World Series of Beer: Home brew

This one's coming in late, as I was on the road much of yesterday and left with little time to blog last night. But I did want to make sure we got in the final innings of our showdown between Massachusetts brewing and Colorado brewing, timed to coincide with the World Series between the Red Sox & the Rockies.

Colorado's game-four beer is straight from the source: Blue Moon Belgian-style Wheat Ale was cooked up by the Sandlot Brewery at Coors Field. Coors opened this brewpub when the park opened for the Rockies' first game in 1995. Just as the team has quickly risen to prominence, Blue Moon quickly climbed the ranks from brewpub special to national distribution and commercial success.

Coors may have a reputation with beer snobs as a producer of boring, light-weight light lagers, but their Sandlot operation, by all accounts is a good place to get great beer. And Blue Moon is a pretty good imitation of the Belgian wit style, with citrus and coriander flavor. If nothing else, its broad distribution and the marketing support provided by Coors have helped to broaden the average consumer's beer experience, opening millions of peoples' minds to different styles and flavors.

While the home team did not emerge victorious last night (the Rockies lost 4-3 to give the Sox a four-game sweep and the World Series title), at least they and their fans have some good beer to cry into.

Headed to Chippewa Falls? Pack your passport

It's sorta close to Canada, but come on. In the New York Times' story today on the Miller-Coors merger, Leinenkugel's is referred to as an imported beer. Excerpt below:

Besides cost savings, the merger will create a strong portfolio of brands, from domestic brews like Coors Light and Milwaukee’s Best to import beers like Leinenkugel’s, Peroni and Molson Canadian.

This reminds me of the laughable gaffes I've seen on a few restaurant menus over the years, with the likes of Rolling Rock and Killian's listed as imports. Killian's at least says "Irish" on the label, despite being brewed in the United States by Coors. But Rolling Rock says "Latrobe, Pa." right on the bottle (or at least it used to ... now it says "St. Louis, Mo.").

As for Leinenkugel's, which the company says is America's seventh-oldest brewery? Maybe Wisconsin looks like a foreign country when viewed from Manhattan. But that doesn't make it so.

Today's column

Pitcher This: Big getting bigger

10-10-2007

Two of the biggest names in brewing are getting together.

SABMiller, the global beer giant that owns America's Miller Brewing Co., and Molson Coors, which operates Coors Brewing Co., announced Tuesday they would combine their U.S. operations into a joint venture, MillerCoors. The new company would be the second-largest brewer in the United States, after Anheuser-Busch, with $6.6 billion in revenue off sales of 69 million barrels of beer.

So what's that mean for Joe Sixpack?

If you'll pardon the metaphor, I think it'll be a lot like pouring half a Coors Light into half a cup of Miller Lite; you won't really notice.

The new company will likely continue to brew and market all the brands customers are familiar with, including Coors, Coors Light, Miller Lite and Miller High Life.

And the profits will continue to go to the same places: the headquarters of the huge multinational firms that actually own those brands. SABMiller, an amalgamation of the original Miller and South African Breweries, is headquartered in London; MolsonCoors, the product of a merger between a Canadian Molson and the original Coors Brewing, has its headquarters in Denver.

The companies hope to save some money by teaming up on marketing, distribution and brewing operations.

For fans of full-flavored beer diversity, there doesn't seem to be much to toast here, at least on the surface. Swap the labels on either company's main offerings and one might not even notice. And that goes for the new company's main competitor, maker of Budweiser and Bud Light, too.

All three companies are fighting for a share of the same shrinking market for mass-produced beer. They've been losing ground to wine, liquor and craft beer from smaller, more creative brewers. Consumers, it seems, are getting bored with the same ol' pale lager that has been the staple of American brewing for decades.

But if a more profitable MillerCoors has more money to invest in developing and marketing new products, there's a chance it could mean more interesting stuff on the cooler shelves at your corner store.

Coors has recognized the appeal of craft beer and has been cashing in with its higher-quality Blue Moon line of wheat beers. Miller, meanwhile, has since 1988 owned Wisconsin-based Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Co., which makes a number of craft beers including Sunset Wheat, available here.

And SABMiller has in its stable of brands a number of European brews such as Pilsner Urquell and Peroni that appeal to those with a more discriminating palate.

If the new company commits more resources to promoting these and other high-quality brands it could go a long way toward improving the diversity of beer for sale, and perhaps brew up some new profits in the process.

BIG beer merger news

Huge news from the brewing industry today: America's second- and third-largest brewers, Miller and Coors, are merging. The combined company is expected to have about 29 percent of the U.S. beer market, still a distant second to brewing giant Anheuser-Busch's 48 percent share, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Like Blue Moon? There's more where that came from

Expect more experiments from Coors Brewing Co. The Wall Street Journal says Coors is launching a new subsidiary, AC Golden Brewing Co., to develop more higher-end beers like Blue Moon, the Belgian-style wit that's taken much of the country by storm lately (that's what the girl next to you at the bar is drinking with the big slice of orange in it).

The journal quotes an e-mail from the company to wholesalers, saying the drive stems from former CEO Pete Coors' "passion for great beer and his belief that there had to be a better -- more efficient and effective -- way for major brewers to introduce and build new brands."

This looks to me like a reaction to beer's slipping stance in the marketplace for alcoholic beverages. Craft and higher-end imports are growing, while the rest of the beer segment is losing market share to wine and liquor. All the big brewers are experimenting with new stuff, but this looks like the biggest commitment yet from a macro to higher-quality stuff.