Sierra Nevada decides on the site for their Eastern brewery: is it time to run for the hills?

Sierra Nevada has chosen Asheville, North Carolina -- okay, Mills River, 12 miles south of Asheville, but from 100 miles or more away...it's Asheville, and you can bet that the beer-happy folks in Asheville will see it that way, too --  as the site for their new east coast expansion brewery. Plans are for a brewery with 300,000 bbls. initial capacity. “We are thrilled to have found an ideal location in western North Carolina for our second brewery,” says Ken Grossman, founder of Sierra Nevada. “The beer culture, water quality and quality of life are excellent. We feel lucky to be a part of this community.”

The brewery site. You can almost smell the mash.

More from Grossman:

Much like Chico, with its close proximity to many creeks, rivers and the Sierras, the location for our new brewery in North Carolina will be situated on property that borders the French Broad River, with the Blue Ridge Mountains as a backdrop. Of course, building a new brewery from the ground up is no small task, and we anticipate the construction to take between 18 and 24 months. Our East Coast brewery will be built with a sustainable and mindful approach and maintain the integrity of the property and beauty of the natural landscape. Construction will take approximately two years, and when completed, we anticipate the new brewery to be close to 200,000 square feet, with an on-site pub & restaurant.

How could you not like this? I've heard some concerns that Sierra Nevada will steamroller smaller craft brewers in the area, even in the wider mid-Atlantic. No, I don't think so, not any more than Sam Adams or Yuengling* have, though there was some of that at the very beginning. Sierra Nevada has clearly learned that if they want to keep growing -- and doing good! -- they're going to have to tune up their game, and they surely have: Torpedo, Ovila, Ruthless Rye, and the impressive run of one-offs they've been doing shows that.

That, in turn, is clearly good for everyone, because it serves notice that Sierra Nevada's impressive plant and talent pool and immense reservoir of goodwill are not going to simply be used to pump out more Pale Ale. No,they're going to be doing what Sierra Nevada has done from the very beginning, and what successful craft brewers have always done: challenging other brewers to bring their best, and thereby delivering the goods to us -- The Thirsty.

Cheers, this is good news.

*No, I'm not saying Yuengling is a craft brewery; don't freak out. But Yuengling did tend to suck up the taps reserved for "different" in bars in the region. 

More on craft beer and super-premium spirits sales

I've been talking about how craft beer and high-end spirits sales continue to buck the economy...and I've been getting a string of comments from my favorite grammar-ignorant punctuation-avoidant anonymous poster crying me false, saying that sales aren't that good, and will soon (when? After ten years?!) crash back to normal. Well...sorry, "Punkin Head," but there's more good news, this time from an interview with Midwest supermarket chain Hy-Vee's vp of wine and spirits, Jay Wilson in Shanken News Daily. Check it out...

Sales of beverage alcohol at the 245-unit Hy-Vee Inc. supermarket chain throughout the Midwest approached $500 million at the end of its fiscal year on September 30, according to Jay Wilson, vice president of wine & spirits. Total sales at the employee-owned chain were at $7 billion for the period. Hy-Vee is opening 3 new stores this year, and will have 248 units in the following eight states by year-end: Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri and Kansas. Its beverage alcohol departments range from 6,000 square feet down to a single 40-foot aisle. Wine and spirits each account for 30% of sales, with beer at 40%. The chain has made a commitment to educating its sales staff and has become a destination for wine, spirits and beer drinkers seeking selection and good value. So far, over 350 employees have received certification recognized by The Society of Wine Educators. 
[Edited here...]
SND: How has the slow economy of the past few years affected your business?
Wilson: While the on-premise accounts have been hurt, people are still buying alcoholic beverages to take home. So they’re coming to us instead of going out.
SND: When Market Watch interviewed you in 2008, beverage alcohol sales at Hy-Vee were $350 million. How have you done in the years since?
Wilson: We just finished our fiscal year on September 30, and we’re very close to half a billion dollars in beverage alcohol sales.
SND: How do you account for that growth? What’s driving it?
Wilson: Craft beer is up 35% and we have really embraced this market. We’re putting 44 feet of nothing but craft in an open-air cold case. We’ve also got some big growth categories in spirits. Vodka is the leading category for us, while Irish whiskey is showing about a 45% trend up over the last three years for us. Additionally, rum is a very big and growing category for us.
SND: Are you seeing any return to super-premium spirits?
Wilson: We’re seeing people going back to them. And there are some people who never left them. But we’re definitely seeing solid growth there.

Note: despite craft enthusiasts' fears that supermarkets will ignore crafts for the "big bucks" of mainstream beer, Hy-Vee clearly sees the benefit of craft's bigger margins.

Ball's in your court, "Punkin." 

Greg Hall doesn't keep us waiting

Check out this interview with Goose Island brewmaster (and hellaciously good guy) Greg Hall. There's a man who's grabbing the brass ring, and good for him. Greg delivered a ton of great beer, put up with a lot of crap, and kept smiling. I'll miss talking to him for work; hope to keep talking to him for pleasure.

Thanks to STAG regular Steven Herberger for the link!

The Lion continues to upgrade and expand

The Lion, PA's third-largest brewery (don't know why the story ignores the Samuel Adams brewery outside Allentown; because it's not PA-based?), gets some good press here. There's been a lot of crap slung about these guys, but they're just keeping their heads down, steadily improving the quality of their beer, and the range of their beer, and now they've got some real sales support. Read the piece; it's just another story about how smaller breweries are real engines of economic growth in this still flailing economy.

Thanks to Bil at MyBeerBuzz for the tip on the story.