Inexperienced Flash Brewing Co. was constructed as a love letter to Southern California. From the beer (its flagship is a West Coast–type IPA) to its branding (all surfboards and sunsets), the brewery has, for practically twenty years, been as completely related to San Diego as fish tacos and palm timber. At the moment, its IPA-heavy lineup is bought in seven Western states, with beer recipes and graphic design that scream SoCal. But since final 12 months, Inexperienced Flash beers haven’t been brewed in San Diego in any respect, however roughly 1,100 miles away in Fort Collins, Colorado. That’s as a result of in late 2021, international hashish and client packaged items firm Tilray—the mother or father firm of Atlanta-based SweetWater Brewing—purchased Inexperienced Flash and its sibling beer model, Alpine, from an investor group for $5.1 million and moved manufacturing to Colorado.
Such acquisitions are more and more frequent in craft beer. The trade’s nationwide gross sales have slowed because the explosive years of double-digit development within the mid-2010s, main breweries of all sizes to promote or merge with one another to spice up effectivity and market share. Typically, that signifies that a beer firm now not makes beer within the metropolis or state the place it constructed its fame. This poses the query: What occurs when a beloved native beer is now not native?
Flying Canine is a latest case examine for this phenomenon. The Frederick, Maryland–based mostly brewery was acquired earlier this 12 months by F.X. Matt, the brewery that makes Saranac beer and has contract-brewed roughly 20 % of Flying Canine’s beer for the previous decade. As a part of the acquisition, all Flying Canine beers are actually made at F.X. Matt’s facility in Utica, New York. In reality, that was the explanation for the deal: Flying Canine’s Maryland brewery both wanted an estimated $15 million in upgrades and new gear—or it might transfer all of its manufacturing to F.X. Matt, which already had the canning line, pasteurizer and different equipment that Flying Canine required.
“We’ve needed to inform the proper story, which is that we’re going to stay a Maryland model,” says Ben Savage, president of Flying Canine Brewery. “We’re going to have roots right here and we’re going to have partnerships right here and we’re going to brew beer right here once more ultimately.”
The plan is to open a Flying Canine innovation brewery and taproom in Frederick County, and to proceed to work with Maryland-based companions, such because the Orioles baseball crew and the College of Maryland. As a lifelong resident of the state, Savage says sustaining his firm’s standing as one of many craft breweries most related to Maryland is necessary to him personally and professionally.
“We’re going to brew beer down right here as quickly as we get issues off the bottom. That’s going to be significant to individuals,” he says. “To show our again on that wouldn’t really feel proper and it doesn’t really feel advantageous to the model both.”
However Fred Matt, CEO of F.X. Matt, says that Flying Canine might want to take concrete steps to take care of its Maryland presence. The mother or father firm has retained 16 Flying Canine staff, lots of whom will proceed to dwell and work within the state. “I hope individuals look again on at the present time and say, ‘I used to be form of grumpy about [the acquisition] when it occurred, however boy, have they executed all the things they mentioned they have been going to do,’” Matt says.
“It’s a bit like shopping for Hollister shirts exterior of California. You assume it’s what all Californians put on however there’s nobody shopping for Hollister in California.”
Transferring manufacturing out of state is a loss for some native followers of Flying Canine, significantly these whose curiosity in craft beer grew alongside the brewery. Matthew Drew of Rockville, Maryland, is one such drinker: He grew to become considering craft beer across the time that Flying Canine moved its firm from Colorado to Maryland, in 2006. He calls Flying Canine “most likely the most well-liked Maryland craft brewery,” and says he’ll miss the brewery’s live performance collection, brewery excursions and taproom-exclusive beers. “As a result of they have been a midsize brewery, they might cater to each style, whereas different, smaller breweries try to get the most individuals within the door, so that they’re going to brew three sorts of IPAs,” Drew provides.
Most necessary to Drew is what occurs after this sale to F.X. Matt. If Flying Canine follows via on its plan to open a small-batch brewery in Frederick County, it could nonetheless really feel native and related to him. “That may make me joyful, to cater again to the native crowd,” Drew says. “Most individuals didn’t go to Flying Canine and get Gonzo Porter and Raging Bitch,” that are industrial hits with broad nationwide distribution. “We went for no matter enjoyable factor they have been brewing subsequent.”
