The other night I found my way home, a little tipsy after an evening in the Belgian town of Bruges. I'd been at my favorite bar in town, the 't Brugs Beertje, where not only did I get schooled in the many varieties of local beer, but also learned a few things about modern-day Belgian life.
Sin stocks, ranging from gambling to liquor, are usually a safe bet in hard times
The pending acquisition of Anheuser-Busch has left some Americans crying in their beer over the loss of iconic brands like Budweiser to Belgian-based InBev. But the $52 billion acquisition is in keeping with this quarter's surge of international companies buying U.S. players. In the second quarter, acquisitions of American-owned companies by foreign businesses tallied $130.2 billion, making it the highest total for any second quarter recorded and 29 percent higher than the 2007 period, according to research firm Dealogic.
Like the Danes themselves, Copenhagen's nightlife is generally relaxed, although not without its surprises.
High-alcohol brews, known in the trade as big or extreme beers, are among many craft beers that are grabbing a growing market share in the United States
Ruthless cost-cutting is what made Belgium-based InBev the world's biggest brewer
Philip McClary was grilling out at his home in suburban St. Louis, Missouri, on Sunday night when he heard hometown brewer Anheuser-Busch would be bought by the Belgian company InBev.
A century ago, what's now Silicon Valley, California, was called the Valley of Heart's Delight because of the region's mineral-rich soil and temperate climate (San Jose gets 300 days of sunshine a year). By the time I left for college in 1997, however, most of the cherry orchards had been gobbled up by office complexes. San Jose was in the hopeful early stages of the Internet boom, and although I didn't have an e-mail account yet, the technological advances that would change the world were already making their mark on my hometown.
Anheuser-Busch has entered preliminary merger talks with Mexican brewery Grupo Modelo, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal Thursday.
At the stroke of midnight, American beer drinkers were no longer breaking the law when they broke open a beer.
The other night I found my way home, a little tipsy after an evening in the Belgian town of Bruges. I'd been at my favorite bar in town, the 't Brugs Beertje, where not only did I get schooled in the many varieties of local beer, but also learned a few things about modern-day Belgian life.
Sin stocks, ranging from gambling to liquor, are usually a safe bet in hard times
The pending acquisition of Anheuser-Busch has left some Americans crying in their beer over the loss of iconic brands like Budweiser to Belgian-based InBev. But the $52 billion acquisition is in keeping with this quarter's surge of international companies buying U.S. players. In the second quarter, acquisitions of American-owned companies by foreign businesses tallied $130.2 billion, making it the highest total for any second quarter recorded and 29 percent higher than the 2007 period, according to research firm Dealogic.
Like the Danes themselves, Copenhagen's nightlife is generally relaxed, although not without its surprises.
High-alcohol brews, known in the trade as big or extreme beers, are among many craft beers that are grabbing a growing market share in the United States
Ruthless cost-cutting is what made Belgium-based InBev the world's biggest brewer
Philip McClary was grilling out at his home in suburban St. Louis, Missouri, on Sunday night when he heard hometown brewer Anheuser-Busch would be bought by the Belgian company InBev.
A century ago, what's now Silicon Valley, California, was called the Valley of Heart's Delight because of the region's mineral-rich soil and temperate climate (San Jose gets 300 days of sunshine a year). By the time I left for college in 1997, however, most of the cherry orchards had been gobbled up by office complexes. San Jose was in the hopeful early stages of the Internet boom, and although I didn't have an e-mail account yet, the technological advances that would change the world were already making their mark on my hometown.
Anheuser-Busch has entered preliminary merger talks with Mexican brewery Grupo Modelo, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal Thursday.
At the stroke of midnight, American beer drinkers were no longer breaking the law when they broke open a beer.
They're big, strong, and fierce -- and they wear little blue booties.
Anjali Rao: He's dubbed the "King of Good Times." The billionaire tycoon casts a long shadow in India with high-profile launches and lavish parties. Vijay Mallya inherited an empire of different businesses at the tender age of 27, streamlining the operation and founding the Kingfisher brand. Today, his holding company United Breweries is worth $5 billion.
