer or high-end cocktails.  I’m not sure how Budweiser fits with any of that.