DRAFT Magazine

As we all know, big beer companies are fighting hard to break into the craft beer world. One of the first such forays was MillerCoors’ Blue Moon, which debuted in 1995. According to Information Resources Inc., a Chicago-based firm that tracks this type of stuff, sales of the brand jumped 14 percent last year.

Unfortunately for the company, there’s a new challenger on the market. A-B InBev launched Bud Light Golden Wheat and it’s already nearly matching the sales figures of Blue Moon.

Of course, the beer has a built in advantage with its Bud Light name and all, but one has to think the Coors people must be a little bit nervous. Then again, perhaps there’s room for both beers in the ever-expanding craft beer world?

A-B InBev will sell yet another part of its brewery empire. United States private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. will purchase South Korean brewer Oriental Brewery Co. for $1.8 billion, according to sources familiar with the matter. In 1998, A-B InBev, which were two separate companies at the time, paid a combined $884 million for OB. One billion in profit isn’t too bad for a solitary decade, huh?

OB, which has 40 percent of South Korea’s beer market, is the country’s second-biggest brewery. Hite Brewery controls the other 60 percent. Apparently, there are no other breweries in South Korea.

The (un?)holy union between Anheuser-Busch and InBev was only the beginning. Kirin, a Japanese brewing conglomerate, offered to purchase Australian-based Lion Nathan for $2.5 billion.

Lion Nathan is the Land Down Under’s second-largest beermaker, trailing only Foster’s.

The Tokyo-based Kirin already owns 46 percent of the Aussie company but wants the whole enchilada as it seeks to increase its presence abroad. Beer sales in Japan have fallen off sharply in recent months while demand for beer in Australia have jumped up. As a result Lion expects profits to rise between 12 and 16 percent over the previous year.

Craft brewers from New Belgium and Sierra Nevada to the brewpub down your street have embraced green technology in their beermaking pursuits. Apparently, the big boys are listening.

An Anheuser-Busch brewery in Fairfield, California has installed six acres of photovoltaic solar arrays that provide approximately three percent of the power needed to run the plant. Additionally, “the facility also installed a Bio-Energy Recovery System to generate more than 15 percent of the brewery’s fuel needs by capturing the nutrients in brewing wastewater for conversion into biogas.”

By the end of the year, Budweiser plans to create enough energy using green means to produce five billion 12-oz. It just goes to show you that if you keep mimicking the craft industry, everything will be okay.

No, not an individual beer, the entire bottling line. Anheuser-Busch, which purchased the makers of the lovely green bottles three years ago from In Bev for $82 million, wants to sell the Rock. Actually, In Bev — the company that now owns AB — is looking to sell the beer that’s “Born Small Town.” Yes, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but just roll with it, okay?

According to The Wall Street Journal, potential suitors include North American Breweries Inc. — which purchased High Falls Brewing Co. and Labatt USA (from In Bev) earlier this year — and C2 Imports LLC. The article doesn’t mention anything about you owning it, but it’s always a possibility. You have $80 million lying around, right?