E-Malt.com News article: Canada, MB: Hot weather creates hot beer sales for Manitoban brewers

Bill Gould thinks Environment Canada needs to add a new icon to the sun, clouds and rain it uses to depict the forecast. A frosty cold glass of draught would work, OSX Pages reported last week.

"This is beer weather," said the president of WETT Sales & Distribution, which distributes Moosehead, Carlsberg and Samuel Adams beers to Manitoba.

He said the hot and dry conditions experienced by Winnipeg and indeed much of the province this summer has been fantastic for sales of suds. "As much as all the marketing gurus in the beer business would love to tell you, it's about their advertising, the weather is the best programming that anybody can have. This is an old-time summer," he said.

Half Pints Brewing, Manitoba's only locally owned brewery, is barely able to keep his craft beers on beer-store shelves and flowing out of pub and restaurant taps because of Winnipeg's soaring temperatures. "We've been running deliveries at the last minute and we've shorted exports to other provinces to keep our own province in beer," David Rudge, Half Pint’s brewmaster said.

Rudge said sales of kegs have been brisk, too, and he's bracing for a run on them before the August long weekend. Rudge said two of its four recipes in particular, St. James Pale Ale and Little Scrapper IPA, are flying off the shelves.

Half Pints' seasonal beer has proven to be just as popular. Rudge said he made a batch of Weizenheimer, a German-style wheat beer, earlier this month and it sold out in four days.

The situation is much the same at the Fort Garry Brewing plant on Kenaston Boulevard. Brian Harris, CEO of Russell Breweries, which bought Fort Garry four years ago, said the plant's staff is going "flat out."

"Now that the sun has emerged, the beer business is strong," he said.

Harris said beer sales can often be a indicator of the overall economy. During the financial crisis a couple of years ago, higher-end and craft-beer sales declined while discount beers increased in popularity. That trend has since reversed, according to him.

"It looks like consumers have more faith in the future. The craft segment is coming back, it's more buoyant," he said.

Susan Harrison, a spokeswoman for the Manitoba Liquor Control Commission, said there's a strong correlation between warm weather and beer sales. She said the MLCC won't have an idea which beers are the most popular with Manitobans this summer until the July numbers come in next week.

"Beer is so popular in this province. When it's hot, sales increase. It's

03 August, 2011