It's almost time for the Super Bowl, and you know what that means... lots of Anheuser-Busch ads. And while a high-profile spot might get you to purchase a few cold Buds, what about shares in the company itself?
Turns out, the best drinking stories in history are actually, well, historical. So raise a glass to your forefathers and marvel at these tales.
Sometimes, a hobby can take on a life of its own. That's what happened to Sam Calagione of Lewes, Delaware. He began brewing beer at home in 1993. Two years later, that avocation blossomed into a full-fledged business: Dogfish Head Craft Brewery.
Colorado boasts 44 independent breweries.
Michael Jackson, a leading world beer critic who praised the brews of Belgium and acknowledged he would never be as famous as "that Michael Jackson," has died. He was 65.
A 23-year old Serb was found dead and half-eaten in the bear cage of Belgrade Zoo at the weekend during the annual beer festival.
Nearly 30 years ago Graham Mackay joined the South African Breweries - now called SABMiller since its acquisition of American brewer Miller in 2002. The world's second-largest brewer (by volume) boosted revenue and operating profits by more than 20 percent last fiscal year, despite another lackluster performance by its U.S. operations.
Produce TV spot pairing beautiful woman with beer-swilling schmo. Have schmo ditch woman for cold beer. Presto! Instant (and yawningly typical) beer marketing campaign. "In general the beer industry doesn't get too clever," says Harry Schuhmacher, publisher of Beer Business Daily (beernet.com), an online trade journal. Indeed, the U.S. beer industry has been flat, shipping 181 million barrels of brew in 2006, virtually the same as a decade ago.
Warren Buffett famously remarked that when brilliant management tackles an industry with terrible economics, it's usually the reputation of the industry that remains intact. His insight helps expla...
Most Americans drink beer in V-shaped "shaker" glasses (so named because they're shaped like a cocktail shaker), whose main attribute is durability and ease of stacking behind a bar.
On weekends Borough Market draws some 70 organic farmers, artisanal producers, world-class bakers and gourmet food importers from all over the world.
Every fall the nation's best beer-tasting room is at Denver's Great American Beer Festival. Here are three little guys who won gold medals.By Matthew Terranova, 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 ...
FSB gets a taste of why business is booming at craft breweries.By Christopher S. Stewart, FSB Magazine
As baseball gives way to football and local Oktoberfests start springing up all over the country, autumn becomes yet another good time to break open a beer.
Downtown Salt Lake City is not the world's easiest place to operate a bar. Mormons dominate the population, and although some Mormons do consume alcohol, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Sa...
Six ales were selected as finalists in this year's Great British Beer festival. Here Roger Protz, editor of the Good Beer Guide and one of the chief judges, gives his appraisal of the winners.
"It's a resiny, floral, spicy hymn to the hop," says Roger Protz, reverentially holding his glass at eye level, so that the light of a London summer evening sparkles through the liquid.
In this land where beer is king, Budweiser is a stranger. But just days from now, when Germany hosts the World Cup, the crown jewel of its favorite sport, Budweiser will make a run for the throne.
With St. Patrick's Day and March Madness soon upon us, Americans probably don't need any more reasons to toss back a few beers. But we'll give you some anyway.
What makes happy hour extra happy? When the boss buys all the drinks. As part of its quest to become the new king of beers, Miller Brewing opened a 2,700-square-foot bar at its Milwaukee headquarte...
"Probably the most intense and serious beer I have ever tried," enthuses one blogger. "Unique in every possible way," raves another. "You can smell it a mile away! This stuff is psycho!" trumpets a third.
First there were macrobrews.
The Kenth brewery in Ystad, Sweden, is anything but a giant corporation.
For centuries, the beer faithful have made pilgrimages to places like London, Brussels and Munich in search of the perfect pint.
Heineken said Friday that it will introduce a new light beer, with fewer calories and carbohydrates, to compete in the highly spirited U.S. beer market.
There's a new No. 1 in the world of beer, and it's a strange brew--part Belgian, part Brazilian, with a Mississippi CEO who has little experience in the business and a leading brand named Stella, n...
After 30 years of hard work and trial and error, brewmaster Axel Heiliger says he has come up with a way to save the beer industry time and money.
