August Schell Brewing Company is providing a fas of Zommerfest for the MNBeer party tomorrow. Mmmm. Can’t wait! See you there!

For those of you unfortunate souls who don’t have the luxury of sitting on your soft butts in expensive chairs, feet comfortably propped up on disregarded Ponzi-scheme proposals, eating doughnuts and drinking fru-fru coffee purchased with TARP money, idly chatting about the plight of the common man, and perusing the daily paper favored by fat-cat financiers (the Wall Street Journal) like myself, I’d like to point you to a pretty good article in today’s online WSJ focusing on Lambics.  I’d like to thank Half-Caff-Double-Donut-Frazier for bringing this to my attention.  It’s got nothing to do with Minnesota Beer, but it does make for a good read and I hope you enjoy it.  I’ve seen an increasing number of craft beer related stories in the WSJ and similar periodicals.  I guess that means it’s a legitimate industry for today’s Gordon Gekko to exploit.  Interestingly enough, many of the more recent stories have touched on the relative health of the craft beer industry in the broad economic malaise.

I’m sure we all assumed this, given the fact that the craft beer scene has exploded in the last year, but now we have the data to prove it! Twin Cities Business magazine has a nice story on the burgeoning craft brewing scene in Minnesota. Thanks JS for the heads up!

MN Craft Beer Sales Boom Despite Recession
Minnesota craft beer brewers outpaced their national peers by nearly 70 percent in 2008.

March 2009, by Katie Harholdt

Are beer sales recession proof? That doesn’t appear to be the case now. Overall, U.S. beer sales were flat in 2008—they saw a meager 0.4 percent increase in sales, according to the Association of Brewers, a beer trade group based in Colorado. The beer industry typically sees healthy single-digit growth each year.

But there’s some good news on the craft beer front, which includes all of Minnesota’s beer makers. Nationally, craft brewers (defined as brewpubs, microbreweries, regional craft breweries, and contract brewing companies) saw their sales rise 5.8 percent in 2008. During that same period in Minnesota, craft beer sales were up a whopping 74.5 percent.

Why such a jump? One explanation is that there’s room to grow. Craft brewing is a small part of the overall U.S. beer industry—just $6.3 billion of the $101 billion beer market in 2008, according to the Association of Brewers.

 

Full story here.

Okay here’s the deal. We’ll be taking pre-orders for the shirts for a few days. They’re nice Gildan t-shirts in black with the above graphic in white across the chest. I’m ordering these Friday and will have them in  a couple of weeks. Drop me a line if you want to pre-order a shirt. ryan AT mnbeer.com

Fear not, if you don’t order now, we’ll still have shirts.