Tag Archives: marketplace

Beer on public radio

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On today’s Marketplace program is a short piece on the burgeoning movement of canning beer amongst craft brewers.

What I’m about to say is a matter of some debate, but good beer — really good beer — often comes from microbreweries. They typically cost more, but conventional wisdom holds microbrews are better than mass-produced fizzy yellow stuff in part because they usually come in bottles.

Whose conventional wisdom, I wonder. Certainly nobody I know.

Anyway, it’s worth a few minutes of your time. Go and give a listen.

Oh, and if you can leave comments, see if you can straighten out the doofus who said “American beer aficionadi tend to drink their beer *from the bottle.*” (I can’t seem to leave comments on the story.)

Are big beer mergers good for craft brewers?

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Speaking of Heineken’s purchase of FEMSA, Public Radio’s Marketplace had a story on how consolidation of brewing giants can help craft brewers.

Marketplace: Are beer mergers a good brew for biz?

Uli Bennewitz owns the Weeping Radish Farm Brewery in Jarvisburg, N.C. He also runs a butchery and an organic farm.

Everybody is wary of “where does this stuff come from?” There is clearly a move towards local, local, local. And I think that is an advantage for small breweries.

They also follow up with a bit of analysis on the Marketplace blog:

Maketplace Scratch Pad: One world, one beer company?

Paddy [Hirsch] recently visited Stone Brewing Company near San Diego, and they told him they loved it when the big companies merged. The mergers turn off beer-drinkers, perhaps in principle but also because something bad seems to happen to the flavor of a decent beer when it gets swallowed up by a mega-corporation. People start looking for alternatives.

The fate of Dixie Beer

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I am a National Public Radio junkie. I don’t get to listen to it as much as I used to, since my one-and-one-half-hour commute is no longer by car. But, I do tune in on the trip to and from the train station and whenever I’m running about.

The family and I were headed out last night to run a few errands. Marketplace was on, but I was only half listening. My ears perked up when I heard the intro to this story:

Marketplace: Couple keep heady hopes for Dixie Beer

dixie200x400.jpgIn the interview, Kendra Bruno (who owns the brewery with her husband, Joe) talks about how they are trying to bring their beer back to market. It is currently being contract brewed in Wisconsin and, Kendra admits, isn’t as good as when it was brewed at “home”.

The brewery was pretty much destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and what the floods didn’t get, the looters did. And not just desperate people trying to survive, but well-organized criminals.

This isn’t the first time Dixie has been profiled on NPR. Back in June, 2006, Peter Breslow profiled the Brunos and what they were dealing with.

Couple Vows to Get Beer Flowing Again in ‘Dixie’

I try not to be cynical, but hearing what other human beings did to Dixie’s brewing equipment shakes my faith in humanity. Small brewers have it tough enough, what with rising hops and barley prices, kegs being stolen and sold for scrap, and all the rest of the bad news that’s come out in the last year. But stealing the kettles and pipes? How do you recover from that? (I’ve seen anecdotal evidence that they were underinsured, as well.)

I guess buying some Dixie Beer (if I can find it around here) is one way to help a small, struggling brewer.

Some other coverage of Dixie Beer post-Katrina:

A Good Beer Blog: Dixie Brewing Company, New Orleans, USA (February 26, 2006) – Some of the comments are quite telling

What’s On Tap: A column about New Orleans and Dixie Beer (November 7, 2007)

Associated Press: Brewer Works to Bring Back Dixie Beer (November 18, 2007)