Contemporary Authors

• Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business Chicago Review Press (Chicago, IL), 2018

1. Barrel-aged stout and selling out : Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and how craft beer became big business LCCN 2017050648 Type of material Book Personal name Noel, Josh, author. Main title Barrel-aged stout and selling out : Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and how craft beer became big business / Josh Noel. Edition First edition. Published/Produced Chicago, Illinois : Chicago Review Press, [2018] Projected pub date 1812 Description pages cm ISBN 9781613737217 (trade paper)

• Takeout - https://thetakeout.com/talking-craft-beer-sellouts-with-the-guy-who-wrote-th-1826306143

  Talking “craft beer sellouts” with the guy who wrote the book on them

  Kate Bernot
  5/28/18 8:40pmFiled to: BEER
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  Photo: Michelle Kanaar
  Nothing riles up the craft beer world like news of yet another brewery getting bought up by “Big Beer.” Chicago’s Goose Island was the first such acquisition by Anheuser-Busch back in 2011, and at the time, no one could be certain what lay ahead for the industry. Now, a mere seven years later, Anheuser-Busch InBev has bought up nine more breweries, including craft darlings like Seattle’s Elysian and Asheville, North Carolina’s Wicked Weed. Other alcohol companies including Constellation, MillerCoors, Heineken, and Duvel Moortgat have done the same. Consolidation has become familiar in even the rebellious world of craft beer, just as it has in other industries.

  So 2018 is just the right time for the publication of Josh Noel’s Barrel-Aged Stout And Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, And How Craft Beer Became Big Business, out on June 1 from Chicago Review Press. Noel, the Chicago Tribune’s beer and travel reporter, has the benefit of both hindsight and foresight. Enough years have passed since the first craft brewery “sold out” to show the beer world what that process looks like, but we’re still in the midst of craft beer’s collective path forward. There are more breweries in the U.S. than at any other time in history—but what the future of American craft beer looks like is still defined day by day, pint by pint.

  Having read Noel’s book, not only do I highly recommend it to beer fans, but I’d suggest it to anyone interested in business, art, and how the two collide. Josh Noel and I spoke by phone about beer, business, and why Big Beer means business in the craft world.

  The Takeout: How and when did craft beer take on a moral sheen? Did the breweries themselves create that?

  Josh Noel: I think it was there from the beginning, because craft beer was very much a reaction to Big Beer initially. It was so long ago now, relatively, but there were fewer than 100 breweries in the late ’70s. There was no choice on American taps and beer shelves, and craft beer was a reaction to that. It gave us diversity and flavor, and it was a delicious underdog. I think it developed that moral sheen very sincerely and very deservedly.

  TO: Is craft beer still countercultural?

  JN: Parts of it are countercultural. The parts that are really true about experimentation and the next thing, I think that’s countercultural. The first New England IPA was pretty countercultural and now they’ve been sort of commodified. But now, someone’s laboring on the next countercultural thing in beer. A beautiful, unfiltered pilsner is almost countercultural these days—now, it’s like dropping the gimmicks and the bullshit is countercultural.

  TO: What was the most misunderstood aspect of the Goose Island deal?

  JN: I think there’s a lot of them… Probably the most revealing ones to me were the amount of discord that was happening behind the scenes as Goose Island was becoming a part of the Anheuser-Busch machine. A lot of that stuff was just out of view and media was actually reporting the opposite. But as a part of the media who was telling the story at that time, how were we supposed to know? I guess that’s what we’re supposed to do as journalists, and digging in is what I got to do with this book.

  TO: What was the most surprising piece of what you learned?

  JN: The fact that [Goose Island founder] John Hall had actually written a letter of resignation because he was so fed up with how Anheuser-Busch was handling Goose Island was really surprising to me. So I was surprised as I gained more understanding of A-B’s role in all of this. I don’t think I realized the degree to which they have evolved. From the outside it looks like they bought their first craft brewery in 2011 and went on to buy nine more, but it’s not that simple. And I didn’t realize until I dug in that there was a really profound evolution within that company since they bought Goose Island. They didn’t know what they were doing at the beginning. And I think they’ve figured it out. To their credit, these guys are some of the most brilliant business people in the world. I think they figured it out certainly more than they haven’t.

  TO: What question or detail would you have loved to answer or decipher but couldn’t answer?

  JN: I guess that there’s no limit to the amount of information I would have liked to have turned up on the mechanics of Anheuser-Busch’s acquisition spree. I was able to find out that they were close to acquiring Firestone-Walker, but that didn’t happen. That was a nice development to turn over. I was glad to find out that Left Hand took the meeting with them, even though they had no intention of selling. I know that there were other deals that got close and weren’t executed; I’d like to have details and a strong narrative on each one of those. But those things are really hard to turn up. There’s no public record; there’s no paper trail; they’re signing non-disclosure agreements.

  TO: Do you believe that what’s in the glass, the beer itself, matters most?

  JN: I don’t think it’s the only thing that matters, partially because there’s so much good beer out there now. I enjoy going to a taproom and buying a beer that was made three days ago on the other side of that wall. I think that’s cool, and I prefer that experience to buying something made in a massive, faceless brewing plant 1000 miles away. If you’re writing about Goose Island IPA in 2018, you’re doing a disservice to your reader if you’re not talking about the fact that it’s made by Anheuser-Busch. It’s a Goose Island brand, not a Goose Island beer.

  TO: It’s really hard for consumers to understand the distribution portion of the industry, yet that’s where a lot of important choices and rules and laws play out. How can the public follow it? Should they have to?

  JN: I personally think yes, it’s important, but that aligns with my own personal politics. I will always come down on the side of knowing where your money goes when you spend it. It’s not fun to pay attention to that stuff; it’s complicated. Because I think it’s important personally and as a journalist, that’s why I spent a lot of effort trying to make [the distribution tier] very clear for people [in the book] and in a way that would educate and resonate with people. I didn’t want to get lost in the weeds, didn’t want this to be geared toward the 1 percent of beer nerd. That said, some people just won’t give a shit—the “if it tastes good, I’m going to drink it” crowd. It was important for me to lay the information out for those people and I hope the whole distribution tier and Anheuser-Busch’s role in it does matter to people.

  The long-term effects could be pretty severe in terms of beer choice, but they’re decades away.
  TO: How big of a threat to the vibrancy of craft do you think “the illusion of choice” is, or seeing what looks like a bunch of different beers on a menu that are all actually owned by the same company?

  JN: I think the illusion of choice argument is real. I think Anheuser-Busch is fairly clearly banking on the illusion of choice and being able to have six things on tap from “six different breweries” that may not in fact be six different breweries; they may all come from the same tanks. So yeah, I think it’s probably a very long way away, but the Anheuser-Busch strategy could chip away at consumer choice… Anheuser-Busch is out to get as big as it can in craft, which is just not true of most of the breweries if you think about it. [Chicago brewery] Half Acre is not out to get as big as it can; the best breweries operate on consumer pull rather than pushing to consumers. The long-term effects could be pretty severe in terms of beer choice, but they’re decades away.

  TO: At the end of all this, how do you feel about Anheuser-Busch? Is it good or bad for American beer overall; neutral; or both?

  JN: I mean there’s journalistic neutrality; I’m just sort of here to chronicle it. But then honestly when you write a book about something, your relationship with it goes a bit deeper than it does with a 600-word newspaper article. Now with the hindsight of book writing, I’d say I have a lot of admiration for those guys. I think they’re very smart. They’re fairly progressive and open minded, I think way more than the old A-B people were back when it was St. Louis- and American-run. These guys are worldly, and aggressive, and just really sharp . That said, they’re also a $250 billion or so company hyper-focused on shareholder return and they’re out to dominate American beer and American craft beer. And I think those are both the realities of the situation.

  TO: What do you see the beer landscape looking like 10 years from now? 25 years?

  JN: Breweries will sort of hit the [saturation] number eventually. [Former Goose Island brewmaster] Greg Hall has long said it will be about 10,000, which I buy. You can go into a lot of communities in this country and find fresh beer made locally and that’s a great thing. I think A-B will be the biggest craft beer company in the U.S. and never relinquish that title, ever.

• Journal Sentinel - https://www.jsonline.com/story/entertainment/beer/2018/06/13/how-goose-island-became-poster-beer-selling-out-conglomerate/686138002/

  How craft beer became big business is heart of 'Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out'
  Kathy Flanigan, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Published 6:00 a.m. CT June 13, 2018 | Updated 6:40 a.m. CT June 14, 2018
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  (Photo: Chicago Review Press)

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  The Milwaukee tradition of standing in line for special beer releases the day after Thanksgiving started here with Lakefront Brewery's Black Friday event.

  But it owes a debt to Chicago's Goose Island.

  The Chicago craft brewery was the first to release its barrel-aged Bourbon County Stout on Black Friday. It was more serendipity than marketing plan. The liquor store was across the street from the brewpub. In the end, it was a master stroke for success. Until it wasn't.

  That's getting ahead of the story that Josh Noel, travel and beer writer for the Chicago Tribune, tells in "Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business."

  Noel will talk about the Goose Island saga and his book June 21 at Milwaukee's Good City Brewing.

  Related: 85 books for summer reading

  "Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out" is the beer version of the Bible story of David vs. Goliath — if David gave up the fight and joined the board of Goliath, Inc.

  Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch,
  Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business. By Josh Noel. Chicago Review Press. (Photo: Chicago Review Press)

  For anyone who frequents Milwaukee's 30 craft breweries, or anyone who has quaffed a beer in the Goose Island Bourbon County bar at the Wisconsin State Fair, Noel's story sets up the brew battle with insider knowledge that only a beer reporter could have.

  For those whose love of beer is related to knowing who made what's in the glass, "Barrel-aged Stout and Selling Out" is important information. Read the book. Rethink the pour.

  For others, it offers the most relatable description of beer's three-tier system from brewer to distributor to retailer. Noel admits that unraveling the system was "easily the hardest part of the book to write and write well." It was a necessary exercise to help readers understand the motivation for Anheuser-Busch and its competition, MillerCoors, for absorbing craft breweries into the fold, he said.

  Woven through the narrative about "the biggest brewery in Chicago; the most interesting brewery in Chicago" is the story of John Hall, a high-ranking executive for a container company who thought starting a brewery was the best way to be his own boss. So he opened Goose Island Beer Co. as a brewpub in Chicago in 1988.

  Hall hired a professional brewer, always a smart idea, eventually turning the head brewer job over to his son Greg, who, it turns out was not only a good brewer but an inventive one. Greg started the Goose Island barrel-aging process and is credited with the idea to sell the then-unique beer on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

  Goose Island offerings from 312 Urban Wheat Ale to Bourbon County Stout grew so popular that the small brewery couldn't keep up with demand, at least without financial assistance from a larger source. On March 28, 2011, Hall sold the brewery to Anheuser-Busch for $38.8 million.

  Big beer vs. craft brewers
  Craft brewers and craft brew drinkers had contentious feelings about the sale to "big beer," especially Anheuser-Busch, the same brewery that had mocked small craft breweries in Super Bowl commercials (including one it had just purchased). A line was drawn. The battle between big breweries and what the Brewers Association branded "independent" breweries began.