Protecting gross sales robust in Maryland and close by states is necessary for Flying Canine and its mother or father firm alike. F.X. Matt sells 77 % of its beer in New York state, and is relying on Flying Canine to assist it increase its presence within the mid-Atlantic. Matt acknowledges that craft beer is more and more localized, and drinkers and retailers alike wish to see {that a} brewery has staff and partnerships with native teams within the locations the place it’s making an attempt to promote beer.
It’s why Inexperienced Flash and Alpine’s six advertising and marketing staff nonetheless dwell in Southern California (4 dwell in San Diego correct) despite the fact that SweetWater’s advertising and marketing division is in Atlanta. “It’s necessary to have individuals nonetheless immersed on this tradition having the ability to talk with a advertising and marketing crew in Atlanta,” says Aaron Grossman, inventive director for Inexperienced Flash. “These are the faces of the corporate who’re making relationships with bartenders or handing out shirts on the fuel station.”
Continuity is crucial on the brewing facet as properly. Flying Canine will proceed to brew Useless Rise, a beer made with Maryland-famous Previous Bay, and Inexperienced Flash will proceed to make use of hops from the Pacific Northwest. Former Inexperienced Flash head brewer Ashley Devonshire traveled to Fort Collins twice to work with the brewing crew there to tweak current beer recipes on new gear. The objective was to make them exactly match the beers that had been brewed in San Diego.
“The one method to actually get these recipes dialed on a very completely different facility, completely different measurement, completely different gear, is to have any individual with the information there,” Grossman says.
He additionally acknowledges that whereas brewing happens elsewhere, these manufacturers have to have “toes on the road” of their hometown. Inexperienced Flash has a bar inside Petco Park, the place the San Diego Padres play, and for the previous three years, Inexperienced Flash and Alpine have each had branded bars contained in the Del Mar Fairgrounds’ occasions heart in northern San Diego County.
But some San Diego beer followers ponder whether Inexperienced Flash represents San Diego extra strongly to outsiders than it does to locals. Chris Leguizamon, a beer educator and member of the board of administrators of the San Diego Brewers Guild, remembers discovering a bottle of Inexperienced Flash West Coast IPA in his hometown of Studying, Pennsylvania, round 2012 and instantly shopping for it to get a style of an iconic California beer. After he moved to San Diego, he discovered that many locals considered Inexperienced Flash and Alpine as revered elements of California beer historical past—not essentially manufacturers that they continued to purchase usually. “It’s a bit like shopping for Hollister shirts exterior of California. You assume it’s what all Californians put on however there’s nobody shopping for Hollister in California,” Leguizamon says.
He doesn’t blame the Tilray acquisition, although. He thinks the departure of Inexperienced Flash and Alpine’s unique brewers, Chuck Silva and Pat Mcilhenney, respectively, was a degree of disconnect for San Diego beer followers. (Inexperienced Flash acquired Alpine in 2014; Silva left Inexperienced Flash in 2015, and Mcilhenney’s son, Shawn, continued to brew at Alpine till 2020.) At the moment, Silva brews at Silva Brewing in Paso Robles, California, and Pat and Shawn Mcilhenney brew at Mcilhenney Brewing, situated within the former Alpine Beer Co. area.
“The loyal beer followers who thought these brewers have been making unbelievable beers went the place the brewmasters went,” says Leguizamon.
What’s not unsure is the position each breweries performed in constructing San Diego’s beer tradition into one which’s revered throughout the U.S. San Diego beer followers really feel ambivalent concerning the breweries as we speak, particularly as they’ve moved manufacturing out of state. However Inexperienced Flash and Alpine are nonetheless broadly related to that metropolis, albeit as trailblazers of the early craft beer motion moderately than as its torchbearers into the longer term. “They pioneered and pushed San Diego’s title throughout the whole United States,” Leguizamon says. “That’s highly effective.”
