The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Big beer companies don't actually like beer

Not that it should surprise anyone, but brewing giants like InBev and MillerCoors aren't buying craft brewers to distribute them more widely. Just the opposite:

[T]he Department of Justice and regulators in California were investigating whether InBev, which makes Budweiser and Bud Light, was buying up beer wholesalers to curb sales of craft beers in bars and grocery stores.

“When a big brewery buys an independently-owned distributor they would evaluate each one of those brands and not keep all of them,” said Tom McCormick, executive director of the California Craft Brewers Association and a former beer distributor. “The bulk of their attention would be on their in-house brands.”

Even as the big players merge, they may not be able to run ahead of consumer tastes. In the last 10 years many Americans have cut back on beer in favor of wine and liquor. And though InBev is very profitable, its beers have been losing market share as more people buy imported and craft beer. [Brooklyn Brewery founder Steve] Hindy said that’s because smaller brewers are just more single-minded about taste. “We make beer,” he said. “They make money.”

The craft brewing phenomenon terrifies companies like InBev because it's literally impossible for them to compete with micros. Once InBev buys your micro, it's no longer micro. You can't scale a micro up very far, either, or it ceases to be a micro. (See, e.g., Boston Brewing Co. and Goose Island.)

FitBit attack vector?

Via Schneier, a report that FitBit trackers could, in theory, spread malware to users' computers:

The athletic-achievement-accumulating wearables are wide open on their Bluetooth ports, according to research by Fortinet. The attack is quick, and can spread to other computers to which an infected FitBit connects.

Attacks over Bluetooth require an attacker hacker to be within metres of a target device. This malware can be delivered 10 seconds after devices connect, making even fleeting proximity a problem. Testing the success of the hack takes about a minute, although it is unnecessary for the compromise.

"Fortinet first contacted us in March to report a low-severity issue unrelated to malicious software. Since that time we’ve maintained an open channel of communication with Fortinet. We have not seen any data to indicate that it is currently possible to use a tracker to distribute malware," [FitBit said].

The researcher has made it clear that this is a proof-of-concept attack, and not one that exists in the wild.

Wait, just a link list?

Yes, even with a new blog engine, sometimes link happens:

The new blog engine does have one key advantage: putting that list together took about 1/3 the time it used to take.

Ugh

Whatever I've been fighting the past few days is taking a really good whack at me today. I may post more substantially later; right now, not so much.

Saturday, though, I had five hours of Bach, and it rocked, as much as a harpsichord, piano, and organ can rock.

Stinky Daily Parker bait

New York Times science correspondent Carl Zimmer explains how Penicillium molds have given us yummy cheeses:

By comparing the genomes of different species of molds, Dr. Rodríguez de la Vega and his colleagues have reconstructed their history. On Thursday in the journal Current Biology, the scientists reported that cheese makers unwittingly have thrown their molds into evolutionary overdrive.

They haven’t simply gained new genetic mutations to help them grow better in cheese. Over the past few centuries, these molds also have picked up large chunks of DNA from other species in order to thrive in their new culinary habitat.

The first cheese makers had no idea that they were collecting particular species of mold. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that scientists discovered the identities. Only then did it become possible for industrial cheese makers to select certain strains of mold grown in laboratories in order to produce cheese in factories.

The article has photos of blue and Camembert cheeses at the top, and I am now craving some. When's lunch?

Craft breweries sell out, like other businesses

Despite just complaining about everything I've got to do this morning, here's Crain's on why craft breweries are selling out:

At least 23 U.S. craft brewers and cider producers have sold all or part of their companies within the past 12 months, with buyers ranging from big brewers to private-equity firms to employee stock ownership plans. While the financial terms of the majority of those deals were not disclosed, industry insiders say more than $2 billion has changed hands, with valuations spiking in some cases to nearly 20 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

"Buyers are paying an absurd amount for craft breweries, and it's a great time to be a brewer who's potentially looking to sell in today's world,” says Chris Furnari, editor of Brewbound, a Watertown, Mass.-based trade publication. “When one deal is announced, and then another, and another, it causes others in the space to take a look at their business and ask, 'Well, what am I worth?'"

Sales in the U.S. craft beer market rose 22 percent to $19.6 billion in 2014, to 11 percent of all U.S. beer sales, according to the Brewers Association, a Boulder, Colo.-based craft beer trade group. Barrel volume was up 17.6 percent, far outperforming the U.S. beer industry as a whole, where volume rose 0.5 percent last year.

Ah, so, it's about money. Because no matter how much you like beer, if you're a brewer, you're in business first.

The problem the acquiring companies will have is this: People drink craft beers because they don't like the large producers, and what the large producers have to do to beer to produce large quantities. So the InBevs of the world will keep buying up craft breweries like Goose Island, and beer drinkers like me will simply stop drinking those acquired brands.

It's almost as if large companies can't understand why people like small ones. Oh, wait.