  "I don't remember exactly how soon but after the Goose sale (to Anheuser-Busch) I thought there might be a book in the story," Noel said.

  It took the 44-year-old Noel seven years to tell the tale.

  He was inspired by Goose Island's creative ways from creating popular easy-drinking beers to the barrel-aged brews to its use of the capricious yeast Brettanomyces in beers such as Sophie and Lolita.

  "That was one of the main selling points to me," Noel said. "Goose was literally one of the most innovating breweries in the world. It resonated so deeply with so many people. It was a huge part of the Goose Island story."

  But the crude courtship of Goose Island by Anheuser-Busch also "ultimately told the broader story of craft beer," Noel said.

  Telling a story beer companies won't tell
  "Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out" is no dry annual report. Noel is a crafty writer.

  In an anecdote about Elysian Brewery and owner Dick Cantwell's battle with Anheuser-Busch, Noel offers this observation: "Then he realized Bud drinkers probably loved class warfare."

  To describe Larry Bell, founder of Michigan's legendary Bell's Brewery, Noel writes: "Bell was 57 at the time, a thickset man with narrow eyes and a trim goatee who spoke with the blunt midwestern syllables native to his suburban Chicago upbringing."

  He explains a Goose Island brewery location as "the kind of neighborhood where a brewer's car was likely to be stolen (which happened) or another brewer's backpack full of brewing textbooks could be swiped if left near a door propped open to vent a sweltering brewery (which also happened, though the backpack and books were found in a dumpster two blocks away)."

  Anheuser-Busch didn't stop with Goose Island. It owns 10 craft breweries across the country. "Part of why I felt compelled to write the book, to tell a story, is that I think the beer companies don't want it to be told and aren't telling it themselves," Noel said.

  Mary Pellettieri, owner of Milwaukee's Top Note Tonics and quality instructor for the Brewers Association (for craft breweries), also worked at Goose Island and is name-checked in "Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out."

  During our interview, Noel asked questions that only readers can answer: "Do you care about how you spend your money in this world? Do you want to support a small local business or do you want to support a ($56) billion conglomerate?"

  IF YOU GO
  Josh Noel, author of "Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out," will appear in conversation at 7 p.m. June 21 with brewmaster Andy Jones at Good City Brewing, 2108 N. Farwell Ave.

• October - https://oct.co/essays/having-beer-josh-noel?mbid=social_twitter

  QUOTED: "Craft beer has such an incredibly passionate and knowledgeable audience. I want to engage with those people and talk to them about beer and tell the Goose Island story, which is also the Anheuser-Busch story, which is also the Anheuser-Busch InBev story, and all that reflects the craft beer story. I’m trying to tell the story of craft beer through the lens of Goose Island and Anheuser-Busch."
  "Goose Island is one of the most creative and innovative breweries in the history of craft beer. I'm talking presale. Then they were at the epicenter of the earthquake that shook the foundation of craft beer with that sale. They were the first to go in a meaningful way. It gets crazy. It starts small and it gets huge."

  Having a Beer with...Josh Noel
  By Will Robertson, May 23, 2018

  Approaching Tribune Tower in Chicago, rock fragments can be seen embedded within the facade. These pieces of history come from the Alamo, Tomb of Abraham Lincoln, and Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. There's even a steel shard from the World Trade Center. Their presence whets the appetite for what lays ahead. Inside, the lobby is adorned with quotes carved in granite; quotes about the First Amendment, in support of a free press and reflections of the values of our free society.

  Up a few steps is the Chicago Tribune newsroom. While the physical has a patina, the spiritual is as bright as ever. Since the newspaper is about to from the building, I jumped at the chance to meet with Josh Noel within these hallowed halls. Josh has worked at the "World's Greatest Newspaper" since 2005 and currently serves as its beer and travel writer.

  ‘Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and how Craft Beer Became Big Business’ is your book, which drops June 1st. You serial tweeted the first chapter, is that correct?

  I started on January 1st. I tweeted one or two lines a day. I'm really excited to start being able to share it. Sharing it on Twitter just seemed to be a novel way to try to engage people. People have a lot of things coming at them now. Getting people to buy books in 2018 is not so easy.

  Said chapter has since been published by the Chicago Tribune. You are a fantastic storyteller. The imagery just drew me in.

  Craft beer has such an incredibly passionate and knowledgeable audience. I want to engage with those people and talk to them about beer and tell the Goose Island story, which is also the Anheuser-Busch story, which is also the Anheuser-Busch InBev story, and all that reflects the craft beer story. I’m trying to tell the story of craft beer through the lens of Goose Island and Anheuser-Busch. Goose Island is one of the most creative and innovative breweries in the history of craft beer. I'm talking presale. Then they were at the epicenter of the earthquake that shook the foundation of craft beer with that sale. They were the first to go in a meaningful way. It gets crazy. It starts small and it gets huge.

  There was a story of innovation, struggle, success, big business, small business, what it means to 'sell out and, for good measure, a father-and-son story.”
  What compelled you to tell this story?

  Soon after Goose Island's sale to Anheuser-Busch in 2011, I knew there was a fascinating story on two levels: Goose Island's role in the rise of craft beer, and Anheuser-Busch's need to get involved in a segment of the industry where it had long struggled. There was a story of innovation, struggle, success, big business, small business, what it means to 'sell out' and, for good measure, a father-and-son story. Every good book needs compelling characters, and a father-son dynamic helped provide that. When I started reporting the book, I did not know the end of the story. It could well have been Goose Island's sale to Anheuser-Busch. Instead, that wound up being the midway point. I had no idea that the Goose Island sale would launch a complicated new era in craft beer, driven mostly by Anheuser-Busch's need to become involved in the industry. But it did, and it only made the story better.

  Having tracked most of Goose Island's history with an emphasis on the acquisition, what about that has gone well and not well for Goose?

  The sale certainly solved the needs Goose Island had at the time of the sale. It gave founder John Hall, who was approaching 70 years old at the time, an exit strategy and a well-deserved payday. It relieved the brewery of the burden of making so much beer. The sale allowed Goose Island's core portfolio to be made in far larger batches at Anheuser-Busch breweries, which freed up the Chicago brewery for more innovation and specialty brewing, such as Bourbon County Stout. However, offloading much of the brewing to Anheuser-Busch also came at a price: Those beers just aren't as good these days. So the things that have gone well as a result of the sale—the ability to grow—have also had a hand in what hasn't gone so well—spotty quality and a fair bit of beer in the market older than it should be.

  It can't be overstated how little a craft brewery owned by Anheuser-Busch and a brewery making a few thousand barrels of beer per year have in common.”
  How does what happened with Goose Island translate to other breweries acquired by AB?

  Goose Island was the first of Anheuser-Busch's ten craft brewery acquisitions, and, as a result, it suffered the most. Anheuser-Busch dearly needed a national craft brand, and Goose Island was it simply by being the first acquisition. It therefore had to grow faster than it should have. The brand has sustained some damage along the way, as we see in the 2017 sales figures. It's no coincidence that every other brand bought since Goose Island has seen far slower expansion. Anheuser-Busch has learned that craft beer and ‘Big Beer’ brands can't be treated the same.

  Has Big Beer learned enough from recent past to suggest another buying spree is in the near future?

  I think we'll see some targeted acquisitions here and there, but the era marked by brewery sales probably peaked in 2015. Anheuser-Busch bought ten breweries between 2011 and 2017. That seems to be about the limit of what they need to accomplish their goal of being the nation's dominant producer of craft beer across every style of beer and region of the United States.

  What are your thoughts on Big Beer vs craft or ‘Little,’ as it were, beer?

  Big Beer and Little Beer are just playing vastly different games. It can't be overstated how little a craft brewery owned by Anheuser-Busch and a brewery making a few thousand barrels of beer per year have in common. Yes, both make IPAs that look ‘authentic’ on a cooler shelf or a tap list, but they're radically different propositions once you get past the liquid. That's why the big beer companies are so invested in the ‘all that matters is the beer’ narrative. It's imperative to Big Beer that it blend in with the little guys. The small breweries have the ‘small, local, authentic’ credibility that is so prized right now and lifts the entire industry. Anheuser-Busch has acknowledged that it depends on the little guys to lend credibility to big guys such as itself. But Anheuser-Busch is also invested in making sure that the smaller guys can grow to become only so large—while it becomes the largest of them all.

  The thought that you could get IPA on a major airline or in an airport bar or at a baseball game 15 years ago was ludicrous. Now, it's commonplace.”
  How is your relationship with the beer industry and Goose Island since writing the book? Has it changed?

  The thing that has changed over the last few years is the industry itself. This era of mergers and acquisitions and Big Beer's leap into craft has been fascinating to watch, with many interesting and compelling players. It has also been interesting to watch the Brewers Association try to grapple with it. The Brewers Association has had some successes, but also seems to have turned people off with its messaging about Big Beer's entry into craft.

  It's amazing to me how many people still don't know Blue Moon is owned and made by MillerCoors and Goose Island is owned and largely made by Anheuser-Busch. And that's the way Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors want it. The way they need it. And it makes sense why. They want those brands to stand for themselves, far from their massive corporate parents. But when the Brewers Association, or whoever, complains about a lack of transparency, there's a fair point there. Say what you want about Big Beer, but it had to get involved in craft and it did. Can't blame them. Are they being honest with the consumer? That's debatable.

  I know you've addressed it via Twitter and also in the book: Who won? Is Big Beer bending to what defines craft a victory? Does being the number one producer of craft outweigh craft's independent gains?

  This is ultimately the question that runs throughout the book. John Hall argues that craft beer won. It forced Big Beer to change. And who can argue with him? The thought that you could get IPA on a major airline or in an airport bar or at a baseball game 15 years ago was ludicrous. Now, it's commonplace. Craft beer made that happen, but mostly because Big Beer got involved. Big Beer controls so much access, that its decision to mainstream craft beer contributed heavily to craft beer's success. And that's why some people say that Big Beer has won—it commandeered craft beer and took it into the mainstream on its own terms. I think both sides make a compelling case.

• Wisconsin State Journal - https://host.madison.com/wsj/entertainment/dining/beer/beer-baron-josh-noel-on-his-new-book-goose-island/article_0b190246-e16f-5b17-806b-1aed2e36e153.html

  Beer Baron: Josh Noel on his new book, Goose Island, and 'selling out' in the craft beer world
  CHRIS DROSNER For the State Journal May 8, 2018
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  The story of craft beer is actually thousands of iterations of a handful of stories: the hobbyist going pro, the drop-everything second career, the shrewd business move, the artist finding an unexpected outlet.

  But there’s no story quite like that of Chicago’s Goose Island Beer Co. It was a craft pioneer, created some landmark beers and then sold itself to Big Beer. Selling to a bigger brewer isn’t unique — Wisconsin’s own Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing did so to Miller in 1988 — but Goose Island’s 2011 sale to Anheuser-Busch was the first in the contemporary landscape of craft beer. It truly began the ongoing and often heated debate about how we should feel about who or what makes our beer.

  Book cover
  “Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out" author Josh Noel will be speaking in Madison on Thursday.

  Josh Noel has had a front-row seat to the Goose Island story and tells it in his new book, “Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out.” He’s been a reporter with the Chicago Tribune since 2005 and has covered the beer industry and culture since 2009.

