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| Courtesy of New Belgium Brewing Co |
(SAN FRANCISCO/FORT COLLINS) A group led by
New Belgium Brewing Company has entered into an agreement to purchase
the assets of San Francisco’s iconic Magnolia Brewing as part of a
bankruptcy proceeding. The newly-formed partnership
will be a majority-owned subsidiary of New Belgium, with Elysian
Founder Dick Cantwell and Belgian lambic producer Oud Beersel as
minority partners. The partnership will continue to operate both
Magnolia locations with existing staff and brands. Cantwell will
head up brewing operations, working alongside Magnolia founder Dave
McLean, who will be an employee of the partnership. It will be Dick’s
first brewing gig since leaving Elysian in April of 2015 after its
acquisition by Anheuser-Busch InBev.
“I’m tremendously excited to be back in the beer
business and looking forward to working with the team at Magnolia to
develop new beers and new ideas,” said Cantwell. “This project is the
natural evolution of a longstanding strategy of
collaboration between myself, New Belgium and Oud Beersel.”
New Belgium stands to align with a couple of
venerable and long-standing brands as it flexes its experimental muscles
on Magnolia’s two brewing systems and ventures further into retail
operations. The plan is to build an alliance that brings
varied talent and experience to a combination of old and new, not to
turn Magnolia’s Haight Street and Dogpatch locations into New Belgium
brewpubs. “Brewing With Friends” if you will. It is likely that much
will seem unchanged in Magnolia’s tap lineup, even
as new beers are developed and introduced, and over time, the fruits of
more patient labors begin to appear.
“We’ve been looking for ways to diversify our
assets and expand our community,” said New Belgium co-founder and
Executive Chair, Kim Jordan. “These two tap rooms are right in the heart
of historic San Francisco neighborhoods, a place Dick
(Cantwell) and I call home. Magnolia makes excellent beer and plays an
important role in the community. We’re excited about the possibilities
and look forward to continuing our journey while honoring Magnolia’s
history and presence.”
Belgian lambic producer Oud Beersel joins the
partnership as a contributing experimenter, with the goal of eventually
shipping containers of its traditionally-produced and spontaneously
fermented beers for blending with Magnolia-crafted
beers. Installation of a coolship is planned, along with the wooden
aging vessels for which both New Belgium and Oud Beersel are known. To
be called lambic the beer must be produced in Belgium, and by shipping
lambic to San Francisco the world’s first dedicated
lambic blendery outside of Belgium will be established. The project
continues New Belgium’s blending work as embodied in Transatlantique
Kriek, a beer produced over several years with Oud Beersel and Brouerij
Boon, wherein beer was shipped from Belgium for
blending with New Belgium wood-aged beers. New Belgium is also likely
to ship beer to San Francisco for blending from its Fort Collins,
Colorado brewery.
Magnolia Brewing was established by McLean in 1997
at the corner of Haight and Masonic in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury
district. Since then it has been a neighborhood institution filled by
locals and tourists alike, serving artisanal
pub food and producing a mainly English-style lineup of beers from a
brewery in the basement. Magnolia has produced an array of award-winning
beers, headlined by Magnolia’s two top sellers, Proving Ground IPA and
Kalifornia Kolsch, both of which have been
distributed in cans since February of 2017. In 2014 it opened
Smokestack, a barbecue restaurant attached to a 30-barrel production
brewery, in the Dogpatch neighborhood of the city. Magnolia encountered
financial difficulties in 2015 because of construction
delays with Smokestack and slower than anticipated development in the
neighborhood, which led the company to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection in November 2015.
“Magnolia has had quite a journey in San Francisco
for nearly two decades, including some very challenging and difficult
times in recent years,” said founder and brewmaster Dave McLean. “I'm
incredibly grateful for this opportunity to see
Magnolia start a new chapter and to be working with New Belgium, Dick
Cantwell and Oud Beersel to preserve what we all love about Magnolia
while embarking on some exciting new craft beer adventures together.”
