An interesting new beer book, Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business, is due out June 1st.  Written by the Chicago Tribune’s Josh Noel, the book tells the story of the how Goose Island went from Craft to Crafty.  The deal for Goose was the first big buyout of a craft brewer by Corporate beer, and the story serves as a cautionary tale for would-be craft brewer sellouts.

Paste Magazine’s Jim Vorel recently reviewed and summarized the book.  The entire review is definitely worth a read, as is the book itself.  But just in case, TLDR:

The folks AB InBev installed to run Goose didn’t know anything about Craft Beer.   The folks in charge of marketing Goose didn’t know anything about Craft Beer or drinkers of Craft Beer.  The fizzled national rollout of Goose was bad in planning and  worse in execution.  The initial reporting on the deal focused on “the beer will still be good” and ignored other matters.   

Since it was the first big Crafty deal, a lot of the press coverage of the Goose Island deal set the template for what would become the Craft Brewery Sellout Playbook, all of which has been thoroughly refuted and debunked here and elsewhere.

And by the way, contrary to all reporting, the beer did change and it’s not as good now.  So there’s that..  Craft on.