  The Goose Island story, starts decades earlier, when John Hall founded Goose Island in 1988.. At the time, Goose Island was just the third brewery in Chicago and one of fewer than 200 nationally.

  Noel details how Goose Island employees spent years wrenching drinkers’ hearts, minds and dollars away from Big Beer.. It’s a compelling reminder of a bygone beer era and Goose’s influential role in it. “Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out” makes a compelling case that Goose Island’s early rise in the tough Chicago market and its constant innovation earned it a spot on the Mount Rushmore of craft beer.

  Bourbon County Stout was the industry’s first beer aged in bourbon barrels, and the style remains the apotheosis of craft beer. Its barrel-aging program didn’t stop there, accelerating into wine barrels, perfecting fermentation with wild, funky Brettanomyces yeast and fruit infusions. These elegant beers — Matilda, Sofie, Juliet, Madame Rose — remain among the best of their kind produced in the U.S. today. On the more populist end, it scored a huge branding hit with 312 Urban Wheat Ale.

  And then came the sale.

  “The announcement of Goose Island’s $38.8 million sale to the world’s largest beer company, on March 28, 2011, functionally ended an era for craft beer — an era of collaboration and cooperation, growth and good vibes, and the shared cause of building a lifeboat in a sea of Big Beer banality,” Noel writes. “Anheuser-Busch and its parent company, Belgian-Brazilian conglomerate Anheuser-Busch InBev, kept buying breweries, and as they did, divisions grew starker and more rancorous. The classic American success story — nurturing a business that changed an industry, then selling it for millions — became heresy in craft beer.

  “The beer industry entered an era of revolution — fragmentation, increased competition, and, for the breweries that dared to follow Goose Island’s lead with a sale to Anheuser-Busch, searing claims of ‘sellout.’”

  While the story centers on Goose Island, the book also puts Anheuser-Busch under the microscope: the culture clashes between stodgy St. Louisans (AB) and hard-charging Brazilians (InBev), the sometimes illegal anti-competitive business practices, the clear sense that Goose’s new corporate parent clearly didn’t understand what it had bought at first.(tncms-inline)f11b2ed2-4f43-497d-a9b6-c9b8074a4a05[0](/tncms-inline)

  Noel will be in Madison on Thursday if you’d like to ask him a few questions about his book. In case you can’t make it, I asked him a few, too.

  Q. How deeply into craft beer were you as a fan and as a professional in 2011? What were your first thoughts when you heard the GI news?

  A. Like most people, my relationship with craft beer has been an evolution. I certainly know more now than I did in 2011, but I knew enough in 2011 as both a fan and as a journalist to realize that the sale to Anheuser-Busch was seismic. My first thought, as a journalist, was that it was huge news and I needed to claw through to explain to readers why it mattered. That was challenging because there really was no precedent. As a craft beer fan, my first thought was along the lines of, “This is huge and has the potential for disaster — but let’s see what happens.”

  Q. Do you think the sale has been a success for Goose Island? For Anheuser-Busch?

  A. I’d say the results have been a mixed bag for both. Both Goose and AB both certainly solved problems with the sale. Goose needed to grow and John Hall, who was approaching 70 years old, needed an exit strategy. John got well-earned millions and he was able to see his creation grow and grow — all the way into the national and global force that it is today.

  AB got a portfolio of good-to-great beer that it was able to use as an entry into the world of craft, which the company finally realized wasn’t going away. It needed to jump in with both feet, and the Goose deal allowed it to do that.

  The primary downside for Goose I see is the quality of its beer — most of the brands made at Anheuser-Busch breweries are all below average these days. The last few times I’ve had Goose Island IPA and Green Line Pale Ale, they have been undrinkable. That’s a direct result of becoming Anheuser-Busch’s national IPA and pale ale, scaled up in the same tanks where Bud and Bud Light are made. It just hasn’t worked, and we see evidence in the market, where sales of the Goose portfolio both in Chicago and nationally were down in 2017 almost across the board — the exception being Goose Island IPA. (It should be noted, however, that the beers made in Chicago at the Goose Island brewery are still mostly good or even very good.) The silver lining for AB: it made a lot of mistakes with Goose — namely, trying to grow too fast — but they have used the lessons of its Goose Island experiment to operate a bit more successfully (so far) with the nine other craft acquisitions that followed the Goose deal.

  Q. Are there lessons learned for the craft beer world at large here? Perhaps in how a small brewer should handle a sale to a megabrewer, or vice versa?

  A. There are a ton of lessons. Goose Island probably suffered more than any other brand that has been sold solely because it went first, and the company that bought it was desperate for the product it made. For a couple years, AB really had no idea what to do with Goose, and then when it began to capitalize on its acquisition, it moved too hard and too fast. AB learned, Goose learned. And probably anyone in the industry paying attention learned. AB, while still quite aggressive, has been more deliberate since then about growth with its acquisitions. And other companies buying up craft breweries — MillerCoors, Constellation, Duvel — have seemed to heed the lessons as well.

  Q. Has the evolving landscape of craft beer since 2011 changed the value of Goose to AB?

  A. The value of Goose to AB has certainly changed. When the deal went down there was no guarantee that AB would buy more craft breweries. Some people in the company — including John Hall — believed that Goose Island might solve all of AB’s craft beer needs. But obviously the industry has grown so wildly and become so fragmented that one brewery wasn’t going to solve all its problems. Goose Island is still hugely valuable to AB as evidenced by its role as lead national and international American craft beer brand, but the fact that AB felt the need to buy nine more breweries is telling.

  Q. Do you think ABI’s brewery buying spree of the past few years is done, at least for a while?

  A. I do think it’s done — at least for awhile. They’re onto the execution portion of their craft beer plan — growth and innovation, mostly, rather than still more mergers and acquisitions.

  For a fair bit of the time I was working on the book, I was nervous because I couldn’t see the end of the narrative. It hadn’t happened yet — and how do you finish telling a story when there’s no logical end? Then, it happened, in two forms: the Wicked Weed sale and AB buying the original Goose Island brewpub. And my book got an ending.

QUOTED: "Noel's offended sensibility can be a little heavy-handed at times."
"Fans of good beer will enjoy Noel's explorations, which make for a useful cautionary tale as well."

Noel, Josh: BARREL-AGED STOUT AND SELLING OUT
Kirkus Reviews. (Apr. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
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Full Text:
Noel, Josh BARREL-AGED STOUT AND SELLING OUT Chicago Review (Adult Nonfiction) $19.99 6, 1 ISBN: 978-1-61373-721-7

Mass-produced beer? You're soaking in it--and sometimes, as this foamy expose relates, under the guise of a trendy indie label.

Every hipster worthy of his chest-length beard may be a connoisseur of artisanal beer these days, but that wasn't always the case. Just a few decades ago, apart from homebrew wizards who made grog in their basements, the ordinary stuff of American consumption was watery, sudsy, corporate lager. Then came the pioneering heroes, foremost among them John and Greg Hall's Goose Island brewpub, a well-kept Chicago secret much beloved of drinkers. Goose Island innovated constantly, particularly by aging its brew in whiskey barrels, a technique that soon, as Chicago Tribune beer maven Noel writes, "became a necessity for any ambitious brewery." Goose Island plied a lonely trade for a time; as the author notes, "the only craft brands with velocity in the city were Sam Adams Boston Lager...and Pete's Wicked Ale." Even there, the most popular of Goose Island's many experiments was a blonde ale that was as close as it came to brewing a mass-produced beer. There's portent there, and in Goose Island's later production of a pilsner that was even closer to store-bought stuff, for when Anheuser-Busch came calling, the owners were only too glad to sell out, and to "the company that had spent decades thwarting the American beer industry with confusion, trickery, and dullness." That big companies swallow up the little innovators is a standard plank in corporate capitalism, and Noel's offended sensibility can be a little heavy-handed at times. However, Goose Island may prove an outlier, for, as the author also notes, whereas when Goose Island began, craft beers and their makers were rare, now there are northward of 2,500 breweries in the U.S., so that "after decades of Big Beer's bland dominance, American beer is rife with choice."

Fans of good beer will enjoy Noel's explorations, which make for a useful cautionary tale as well.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Noel, Josh: BARREL-AGED STOUT AND SELLING OUT." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534375108/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7f8b66f6. Accessed 15 July 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A534375108

"Noel, Josh: BARREL-AGED STOUT AND SELLING OUT." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534375108/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7f8b66f6. Accessed 15 July 2018.

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  https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/05/five-things-i-learned-about-ab-inbev-while-reading.html
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  Five Things I Learned About AB-InBev While Reading Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out
  By Jim Vorel | May 14, 2018 | 9:22am
  Photos via The High End
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  Five Things I Learned About AB-InBev While Reading Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out
  Here’s something that I know is true of myself, and I assume is probably true of a lot of other beer writers: We don’t necessarily read a lot of physical books about beer these days.

  Oh, perhaps we did once upon a time. I certainly read beer books voraciously in the late 2000’s, devouring information (as it existed at the time) about beer styles, beer history, homebrewing (thanks, Charlie Papazian!), beer science and the occasional forays into beer politics and economics. But once you become really invested in a subject like beer, or embedded in some niche within the brewery landscape itself, new beer books tend to lose their allure—especially books in the “here’s what’s going on in beer right now” vein. Why? Because for one, they’re likely to be out of date by the time they even reach publication. The more the pace of change within craft beer accelerates, the shorter the shelf life is of those books.
  It’s certainly true of almost everything written in print about beer styles. Just look at something like former Stone brewmaster Mitch Steele’s important IPA: Brewing Techniques, Recipes and the Evolution of India Pale Ale, first published in 2012. When it hit the shelves, beer fans gobbled it up as “the essential book on IPA.” But now, a few years later, IPA is so vastly different that you’d hardly recognize it from the template Steele was working from at the time. That’s just the reality: Any end-all, be-all book on the style published today would have to dive deeply into new IPA substyles—especially hazy IPA—and that book would likely end up obsolete a few years from now when we’re all drinking VIRTUAL IPA’S made with DIGITAL HOP PROCESSING, etc.

  Still. There are the rare exceptions when I’m really looking forward to reading a beer book, and that was the case with Josh Noel’s Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out, which officially hits bookstores on June 1, but is already available online. This was for a few reasons:

  — I’m from the Chicago suburbs, and Goose Island was one of the first “craft breweries” I ever became aware of while coming of age.

  — Their 2011 sale to Anheuser-Busch InBev kicked off the “acquisition era” of craft beer that has continued to this day. When it happened, nobody quite knew how to react, or what it would mean for the next era of craft beer proliferation.
  — Given that I’m a longtime Chicago Tribune subscriber (and former newspaper reporter myself), I’ve long read Josh Noel’s beer reporting on my hometown. Full disclosure: We’ve chatted occasionally via Twitter and are friendly, in a colleaguial sense.

  I also found myself appreciating, as I tucked into the book, that it functions both as a history and as an illuminating look into how the world’s largest beer conglomerate tends to do business. There’s a wealth of information here present about the acquisitions of not just Goose Island, but all the other breweries since acquired by Anheuser-Busch InBev—which now includes Blue Point, 10 Barrel, Four Peaks, Breckenridge, Devil’s Backbone, Elysian, Golden Road, Karbach and Wicked Weed, although you of course won’t find reference to ownership on any of their packaging.

