Blog Entries Tagged as brew

Let the Games Begin: BevStar 2013 Call for Entries

Category: General Blogs  |  Tags: brew

With the dawn of a new year comes a new chance for your brand to shine. Whether you're playing in the alcohol or non-alcohol space (or both even), you are cordially invited to submit your product to our third-annual BevStar Awards competition. It's our annual celebration of innovation across all of the major beverage categories. And the best part? It's absolutely free to enter, aside from whatever shipping costs you need to incur to get a sample of your product to our judging team.

Since this is about innovation, we ask that your product be new(ish). That means it should have been launched no earlier than Sept. 2011. If it hasn't been launched yet, that's fine. As long as you've got a product, a package and a plan to roll it out before summer 2013, it's eligible. (The product has to exist. Ideation is great, but execution is critical.)

Once again, we'll be awarding gold, silver and bronze awards in the following categories:

• Carbonated Soft Drinks

• Water/Enhanced Water

• Functional Beverages (including sports drinks, but not including energy drinks—those get their own category. We got a ton of energy entries last year.)

• Energy Drinks

• Beer

• Mead, Cider and Sake

• Wine

• Spirits

• Ready-to-Drink Tea & Coffee

We'll also present special achievement awards for marketing innovation, social media initiatives and environmental sustainability.

To enter, please e-mail the following to bevstar@beverageworld.com :

1. Product Name

2. Parent Company Name

3. Contact Info (address, phone & e-mail)

4. High-resolution product image

5. A brief description of the product and why you believe it should win a BevStar award.

6. The names of any packaging, label design, ingredient and branding companies or individuals that helped develop or market your product.

If your product passes the written test, we'll send you instructions on where to ship product samples for the practical test. We ask that you limit the samples to one bottle/can/carton/etc. per product entered.

Keep in mind, tasting is only one component of our selection process. Your product has to offer the whole package, which includes, well, the package and its overall market positioning.

The submission deadline is March 1. Winners will be notified by June 1 and we'll showcase winning products in the July 2013 issue of Beverage World.

If you've got any questions you can e-mail me directly.

We're looking forward to your entries!

Reverse Consolidation?

Category: General Blogs  |  Tags: brew

In the course of putting together our annual Forecast issue (the fun begins with the rather foreboding cover item on energy drinks on page 32), it’s often a tricky task to put a fresh spin on certain categories that, year after year, seem to have been performing more or less the same, give or take a volume percentage point here or there. And when the outlook for the coming year is for more of the same, it’s a mixed blessing: It’s a good thing because those doing the forecasting have a smaller chance of being wrong when performance has been so consistent and bad because those of us tasked with writing about such projections have to figure out a way to not keep repeating ourselves.

The category of which I speak, of course, is beer. To borrow a phrase from Led Zeppelin, the song remains the same: Beer’s going to keep losing alcohol share to wine and spirits, the overall market’s going to be flat or, at best, grow at a dying snail’s pace, but the craft segment’s going to continue to enjoy low double-digit growth in both volume and dollar sales.

However, a potential new twist on what’s happening in the market is that a strange dichotomy has emerged. At the top of the market, where the large multinational brewers roam (and on the distribution tier, for that matter— but that’s another story), consolidation is the driving dynamic. AB InBev is buying Modelo—a handful of years after InBev bought Anheuser-Busch to form the gargantuan entity we’ve come to know and love—Heineken’s expected to take control of Asia Pacific Breweries and there are always rumors and rumblings that AB InBev might even merge with SABMiller to give new meaning to the word ‘formidable.’

But on the small brewer side, domain of the crafts, you’ve got the reverse happening. There are already more than 2,100 small, independent brewers in the country, up several hundred from just a year ago. With more than 1,300 breweries in planning at last tally, that number could hit 2,500 in 2013. Sure there’s some consolidation happening with a couple of brewers here and there merging or giants scooping them up—à la AB InBev-Goose Island—but, relative to the number of newbies popping up, those instances are few and far between, the exceptions rather than the rule. It’s almost as if the market as a whole has gotten so consolidated that the pendulum has swung toward the exact opposite of consolidation, as far as craft brewing is concerned.

It’s a phenomenon that’s carrying over into spirits, as our November 2012 cover story could attest. It’s also happening in the non-alcohol realm among segments like artisanal sodas.

Will this reverse consolidation eventually slow down and become the reverse of reverse consolidation (aka ‘consolidation’)? Of course, that’s ultimately the market trajectory that history favors. However, 100 or so years from now, couldn’t the cycle start anew yet again? Even more recent history favors that scenario. It’s a pendulum effect and, pendula are, after all, controlled by gravity—a force not unlike consumer demand.

The Teacher Has Become the Student

Category: General Blogs  |  Tags: brew

My wife and I just went on what was quite possibly the best brewery tour we'd ever been on (and believe me, we've been on a lot of them). It was at London's Meantime Brewing Company, a 13-year-old craft operation that takes its name from the fact that it's situated in the chronological capital of the world, Greenwich.

