AB just bought Elysian, thoughts?

Reads 25539 • Replies 395 • Started Friday, January 23, 2015 11:28:57 AM CT

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Message after4ever P admin beers 8025 º places 322 º 23:52 Sat 1/24/2015 Originally posted by CLevar What’s this "Shelf space" thing? You can always go buy beer on tap and in growler on site. Can’t get more fresh. Can’t beat the price. Won’t ever be more "local". And you are supporting the brewery/taproom well as they are getting much better margins. That’s true. Bottled beer doesn’t really matter, kegs can never get old, kegs can never be priced highly, and kegs can never be shipped outside of the area where they were made. And since everyone buys beer in taprooms, breweries don’t need to worry about getting distribution and finding retail accounts if they want to grow. They just need to not be lazy, and brew more beerzzzz!
Message furthur beers 2164 º places 40 º 23:59 Sat 1/24/2015 31 pages and no one has asked if "corporate beer still sucks"?
Message CLevar places 23 º 00:20 Sun 1/25/2015 Im simply pointing out that only thinking about shelf space when it comes to drinking local beer is rather myopic. Sure, AB may be able to crowd someone out of some shelf space at the local bottle shop. But you still have the taproom- local, fresh, better price, better for the brewery. The sky is not falling folks. It’s a great time to be a beer drinker.

Message Reid beers 3533 º places 95 º 00:27 Sun 1/25/2015 What i find odd is that the same kind of folks who are generally OK with AB doing this were the same who for years said AB brewers were the best in the world and could easily make world class beers of any style. But they cant so they have to buy good brewers. Why is this so? The best the world class brewers of AB could do was Shock top and a few average pale ales
Message poisoneddwarf beers 5619 º places 26 º 00:43 Sun 1/25/2015 Originally posted by CLevar What’s this "Shelf space" thing? You can always go buy beer on tap and in growler on site. Can’t get more fresh. Can’t beat the price. Won’t ever be more "local". And you are supporting the brewery/taproom well as they are getting much better margins. I can’t tell if you’re joking or not. When AB buys a craft brewery, the spot on the shelf devoted to Elysian, 10 Barrel, Goose Island belongs to AB. No other true craft beer can go in that spot because it’s occupied by an AB/InBev product. There are only so many spots on the grocery shelves to hold craft beer, and when an increasing amount of craft breweries get owned by AB, those spots are now owned by a giant corporation. Not as much room for the smaller guys. It’s true that AB distributors hold a lot of influence in a lot of markets. If a Bud distributor wants to put a big Super Bowl display of Bud Light 18 packs at the front of the store, they might say, "Give us that spot on the shelf where Bale Breaker (or insert whatever small brewery might be local to you) is so we can put an Elysian beer there instead." What’s the store owner going to do? Are they going to say no, we don’t want to display the largest beer sponsor of the NFL here during the Super Bowl, we’d rather sell a couple six packs of Bale Breaker a week. What’s this hypothetical store owner going to do, CLevar? Getting back to your original point, yeah, we can always go check out taprooms, but what about the casual beer drinker that wants to pick up a six pack at the grocery store before the big game and doesn’t know that Elysian is owned by a giant corporation? The Elysian beer might get bought out of sheer ignorance about what is owned by a giant corporation and what is independent. This type of scenario happens all the time, and more and more money that could have gone to independent small brewers instead goes to the giant conglomerate that honestly doesn’t need any more money.
Message after4ever P admin beers 8025 º places 322 º 01:38 Sun 1/25/2015 Originally posted by CLevar Im simply pointing out that only thinking about shelf space when it comes to drinking local beer is rather myopic. Sure, AB may be able to crowd someone out of some shelf space at the local bottle shop. But you still have the taproom- local, fresh, better price, better for the brewery. The sky is not falling folks. It’s a great time to be a beer drinker. Who is talking about shelf space in the context of drinking local beer? This thread is about major multinationals with massive distro networks building portfolios of established craft brands so they can strong-arm shelf space for products under their control. That’s exactly the problem with sellouts like this. AB won’t mess with QA, recipes, ingredients, or brands. They will exploit any leverage this buyout gives them--and that’s at retail, be it pour or shelf. If anything, they will give Elysian and the CBA access to more hops, in particular, by opening up slots in large contracts for them. The whole problem here is monopolization, which happens at point of sale. Yes, there are ways around it. That’s what discriminating craft beer customers will now use, to support independents. But that’s no consolation if you’d like to see a level playing field based on pure merit at POS.
Message Reid beers 3533 º places 95 º 01:43 Sun 1/25/2015 CBA is only 33% AB owned as far as i know

Message Beerdrinker79 beers 2189 º places 7 º 02:46 Sun 1/25/2015 Originally posted by after4ever Originally posted by CLevar Im simply pointing out that only thinking about shelf space when it comes to drinking local beer is rather myopic. Sure, AB may be able to crowd someone out of some shelf space at the local bottle shop. But you still have the taproom- local, fresh, better price, better for the brewery. The sky is not falling folks. It’s a great time to be a beer drinker. Who is talking about shelf space in the context of drinking local beer? This thread is about major multinationals with massive distro networks building portfolios of established craft brands so they can strong-arm shelf space for products under their control. That’s exactly the problem with sellouts like this. AB won’t mess with QA, recipes, ingredients, or brands. They will exploit any leverage this buyout gives them--and that’s at retail, be it pour or shelf. If anything, they will give Elysian and the CBA access to more hops, in particular, by opening up slots in large contracts for them. The whole problem here is monopolization, which happens at point of sale. Yes, there are ways around it. That’s what discriminating craft beer customers will now use, to support independents. But that’s no consolation if you’d like to see a level playing field based on pure merit at POS. I agree, it seems that some people on this website don’t understand how important this is, this could be nothing, or this could be the start of the end of craft beer as we know it. It may sound mellow dramatic, but throughout history there have been highs and lows in this industry, we have been lucky the past 30 years to experience a revolution, but that doesn’t mean it can’t end. And things like this start and end in small steps, they take a little at a time, before you know it, the whole industry has changed.
Message VoodooBock beers 2 º 02:49 Sun 1/25/2015 No more Elysian for me.
Message Erlangernick beers 6 º places 2 º 05:26 Sun 1/25/2015 Originally posted by VoodooBock No more Elysian for me. I remember when Elysian bottles started showing up in Oregon round about the turn of the millennium. I had been to the brewpub before that and enjoyed it immensely, and had the luck of meeting Cantwell & Buehler there through people I was there with (and also knew Buehler’s sister from Rogue), and even then, I was quite "meh" on the bottled stuff. There was so much good local beer already to buy, why would I bother with foreign Seattle stuff? Loki Lager was a nice addition though.