Ah, autumn, when a man's thoughts turn to drink.
Whether it's because of low-carb diets, cool summers or a switch to cocktails and wine, the beer market is going flat.
For five generations, the men in the Koch family became brewmasters. Koch began his career as a consultant, but in 1984 he founded Boston Beer Co., maker of Samuel Adams. It's now the sixth-largest...
As America toasts its founding, pause to consider beer's role in the history of the Republic.
A brewery brouhaha has shifted from the ad room to the courtroom.
Beer drinkers need not worry about the carbs, Anheuser-Busch said Thursday.
New York's Rheingold Beer Company is taking aim at Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a new advertising campaign critical of what a company spokesman calls "silly laws" like the city's smoking ban.
When Dereck Gurden pulls up at one of his customers' stores -- 7-Eleven, Buy N Save, or one of dozens of liquor marts and restaurants in the 800-square-mile territory he covers in California's Central Valley -- managers usually stop what they're doing and grab a notepad.
Russian troops have retrieved 10 tons of beer trapped under Siberian ice, the Itar-Tass news agency has reported.
When Dereck Gurden pulls up at one of his customers' stores--7-Eleven, Buy N Save, or one of dozens of liquor marts and restaurants in the 800-square-mile territory he covers in California's Centra...
When engineer Jeff Lebesch and his wife, Kim Jordan, a social worker, quit their jobs in 1992 to start a brewery, they had several goals. Chief among them were to make great beer and to become lead...
Which big corporations will take the fall for the nightclub fire in West Warwick, R.I., where almost 100 people died? The club burned down in February after a pyrotechnic display by the band Great...
Maybe we expect too much from our business leaders. Certainly they have plenty to worry about--an edgy economy, a woeful Wall Street, a snooping SEC--without everybody jumping down their throats wh...
Economists tell us the only thing keeping the world economy afloat these days is the heroic spending of the American consumer. The average wage-earner's willingness to go ever deeper into debt to o...
August is a particularly good month for drinking beer, although I must say the other 11 aren't bad either. Which is why beer has always been a pretty good business. Yes, there are concerns about te...
Lizardhead Brewing Co. CORTEZ, COLO.
We'd never chug cabernet from a bottle, but Americans think that it's different with beer. John Travolta, leaning languidly against the bar in Urban Cowboy, captured our odd romance with longnecks....
Want to give the gift that keeps on giving? No, we're not suggesting you pawn off unwanted wedding gifts or pass along a five-year-old fruitcake. But you could consider a gift-of-the-month club. Ch...
To compile this list of the world's most admired companies, FORTUNE consulted the experts: the business executives who run companies and the analysts who study them. As with FORTUNE's list of Ameri...
Sometimes a great notion is only that--an idea. But truly great ideas are more. Just ask anyone who has implemented one successfully. We did, and we discovered that making a real business out of an...
We'll grant that the University of California at Davis may not be the first response that springs to mind in answer to the question "What is the best B-school in the country?" But if you're talking...
It would be like finding out that the Mona Lisa was Dutch. Or that a Spice Girl was Russian. In one of those signs that the globalization apocalypse is truly upon us, Germany's largest beer baron i...
Like most college students, I drank my share of beer back in the day. A lot of that beer was Utica Club, a regional brand made by the F.X. Matt Brewing Co., a small, family-run operation in Utica, ...
To complete this list of the world's most admired companies, FORTUNE consulted a select group of experts--senior executives and outside board members of companies in each of the industries included...
Imagine a betoqued, heavily accented chef presenting an haute five-course feast--and eschewing his excellent wine cellar for beer. Try very hard, because it's becoming a common image in serious res...
The betting odds stood as high as 25 to 1 against Evander Holyfield when he entered the ring last November to take on Mike Tyson. Detractors were saying the 215-pound Atlanta resident was too nice,...
Squads of Armani-clad consultants, flip charts at hand, warn of dastardly global competitors and of technology that changes faster than the latest management fad. Thousand-dollar-a-day seminar inst...
Making a buck at craft brewing has been as easy as falling off a barstool the last few years. So Wall Street is now bellying up for a couple of IPO brewers. They'd better start chugging; the party ...
