In case you lost track of all the new markets craft brewers launched in the last mo, we've put 'em all together for you in. Organized by state, this list includes craft brewer distribution expansions with sales expected to begin in Nov 2014.  While it may not be comprehensive, this list includes announcements made by the largest craft brewers and many expansions by smaller players.  

Grocery store operators in Colorado kicked off the new year by announcing they’ll once again seek to change state law that bars them from selling beer over 3.2% ABV and wine. Recall, grocers in the state have asked for the privilege for years on end; craft brewers oppose changing the current system, in which mostly independent liquor stores sell their beer. Grocers, behind Colorado Consumers for Choice coalition, hope to change “antiquated, silly and just frankly out of date” laws, according to a Colo Public Radio report. But no sign that 2015 will develop or end any differently than previous years.

Grocers in Wisc have a bid to change state law too: the Wisc Grocers Assn is looking into expanding sales of growlers to license holders that already sell pre-packaged beer, the Pierce County Herald wrote. Demand is clear, but the Tavern League isn’t thrilled: “tap beer is the last exclusive thing they offer,” or so the paper summarized commentary from the org’s prexy. Changes to what kind of licensees can fill growlers could come up in Missouri, too. Some there hope for a bill to expand growler-filling privileges to more than just a small group restaurant licensees, per a St Louis Post-Dispatch op-ed.

Sierra Nevada set to debut its two new year round intros, Hop Hunter IPA and Nooner Pilsner in coming weeks.  Hop Hunter IPA is featured as the first beer that uses “wet-hop character year-round.”  Founder Ken Grossman and co have been honing this process that allows Sierra to extract “distilled wet hop oil” all yr since “harvest season of 2012,” according to Esquire, noting Ken got idea from hop and mint farmer who “built a unique contraption for extracting fresh mint oils from his mint leaves.”  Indeed, “hop oils have been used over the years, but those have always come from dried cones,” Esquire elaborates.  Hop Hunter will be available in 12-ounce bottles and draught. 

Nooner Pilsner marks Sierra’s “first year-round lager,” co notes in latest press release, and will be “available on draught, in six-pack bottles, and in twelve pack cans.” Conveniently, Sierra will have a new canning line that does “more than 600 cans per minute” up and running at its Mills River, NC facility, in time for the release of Nooner Pilsner, according to latest blog entry.  Cans have become “a much more important part of what we do,” and “after a while it just made sense to bring cans to our second home in the east,” sez co.  Currently Sierra Pale 12 pk cans make up a little over 12% of total Sierra Pale sales, yet nearly 1/3 of brand’s growth in IRI scan data.

Lastly, Sierra will release Beer Camp Hoppy Lager, the Beer Camp Across America “collaboration with San Diego’s Ballast Point,” as part of co’s spring seasonal line-up.  Going forward, Sierra plans to “release one of the [collaboration] highlights from the past year” each spring.

Oskar Blues shipments up 25% to 149,000 bbls in 2014, co announced in press release this week.  Meanwhile, to start off 2015, Oskar Blues will enter 4 new states – Iowa with Iowa Beverages and Fleck Sales Co; Nebraska with Quality Brands of Omaha and Double Eagle; ME and VT with Sheehan family operations, Craft Beer Guild of Vermont and Craft Beer Guild of Maine – as well as Southern Illinois with Wirtz Beverage.  More partnerships will be announced soon in both Ia and Neb to fill out rest of those states.  And additions of VT and ME “fill out Oskar Blues’ footprint in the Northeast.”  All in, with new additions, Oskar Blues now in 40 states plus DC, and there’s “more to be announced soon,” co hints.

SweetWater volume increased 33% to 192,500 bbls sold, co announced, as it received nice boost from new cans, among other factors.  Indeed, cans already accounted for 25% of total sales for flagship SweetWater 420 Extra Pale Ale and SweetWater IPA.  In 2015, SweetWater will start canning Take Two Pils, and add “new all-can version of Tackle Box variety 12-packs.”  Another growth factor was handful of new states SweetWater entered in latter half of 2014 including Va, DC, Miss, OH and Tenn. Most new states could have bigger impact in 2015.  As previously announced, SweetWater also plans to enter Tex in Q1, and Chicagoland with Lakeshore Bev in April, along with “more cities and states” to be named.

Craft beer came out of the gate in 2015 looking a little less gussied up than it often does. While the segment has largely represented the “good news” of the beer industry for the last few years, a handful of widely shared stories shined light on some of the cracks in craft’s veneer. None more so than the long, questioning look at Boston Beer founder/chairman Jim Koch and his beloved Sam Adams brand from hometown Boston magazine. Painting a picture of a “pissed off” Jim, the profile identifies a growing gap between Boston Beer’s biz and the loudest, geekiest corners of craft. Published in print late last year, the piece appeared online Monday morning and racked up 7500 Facebook shares by end of biz. That hit 17K by Tuesday morning, over 20K at presstime.

