Celis goes local.
Those who enjoy the taste of Celis beers from Austin, TX, are advised to snap up all available stocks. The parent company is pulling back sharply on distribution.Founded in 1990 by Pierre Celis, a talented Belgian brewer, Celis was acquired early this year by Miller Brewing and placed into its new subsidiary, the American Specialty Craft Beer Co. When the acquisition was announced, Miller said it had plans to greatly increase the capacity of the 16,000-barrel brewery. Then in midsummer, it became known that American Specialty was reining in the beers, which include Celis White, Grand Cru, Pale Bock, and others.
"We're reducing the scope of the distribution," says Scott Barnum, general manager of American Specialty. "Instead of being in 30 states, we'll be in four or five. That's because distribution had been spotty -- everyone was getting shorted. Even the Austin distributor in the back yard of Celis wasn't getting a steady supply.
"We're withdrawing back to some of Celis' key markets. We've discovered in the process that Texas alone is soaking up more than what Celis is producing."
By September, the capacity of the Austin brewery will be 20,000 barrels, and by the end of March it will have grown to 45,000, Barnum says. "It's not inconceivable that Texas could take all 45,000 barrels," he observes.
Freshness, or lack thereof, had been reported. "Every micro has had problems with freshness in the marketplace. It's hard for a developing company with limited resources being in 30 states to adequately cover the market. They didn't have any brewery sales people in the field making sure that retailers were properly rotating the product. I've gotten complaints," Barnum says. "That is a sensitivity that we've factored into the decision. When we go we want to be fresh. The last thing you want to do is to taint an extraordinary product by not being fresh." Barnum says that Texas, Illinois and Arizona will receive Celis beers, "and then we're debating a couple of others--selected portions of Georgia and Wisconsin."
Despite his insistence on a narrow market, Barnum hinted at future re-expansion. "If Celis is going to be a major contender, it has to have every aspect of its business in line, and that includes the proper service and delivery of its products. So we have to take a half-step back to take two steps forward."
Rogue Ales, which have scored exceptionally well in competitions, have somewhat of a cult following, and Jack Joyce doesn't see any slowdown in wholesaler interest. "Wholesalers pursue us wherever we go. We used to go to festivals and enjoy ourselves, now we have to meet with people all the time. We've never pushed it, we've sort of serviced it. Our view is that we are really high end, and people want the product. So we'll share it with them. You have to sell beers on content."
BUT IS IT FRESH?
If brewers have one fear, it is that a consumer will open one of their beers and it will be bad. There is nothing worse, we all know, than a skunky beer.
"You have to watch freshness very closely," Daugherty says. "The consumer today is much more aware of code dating, because of the milk companies. When Coke and Pepsi do it, it makes it more a point than perhaps it needs to be."
"Freshness is one of the factors we sell on," says Keith Dinehart of Chicago Brewing. "Our beers are flash pasteurized, a computerized process that takes less than a minute. The advantage for us is that the product does not cook in the process. The flavor profile is more to the original recipe. As far as we know, Anchor Brewing is the only other American brewer with this kind of equipment. It's expensive, and we got ours in a foreclosure sale.
"We feel that our beers have a five-month shelf life," Dinehart adds, "and we put a freshness date on them that says best before'." We've had some problems where a wholesaler doesn't rotate the beers. A lot of it is trust and relationship. They might be short-staffed, or have internal problems."
The brewer will eventually find out if there is a freshness problem. "This segment of the consuming public is incredibly hardcore," Dinehart says. "They eat, sleep and drink good beer. They will call us and say they love the product, and they'll also call us and tell us that we have a problem in their town. So we put the wholesaler and the broker onto it."
"We've had damn few problems with freshness," says Rogue's Jack Joyce. "To do it right you have to have the proper bottling technique. And we use a hell of a lot of hops. We're high ingredient beers, almost bottle conditioned, but not quite."
Despite their attempts at control, small brewers eventually understand their limitations, and work with them. "Do we have the power over the distributor to have them go in and make them check dates and bear the economic loss for out-of-date product? No, we don't have that power," says Joyce. "We take the product back and we eat it."
But what they can do is make sure of the quality of the product. "Our beers have radically different shelf lives. We have 10 to 15 brands on the market at any one time, and we do degradation testing weekly on different-aged beers. We have discovered that our beers get better with age. They are `best consumed after,' not `best before' a certain date."
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| Title Annotation: | Celis Brewery Inc. |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Modern Brewery Age |
| Date: | Sep 18, 1995 |
| Words: | 922 |
| Previous Article: | Micros go national. |
| Next Article: | Competitive partnering: sharing resources to improve profits and service. |
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