It's time for your brewing industry news for 3/11...

• BUD: $57.05
• TAP: $44.10
• SAM: $87.23

Well here we go for another week in the world of brewing, and I have a few stories to talk about this week, This weeks first story is focusing on one of the brewing industries favorite holidays. Which holiday am I referring to?? That's right, Saint Patrick's Day!!!!! This holiday is one of the biggest drinking holidays for many of the local pubs and bars and generates a great deal of revenue for them. However, many of the brewers within the industry have begun focusing less and less on smacking a green label on their bottles or adding the normal green food coloring to become more festive and instead these brewers are tipping their hats to one of the most authentically Irish beers on the market and that's Guinness. Guinness has been the traditional Irish beer since back in the 1970's when, ironically, it was still actually made in Ireland. Now, however, with their current London address they are still holding strong sales every Saint Patrick's Day as people attribute this smooth stout to the traditional Irish heritage the people feel they are supporting on that holiday. Many of the other brewers within the market have decided instead to focus on making better tasting beers that they can market year round to gain the sales they need to pull through this recession as best as possible. Also, surprisingly, many stats from Saint Patrick's Day in the last few years has shown a tremendous lean towards the craft brewers of each local town. Many of these craft brewers are making distinct beers for the Irish holiday and they do this because it is something they are known for. They brew up their special holiday brews and distribute them at the local pubs and bars around their breweries and have taken increasingly more sales year over year.

Enough about Saint Patrick's Day, instead I want to turn the focus to the NFL lockout. I touched base with this topic some last week but wanted to go a little more in detail this week. I read an article today from earlier this morning that was title NFL Lockout Winners and Losers and was written by Laura Griffin from CNBC. This article caught my attention when it was listed under my industry sector news for the week. Now, about the article, it refers to the many different places and organizations that are looking to lose a tremendous amount of money if this strike persists with the NFLPA. As I read through the article, one big thing that shocked me was the dollar amount for how much money many of these host cities.would be losing if this 2011-2012 football season doesn't kickk off like it is supposed to. Between breweries and bars along with all the other profits brought in from the football season in general, these host cities are looking to lose roughly 160 million dollars per city if there is to be no season come this fall. That study she was referring to only focused on those cities that have football teams locally in the NFL and didn't discuss the many other places nationally that stand to lose a great deal if this strike continues. I think this in incredibly important for the brewing industry because this lack of sales and the speculation of what could come has caused unsettling drops in the value of nearly all stocks across the publicly traded brewing companies. Not good. Plain and simple. I think the NFL needs to get their things in order and get this season off to a smooth start or this industry could start a pretty steady decline that would be incredibly hard to bounce back from.

The next story this week is about an article I read from The Daily Feed  written by Kevin Depew on March 9th. This story was about how wine has proven to be more recession proof than beer. Suprising? Certainly was to me! After reading through the article though, I did find some pretty interesting information that Mr. Depew had to discuss. The basis of his discussion was based on the fact that during the two most recent recessions in our country wine sales have increased by 3-5% while beer sales have dropped around 6-9%. the main reason Depew feels this has happened is related to the class of the people that consume these different beverages. He discussed how many of the people who purchase and drink wine are of a higher social class and in-turn they have felt the financial impact of the recession less severely than those who consume beer. Many of the consumers in the world of brewing are your everyday blue-collar workers who commonly live paycheck to paycheck and when the economy tanks like it has over the last roughly ten years, these people can't find the extra money as often to enjoy their favorite brews like the more wealthy white collar individuals who consume wine. I do have to say that after reading the article, it seems a relevant argument and in fact possibly investing in the wine and distillers sector may be a smarter investment than what brewing ever could be.

Lastly this week, I wanted to discuss Boston Beer Company's fourth quarter profits that they posted on Tuesday. Boston Beer released their fourth quarter earnings announcing exceptionally strong sales and earnings growths. The only problem from this was that many analysts had much higher expectations for the company and because there sales did not meet those expectations it caused the price of their stocks to suffer as of recent. Overall, SAM posted fourth quarter profits of $12.2 million, or 87 cents per share compared with only $7.5 million, or 52 cents per share this time last year. For the full  year,earnings were up over 60% as well and posted profits of $3.52 per share versus $2.17 only a year ago. Full year net sales rose from $415 million in 2009 to $464 million for fiscal 2010. On top of the years profits and revenue amounts,

the company also ramped up its promotional spending 16% as well, spending nearly $37 million in the process to promote its core Samuel Adams lager and seasonal, along with its Twisted tea and Hardcore Cider namesakes.