Flying Dog Brewery, currently holding its main office in Denver will be migrating all of its production to Fredrick Maryland to response to market pressures. As we spoke about yesterday, hops and barley prices are rising out of control and breweries have to act quickly in response to the pressure.
This move isn’t hugely dramatic to their production because they already have over half their production in Maryland today.
“As you may have heard, Flying Dog Brewery recently announced that we are embarking on the next step in our illustrious, 17 year history of crafting remarkable beer by concentrating all of our brewing and production to the brewery in Frederick, MD, where 70% of Flying Dog Beer is already being brewed.” (flyingdognews)
In January, they’ll be moving all production to their high efficiency production center in Maryland. Like many breweries they’re “facing unprecedented cost pressures due in large part to the tremendous hop and malt cost increases.” This move should allow them to continue growing in the market without being forced out of the industry from the huge jumps in product pricing. As a matter of fact, their news blog states “the Frederick facility is a state-of-the-art brewery that has already been producing great beer for Flying Dog and we look forward to ramping up production and growing our business even more than the +20% trends we are experiencing in 2007.”
Denver was great, as we’ve seen from their beers currently in the market but they said the Maryland office can brew a “wider range of recipes” and can produce beers that last longer on the shelves due to how the facility mixes their oxygen and also allows for a longer stable flavor. The last benefit? It can push out double the bottles as their Denver office. All this translates to more market penetration, faster production in an environmentally friendly, all to help offset the huge increases in hops and barley.
“Flying Dog will shift about 10 production jobs to the former Wild Goose Brewery, which Flying Dog acquired in 2006 for $1.4 million,” says the Baltimore Business Journal. They go on to say “production staffers will be offered relocation packages; employees mulling a move to Maryland will take a “scouting trip” to Frederick next month” (bizjournals)
Hopefully this isn’t a sign that we’ll see less dynamically changing microbreweries go away in the future due to the market strains. I’ve not met a microbrew I didn’t like.
[Update 1] Flying Dog Brewery has notified us and mentioned their administrative, marketing and accounting will be staying in the corporate office in Denver. Only production is making the move to Maryland.
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