What's the ultimate way to ensure that your product meets the idiosyncratic tastes of today's demanding consumers? Some San Francisco entrepreneurs think they've got the answer: Let the customers m...
Faced by flat sales at home, American brewers looking overseas could learn a lesson or two from Irish brewer Guinness PLC, whose murky stout is now the most popular imported draft brew in Germany. ...
So-called microbreweries, each producing less than 50,000 barrels a year, are really foaming. While the overall beer market has been essentially flat for the past decade, production at micros and b...
To get a taste for the crazy ways marketers must compete for today's finicky consumer, stroll through the beer section of your local retailer. You'll see Icehouse, a successful new upscale beer fro...
Most new-product manufacturers would kill for the instant name-brand recognition of Miller Brewing, General Motors, or Coca-Cola. But these companies are finding that their greatest asset can somet...
Julie Norton has been getting all kinds of beer delivered to her home in Washington, D.C. -- ''ambers, stouts, bocks,'' she says, from microbreweries as far away as Birmingham, Alabama, New Orleans...
Who needs politicians to create world trade agreements? North American beermakers are practically drafting a trade treaty of their own, making deals north, south, and elsewhere as globalization of ...
The beer business may be flat, but the sales of the so-called microbreweries bubbled up last year some 40%. No longer defined solely by size, a microbrewery today is a small-scale beermaker that us...
When it comes to attracting investors, regional beermaker Portland Brewing has a novel approach -- this dividend's for you. Each of the company's 600 shareholders receives a card worth a free pint ...
The battle of the braumeisters began last summer when Anheuser-Busch ran TV and radio ads accusing Coors of shipping beer concentrate to its Virginia brewery -- and mixing it not with Rocky Mountai...
American cars and supercomputers may be a hard sell, but the Japanese are confirmed fans of U.S. beer, quaffing ten million gallons of it last year. Enter the tiny (seven-employee) Brooklyn Brewery...
Those 60-hour weeks can really wear down a manager, even in the soothing environs of Vermont. So Fred ''Chico'' Lager, 35, is retiring as CEO of Ben & Jerry's Homemade, the $60-million-a-year compa...
IF YOU HAVE BEEN BUYING beer for the holidays, you've probably noticed that Santa was being very good to you. In Indianapolis, Miami, and Corpus Christi, Texas, you could buy cases of Miller or Coo...
LOOK QUICKLY, and the blue-eyed, pudgy-faced Allen Sheppard, 56, boss of Britain's Grand Metropolitan, could pass for the double of a corporate symbol he recently acquired -- the cuddly Pillsbury D...
BIG, EXPANSIVE Alan Bond -- Australia's grand acquisitor -- said ''g'day'' in 1988 to anything that wasn't nailed down. First he bought Bell Group, a broad-based conglomerate in Perth, in part from...
The heat is equatorial, your gullet is a mini-Sahara and you'd give your right Reebok for an ice-cold beer. But you have a meeting right after lunch, and you'd rather not show up sudsy-brained. So ...
VINOD KHOSLA often leaves people speechless when he says he retired at 30 to spend more time with his wife. Emigrating from India at 21, he received an MBA from Stanford University at the age of 25...
Talk about ups and downs, Lee Byung Chull, 77, has been through enough to fill a couple of careers. Samsung Group, a global conglomerate of 37 companies in electronics, shipbuilding, and textiles, ...
IT'S EARLY EVENING at the sprawling Missouri farm of August A. Busch III, and his after-work ritual is just beginning. In the family room the 50-year-old chief executive of Anheuser-Busch Cos. abst...
NONALCOHOLIC BEER, once dismissed by lovers of the real stuff as a pale potion without a punch, is coming out of its corner for another round. Brewers are introducing brands they say taste better, ...
ADOLPH COORS CO., once considered a flashy lightweight in the beer business, has pushed its way through the crowd and is taking a seat at the bar. As recently as 1984 the Golden, Colorado, brewer w...
IF YOU HAVE THOUGHT about it at all, you probably thought Guinness was the last word in stout -- the opaque, dark beer with the creamy white head and the sturdy, bitter taste. But Heineken, the Net...
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