The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close in September.
About Magnolia Brewing Company
Led by brewmaster and founder Dave McLean, Magnolia
Brewing Company has been producing some of San Francisco’s most
sought-after beers and dining experiences since 1997, when it opened its
original Haight-Ashbury brewpub. It is known for
its award-winning British-influenced and cask- conditioned ales and
balanced, lower-alcohol session beers such as Bonnie Lee’s Best Bitter
and SaraRuby’s Mild, as well as its flagship brands, Kalifornia Kölsch
and Proving Ground IPA. Magnolia Brewing is committed
to local and artisan sourcing and sustainability in brewery and
restaurant operations, as well as the spirit of community formed around
good beer and food. In addition to its two brewing operations, Magnolia
operates two restaurants: Magnolia Gastropub, located
at the Haight Street brewery, and Smokestack, housed inside Magnolia
Dogpatch’s 10,000 square foot production brewery.
About New Belgium Brewing
New Belgium Brewing,
makers of Fat Tire Belgian Style Ale and a host of Belgian-inspired
beers, is recognized as one of Outside Magazine’s Best Places to Work
and one of the Wall Street Journal’s Best Small
Businesses. The 100% employee-owned brewery is a Platinum-level Bicycle
Friendly Business as designated by the League of American Bicyclists,
and one of World Blu’s most democratic U.S. businesses, and a Certified B
Corp. In addition to Fat Tire Belgian Style
Ale and Fat Tire Belgian White Ale, New Belgium brews thirteen
year-round beers; Citradelic Tangerine IPA, Citradelic Lime Ale, Voodoo
Ranger IPA, Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA, Voodoo Ranger 8 Hop Pale Ale,
Dayblazer Easygoing Ale, Tartastic Lemon Ginger Ale,
1554 Black Ale, Bohemian Pilsner, Abbey Belgian Ale, Trippel and a
gluten-reduced line, Glutiny Pale Ale and Glutiny Golden Ale. Learn more
at
www.newbelgium.com.
About Dick Cantwell
Dick Cantwell is among the most well-respected and
experienced craft brewers and international beer judges. Cantwell
founded Elysian Brewing Company in 1996, where he served as head brewer
until he left the company in 2015 after he was
forced to sell to Anheuser-Busch InBev. During his tenure, Elysian was
named Large Brewpub of the Year three times at the Great American Beer
Festival® (1999, 2003 and 2004). In 2004, Cantwell received the Brewers
Association’s Russell Schehrer Award for Innovation
in Brewing. Additionally, he has written for various beer magazines,
authored Barley Wine with Fal Allen; The Brewers Association’s Guide to
Starting Your Own Brewery, Second Edition; Wood & Beer: A Brewer’s
Guide with Peter Bouckaert and is currently at work
on a forthcoming Brewers Publications title about experimental IPAs, a
spring 2018 release. Cantwell served as the Brewers Association’s
Quality Ambassador, making presentations across the country at state
guild conferences. He resides in Seattle, WA and San
Francisco, CA.
About Oud Beersel
The Brewery Oud Beersel, which started in 1882, is
located in Beersel at 10 km from the Brussels city centre, in the
southwest of the capital. It is one of the last remaining authentic
lambic breweries of Belgium and well known for its
lambic beer brewed along traditional brewing methods. Due to the
absence of succession in the family business at the end of 2002, the
traditional lambic beers of Oud Beersel were threatened to disappear.
Shocked by the loss of this cultural and historical
patrimony, the brewery was taken over by Gert Christiaens in 2005 and
business was restarted pursuing the principal aim to protect the
time-honored lambic beers, as well as the cultural and historical
heritage of Oud Beersel for the coming generations. This
traditional brewery of lambic beers is nowadays managed in a modern way
with respect for tradition and the métier. The traditional part of the
production process of the lambic beers, in particular the spontaneous
fermentation, the maturation of lambic in wooden
barrels and the mixture of various lambic casks and vintages
constitutes the core business of the company.
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