After taking last week off, we had to talk about on the Beer with Strangers podcast. Doug and Shawn both were at the National Homebrewer’s Convention last weekend, Tony has a beer festival coming up this weekend and there is all sorts of good bad and odd news in the beer world this week. You can listen to the audio at BeerwithStrangers.com or subscribe on iTunes.
9,000 reasons to love craft beer
Jim Koch thinks the craft brewing industry could double the number of breweries now operating before it reaches saturation, I’m not inclined to disagree. We could use a couple-three more here on the Shore so that everyone was within a walk or short drive from their nearest brewery. I think it isn’t outrageous to say that a lot of the big distribution money is probably off the table, and shelf space is going to be an issue going forward. But small to mid-size breweries serving their communities and the local area generally? Yes. That seems really likely.
Update
Apparently they were able to salvage the yeast from the bottles that were discovered off Australia. Although everyone apparently is interested in what the beer tastes like, I’ll be the yeast is where the value is. Homebrewers likely would get a kick out of using that yeast for their own beers.
More Market news
I’m always a little suspicious when there are news stories about stock picks that seem a little too much like paid ads. The attached story is one of those. We’ll discuss whether a business plan that is centered on creating a massive company just as consumer preference seems to be turning away from conglomerates, is really the indicator of a solid stock.
Big news
This is kind of a big deal, but you expect that eventually people are going to have to move on. There doesn’t seem to be any bad blood. I guess after helping to grow one of the world’s powerhouse craft beers it’s time to maybe get back to smaller batches. It would be a shame if he ended up as, say, head of acquisition for Coors, or whatever…
Craft beer folks tend to like gadgets, and this is as gadgety as it gets, glasswise. It’s a little weird that Molson is investing in the kind of glassware technology that isn’t 100 percent compatible with the big beer lifestyle, but it is cool that they acknowledge there are better and worse ways to serve beer. Finally, in the top ’em off culture that pervades bars, where too often head is an invitation to criticisms of underpouring, I wonder who this is for?
