Interesting article with a different way to look at craft breweries “selling out” to the beer giants. Made me look at things a little bit differently
Interesting first post. 
Welcome. This article has obviously been written from the biased perspective of the Giant Brewing Conglomerate and has been bounced around the Facebooks in an odd propaganda ploy. I don’t blame brewery owners that sell out, business is business, and brewing is a business after all. But the Giant Brewing Conglomerate and its propaganda machine is not going to work here. Just sayin’. Suspicious first post.
Just wait… when there’s an inevitable contraction in the growth of craft beer, that’s when the cuts will begin. To a global corporation, these are “brands”, nothing more. If they can make more money by changing recipes, consolidating operations, and cutting staff, they will.
Indeed. First and, so far, only post.
When craft breweries sell out, it allows ME to remain steadfast in the brewing of my own. I’ll start worrying when the various maltings, hops growers, etc monopolize.
For me selling out would allow me to take the money and run as soon as the sales contract, which surely forces the founders to stick around a few years, allowed me to stop “innovating” for the Giant Brewing Conglomerate.
Stan Hieronymus posted a link to this article last week, with this counterpoint as well.
My big complaint in all this is how distributorship is controlled. ABI gets exclusivity, and the laws inject monopoly into the equation, keeping everybody else from distributing their beers.
There was a time that seeing a tap list of consisting of Stella, 10 Barrel, Elysian, Ballast Point, Shock Top, and Bud/Bud light would have been a happy sight for me. Not any more. Its 1 company and 1 company only. I refuse to buy any of these brands now.
Totally agree. I support a brewery’s right to sell to the monopoly, but I get to vote with my dollars, and I don’t cast votes for AB. Their agenda is clear.
Hard to say whether the greater distribution access and increased production capacities will result in altered recipes ultimately, but if it is truly about the beer in terms of your beer selection, one view is that it should not matter who is making it and how it is distributed, as long as it remains true to the original.
From my own perspective, the key is whether there is a significant barrier to entry into the marketplace preventing the making of beer for commercial sale. As long as the ability remains relatively easy to open a microbrewery, brew pub or similar self distributed operation, there is hope for craft beer. But as to distribution on a broader scale - I don’t think that the big guys will allow the rules to change. They have retail shelf space and won’t give that up.
2nd hand knowledge has it that the brewers at Elysian are feeling pressure to alter the recipes. I’ve heard of at least one person that left over it.
What a surprise.