  In the course of reading, I was entertained and informed in equal measure. There was a lot about the story of Goose Island I was already aware of, simply by virtue of having been paying attention when it happened. Who could forget, for instance, the incident when Goose Island brewmaster Greg Hall ended up in hot water just days after the sale was announced when he started peeing in beer glasses at Chicago beer bar Bangers & Lace? At the time, it certainly felt like a pretty clear admission that not everyone was pleased with the transaction.

  However, there’s also plenty in Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out that was new to me, and many of the most interesting tidbits are related to the operations of AB InBev and how they handled the acquisition. And so, allow me to list: Five things I learned about AB InBev while reading Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out.

  1. AB InBev Put a Guy in Control of Goose Island Who Knew Nothing About Craft Beer

  When Goose Island founder John Hall stepped down at the end of 2012, despite originally intending to stay for three to five years after the 2011 sale, AB InBev appointed Andy Goeler to run Goose Island in its senior executive position. He was an AB lifer who was named the director of marketing for Bud Light in 1995, during the time when it surpassed Bud Heavy to become the nation’s #1 beer. He believed intensely in the company, was one of its most loyal soldiers, and had a proven track record for marketing. He also apparently didn’t know anything about craft beer, in even an academic sense, when he was put in charge of Goose Island. Writes Noel:

  Goeler’s talent was as a Big Beer guy. Suddenly he was a Small Beer guy—tasked with turning it into Big Beer. The fit was as odd as it might seem. When he professed a fondness for the seasonal Mild Winter, a Goose Island employee mentioned that the beer featured rye in the grain bill, a fairly standard ingredient in a craft brewery.

  “I didn’t know you could put rye in beer!” Goeler said.

  This is a guy who had worked in the beer industry for decades, but his conception of what beer could be was so narrow that he’d never done the most basic reading on the topic. Now he was the final say on which beers would be produced at a brewery that had pioneered such processes as barrel-aging and wild-fermented beers in the years prior. This was, suffice to say, a bad idea. Today, Goeler is once again the vice president of Bud Light.

  andy_goeler (Custom).jpgAndy Goeler’s crafty portrait from his time as vice president of marketing for AB InBev’s The High End, after the Goose Island post.

  AB InBev had purchased Goose Island, but they didn’t understand a thing about the product coming out of the brewery they just bought. At Goose Island events, the representatives from AB InBev would show up and drink Bud Light. Few displayed any interest in learning about the thing they were trying to sell. The corporate mind revolved around massive, wholesale-centric events such as SAMCOM, the annual Wholesaler Sales & Marketing Communication Meeting. As Noel writes:

  The Anheuser-Busch galaxy revolved around SAMCOM, the annual conference where wholesalers gathered under one roof to be fired up and fed marching orders for the coming year. Inside the brewery, plans needed to be discussed in May so they could be finalized in September, then rolled out at SAMCOM in November.

  John Hall, meanwhile, somehow managed to be distressed by many of the things happening, despite the fact that he signed away his ability to make any of the final decisions, even before stepping down. In truth, he seemed to feel the rug pulled out from under him after the first year when they guy he “made the deal” with, Anheuser-Busch president Dave Peacock, stepped down from his post. That left Hall reporting directly to AB InBev’s Brazilian ownership. Or as the book reads:
  When he agreed to sell, John figured he would be tethered to, and protected by, Peacock. It was as if John had sold his company to him—not these faceless Brazilians. But now Peacock was out as president of Anheuser-Busch, and the company hadn’t even bothered to replace him. John was left to report to Peacock’s old boss—Luiz Edmond, the head of AB InBev’s North American operation.

  It seems rather naive of Hall to think that his company would somehow be “protected” from meddling by a global mega-giant, but at the same time, we should keep in mind that Goose Island was serving as a testing ground for what acquisition by AB InBev would look like. He made the deal, hoped for the best, and got something significantly less than “the best.”

  2. AB InBev Gave Goose Island Zero Input on the Brand’s Initial National Rollout

  When it came time for the brand’s long-awaited national rollout—really, the reason why AB InBev would ever acquire a craft brewery to begin with—Goose Island and AB InBev disagreed starkly about how it should happen.
  Goose Island’s leadership (not yet replaced by the likes of Andy Goeler) argued that it should be “a slow, measured rollout—starting with full distribution through the East, then to the South, then inching West. Along the way, Anheuser-Busch distributors and their sales forces would need to be educated about the brewery, the brand and the nuances that distinguished a wheat ale from a pale ale, a Guinness from a Bourbon County Stout. As things stood, distributors didn’t understand the brand and lacked the tools to make it succeed. Pushing distribution ahead of awareness might lead to short-term boost, but it wasn’t sustainable.”

  AB InBev disagreed. As Noel writes, “Goose Island never even got the courtesy of a call to learn that it was relegated to bit player for its own rollout.” He continues:

  Anheuser-Busch was orchestrating the rollout behind their backs. The timing wasn’t meant to suit Goose Island; it was meant to fire up Anheuser-Busch wholesalers, who would hear details at that fall’s SAMCOM. A rollout that should have taken years would happen in months.

  If you’re wondering how that rollout ended up going, the answer is “fine … at first.” In 2013, as the brand expanded nationwide, sales were obviously way, way up. In 2014, however, former Goose Island flagship Honker’s Ale actually decreased 18.6% in sales, while the brewery’s biggest beer, 312 Urban Wheat Ale, was flat. The only style that continued growing was Goose Island IPA, but even that brand’s 33% growth in 2014 was way, way below the rate that comparable craft IPAs were growing at as the IPA style caught fire.

  In fact, much of what AB InBev subsequently tried to do with Goose Island failed commercially. They tried to spin-off the 312 brand into 312 pale ale, which was gone within a year. A similar series of seasonal hoppy beers likewise flopped. Frustrated brewers found that they weren’t even allowed to brew a Goose Island pilsner at the time, for the most pointless of reasons—it would have been “too similar” to Budweiser.

  goose pale ales (Custom).jpgTwo similar in appearance, and equally unsuccessful, beers introduced via Goose Island by AB InBev.

  At the same time, AB InBev spurned the brewery’s oldest supporters as the brand went national:
  Meanwhile, Chicago bar owners who had supported Goose Island for years were lucky to get even one case of Bourbon County Stout. They wondered why clueless, cookie-cutter chain stores were suddenly getting so much of the previous beer. The answer was that the clueless cookie-cutter chain stores churned through massive sales of 312 and IPA during the rest of the year. They were being rewarded by a new generation of Goose Island decision makers.

  3. It Was Surprisingly Easy to Get Local and National Media to Look Past Everything Happening

  I don’t know why I’d be too surprised about this one, but I still sort of was in spite of myself. Writers in any field can be on the lazy side. It’s one of the chief functions of PR people; to drop nuggets of positive-sounding news (accurate or not) into the laps of overworked writers, who all too often are busy, under deadline, and simply repeat what they’re told without really vetting any of it. And in the couple of years after the AB InBev acquisition, the truth is that Goose Island was largely held to a VERY low standard by writers; even those who specifically covered craft beer, but especially by national media without as much craft beer experience. The mere fact that the brewery:

  A. Continued to exist, with a facility in Chicago, and
  B. Still made many good beers,
  was all it took for a lot of publications to deem the acquisition “successful,” or to write that fears that “the beer would suffer” had been fully assuaged. Beyond that, there were actually plenty of pieces written as paeans of praise to the AB InBev-run Goose Island, calling anyone who wasn’t yet convinced an insufferable snob. Never mind the fact that many of the core brands did indeed change for the worse while being produced in AB InBev facilities around the country—that at least was a subjective matter of taste. But writers also failed to note many aspects of the botched national rollout, not to mention things such as the great array of brewers who left the company. As Noel writes:

  Expectations had fallen so precipitously after the sale that anything short of burning the brewery to the ground seemed like victory. On the inside, however, the experiment was at a low point. A parade of brewers left. John J. Hall [not the same as founder John Hall], who had written the recipe for 312, quit to become brewmaster at Latin-themed Chicago brewery 5 Rabbit Cerveceria. Claudia Jendron, who rose to become one of Goose Island’s few female brewers after starting as receptionist, took a job at a new suburban brewery. John Laffler, the face of the barrel-aging program, departed to start Off Color Brewing.

  There were many, many others, who left to join the new Lagunitas brewery in Chicago, and especially a lot of brewers who were poached by Chicago’s own Revolution Brewing, which aimed to become the genuine “Chicago’s brewery” that Goose Island once was. Among them was Miguel Miguitama, a brewer who had been at Goose Island for more than 20 years at that point. And Revolution didn’t even have to offer raises to do it.

  Revolution nearly had its pick of Goose Island’s brewers simply by offering what Goose Island used to be: no low-grade corporate overhaul, no drug testing, and no former Bud Light guy at the helm. Revolution didn’t even have to offer raises. It was just a better workplace culture.

  Revolution Banner (Custom).pngChicago’s ascendant native brewery, Revolution. Bonus: They have a bar in left field at Sox Park!

  Even before founder John Hall officially stepped down at the end of 2012, reporters were simply accepting the lines they were being fed. In “a lengthy cover story that November,” the magazine of the American Marketing Association wrote about Hall and Goose Island, quoting an AB InBev company spokesman who said John was “here and he’s still running the show.”

  In reality, Hall had already turned in his resignation. He would be gone on Dec. 31 of that year.
  4. AB InBev Had No Conception of Where and When People Drink Craft Beer

  As Noel observes, consumer tastes had greatly fragmented from the 1990s to the end of the 2000s, when it comes to beer. People who were experimenting with craft beer were thirsty for novelty, change and above all, variety. They were coming out of a shell, crawling out into a world full of novel flavors that they never even knew could exist before. I remember that exciting time quite well, given that I was right there alongside the other drinkers who became ravenous craft beer fans in the mid-to-late 2000s.

  AB InBev? They didn’t understand seemingly any aspect of that mindset. When your only goal is “sell more Budweiser,” each and every year, perhaps it makes you somewhat immune to the concept of people who are making decisions based on taste rather than branding, but many of the choices made by the company during this period (and choices made with how to handle Goose Island) involve a mindset that seems to expect “craft beer” to be treated by all drinkers as a short-term novelty before a return to REAL beer—aka, Budweiser.

  To whit, AB InBev divided their whole beer portfolio into “occasions.” These occasions had titles such as “everyday food occasions,” “hanging out occasions,” “indulging occasions,” “partying occasions,” “relaxing occasions” and “savoring occasions.” Ask yourself now: In which of those occasions do you turn to craft beer?
  If you’re like me, or like just about anyone else who primarily consumes more flavorful beer styles, your response would be “all of them.” After all, what is even the difference between “indulging” and “savoring,” anyway? Who doesn’t enjoy craft beer styles paired with various foodstuffs? Or a craft beer while relaxing? Or while “hanging out”?
  AB InBev, on the other hand, denoted exactly ONE of those occasions as appropriate for Goose Island, and that was “savoring,” right alongside Stella Artois and Shock Top. All the other occasions were meant to be the realm of Budweiser. Seriously. Here’s the full breakdown.

