Tag Archives: Kona Brewing Company

North, South, East, and West

August 5, 2022 The Beer Professor 2 Comments

As a Professor of Geography at the University of Toledo one of the classes that I teach is called People, Places, and Society. Ostensibly it is an introduction to Human Geography course. During the first few weeks of the semester I spend quite a bit of time introducing the students to basic geographic concepts – things like absolute and relative location, spatial distribution, spatial interaction, spatial diffusion, distance-decay, etc. Of all the basic geographic concepts. absolute location is probably the most straightforward and easiest to understand.

Absolute location is the location that something occupies according to some agreed upon system. One of the most common methods that we use to measure the location of a place is by using lines of latitude and longitude. – think of these as “imaginary” lines drawn on the surface of the Earth.

Lines of latitude (also called parallels) run in an East-West direction. The Equator is 0 degrees latitude. All lines of latitude are numbered between 0 degrees and 90 degrees latitude and are designated as either North or South, depending upon how far they are north or south of the Prime Meridian. The North Pole is 90 degrees North, while the South Pole is 90 degrees South.

Each place on the surface of the Earth can be precisely located according to how far (north or south) they are from the Equator. So for example, New York City, NY is 40 degrees north of the Equator, while Sydney, Australia is 33 degrees south of the Equator. Toledo, OH, where I live, is 41 degrees north of the Equator (just a tad further north than New York City).

Lines of longitude (also called meridians) run in a North-South direction and connect the North and South Pole. All meridians designated as either East or West are numbered between 0 degrees and 180 degrees, depending upon how far they are either east or west of the Prime Meridian. The Prime Meridian. The Prime Meridian is the internationally agreed upon starting point for numbering meridians. It runs through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich in the United Kingdom and is labeled 0 degrees longitude. The meridian on the opposite side of the globe from Prime Meridian is 180 degrees longitude.

The Prime Meridian in Greenwich, United Kingdom

Each place on the surface of the Earth can be precisely located according to how far (east or west) they are from the Prime Meridian. The aforementioned New York City, NY is 74 degrees west of the Prime Meridian, while Sydney, Australia is 151 degrees east of the Prime Meridian. Toledo, OH, is 83 degrees west of the Prime Meridian.

So now we have all the information we need to identify the absolute location of these three cities:

New York City, NY – 40 degrees north, 74 degrees west
Sydney, Australia – 33 degrees south, 115 degrees east
Toledo, OH – 41 degrees north, 83 degrees west

The last time that I was teaching this material to my students, I started to wonder about the furthest north, south, east, and west that I had travelled to visit a brewery. So I pulled up a map on my computer screen, and here is what I came up with:

Nya Carnegiebryggeriet (New Carnegie Brewery), Stockholm, Sweden (59 degrees north)

At 59 degrees north, Nya Carnegiebryggeriet (New Carnegie Brewery) in Stockholm, Sweden is the most northerly brewery I have visited. My visit occurred in January 2016. I was in Stockholm attending a conference at the Royal Institute of Technology. Opened in 2014, the brewery is a joint venture between New York’s Brooklyn Brewery and Danish brewing giant Carlsberg. The brewery is housed in an old 1930s lightbulb factory in the Hammarby Sjöstad district of the city. Hammarby Sjöstad (translated as Hammarby Lake City) is an area of Stockholm that has gained fame as an exemplar of eco-friendly urban redevelopment. The brewery has contributed to the redevelopment of the neighborhood. The brewery’s name, Nya Carnegie, is a nod to Carnegie Porter, a classic Swedish beer. Carnegie Porter traces its origins to 1836 when Scottish businessman David Carnegie Jr. (1813-1890) purchased the Lorent sugar refinery and brewery in the Klippan neighborhood of Gothenburg.

Al old lightbulb factory is home to Nya Carnegiebryggeriet

Nya Carnegiebryggeriet has contributed to the redevelopment of the the Hammarby Sjöstad district of Stockholm

A ferry arrives and docks close to Nya Carnegiebryggeriet

Monteith’s Brewery, Greytown, New Zealand (41 degrees south, 175 degrees east)

At 41 degrees south and 175 degrees east, Montheith’s Brewery in Greymouth, New Zealand qualifies as both the most southerly and the most easterly brewery that I have visited. I traveled to Greymouth on December 2014. I had been in Christchurch, New Zealand attending the annual conference of the Australia-New Zealand Regional Science Association. I had a couple of days after the conference was finished, so decided to visit Greymouth. Christchurch and Greymouth are on opposite coasts of New Zealand’s South Island. With a population of ~8,300, it is the largest town on New Zealand’s west coast. Rather than drive or travel by bus, I decided to take the TranzAlpine train. Identified by Lonely Planet as one of the world’s most amazing train journeys I was keen to take it. I was not disappointed. The 139 mile (223 kilometer) journey, which takes four and a half hours one way took me through the fertile Canterbury Plains and the spectacular southern Alps.

Greymouth is the largest city of the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island

Some of the scenery enjoyed from the TranzAlpine Train

Established during the West Coast Gold Rush of the 1860s, Greymouth, transitioned into a major coal mining and forestry center. Most of the jobs in these two sectors have disappeared and for a number of decades the town has been struggling to revitalize its struggling economy .

