Elysian Brewing Co. in Capitol Hill. Photo by Sarah Radmer
By Clark Humphrey
There will still be four Elysian brewpubs in Seattle. There will still be various Elysian beers on tap and in bottles at bars, restaurants and stores in the region and beyond. There will still (probably) be an Elysian Brewery on Airport Way South, not far from the old Rainier Brewery.
But they’ll all be owned now by AB InBev (doing business in this country as Anheuser-Busch).
The Belgian-beer conglomerate that bought Budweiser (and commands 47 percent of the nation’s total beer sales) is now buying up craft brewers around the country. Just weeks ago, it snapped up Oregon’s 10 Barrel. It already owns 32 percent of the now-merged Redhook and Widmer Brothers.
And, now, Elysian has joined the empire.
The craft brewers’ national trade group, the Brewers Association, automatically expels any member company that sells out to AB or MillerCoors.
‘The sky is not falling’
For almost 19 years now, starting with a single (albeit spacious) brewpub in the Pike/Pine corridor, Elysian has steadily become a big fish in the no-longer-so-small pond of regional craft brewers. Its product line has included more than 350 different brews over the years, many of them short-term and seasonal (like its annual pumpkin ales). Its products are distributed in 11 states and two Canadian provinces.
One of those products is Loser Ale, originally introduced as a promotional tie-in with Sub Pop’s 20th anniversary in 2008. Its slogan (based on Kurt Cobain’s hand-scrawled T-shirt on a Rolling Stone cover, which, in turn, was based on SST Records’ old slogan): “Corporate Beer Still Sucks.”
Many “craft beer” drinkers see their choice of drink as a lot more than just a matter of quality product. They think of indie beer (just as many think of indie music) as a crusade of the regular folk fighting back against a bland, monolithic, corporate culture.
But should they?
As Kendall Jones writes at the Washington Beer Blog: “The sky is not falling. This is not a sign that the end is near. There are still over 3,400 breweries in America that Anheuser-Busch does not own…. As craft-beer lovers, we’ve been taught that Anheuser-Busch and the other big beer companies are our enemies. So what gives? Is Elysian now evil? Not in my mind, but that’s a decision you’ll have to make for yourself.”
Another view on the Elysian sale comes from Jeff Alworth at the Canadian blog Beervana, who ties Elysian’s past success to its savvy local management: “It [has] long been my favorite Washington brewery, and it’s always my first stop when I hit Seattle. It has always seemed the most Seattle of the Seattle breweries — an extemporaneous brewery that could be equal-parts gritty and urbane and credibly support local sports teams or indie bands. Elysian always seemed to be right where Seattle was at the time.
“Just because a brewery is local doesn’t mean it can channel the local mores, culture and zeitgeist,” he continued. “Elysian could and did — which is a big part of why they were so good. Can they still do that as a division of AB? In the short term, almost certainly. But I fear we’ve lost a little bit of what made Seattle Seattle.”
If, as Elysian’s owners publicly insist, joining the big boys was the only way to support the company’s continued growth and to fund further expansion, maybe there’s a natural business limit to how big a microbrewer can be and still remain independent (if no longer truly “micro”).
A great performance
More than a week after the Elysian announcement, AB ran a Super Bowl commercial. The ad touted Budweiser as the drink of choice for real beer drinkers, not those artsy craft-beer snobs who go for “pumpkin peach ale” (i.e., just the sort of product that Elysian has made, marketed and championed).
CLARK HUMPHREY is the author of “Walking Seattle” and “Vanishing Seattle.” He also writes a blog at miscmedia.com. To comment on this column, write to CityLivingEditor@nwlink.com.