  Everyday food occasions: Budweiser, Bud Light, Busch, Busch Light

  Hanging out occasions: Bud Light, Budweiser, Natural Light, Rolling Rock

  Indulging occasions: Bud Light Lime, Rita beers, Shock Top, Stella Artois

  Partying occasions: Bud Light Platinum, Budweiser Black Crown, Beck’s, Rita beers

  Relaxing occasions: Budweiser, Bud Light, Busch, Busch Light

  Savoring occasions: Stella Artois, Shock Top, Goose Island, Leffe

  I mean YEAH, who wants to pair a crisp, spicy saison with their nice piece of fish when they could have a Busch Light, right? I don’t know about you, but I certainly prefer to “indulge” with “Rita beers” than with a rich, vinous Belgian dark strong ale.
  The message was clear: AB InBev didn’t see craft beer styles as anything other than a novelty consumed for special occasions. They imagined every craft beer style as being “savored” because that implied they were only temporary (and rare) indulgences. Craft beer was not meant to be part of daily life. You didn’t drink craft beer during a weeknight dinner. You didn’t hang out with friends and drink craft beer during a football game. You just dabbled with it before returning to the REAL STUFF, in the form of Budweiser.
  5. AB InBev Paid a $6 Million Fine in India For Bribery

  Of everything in Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out, this is the single tidbit that I was most surprised to not already know about, considering that it happened just two years ago. As Noel writes:

  A $6 million settlement in September 2016 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) after being accused to bribing Indian government officials to increase sales and production in that country, a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Anheuser-Busch InBev was also accused to threatening a former employee who planned to reveal the arrangement.

  That is … woah. AB InBev has been fined plenty of times in the U.S. for business practices such as its wholesalers illegally providing bars with coolers and beer equipment, but the fines have NEVER been anywhere in the same solar system as $6 million. This business story with more information on the fine says that the payments included settlement of charges that the company had “silenced a whistleblower” who was trying to provide the SEC with more information about the case.

  This is why some beer fans care about more factors that simply “well, does the beer still taste good?” when a brewery is acquired by AB InBev. It’s why an acquisition such as the one undergone by Goose Island or Wicked Weed isn’t so simple as just telling your fans that “nothing will change.” Some will just happily ignore the actions of the parent company, but others will find that harder to do.

  With your local craft brewer? Well, at least you’ll probably feel confident that they’re not trying to stop a whistleblower from leaking damning information to the SEC.
  6. Bonus: AB InBev Literally Made it Rain Hops Once

  Just for fun, because I couldn’t find anywhere else to work it in: AB InBev once made it literally rain hops on a bunch of wholesalers attending SAMCOM.
  After Andy Goeler took over the company, he headed to the 2014 SAMCOM set on whipping wholesalers into a frenzy about selling more Goose Island IPA in their stores. During a big, impassioned speech where he called Goose Island “the most disruptive brewery right now,” he pegged the company’s future on IPA. Then this happened:

  And then hops rained from the ceiling. Literally. They landed in clothing and hair as hop dust spun into the air and a dank, piney aroma filled the room. The distributors stood and cheered. They had their marching orders.

  No judgement, I just wanted to include that because it sounds like one hell of a weird scene.
  Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out hits bookstores on June 1, 2018, and is already available online.

• Detroit Free Press
  https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/2018/06/01/craft-beer-book-selling-out-review-goose-island-josh-noel/637642002/
  Word count: 1246

  Craft beer made in Bud Light tanks: The story of 'Selling Out'
  Robert Allen, Detroit Free Press Published 6:00 a.m. ET June 1, 2018 | Updated 10:37 a.m. ET June 1, 2018
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  (Photo: Chicago Review Press)

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  Like Michigan's beloved Two Hearted Ale from Bell's Brewery, Chicago's 312 Urban Wheat from Goose Island Brewery grew from a local favorite to a beer popular across the United States.

  Unlike Bell's, Goose Island's owners sold out to big beer.

  The booming craft-beer community was rocked in 2011 by the $38.8 million sale to Anheuser-Busch Inbev, triggering a deeper level of competition for independent breweries that distribute to stores, bars and restaurants. It's an ongoing, American David-and-Goliath drama that – while heated for craft-beer fans and people in the industry – isn't really on the average beer drinker's radar.

  The story is told in the new book "Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business," which could make you give beer labels and tap handles a second glance. In stores Friday, it's written by Josh Noel, who covers beer for the Chicago Tribune.

  It's a close-up, inside look at Goose Island – from the brewery's beginning to well after the sale, connecting it to nationwide matters of good beer and brand identity. There's the creation of the boundary-breaking Bourbon County barrel-aged stout in the 1990s, and the later, post-sale clashes between beer-focused brewery leaders and their marketing-driven, new corporate bosses. Examples of big beer's tactics – such as mimicking craft-beer brands and pressuring distributors – to hold onto market share are highlighted not just in the Midwest but Texas, Washington and beyond.

  Brewers including Bell's founder Larry Bell have compared the craft-beer revolution to the "Star Wars" saga (yes, with the scrappy independent brewers as the Rebel Alliance). And in the book, there's this quote from Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver, two years after the sale:

  "Businesses like that are about money. I loved Goose Island – it was a great brewery. But it's like Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader and he's not there anymore. Some of the people might still be there, but the spirit isn't. It became something else."

  Shortly after the Goose Island sale, production of 312 Urban Wheat had moved from the brewery's namesake Chicago area code to upstate New York, and it was being brewed in the same tanks used to make Bud Light. And AB Inbev trademarked the area codes for 15 cities such as Philadelphia (215), Las Vegas (702) and Cleveland (216), according to the book.

  Goose Island founder John Hall, who apparently sold the brewery in part because the company needed to fund expansion to keep up with demand, had planned to stay on for several years. But he announced his departure in 2012 after he was excluded from decisions for the nationwide roll-out. The next person in charge had far less understanding of craft beer – at one point, exclaiming that he'd hadn't known that rye (a fairly common craft-beer ingredient) could be used in beer, according to the book.

  After the acquisition, Goose Island's summer, fall and Christmas beer releases were replaced with three IPAs and a pale ale, because hoppy was trendy:

  "When told in a meeting that the seasonal beers would be replaced by a series of hop-forward beers, some brewers were enthused enough to start sharing ideas. They were quickly told to stop; their input wasn't requested. Decisions had already been made. They were simply handed recipes before the first brew, then underwhelmed by what they saw," Noel wrote.

  Those new beers didn't sell well and were all discontinued.

  Read more:

  How to tell if your 'craft beer' is authentic

  Short's Brewing Co. sells 20% stake to Heineken

  In the book, Noel describes the brewery's flagship Goose IPA that you'll find available today as a "radically different beer and a different recipe" from the original, in part because it had been scaled up for the massive, industrial brewing operation. It and other beers aren't described as worse under AB Inbev, just different.

  Among the more-than 100 sources Noel interviewed are people from craft breweries as well as AB Inbev. Before the sale, the latter had been accustomed to making exponentially more beer with substantially less flavor – as anyone who's ever compared a local craft beer with Bud Light knows. By the end of the book, it appears clear that the massive company had learned a lot about craft beer.

  The book also describes AB Inbev's later acquisitions of 10 Barrel Brewing (Oregon), Wicked Weed Brewery (North Carolina) and Breckenridge Brewery (Colorado), and how Breckenridge founder Todd Usry sold his brewery roughly a year after saying "when craft breweries sell out, 'I think there is some serious authenticity that is lost, and that the brand loses,' " according to the book.

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  In Michigan, an AB Inbev acquisitions executive sent Bell an email in July 2015 asking to meet. It happened not long after a MillerCoors executive had approached him at a conference about selling.

  "Didn't these people rest? Or were they that eager to destroy craft beer? Because that's how Bell saw it: Anheuser-Busch was buying breweries to crush everyone else. He read (the executive's) email a couple more times. The interest half scared him. Saying no meant they would come after him," Noel wrote.

  Bell's, based in the Kalamazoo area, remains an independent craft brewery by the guidelines of the Brewers Association, the craft-brewers trade organization that has increasingly sought to differentiate between independent and big beer. It defines "craft brewer" as a small, independent, traditional brewer — specifically, annual production of 6 million barrels of beer or less. Also, the brewer must be less than 25% owned or controlled by an alcohol industry member that is not itself defined as a craft brewer.

  Bell's was the largest brewery in Michigan for many years, until 2017, when its production volume was surpassed by Founders Brewing Co. of Grand Rapids. Founders – which sold a 30% stake to Spanish company Mahou San Miguel in 2014 – is no longer considered a craft brewery under Brewers Association guidelines. It has grown substantially since the sale.

  No Michigan brewery is fully-owned by one of the big macro-brewers. But if you visit a grocery store or bar here, there's a good chance you'll find an AB Inbev product right next to a local craft brand. But you won't be able to tell by reading the label – the point is to make you think it's all the same.

  'Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out'
  By Josh Noel

  Chicago Review Press, 386 pages, $19.99

  In stores June 1

  More information here.

  Spirits of Detroit columnist Robert Allen covers craft alcohol for the Free Press. Contact him: rallen@freepress.com or on Untappd, raDetroit and Twitter, @rallenMI.

• Manual
  https://www.themanual.com/food-and-drink/goose-island-beer-company-barrel-aged-stout-and-selling-out/
  Word count: 854

  QUOTED: "I started not that long after the Goose sale not knowing exactly what the book would be. ... I thought the book might end with the Goose sale. But that was the midway point. Lucky for me there was a whole bunch of wild stuff, something remarkable had just begun."

  New Book Chronicles the Sale of Goose Island Beer Company to Anheuser-Busch and the Fallout
  By Pat Evans — Posted on May 30, 2018 - 5:00PM

  One of the craft beer industry’s defining moments is now encapsulated in a work of true journalistic effort with the book Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out.

  Chicago Tribune writer Josh Noel releases Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out on June 1, fully chronicling the sale of the Windy City’s beloved Goose Island Beer Company to Anheuser-Busch, and its effects on the beer industry as a whole, while also telling much of the history of the rise of the craft beer movement.

  goose island beer company barrel aged stout and selling out edited
  Noel spent more than seven years on the project, conducting more than 100 interviews, creating an incredibly detailed, intricately woven story few readers, beer fan or not, will want to put down. Craft beer has passionate fans and until now, most books on the subject have been told through that light. While Noel is a fan of beer, his journalistic integrity shines through in this endeavor.

  “I just felt beer was ready for a journalistic effort in a book-length project,” Noel said. “There’s a lot of great reporting at the magazine and newspaper level. There are a couple industry histories, but nothing that I felt brought that sort of journalistic intensity to the rise of craft beer.

  “I felt Anheuser Busch’s entry into craft beer deserved a rigorous effort.”

  The $38.8 million sale of Goose Island occurred in 2011, so in 2012 with the book in mind, Noel contacted the founder of Goose Island, John Hall, and asked if he, too, thought there was a book in the story.

  “If he didn’t say yes, it might not have happened,” Noel said.

