Oskar Blues Buys Tampa's Cigar City Brewing

Tampa Tribune — Rachael Starcher is a big fan of Cigar City beer.
 How big? Starcher, her husband and a friend drove down from Morgantown, West Virginia, this weekend to attend Cigar City’s annual Hunahpu’s Day release party for the revered seasonal stout.
 On Monday, the trio were seated at a table outside the Cigar City tasting room on Spruce Street, sipping “everything they have,” when they learned the Tampa craft brewer had been acquired by Oskar Blues Brewery of Longmont, Colorado.
 “I would be surprised if anything would change,” said Starcher, a medical student. “They obviously have some of the greatest beer in America. ... When you get to a certain level, you need the resources that only bigger companies have. If you want to step it up, you have to have those connections. I have no problem with it.”
 That’s an attitude Cigar City founder Joey Redner hopes will take hold as word spreads that the local institution, which produces Jai Alai India Pale Ale and other award-winning beers and is credited with making Tampa a leading center of craft brewing, has been sold.
 Fireman Capital Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm, is the financial partner in the deal, bringing Cigar City into a bullpen of craft brewers that include Oskar Blue, Perrin Brewing of Comstock Park, Michigan, and the Utah Brewers Cooperative, which includes the Wasatch and Squatters brands.
 Redner had a message Monday for loyal customers who may have panicked when they got the news.
 “Relax. Have a beer,” Redner said in an email exchange with the Tampa Tribune. “Nothing is changing. I am staying put. The brewery is staying put. I still have a lot of skin in the game via the ownership entity that has been created via the Oskar Blues holding company. I don’t own the majority of the company anymore, but I am still very significantly invested in the future of Cigar City Brewing, only now I have partners with the technical and operational know-how to sustain our growth.”  ...more

Grand Rapids Makes USA Today's Readers Choice: Beer Winners

 The United States surpassed 4,100 breweries in 2015, according to the Brewers Association. That's a lot of beer! Demand for high-quality craft beer is at an all time high, and USA TODAY 10Best set out to find the crème de la crème of the craft beer world.
 Enlisting the help of a panel of beer experts, 10 Best nominated 20 finalists in the categories of Best Beer Scene, Best New Brewery, Best Beer Bar, Best Brewpub, Best Beer Festival and Best Beer Label. For the past four weeks, readers have been voting daily for their favorites in each category, and the results are in.
The winners for the USA TODAY 10Best beer awards are as follows: 10best-readers-choice-beer-winners

US Maltsters Cut back On Malting Barley

US maltsters have cut back on the number of acres of malting barley they will contract for this year and what will be contracted for will be at a lower price than what was issued last year, Farm and Ranch Guide reported on March 2.
 That’s the word from CHS Sunprairie grain merchandiser Kayla Burkhart. They contract acres for Rahr Malting in the north central region of North Dakota and the amount of acres contracted was cut significantly.
 “Our six-row barley malting contracts were cut in half and our two-row contracts were cut by 70 percent,” Burkhart said. “The reason is that we had such great crops last year, which resulted in a big supply so they don’t have to contract a bunch for this year.”
 The average price paid for the malting barley contracts by Rahr was around $4.50 a bushel, which pencils out on the favorable side considering the current prices of other commodities.
 “When you are talking a current price of $4.20 a bushel for spring wheat, the price being offered for the barley contracts is phenomenal,” she said.
 A reflection of the current situation of adequate malting barley supplies is the lack of a higher cash bid price for malting barley. emalt.com