When tour leader Alex (a quite dynamic guide) learned we were from the States he couldn't stop gushing about the U.S. craft beer scene and how the U.K. is about 15 years behind the American movement. Wait a minute. BEHIND? A great deal of American craft brewers took a cue from classic styles from Britain (as well as, of course, Belgium, Germany and the Czech Republic) when developing their own products. Beer travelers from the U.S. trek across the pond to drink cask-conditioned Real Ale. And a lot of the U.S. craft brewers offer cask versions of their own products, again a nod to the classic British tradition.

But now there are breweries like Meantime whose offerings are heavily influenced by the styles popularized by American craft brewers—those same styles whose ancestors were European and tweaked and reinvented over time. American pale ale is of course a descendant of English pale ale. The same goes, of course for American IPAs, which evolved from British India Pale Ales, which were more aggressively hopped and had a higher ABV to preserve them for the 18,000-mile pre-canal-era voyage from England to thirsty colonial troops in India.

The walls of Meantime's tasting room were filled with bottles from around the world with a disproportionately large section devoted to U.S. craft brews. Others visiting the brewery were eager to tell us how much they loved beers from the likes Brooklyn Brewery or Stone.

And it's not just the U.K. The brewing boomerang has flown back to Belgium as well, with U.S.-influenced styles like Belgian IPA emerging.

It's hard to believe that not too long ago Europeans considered American beers a total joke. But who's laughing now?

BevStar Awards 2012: We Finally Have Our Winners!

Category: General Blogs  |  Tags: brew

After a lengthy judging process involving a record number of entries this year and a self-imposed media blackout until the official winners' issue started arriving this week, we are very pleased to announce the winners of the 2012 Beverage World BevStar Awards. For those just joining us, the BevStars recognize new product innovation across all of the major beverage categories.

We received a particularly robust shower of entries in the Energy & Functional category—so many that we decided to split it into two separate categories this year. It really reflects the level of innovation in those segments. If you recall from our 2012 State of the Industry report, energy drink volume returned to double-digit growth last year, with an increase of more than 17 percent in 2011, according to Beverage Marketing Corporation.

Without further ado, here's the list of this year's winners. For details on all of these brands, read the July 2012 issue of Beverage World. Congratulations to all!

BEST IN SHOW
Ruthless Rye IPA, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

BEER
Gold: Ruthless Rye IPA, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.
Silver: Deviant Dale's IPA, Oskar Blues Brewing Co.
Bronze: Bronx Pale Ale, The Bronx Brewery

BOTTLED WATER
Gold: MyCause Water, Panacea Beverage Co.
Silver: Elevate Enhanced Fiber Water, 912 Corp.
Bronze: Karma Wellness Water, Karma Kulture LLC

CARBONATED SOFT DRINKS
Gold: Spindrift, Spindrift Soda co.
Silver: Dr Pepper Ten, Dr Pepper Snapple Group
Bronze: HotLips Cranberry Soda, HotLips Soda Co.

ENERGY
Gold: Monster Rehab, Monster Beverage Co.
Silver: Slap Frozen Energy, Brain-Twist
Bronze: Berry Rain, RevHoney

FUNCTIONAL
Gold: Neuro Sun, Neuro Beverage
Silver: Ralph & Charlie's Aloe, Ralph & Charlie's Beverage Co.
Bronze: Modjo Hydrate Elite, Cellutions

READY-TO-DRINK TEA & COFFEE
Gold: Honest (Not Too) Sweet Tea, Honest Tea
Silver: RealBeanz, RealBeanz LLC
Bronze: Tao of Tea, The Tao of Tea

SPIRITS
Gold: Purgatory Vodka, Alaska Distillery
Silver: Apple Pie Moonshine, Ole Smoky Moonshine Distillery
Bronze: BuzzBallz, BuzzBallz LLC

WINE
Gold: FlasqWines, JT Wines
Silver: Blanc de Bleu, Premium Vintage Cellars
Bronze: Xavier Flouret La Pilar Malbec, Cognac One LLC

For those brands that entered but didn't take a gold, silver or bronze in any of the categories, don't fret. Competition was particularly stiff this year and the decisions were all very difficult for all of us on the judging panel. And there's always next year. We'll be announcing a call for entries some time in December.
 

Last Call for 2012 BevStar Awards Submissions!

Category: General Blogs  |  Tags: brew

I just wanted to give you a quick heads-up that the submission deadline for the Third Annual Beverage World BevStar Awards is fast approaching.

The awards recognize innovations across the major beverage categories, introduced to the market--US or abroad--during the past 18 months. You can submit as many products as you'd like, as long as they've been released within that time period. We'll award gold, silver and bronze medals in each of those categories, as well as a Best in Show award and special achievement awards for Marketing Innovation, Social Media Initiatives and Environmental Sustainability.

We're happy to announce a new category this year: mead, cider and sake. We felt that these fermented classics got lost within beer, wine and spirits, especially since sake is actually closer to beer than it is wine even though it's frequently lumped in with wine.

Other categories include carbonated soft drinks, water/enhanced water, functional & energy, beer, wine & spirits and ready-to-drink tea.

The first step is to email your submission to bevstar@beverageworld.com. That message should include:

• Product Name

• Parent Company

•
 High-resolution product image

• A brief description of the product and why you believe it should win a BevStar Award — maximum 75 words please


• The names of any packaging design, ingredient and branding companies that played a key role in the development of the product

If your entry passes the initial screening process, expect an email directing you where to mail a product sample.

Good luck to you all!