  Instead, Hall didn’t hesitate.

  goose island beer company barrel aged stout and selling out bourbon edited
  Throughout Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out, Noel tells the story of John Hall and his son, Greg, both integral to the tale of how Goose Island became a craft beer powerhouse, the sale and the following seven-year roller coaster. But beyond the Halls, the beer world took Noel for a wild journey as AB InBev went on a buying spree, as did MillerCoors, Heineken, and Constellation Brands. The number of breweries in the U.S. also drastically increased, 2,475 in 2012 to 6,372 in 2017.

  Big beer buying smaller breweries also saw a valuation peak in 2015, when Constellation Brands paid $1 billion for San Diego’s Ballast Point Brewing.

  “I started not that long after the Goose sale not knowing exactly what the book would be,” he said. “I thought the book might end with the Goose sale. But that was the midway point. Lucky for me there was a whole bunch of wild stuff, something remarkable had just begun.”

  In the ensuing years, AB bought New York’s Bluepoint Brewery, Washington’s Elysian Brewing, Oregon’s 10 Barrel Brewing, California’s Golden Road Brewing, Colorado’s Breckenridge Brewing, Arizona’s Four Peaks Brewing, Virginia’s Devils Backbone Brewing, Texas’ Karbach Brewing, and North Carolina’s Wicked Weed.

  Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out takes a look at all of these acquisitions and dissects the learning curve AB InBev took in how to operate in the craft space and a captivating look at the behind-the-scenes workings of big beer.

  Surprisingly, Noel received a remarkable amount of cooperation from AB InBev representatives.

  “They were very open when it comes to the message they want to share,” Noel said. They were willing to put me in touch with virtually anyone from AB or the High End [the crafty branch of the corporation] with one notable exception, the M&A guy.”

  That guy, Michael Taylor, was off the radar until very recently. He was the point of contact as AB InBev was out scouting for potential acquisitions. Noel said he’s not surprised they wouldn’t want to divulge the “mechanics and nuances of how a $250 billion company gobbles up 10 small breweries.”

  Noel knew he had a story on his hands. How good it wound up being was a pleasant surprise to him and now as passionate craft beer fans continue to stoke the anti-big beer fire and the Brewers Association doubles down on their Independence Matters campaign, Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out couldn’t come at a better time.

  “The intensity of the reaction is the story to tell,” Noel said. “That people care so much. People don’t care this much about toothbrushes and washing machines. It’s one of the most intimate consumer relationships out there.”

• Chicago Tribune
  http://www.chicagotribune.com/dining/ct-food-josh-noel-beer-book-excerpt-goose-island-0530-story.html
  Word count: 3538

  How Goose Island sale to Anheuser-Busch changed craft beer is detailed in new book by Tribune beer writer Josh Noel
  Goose Island book
  In an exclusive excerpt from his upcoming book, "Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out," Tribune beer writer Josh Noel details how Goose Island was launched in 1988. (Chicago Review Press)
  Josh Noel Josh NoelContact Reporter
  Chicago Tribune
  There’s no more fascinating brewery in America — or possibly the world — than Goose Island Beer Co.

  Across its 30 years, Chicago’s oldest brewery has been on the leading edge of beer (it pioneered aging imperial stout in bourbon barrels) and business (its 2011 sale to Anheuser-Busch InBev launched a wild new era of the beer industry).

  When I started writing about beer for the Chicago Tribune in 2009, Goose Island was the city’s most interesting brewery. Nine years and one sale of the brewery later, that’s probably still the case. Goose Island is not only a vibrant local entity, it has become the lead national and global craft brand for the world’s largest beer company, with pubs popping up across the globe. It has grown into a story that couldn’t just be contained to the pages, whether web or paper, of the Chicago Tribune.

  The story deserved a book.

  That book, “Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch and How Craft Beer Became Big Business” reaches bookstores June 1. The Goose Island story starts small: one man’s idea for a second career in the nascent American brewing industry during the mid-1980s. It winds up telling a story far larger than its own — the story of craft beer: innovation, struggle, wild success and a complicated crossroad.

  Life has been anything but simple for Goose Island as part of the world’s largest beer company. Here is where the brewery’s story began.

  John Hall
  John Hall, photographed at Goose Island Brewery in 2000, launched the brewery in 1988 when he was looking for a small company to run "where he was the boss and could make the decisions that would lead to success or failure," according to the book. (James F. Quinn / Chicago Tribune)
  Excerpted from “Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business” by Josh Noel, to be released June 1. Copyright 2018 Chicago Review Press, $19.99.

  On a Thursday evening in 1986, as a spring storm pounded the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport, John Hall sat in an airplane on the rain‐glazed tarmac and did something he would recount for the rest of his life. He reached for a magazine.

  John was forty‐four and had grown from a low‐level sales grunt to one of the senior‐most executives at Container Corporation of America, a corrugated box manufacturer housed in a sloping high rise in downtown Chicago. John had a fine view of the skyline from his fifty‐fourth‐floor corner office, but he spent much of his time on the road. He was headed home from a few days in Ft. Worth and Houston, visiting two of the plants he managed. But the plane wasn’t moving, and the rain wasn’t letting up. There was talk of tornadoes. He needed distraction. Tired and ready to be out of his suit, John pulled a magazine from the seatback pocket ahead.

  He thumbed through the pages until landing on a story about a tiny brewery 100 miles north of San Francisco, opened three years earlier by a pair of friends who thought their home brew might be good enough to appeal to a broader audience. It was. Hopland Brewery was California’s first brewpub and just the second in the nation since the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. It had become a destination for thirsty travelers headed north on California’s fabled Highway 101, with a simple set of directions: “Take the Golden Gate Bridge out of town for two hours; the brewery is on the right.” Hopland Brewery made four hundred barrels of beer during its first year — less than what the largest brewers might pour out in a day.

  That tiny brewery 2,000 miles from home stirred something in John on that Dallas tarmac. He’d loved beer since the age of fifteen, when he and his childhood buddies frequented the Waterloo, Iowa, bars that knew better than to ask the ages of their patrons. Because John’s growth spurt didn’t come until his later teens, he had to strain to see over the bar as he dropped a quarter and asked for whatever lowbrow Midwestern lager was on tap. Old Style. Grain Belt. Gluek’s Stite. It didn’t much matter. Young John Hall liked beer.

  Older John Hall liked beer, too. He’d grown into a stocky man, not quite six feet tall but thickly built from near‐daily workouts. He wore an extra layer around the middle from a life of white‐collar comfort, and his hair began fleeing in his twenties, which left him bald on top with a fringe of brown circling the back and sides of his head. He believed in respect and clarity and decorum, and though he wasn’t the type to close down a bar, he was able to have three or four pints with virtually anyone before heading home to read that day’s Wall Street Journal. His kids called him “Encyclopedia” because he seemed to know everything.

  As a vice president at Container Corporation, he’d traded the cheap lagers of his youth for the beers discovered on the other side of the Atlantic: endlessly drinkable English bitters, deftly layered Belgian ales, and crisp German lagers. European beer looked, smelled, and tasted different from anything John knew at home. A hefeweizen in Bavaria filled his nose with the tang of lemon, the richness of banana and clove, and arrived in gorgeous, sloping half‐liter glasses that felt weighty and dignified in his hand. He could never understand why the genius that flowed from the average European tap barely existed in the United States.

  Beyond a love of beer, a scrappy, young California brewery resonated with John because of a simple truth after twenty years in the corrugated box industry: he was bored. Corporate finance had been good to him. He’d climbed from a fresh‐from‐business‐school assignment that initially disappointed him — salesman at Container’s plant in Sioux City, Iowa — to a lofty perch overseeing a thousand employees at eight plants from the Chicago headquarters. He’d become the $2 billion company’s youngest vice president, met Vice President George Bush at the White House, and done well enough to buy his family a condo in Vail. But he couldn’t fathom being a cog in someone else’s operation for another twenty years.

  John had already survived one takeover of Container Corporation, when Mobil oil bought the company in the early 1970s; he watched a bunch of executives cash unfathomably large checks on their way out the door. He didn’t want to work for an oil company but gritted his teeth and earned his way to the top. A second takeover was ahead, by another box company, and John had no interest in navigating it. Buyouts led to jobs cuts, efficiencies, and changes in culture. He was assured he would survive but was uninterested. He craved a smaller operation where he was the boss and could make the decisions that would lead to success or failure. “If I’m going to work for an asshole, it’s going to be me,” became his go‐to line. The sale would be his chance to cash in his Mobil stock and leave with a seven‐figure nest egg.

  John had considered a run at acquiring Container Corporation, but he couldn’t raise the cash. He weighed buying a label company in Kansas City — it was heavy into digital imaging, which struck him as the future — and a printing company in Mississippi. He hired a firm that brokered sales of small and medium‐sized businesses to find a fit. Nothing fit. And then he reached for that magazine. It struck him immediately. A brewery. A brewery was the answer.

  ---

  When John Hall was born in 1942, the United States was home to nearly a thousand breweries. By the time he began drinking in those Waterloo bars in the late 1950s, the number was down to two hundred. As he read that magazine article, in the mid‐1980s, there was scarcely more than one hundred.

  That plummeting figure, and the creative stagnation of a once‐vibrant industry, could be traced to a cultural shift that took root decades earlier.

  In the years following World War II, families grew; suburbs did too, and tastes homogenized. The United States became an engine of production and consumption, and that was particularly true for how the nation ate and drank. Fresh and local was traded for processed and prepackaged, cheaper and faster, familiar and ever more abundant. Labels became the language of food and drink. Bread was Wonder. Soup was Campbell’s. Breakfast was Kellogg’s. Beer was Budweiser.

  Like most brands that rose to prominence during the postwar years, the nation’s largest beer company had started small. Bavarian Brewery was founded in 1852 by George Schneider on a plot of land just south of downtown St. Louis, a literal stone’s throw from the Mississippi River. Before the end of the decade, Schneider had defaulted on a $90,000 loan, which sent control of his brewery to Eberhard Anheuser, a German immigrant and prosperous soap manufacturer.

  Anheuser soon joined forces with his son‐in‐law, Adolphus Busch, who owned a wholesale brewing supply store. Before long, the two men renamed the brewery for themselves: Anheuser‐Busch. In the 1870s, the partners were approached by Busch’s friend Carl Conrad to brew a recipe inspired by a Czech style of pilsner called Budweis, which wowed Conrad during his European travels. He sold the beer, which he called Budweiser, as a premium product in the United States. Between the advent of railroad shipping and Conrad’s dogged sales efforts, Budweiser became a national sensation. When Conrad declared bankruptcy in 1883, Anheuser‐Busch took control of the prized brand. Touting the beer for its time aged with wood from the beech tree — done not for taste but to aid filtering — Budweiser became the company’s engine. Twenty years later, Adolphus Busch created a brand that buoyed Anheuser‐Busch even further, a premium beer available only on draft meant to reach a high‐end drinker. Busch called it Michelob.