The article hit a nerve. Backlash against the article appeared just as quickly as comments agreeing with claims that Sam Adams is “mediocre” and doesn’t deserve tap space from a couple Boston-area bar owners cited in the piece. Not so, the brand’s defenders countered. Is too, others commented. These disparate (and sometimes desperate) responses further highlight another growing fissure: the success of Sam Adams, and craft generally, no longer depends entirely on the kind of beer-focused accounts that initially built the brand and the segment. Being shunned by those kinds of accounts can be a hard pill to swallow, as the piece suggests in its account of Jim at a hometown bar last Oct. But Sam Adams is bigger than that now; craft is bigger than that now.

Too Big, Too Familiar To Be Cool; Who Needs Coolness?  Sam’s “coolness problem,” as the article calls it, is neither new nor exclusively Sam’s. Kurt and Rob Widmer and Deschutes’ founder Gary Fish echoed Jim’s frustration with the phenomenon in an interview with Marketwatch, also published Monday. “If we’re large and we’ve been successful, we can’t be cool anymore,” Gary summarized the thinking of some consumers. But “it’s a distinct minority of people who respond that way,” Kurt said, adding that “it’s a frustration because they tend to be rather vocal about it.” Those vocal consumers, on Facebook and Twitter, Beer Advocate, RateBeer and Untappd, take up more and more time of brewery employees now too, if not brewery owners. Criticisms offered in these forums trickle up and even if they represent the views of just the “1 or 2% who take that attitude,” as Kurt told Marketwatch, they can still sting. But to a greater and greater degree, the source of this noise is not the same as the source of growth for the largest craft brands.

Boston Beer Less Dependent on Beer  Boston Beer’s overall growth in 2014 was phenomenal and not to be forgotten in this context. But the article identifies yet another divide specific to the company: that growth came from brands that don’t give the company’s founder the warm and fuzzies. It posted solid growth for its flagship lager and big seasonal brands (tho that slowed as the year wore on). Instead, the biggest growth driver for Sam Adams was launch of Rebel IPA, a style Jim’s “been loath to make,” according to the article. But make them Sam Adams will: it launches bigger and smaller Rebel extensions, Rebel Rouser Double IPA and Rebel Rider Session IPA, this year.

Expanding view to total Boston Beer biz, it’s still growing gangbusters with Angry Orchard cider. Twisted Tea grew solidly too. But Jim “admits he has little love for” cider and tea in the article. He “refuses to appear in the ads or put the Boston Beer Company name on any of the cider or tea labels.” That being said, gotta be hard for any biz-owner to be too disappointed with the kind of success Boston’s had recently. So, “Koch may be disheartened, but he’s far from done,” the article says of Jim’s bullish attitude in its conclusion.

Roundup of Naming Trouble Shared Far and Wide  You’ve read about ’em plenty, but craft trademark disputes hit NPR’s The Salt, also on Monday, then got picked up by plenty of other non-beer sources like Grist, Consumerist and Gizmodo. Tho there’s little new news here, the piece follows a series of disputes indicating just how pervasive these issues are (a different version of the name game we played back in CBN vol 3, #63, in Dec 2012). Per NPR: SweetWater sent Lagunitas a cease-and-desist for its use of “420,” while Lagunitas has gone after brewers like Knee Deep when founder Tony Magee believes they infringe on his co’s trademark of “the arch presentation of those letters,” (IPA) he told NPR. Port/Lost Abbey “sued Moylan’s” over Celtic crosses and Moylan’s skirted issues with Four Peaks over “Kilt Lifter.” And no one’s talking about what went down between Australia’s Yellow Tail Wines and Ballast Point over Yellowtail Pale Ale (now just “Pale Ale”). The bottom-line: the issue’s not going away. Most signs point to continued strong growth for craft as a whole. But as it happens, as more brewers appear, as large brewers increase activity in the segment and competition gets tougher, trademark battles poised to get even uglier. We ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

“Rogue’s Eugene Public House and Track Town Brewery has closed” as of Dec 26, reported The New School.  Apparently this has been a long time coming according to paper, which criticized spot for being “rarely busy” and having brewing process “inefficiency” issues. However paper also points out that plenty of ex-brewers there have gone on to other related industry gigs in the local beer scene dating back to before Rogue even owned it, including founder of Hopworks Urban Brewery, Christian Ettinger; founder of Hop Valley Brewing, Trevor Howard; co-founder of Hess Brewing (in San Diego), Nate Sampson; and Tim Barr, “now a brewery consultant and brewer at Ground Breaker in Portland.”

Recall, Rogue’s main brewery and production facility is in Newport, Oreg, and co has two other “allied brewpubs” and “nine restaurant/public houses” from San Fran to Issaquah, according to company website.  Rogue also has a distillery, a separate farm for growing ingredients, and a partnership with Rogue Creamery to make “several cheddar cheeses infused with Rogue Ales.” 

