Gluten-Free Brewery Planned for Arkansas

This is a very interesting idea. I wonder if it will really take off or not?

AP Monday December 11, 5:43 pm ET

Gluten-Free Brewery Planned for Arkansas -
Two Businesswomen Plan Brewery to Make
Gluten-Free Beer, a Medical Must-Have for 1 of Them


FAYETTEVILLE,
Ark. (AP) -- A woman affected by a disease that stops her from enjoying wheat products will soon be able to say "beer me" without fear of getting a stomach ache or other illness.

Constance Rieper-Estes and brew master Leigh Nogy plan to open the Dark Hills Brewery, which will produce gluten-free beer.

Rieper-Estes and her son are both celiac, which means they can't eat pasta, bread and other foods that contain gluten.

For Rieper-Estes' marriage reception, Nogy brewed two gluten-free kegs. The beer proved popular and the two women embarked on their business venture to open a brewery in northwest Arkansas. The packaging brewery will be located between the cities of Fayetteville and Springdale.

Gluten is in a family of proteins contained in wheat. Most beer is produced by malting barley, which can leave gluten behind. Dark Hills beer will be brewed from rice containing no glutenous grains.

Rieper-Estes and Nogy held a beer tasting event for investors on Sunday in Fayetteville, ending a six-month effort to sell shares in the brewery and develop interest. The next phase will be to renovate and build the brewery.

The two founders said they plan to distribute the beer in Arkansas for a year to build brand recognition, then try to move into bigger markets.

"We think there is a gold mine for this type of beer," Nogy said.

Dark Hills Brewery: http://www.darkhillsbrewery.com

Link to the article: http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/061211/gluten_free_beer.html?.v=1

Small breweries, big beer

Fortune Small Business (FSB) expores the booming business for some Colorado breweries:

By Christopher S. Stewart, FSB Magazine
December 8 2006: 9:50 AM EST

Denver (FSB Magazine) -- Normally, I don't drink beer before 5 on a workday. But it's Tuesday at 3:30, and I'm making an exception. Not because the world is too much - isn't it always? - but because FSB has tasked me with most Americans' dream job: to explore the booming business of American craft brewing.

I've come to Colorado, the second-largest beer-producing state in the
Union. Colorado may be home to Coors (Charts), but connoisseurs of inspired microbrews also know that with 92 small breweries - second to California's 224 and ahead of Washington's 80 - it's a fine place to hop off the slope and hit the tasting rooms.

This is a heady time for boutique beer producers all over the country. After an Internet-style rise and fall in the late 1990s, craft beers are on the climb again, with $4.3 billion in U.S. sales in 2005, a 13 percent lift from a year earlier. (By comparison, mass-market beer sales slipped 1.5 percent over the same period.)

In September the industry held the 25th anniversary of the Great American Beer Festival, the trade's equivalent of the Oscars, and attendance jumped from 29,000 in 2005 to a record 41,000

For the rest of the article see CNNMoney.com

Local beer makers want Floridians to develop a taste for microbreweries

This is a great article I found on Yahoo about educating the market and starting a brewery. This article focuses on Florida but it really could be applied anywhere.

Here is a small snippit

As the small but energetic brewing scene organizes, its players say the region's microbrew market is ripe for new options.
"Now people are starting to recognize what a good beer is," Monkey King co-owner Mark Anderson said.
Though Florida is the state responsible for the Hops microbrewery restaurant chain, which became ubiquitous in the 1990s, it has been relatively slow to embrace the craft beer trend.
But national production of craft beer — a term the industry uses for all-malt beers produced by small, independent and traditional breweries — has grown every year for the past 36 years, reports the Boulder, Colo.-based Brewers Association, a trade group for craft brewers.
Craft beers raked in $4.3 billion in sales last year, up from $3.8 billion the previous year, and production grew 9 percent, according to the association's figures.
That was double the growth rate for wine and triple the rate for liquor, the association reported.
Craft beer production is on track to grow 13 percent this year, said Paul Gatza, association director.
"We're in a period of pretty rapidly accelerating growth for this segment, and I think that's attributable to consumers changing their tastes," Gatza said. "We've seen that in other food industries. We've seen that in breads and coffees, and cheese is now becoming more of an artisanal product. ... People are going for fuller kinds of products, and they're willing to pay a little more for them."

For the rest of the article please visit this link: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/business/epaper/2006/12/11/a1bz_microbrew_1211.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=6

Baltimore picks holiday beers - Yum!

A panel of 6 from the Baltimore Sun tasted 34 winter brews that were divided into three categories - American, English and Beligan. The winner of the American winter brew was local Clipper City Winter Storm. It seems that this year many of the winter beers have a distinct chocolate or coffee hint, as noted by Rob Kasper, yet they still taste like beer.

I could easily envision sipping one of these beers after a hard day of stringing the holiday lights or fetching the Christmas tree. Along with the extra ingredients, these beers come with higher alcohol levels, up to 12 percent in the Scaldis Noel. A long winter's nap might be a better post-sipping activity than penning Christmas cards.

To read the entire article visit http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/dining/bal-fo.beverage29nov29,0,7724368.story