  Fueled by its two core brands, Anheuser‐Busch became one of the nation’s largest breweries, surpassing one million barrels of production in 1901. It doubled that total during the next forty years while cementing its position among America’s leading brewers. The growth from there was staggering; thanks to homogenous postwar tastes, Anheuser‐Busch churned out thirty‐seven million barrels of beer annually by the early 1960s. Once a decidedly local undertaking in neighborhoods from coast to coast, beer drinking became about the brands that looked and tasted the same in Idaho as in Iowa, Flagstaff as in Ft. Lauderdale. Though it continued to tout its St. Louis roots, Anheuser‐Busch opened large breweries across the country: Newark in 1951, Los Angeles in 1954, Houston in 1966, Columbus in 1968, and on and on with a regional unfolding that ended with its twelfth brewery, in 1993, in Cartersville, Georgia. Along the way, an ice‐cold Budweiser became the American standard. Anheuser‐Busch marketers tried to personalize the experience — or make it humorous, or the embodiment of masculinity — while brewers and their automated systems churned endless waves of beer to an airtight distribution network reaching seemingly every corner bar and convenience store. American beer drinkers had been conditioned to believe they were choosing Anheuser‐Busch’s beer, but that was only half true; Anheuser‐Busch had left them few other options.

  A handful of other large breweries hung around to battle the St. Louis goliath. One was Schlitz, a Milwaukee brewery that was the nation’s top beer maker for much of the first half of the twentieth century. Through the 1950s, it ran neck and neck with Anheuser‐Busch for national supremacy. But Anheuser‐Busch surged ahead during the 1960s, amid a wave of industry consolidation, and never relented. In a bid to keep up, Schlitz turned to shortcuts during the 1970s: flavor additives, gel to combat haze, and a cheaper, high‐temperature fermentation process instead of the traditional time‐intensive lagering method. In a matter of months, the reengineered Schlitz destroyed the goodwill it had spent a century building. During the 1970s, Anheuser‐Busch accounted for one‐sixth of the beer sold in the United States; by the 1980s, due in part to Schlitz’s colossal errors, it was up to nearly one‐third.

  Stepping up as chief rival was Miller Brewing, which had an almost identical origin story: founded in the mid‐nineteenth century (1855) by a German immigrant (Friedrich Muller) who took over a failing midwestern (Milwaukee) brewery (Plank Road Brewery), which he renamed for himself and slowly turned into a giant. Owned briefly in the 1960s by a Maryland conglomerate, Miller Brewing landed in the hands of cigarette titan Philip Morris, which turned Miller into a formidable brand with the introduction of its lighter‐calorie — or “lite” — beer in the early 1970s, a recipe bought from bankrupt Chicago brewery Meister Brau. Equally important, Miller employed retired sports stars to promote the beer in television spots in which a good‐natured argument unfolded: Did the beer “taste great” or was it “less filling?” (The tagline only flaunted its lack of character: “Everything You Always Wanted in a Beer. And Less.”)

  Anheuser‐Busch followed in the early 1980s with Bud Light and several iconic advertising campaigns of its own, which usually relied on charming, anthropomorphized animals or women in bikinis. The major brewers tracked each other like sleuths, analyzing competing beers in laboratories and tweaking recipes as necessary. When one dropped the bittering, the other followed. By the mid‐1980s, the American beer industry amounted to a war: Which of two companies could make the less‐flavorful beer and most effectively advertise that flavorless beer on television? Sales grew wildly, but in every other way, a once‐vibrant industry bottomed out: no flavor, no variety, and no competition. In 1950 the nation’s top‐ten brewers made 38 percent of the beer. By 1980 the top‐ten brewers made 93 percent of the beer. Bud and Miller alone accounted for nearly 50 percent of the nation’s sales — a figure that would inch toward 70 percent during the decades to come.

  ---

  John Hall was never a fan of the companies that had stifled American beer. As a young man, he embraced blue‐collar Midwestern brands, particularly Old Style, brewed amid the bluffs of the upper Mississippi River in La Crosse, Wisconsin, about 130 miles northeast of Waterloo. His friends drank Budweiser, but it never fit him. It was too obvious. The difference between what was inside cans of Budweiser and Old Style might have been negligible, but the difference on the outside felt like everything. Old Style’s blue shield, red ribbon, and the words “pure genuine” meant he was different. Budweiser meant he was like everyone else.

  Stirred by that small brewery in California, John knew he was still different. Anheuser‐Busch and Miller had slugged their way to the bottom, but that only meant opportunity. The few surviving breweries largely made the same flavorless lager. But not Hopland Brewery. And that meant there was room for more.

  As John would learn, there was more. The world of craft beer was small but scrappy. (Most people called it microbrew at the time, but the term craft beer is widely pegged to 1986 — just as John Hall was discovering the industry.)

  The nation’s forefather craft brewery, Anchor Brewing, belonged to Fritz Maytag, who, like John Hall, was a child of means from small‐town Iowa. Maytag had graduated from Stanford in 1959 with a degree in American literature, then studied for a couple years in Japan before dropping out of graduate school to return to San Francisco. On a whim, he bought the faltering Anchor brewery in 1965, which made uneven beer and seemed likely to close in the midst of the national beer malaise. Maytag tweaked the recipe of its trademark steam beer and slowly rehabilitated his investment. More breweries followed: New Albion, in Sonoma, California, started by a former US Navy cadet who discovered the joys of home brewing while stationed in Scotland; Sierra Nevada, of Chico, California, launched by a home brewer who had wrestled with whether to buy a bike shop instead; and Boulder Beer Co., Colorado’s first brewery, which was started by a team that included two University of Colorado physics professors. Beer was becoming an industry of second acts. It was what people did for love after staggering around in matters far more practical.

  The movement was a slow return to national form. Before Prohibition mostly killed US brewing in 1920, the country had been home to thousands of small breweries. When selling alcohol became legal again, in 1933, the industry recovered quickly: 857 breweries operated within a decade. But for the next thirty‐seven years, Anheuser‐Busch, Schlitz, and Miller fought it out at the top with a handful of others as the number of American breweries dwindled. The county’s entry into World War II killed nearly 40 percent of the beer industry and homogenizing tastes did the rest. The bottom came in 1978, when the nation was home to just eighty‐nine breweries owned by barely forty companies. (Anheuser‐Busch owned nine of the breweries.) Big, bland beer was winning, and more than one industry analyst predicted fewer than ten American beer companies would remain by the year 2000.

  But then came the worst thing to ever happen to Big Beer: House Resolution 1337, “An Act to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 with respect to excise tax on certain trucks, buses, tractors, et cetera, home production of beer and wine, refunds of the taxes on gasoline and special fuels to aerial applicators, and partial rollovers of lump sum distributions.”

  Home brewing became legal.

  California senator Alan Cranston sponsored the key amendment in 1978 after a group of home brewing constituents lobbied him to overturn an antiquated law that taxed the production of beer brewed at home for personal use. The resolution took effect February 1, 1979, and allowed a nation to discover fresher, fascinating alternatives to the handful of beers that had strangled generations of taste buds.

  As Ken Grossman, founder of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., wrote in his 2013 book, “Beyond the Pale,” home brewing woke a sleeping giant: “We wanted to share our beer, our hoppy, dark flavorful creations. Our friends loved our beers; certainly we could find other people who would as well.” Grossman was inspired to go professional by a visit to Anchor Brewing and a tour given by Fritz Maytag. He was taken with Maytag’s model of choosing not to compete with cheap light lagers, but instead sell premium products at premium prices. Maytag had embraced innovation and risk, which led Anchor in 1972 to become the first American brewery in decades to brew a porter or, three years later, to release Old Foghorn, a thick, boozy barleywine. In 1981 Grossman followed with his own piece of the revolution, introducing an unlikely flagship: a pale ale that would differentiate him in the market. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale showcased the very ingredient Big Beer had suppressed for decades: earthy, piney, floral hops. What’s more, they weren’t bitter old‐world hops; they were American hops, bright, dank, fruity, and grown in the Pacific Northwest.

  Following Sierra Nevada’s lead, the US brewing industry slowly chugged to life:

  Brewing, to John Hall, seemed just risky enough to be fun but sensible enough to be practical. Drinking in America had become an increasingly intimate experience. California wine had matured into a force during the 1970s. A Seattle coffee company called Starbucks had just opened its first store in Chicago — its first in the United States beyond its home market. People were becoming more deliberate about how they ate and drank; John figured beer was ready to assume its place in the conversation. Homogeny and facelessness helped Budweiser and Miller become giants, but they had no true relationship with the consumer; it was all image and trickery. John would sell something new. The challenge was no different than when he had been a fresh‐faced twenty‐three‐year‐old business school graduate driving the long, flat highways of Iowa and Nebraska. The measure of a man was whether he could sell something. For his second act, John Hall would sell beer to Chicago.

• Beer & Brewing
  https://beerandbrewing.com/book-review-barrel-aged-stout-and-selling-out-by-josh-noel/
  Word count: 897

  QUOTED: "This is an honest look at an important brewery that even now continues to change the landscape. Beat writers spend a lifetime hoping to create a book only half as good as this one, and drinkers will finish reading with a deeper appreciation for beer history, business, and the future. Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out is the masterful result that happens when a proper newspaperman gets his teeth into a story."

  Book Review: Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out by Josh Noel
  Reporter Josh Noel masterfully tackles the complicated and important story of Goose Island in his new book "Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out." Every fan of craft beer should purchase and immediately read this book, says our senior editor John Holl.

  JOHN HOLL a month ago

  100%x200
  It's hard not to notice Goose Island beers. In the seven years since the Chicago-based brewery was purchased by Anheuser-Busch it's gone global. The IPA is found on tap and on shelves around the globe. It's annual release of Bourbon County Stout, once a darling among craft beer connoisseurs, continues to draw lines each Black Friday. The brewery in many ways has become a textbook example of what happens when a large brewing company buys a smaller, beloved brand.

  For many who watch the beer industry, work in it, or have made it their hobby, March 28, 2011, the day John Hall sold his brewing company to the makers of Bud Light, is the dividing line between "before" and "after" in the modern story of beer.

  What followed the sale of Goose Island was a rash of other sales: Elysian Brewing Co., Wicked Weed, Lagunitas, Revolver, Full Sail, Clown Shoes, Golden Road, Oskar Blues, Breckenridge, and many others over not so many years. Anheuser-Busch made the majority of the purchases, although rivals Heineken and MillerCoors also got in on the act, along with private equity companies. The lines of ownership are blurred thanks to smaller stakes in companies or deal that simply slipped under the radar.

  We, as beer drinkers, like to know who makes our beer. It's one of the things that made the modern beer renaissance so appealing. Our beer, the flavorful recipes we downed pint after pint, didn't come from anonymous factories. It came from down the street or the pub we sat in. We could meet the brewers, get to know their families, become friends, and generally help a fledgling industry along.

  It's one reason why, when a brewery chooses to sell to another company-especially a large brewery-we take it so personally, and why the insults from disappointed consumers (usually online) can come out so freely and harshly.

  ADVERTISEMENT
  Today, craft beer fans can scoff at Goose Island. They will say the recipes have changed, that the beer has lost its soul. That it's corporate or tired. But those barbs don't do the full story justice. Because when you consider what happened before the sale, you can see just how important Goose Island was to the developing brewing landscape and what John Hall, his son Greg, and so many others who rotated through the brewery walls did to positively affect the beer we drink today.

