Changing Beer Scene

Sad day for Bud

Budweiser is no longer the King of Beer as we once knew it. Instead, Inbev a international beer company made one of the largest shareholder cash offers in history. The Board did not go quietly and were unceremoniously removed. They tried valiantly to save the company but in the end shareholders were swayed by the $70 a share offering price. Sometimes money is just louder than tradition, jobs, patriotism, and keeping something American. Even if you are a craft beer snob and never let that stuff touch your lips it is a sad day for beer drinkers around the country. Is there anything made in America? Oh Yeah, that craft beer from your favorite local brewer.

Distribution Chaos Ahead?

Now for local beer news. Alaska Distributors which for many years has been the distributor of many local beers and fine out of state beers is disbanding, sold, broken up, assimilated. Whatever you want to call their demise there will no longer be Alaskan Distributing. Columbia Distributing going through their own changes is combining with Hood River out of Portland to create COHO Distributing. A cute fish that is chomping a huge chunk of the Alaskan Product Book. No one yet knows where the various brewers will end up. This is huge. Will Sierra go with the new guys? Where will Alaskan Brewing (no relationship to the distributor) go? Every brewery is evaluating their options. This is big money. Probably one of the largest transfers of products in State History. There are so many wineries and breweries in this company. Will they all go quietly to the new Coho? The distributor selling brands gets paid for the valued assigned to the accounts and revenue it created with that brand. This is really big money. Stay tuned it will turn the beer business upside down for a time. As always happens in these huge deals chaos inevitably reigns.