Enjoy a favorite brew or two and a very Happy New Year!

Construction on New Belgium’s Asheville brewery has picked up these past couple mos, as site went from virtually no visible structure there to “now having the shell of the building in place,” Asheville general manager, Jay Richardson told Mountain Xpress (see photo here).  “Building activity will peak in the next two-three months,” as co will need to get the various large tanks in place “through the top” before completing the roof.  Similar to when Sierra Nevada facility was in construction, shipping these larger tanks to the brewery site will “require street closures and special accommodation from the N.C. Department of Transportation,” noted paper.  Then too, NBB officially will take ownership of “distribution center in Enka-Candler” this March, and “bulk of staffing for that facility will take place in spring and summer, though key positions will be posted sooner.”  

In Ohio “at least 25 breweries launched operations in 2014,” and “nearly half” are nanobreweries, reported Oh-focused beer blog called The Beer Blog.  Recall, Oh is one of 6 new states (13 total) to have over 100 breweries in-state, according to Brewers Assn (see Dec 10 issue).  Among new breweries, Platform Brewing was recently mentioned as one of “small business highlights” in Cleveland area by Cleveland.com.  Owner Justin Carson and his business partner “launched [the] brewery, tasting room and production incubator” this July, and also have a separate co, JC BeerTech, based in Cleveland “that cleans draft-beer lines for restaurants and distributors” across the country, noted paper.  Another notable new brewery, Pinups and Pints, calls itself “the country’s first strip club brewery,” noted The Beer Blog.  And interestingly, an “emerging trend in Ohio” is winery breweries, such as Maize Valley Winery, which launched a nanobrewery this year. 

Blog also points to various established in-state brewers that’ve announced or completed “major expansion projects,” such as Great Lakes Brewing, Thirsty Dog, Jackie O’s, Columbus Brewing, Maumee Bay, Lager Heads, Dayton Brewing, and Fat Heads (opened a brewpub in Portland, Oreg).  Editor’s note: two other hot Oh brewers not mentioned, Rhinegeist and MadTree, recently announced expansion projects in home-state (see Dec 10 issue), and Rhinegeist also opened up a small distributorship in Ky late this yr.   

Then too, a handful of “major craft brewers” entered or expanded territory in Oh this past yr, including New Belgium (entered late 2013), Deschutes, Lagunitas (expanded into Cincy), SweetWater, and Boulevard Brewing (plans to enter Oh in Jan 2015).  Recall, NBB and Deschutes (to a lesser extent) picked up big chunks of mkt share in Oh supers this yr (see Dec 17 issue), while SweetWater has yet to show up in top-scan data, as it didn’t enter state ‘til later in the yr.   

World of Beer Lakewood, OH Location Closes Suddenly; In “Aggressive Growth Mode” Elsewhere Craft-centric chain World of Beer has suddenly closed down its Lakewood, OH location, reported Cleveland.com.  Two days ago co made official announcement to confirm “it has closed” via Facebook, however co oddly made a post about New Year’s Eve plans “as recently as Saturday.”  There was “no notice, no nothing, we’ve had no callbacks,” said owner of the building, Brad Kowit, in follow up article.  One reason World of Beer may have closed is due to lack of a kitchen, which is “seen as a key growth driver,” and “this particular location, it wasn’t there to add the kitchen like we wanted to,” World of Beer vp of marketing, Terry Haley told paper.   “We reached out, saying ‘maybe we could do a kitchen or something,’” said Brad, yet “never heard back.” Lakewood location opened in 2013, and “was the only WOB in Northeast Ohio.” 

Elsewhere World of Beer is in “an aggressive growth mode with very high aspirations for new openings in 2015 and subsequent years,” said Terry, including plans to open a new location “near Ohio State’s campus” sometime in 2015.  Co has 65 locations thruout the country, “15 of which opened this year alone,” he told paper.  Northeast Ohio mkt is “definitely a place we’re going to keep a close eye on,” tho Terry’s “hesitant to put a time frame on it.” 

A year after Duvel Moortgat USA acquired its hometown brewery, Kansas City drank up over a million cases of Boulevard this year, continuing its support of the local brand. The brewery’s KC-area distrib, Central States Beverage announced it’ll break thru the million-case mark just before 2014 ends, the first Boulevard distrib ever to sell that much in a single year. Growth of the brand locally has come from Central States’ efforts “focusing on high volume sales in local stadiums and entertainment venues” as well as “making the beer a tap-handle necessity” in local bars and restaurants, the co wrote. It’s also “more than doubled” its Boulevard sales in and around KC since it got the brand back in 2007. Boulevard shipped about 130K bbls that yr; a half-million cases pencils out to about 28% of the co’s total volume. A million cases would be over 36% of 200K bbls, which Boulevard was approaching in 2014, after shipping about 185K bbls last year. Recall, Boulevard’s been expanding distribution significantly in recent months, with plans to continue that into early 2015, starting with Oh in Jan.