  When it comes to writing about beer, what we've mostly had for the last several years are broad strokes history books, tasting books, niche category books, cookbooks, travel guides, or nerdy, scientific looks at ingredients or processes. With the release of Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business (Chicago Review Press, $19.99) by Josh Noel the writing game will change. I firmly believe that folks will look differently at how beer should be covered.

  As a reporter, I'm in awe of the research and access Noel, a long-time writer for the Chicago Tribune, put into the nearly 400 pages. This isn't simply about one brewery, it's a detailed portrait of more than 20 years of tulmult, experimentation, and success in beer. Noel weaves in stories of brewers who made the bones at Goose Island long before starting their own venture or becoming common brewhouse names. This includes folks like Firestone Walker's Matt Brynildson or Perennial Artisan Ales' Phil Wymore, and countless others that, like me, when you read this book, you'll be surprised to see pop up. The book gives a voice to forgotten folks and dredges up stories that would otherwise be whitewashed by public relations firms.

  Noel doesn't leave anything to the imagination. Impeccably sourced, his book doesn't pull punches. Be it the well-known incident of brewer Greg Hall urinating into beer glasses at a Chicago bar after the sale, to the corporate structure and decisions that led Goose Island to where it is today. Throughout the book Noel goes deep into the story of Goose Island and why it matters today in American beer.

  This is an honest look at an important brewery that even now continues to change the landscape. Beat writers spend a lifetime hoping to create a book only half as good as this one, and drinkers will finish reading with a deeper appreciation for beer history, business, and the future. Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out is the masterful result that happens when a proper newspaperman gets his teeth into a story.

• Chicago Reader
  https://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2018/05/29/in-barrel-aged-stout-and-selling-out-the-tribs-josh-noel-outlines-how-goose-islands-sale-led-to-battle-lines-being-drawn-in-the-brewing-ind
  Word count: 1076

  QUOTED: "One of his greatest feats is organizing the book in such a way that it delivers a ton of information (including one of the best explanations I've read of the three-tier system of beverage distribution) without being dense or dry."

  When craft beer went corporate: Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out tells how Goose Island's sale transformed an industry
  Posted By Julia Thiel on 05.29.18 at 06:00 AM
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  Josh Noel's book Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business, from Chicago Review Press
  Josh Noel's book Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business, from Chicago Review Press

  "There wasn't a single moment when the chummy, jovial craft beer industry became a battlefield of 'us versus them,'" Josh Noel writes in Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business (Chicago Review Press). "It happened slowly. And then, seemingly, all at once."

  The line isn't an introduction to his subject matter (it actually comes near the end of the book), but it does encapsulate it fairly neatly. Noel happens to be discussing the attempts of the Brewers Association to define craft beer—which has become an increasingly thorny question as more craft breweries have been bought by global beverage companies (often referred to as Big Beer). In the early years of the craft brewing renaissance, he says, the term was never really defined. "Craft beer was the underdog. It was flavor. It was creativity. It was peace, love, and collaboration. Everyone was included—except for Big Beer. There were no wrong answers. But when there are no wrong answers, there are no right answers, and the Brewers Association sought to correct that."

  The question at the core of the debate—and the book—is whether it matters who owns craft breweries. Once they cease to operate independently, do they still count as craft? Goose Island was the first to sell out to Anheuser-Busch InBev, in 2011, but the megacorporation has acquired another nine craft breweries since then, making the matter increasingly pressing. Noel's focus is Goose Island, but he provides a broad and meticulously researched look at the big picture, including a history of Anheuser-Busch and its gradually evolving attitude toward craft beer. (Noel, a Tribune reporter, broke the news of the Goose Island sale and has been covering the story ever since.)

  In fact, Goose Island’s ties to Anheuser-Busch go back to the early days of the original Clybourn brewpub, though they were less formal then: Goose Island’s head brewer quit in 1991 when he showed up to pour beer at a summer festival and saw a Budweiser banner over his company’s booth. Noel deftly demonstrates that founder John Hall, who’d been a high-ranking corporate executive before he decided in 1986 that a brewery would be his next project, didn’t get into the business to be an underdog; he’d wanted Goose Island to dominate from the start. In 2006, before he sold out entirely to AB-InBev, he’d sold 42 percent of his company to Anheuser-Busch (before it had itself been acquired by InBev). “He saw no victory in staying small or independently owned,” Noel writes of Hall.

  But John Hall and his son Greg, who became head brewer in 1991 after the first one quit, did take risks. That "barrel-aged stout" in the title of the book isn't there just to rhyme with "selling out": Goose Island's Bourbon County Stout, created back when barrel aging was all but unheard of, defied categorization when it was introduced in 1995 but became one of the most iconic beers in the country and helped to launch the barrel-aged beer trend. Similarly, Goose Island began experimenting with using the unpredictable yeast Brettanomyces to make beer at a time when most American breweries were just trying to avoid it (the yeast can cause beer to spoil), producing a Belgian-style ale called Matilda that's still one of the brewery's most popular beers.

  Those beers illustrate how the way that craft breweries operate—creating a beer and then figuring out how to market and sell it—is entirely differently from the way megabreweries function. "Beer didn't start as a recipe at Anheuser-Busch; it began as an idea around a conference table strewn with laptops and spreadsheets," Noel writes. One of his greatest feats is organizing the book in such a way that it delivers a ton of information (including one of the best explanations I've read of the three-tier system of beverage distribution) without being dense or dry. Especially compelling is Noel's account of John Hall announcing to his employees that he's sold the brewery to Anheuser-Busch and the stunned, angry reactions that followed. Employees met by department to discuss details (upon hearing that they'd be subject to drug testing in a few months, Noel writes, some salespeople snuck off to smoke weed while they still could), then Hall reconvened the staff to say that the sale was a win for craft beer and for Goose Island. They had created something that AB-InBev couldn't, which is why the behemoth had bought their brewery.

  By 2017, though, with ten craft breweries in the fold, AB-InBev had become the second-largest producer of craft beer in the U.S. Which sounds a lot like winning. Does that mean Goose Island lost? By Noel’s account, it’s not that simple. More than half the book is dedicated to the years following the sale, which have included some rough patches but also a cash infusion by the corporate overlords and significant growth for Goose Island, which was the point all along.

  And all that beer they're making—is it craft? Not according to the Brewers Association, which has defined craft brewers as "small, independent and traditional" ("independent" in this case means being less than 25 percent owned or controlled by a member of the beverage industry that's not a craft brewer). Last summer they issued a seal for independent craft brewers to put on their beer labels, making it easy for consumers to distinguish what's what. Goose Island, of course, doesn't qualify.

  Barrel Aged Stout and Selling Out. By Josh Noel (Chicago Review Press). Reading Fri 6/1, 7 PM, the Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln, 773-293-2665, bookcellarinc.com, free.

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  QUOTED: "If you care about the beer industry and the future of craft beer, you'll enjoy this book."
  "Noel has put together an excellent book that will be of interest to craft beer fans and industry observers."

  Friday, May 25, 2018
  Review: Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out
  I first caught wind of Josh Noel's book months ago. It peaked my interest because I've followed the antics of Anheuser-Busch in craft beer space for many years. You know this if you stop by here occasionally. I preordered the book on Amazon and it arrived just prior to last week's trip to Kauai. Perfect timing.

  The book is not yet in full release. That evidently happens on June 1. It looks like Amazon is still handling it as a preorder, though, as I say, the copy I ordered months ago arrived in my mailbox about two weeks ago. Whatever.

  First, I don't know Josh Noel and was not interviewed for his book. One of my blog posts from several years ago is referenced, but that's it. My friend, Jeff Alworth, received an advance copy a while ago and told me it was great reading. He was right, a rarity. (I kid.) Read Jeff's review here.

  Noel, who writes about beer and travel for the Chicago Tribune, interviewed seemingly hundreds of people and consulted a pile of print, electronic and related sources while prepping for the book. As with all such projects, the research likely took significantly longer than the actual writing. Situation normal.

  I don't want to give too much of the book away. Please support the author by purchasing a copy. The tale is essentially divided into two parts. Most of the first half of the book focuses on how John and Greg Hall (father and son) built Goose Island Brewing into a highly respected craft brand. The second half covers the aftermath of Goose Island's sale to Anheuser-Busch in 2011.

  It's clear early on that John and Greg Hall are polar opposites. John is the steady, conservative hand steering the company; Greg is the wildly creative, undisciplined and unstable force who invented a great line of beers, including Bourbon County Stout, a beer that transformed the way we think about barrel beer in this country.

  By 2010 or so, Goose Island was at a crossroads. It simply could not keep up with the demand for its mainstream beers, while also maintaining production of its high end specialty beers. They needed money in some form to expand. John Hall, 45 when he launched the brewery, was nearly 70. Thinking about the next 10 or 20 years wasn't in the cards.

  There was no succession plan at Goose Island. While many employees and outsiders assumed Greg Hall would eventually take control of the company, that was not the plan. Some will consider Greg to be the tragic figure in this story. In fact, it's fairly clear that he was was not suited by temperament to run the company. He was strictly a creative guy.

  The result of that reality is that John Hall elected to sell a controlling share in Goose Island to Anheuser-Busch. Portland-based Craft Brew Alliance, which owned a 42 percent share in Goose, eventually sold its share for $16 million in cash, plus reduced distribution fees worth millions more (the CBA was a third owned by AB at the time).

  In the wake of the buyout, Noel shifts to covering multiple facets of what transpired. The Brazilians running Anheuser-Busch (absorbed by InBev prior to the Goose Island deal) had no idea how to operate a craft brewery. They bullied employees, bungled marketing tactics and generally mangled the Goose Island brand.

  But Goose Island served as a sort of test case. As Anheuser-Busch bought more craft breweries, its experience at Goose was significant. The cautionary tale for craft beer fans is that the Brazilians have been good learners. They've modified and refined their approach with the acquired brands. To a significant extent, they actually know what they're doing now.

  It seems to me that Noel's views on big beer vs craft are readily apparent. But you'll have to read the book and judge for yourself. If you care about the beer industry and the future of craft beer, you'll enjoy this book. Please buy of copy at your local independent bookstore or online, if you must. It's well-worth the investment.

  One area where Noel jumps the track along the way is in describing Portland's early craft beer history:
  By 1984 the city of fewer than four hundred thousand was home to a handful of breweries, including what would briefly become three of the nation's ten largest: Portland Brewing Co., Full Sail Brewing Co., and Widmer Brothers Brewing. Widmer, in particular, generated buzz with its odd choice of a flagship: hefeweizen...
  Actually, Portland had only one operational brewery at the end of 1984. That was Bridgeport Brewing, known at the time as Columbia River Brewing. Portland Brewing didn't open until March 1986. Full Sail (originally Hood River Brewing) didn't open until 1987, and not in Portland; Widmer was prepping to open in 1984 and eventually did in April 1985. But Hefeweizen was not the Widmer Brothers intended flagship. That honor belonged to Altbier, which proved to be a hard sell. Hefeweizen became the Widmer flagship largely by accident a year or two after they officially opened.

  Regardless of that misstep, Noel has put together an excellent book that will be of interest to craft beer fans and industry observers. I regard it as essential reading.

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