Beavertown confirm sale of minority stake to Heineken

#2. Hoptimism, another one of the top UK webshops. https://www.facebook.com/hoptimismbeers/posts/1805165842855361

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I criticise big brewers for peddling crap. I criticise the hypocrisy of marketting yourself as being very very “craft” forever, and then jumping at the opportunity to suck on Big Beer’s cock when it’s waved in your face.

But I tick none of your boxes.

I buy salty gherkins from a little old lady at the local open-air market. Not one little old lady, we rotate around about half a dozen. And the meat comes from small butchers too. Not always Estonian, because the cured meats from Latvia and Lithuania are amazing, so of course I buy them too.

I have no google acccount, no facebook account, and I’ve not (successfully) bought something via amazon for about a decade (I admit I tried to buy “Joking Hazard” via them last year, but they were unable to process my card, so no transaction occurred).

This is a principled stand.

However, I understand that everyone likes a bit more money - do you like money? I like money! - and they’d be dumb to not take that wodge when it’s offered. They just shouldn’t have been such bullshit artists in the past with their pretence of being anti- what they were actually gagging for.

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Didn’t know about La Trappe. I suspect many people don’t. I generally don’t care who owns what as long as the beer is good. I just find it kind of ironic that the sell-outs are often the ones who are very vocal about being independent. (I personally don’t like people who say one thing and do another thing.)
This is not a deal that was made in a day, they have negotiated the terms for months. If they were really honest, they could have easily let the other breweries know that this kind of thing may happen or may not (without giving away details). At least they didn’t pull a ratebeer and announced the sale before the fest…

Ohh and the “nothing will change plapla” is pure bullshit PR spin. I work for a company that has been sold twice and the first thing that the new owners always say is: “you guys are doing really great work! nothing will change!”. Of course the things start to change fast… No big corporation gives away millions just for fun or to support “craft”. They may be less involved when the company is earning a solid profit and growing, but the moment they hit some kind of problems, everything will change.

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With a bit of time I can probably think of quite a lot of exceptions to that rule, but here’s one for starters The Wedding Present were criticised for moving to a major label back in the day, I think that they went to RCA records? but then knocked out some fab stuff, Kennedy being probably my favourite song of theirs, but also whilst on that label released a single a month for a whole year, which was a very novel and not big business thing to do!

OK, I’ll miss the 3.9 3.7 3.7 3.6 3.5 3.4 3.4 beers.
Not so fussed about the 3.2 3.2 2.9 2.9 2.9 ones.
Really not going to miss the 2.7 2.6 2.5 2.5 2.3 2.2 2.0 1.9 1.8 1.7 and 1.5

Was anything of real value actually lost? That really isn’t the kind of scoring that an actual good brewery gets. Actual good breweries get:

3.8 3.8 3.7 3.7 3.6 3.5 3.4 3.4 3.4 3.4 3.4 3.3 3.3 3.3 3.3 3.2 3.2 3.2 3.2 3.1 3.1 3.1 3.1 3.1 2.9
or
4.2 4.0 4.0 3.8 3.7 3.7 3.7 3.7 3.6 3.6 3.6 3.6 3.6 3.6 3.6 3.5 3.5 3.5 3.5 3.5 3.5 3.5 3.4 3.4 3.4 3.3 3.3 3.3 3.3 3.2 3.2 3.2 3.1 3.1 3.1 3.0 3.0 2.8 2.7
or
3.7 3.6 3.5 3.4 3.4 3.4 3.4 3.3 3.2 3.2 3.1 3.1 3.1 3.0 2.8 2.8 2.6

And no, those aren’t my favourite breweries, those are the three chosen by @minutemat above. (And the bottom two are a pils, and a collab with lost abbey, so yes, there are occasional hiccups even with good breweries.)

Hey, we don’t do ‘hipsters’ in Shropshire, we have ‘farmsters’ though; beards and smocks go well together, especially with wellies.

<*))))))><

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Congrats, you win the ABC “Manafort pleads guilty to 5 charges of manslaughter.” fake news award.

The abbey owns the brand. The abbey owns the brewery building. The abbey owns the brewing equipment. The brewery is operated by a subsiduary of Bavaria.

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Shame, had some great beers from them.

We actually got them in Croatia recently, but in a pretty shitty move, they sent in somewhat older kegs of Gamma Ray and Lupuloid, which sucks if you’re entering a new market. Though… they were okay compared to some kegs of some other famous breweries that money from macros recently…

“Owned by Bavaria” might be pushing it a bit - the Trappists are quite strict about the monks supervising, the brewery being within the monastery, and all that. Bavaria seems to be more of a sub-contractor running the day-to-day brewing ops, it also handles marketing & distribution.

Sorry if this has been mentioned but Brewdog have now pulled out, on the basis that Heineken never do minority deals. They fully bought Lagunitas last year and he reckons its in BTs contract to fully sell out at some point in the future.

Im kinda siding with him. What do Heineken care about ‘craft’ beer?

I bought David Gedge a pint of lager after a gig at the Leadmill, some years back. It may or may not have been Heineken…

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Sell out … I went to an independent bakers and bought him some apple pie !

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Mmm. My thinking is they know enough about brand value, and they care enough about the money they just forked out, that they’re not going to feck it up. 20 years ago, maybe, but not now.

My worry isn’t for the quality and variety of Beavertown beer (or Lagunitas or Brixton beer), it’s for the squeeze it’ll put on smaller brewers once Heineken strongarms its own brands into the emerging “mainstream craft market”.

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Craft is an approach to brewing rooted in a passion for beer itself. Heineken no doubt understand how to exploit it, make money from it, create a successful brand out of it, but does that translate as ‘passion’ for the movement, the community? Of course not. Money and volume is the motivator. And volume is what they want Beavertown to generate. Not peace and love for craft beer :v:️

Disagree. The reason H bought B was because it was already a successful brand. H don’t need to create anything here.

Ok, lets be factual then. Brewery “de koningshoeven” is owned by the holding company of Bavaria. https://drimble.nl/bedrijf/lieshout/k41216684/stichting-administratiekantoor-ambrig.html

On paper, the monks might own the rights to the brand La Trappe. But thats just so they can keep the trappist label. Bavaria does the brewing, the selling and the logistics. Hey, but its just a minority influence :wink:

Obviously you have never worked for the big corporation. The ability to fck things up and sometimes just lack of common sense is something you can’t even imagine, if you haven’t seen it at first hand.

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I suspect we’re all tired of hearing Beaver related stuff now but since it hasn’t yet been posted here did anyone else read Cloudwater’s longer explanation they posted yesterday of their decision to pull out of BeaverEx? It’s interesting, many links in the article citing Heineken’s past offences which makes their decision a lot more understandable when they’re bundled together like that all in one paragraph.
http://cloudwaterbrew.co/blog/tough-calls-and-a-bigger-picture

Breweries dropping out so far:

  • The Veil
  • Evil Twin
  • Modern Times
  • Cloudwater
  • Brew by Numbers
  • BrewDog
  • Pen Druid

Breweries who have officially said they will still attend:

  • Northern Monk

Everyone else is apparently undecided so far, not sure assumptions can be made either way at this rate.

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Garage Project also confirmed they would attend.

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I think there are plenty of up & coming breweries who will jump in and replace those that leave, such as Garage. Bbno & CW have both hinted they’ll be doing another event in london the same weekend, and make it up to those with tickets. Tbh, with 100 other breweries im unlikely to miss them, and wont feel any pressing need to travel after the event for more beer elsewhere.

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