After checking into my overnight accommodation I headed for Monteith’s Brewery. I would be one of the 35,000 visitors who visit the brewery annually. Founded in 1868, the brewery was originally family-owned, and is named after the founder Stewart Monteith . In 1970, the brewery became part of Dominion Breweries Group, who were acquited by Heineken in 2013.

It is a brewery with something of a tumultuous history. Two times in past, the owners of the brewery have announced the cessation of brewing operations in Greymouth. The first was in 2001, when closure of the brewery was announced. Such was the public outcry, the brewery was re-opened four days later. The second occasion was in November 2020, when, DB Breweries announced that it would cease brewing operations in Greymouth, citing the uncertainty created by COVID-19 as well as the high cost of transporting raw materials to and the finished product from the brewery. The brewery’s onsite restaurant would remain open. Despite the closure, beer drinkers could still buy Monteith’s beer as it is brewed at two other locations (Auckland and Timaru) in New Zealand. Not surprisingly, the local council were not happy when hearing DB’s plans for the brewery. Indeed Mayor Tania Gibson of asked DB to consider handing over the brewery to the people of Grey District. In January of 2021, DB and the local council reached an agreement whereby the brewery’s bottling plant would be given to the district.

Kona Brewing Company, Hawaii, USA (155 degrees west)

At 155 degrees west, Kona Brewing Company in Kailua Kona on Hawaii’s Big Island is the most westerly brewery I have visited. I visited Kona Brewing in February 2016, while in Hawaii attending the annual conference of the Western Regional Science Association. Kona Brewing Company was founded in 1994. When I visited the brewery in 2016, Kona Brewing Company was a member of the Craft Brew Alliance family of craft breweries. Craft Brew Alliance, established in 2008 with the merger of Redhook Ale Brewery and Widmer Brothers, acquired Kona Brewing Company from its original owners (Cameron Healy and Spoon Khalsa) in October 2010. In December 2010, AB InBev purchased a 32.2% share of Craft Brew Alliance . In 2020, AB InBev purchased the outstanding 67.8% share of Craft Brew Alliance. In order to not be in violation of Federal Anti-Trust laws, Kona Brewing had to be sold, with the brewery being purchased by PV Brewing Partners, a Delaware limited liability company headquartered in Kansas.

As a brewery, Kona is probably best known for its Big Wave Golden Ale, Longboard Island Lager, and Firerock Pale Ale. You may have seen a number of Kona Brewing’s beers for sale at your local liquor or grocery store. If you live on the mainland, however, the Kona beer that you purchase was not brewed in Hawaii. Partly to save on the costs of transporting beer from Hawaii, Kona beer is brewed on the mainland United States. I recently enjoyed a bottle of Kona’s Longboard Lager and on the label it indicated that this particular bottle was brewed in one of three locations – Fort Collins, CO, Portland, OR, or Portsmouth, NH. The listing of mainland brewing locations is an outcome of a 2017 class action lawsuit brought against Kona’s then owners, Craft Brew Alliance, for deceiving customers on the mainland into thinking their beer was produced in Hawaii. In 2022, Kona opened a new 30,000-square-foot brewery that can produce 100,000 barrels of beer annually This is ten times the production capacity of the brewery that I visited.

Some of the beers on tap when I visited Kona Brewing in 2016

Further Reading

Walton, Sara, Shane Grice and Bevan Catley. 2003. The Monteith’s affair: Bitter to the loyal end. Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management, Voulme 9, Issue 2, pages 69-74. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5172/jmo.2003.9.2.69

Craft Breweries, International, Neolocalism

Made in Honduras

January 21, 2019 The Beer Professor Leave a comment

Craft breweries typically have strong connections with their local communities. These connections are manifest in a number of ways. The owners usually live in town. The brewery provides space for activities such as a local yoga club, and several times a year they brew a special beer, part of the profits of which are donated to local charitable causes. In discussing craft breweries, George Homewood, Norfolk, Virginia’s director of planning and community development, notes:

“there is a different food truck outside nightly. Depending upon the brewery, there may be yoga on Sundays, trivia on Wednesdays, retro video games on Thursdays, and music on Saturdays as well as neighborhood block parties, a monthly pet adoption day or a free community meal.”

Regardless of where we live, all of us know local breweries who support their communities in these types of way. Some breweries are so proud of their local community that they name beers after local landmarks, historical figures, or important events in the community’s past. A growing number of breweries are even trying to source more of their ingredients, particularly hops, from the local region. For some breweries, one of their major contributions to the community is simply to provide a gathering place for locals; a refuge of sorts where neighborhood residents can come, meet up with a few friends, and enjoy a couple of beers.

And craft beer drinkers seem to appreciate this commitment to local communities and are very happy to support the locally-owned brewery, rather than the faceless multinational corporation (e.g., AB InBev or Heineken). There’s even a name or this preference for the local – it’s called “neolocalism”. The geographer, Steven M. Schnell defines neolocalism as a “conscious attempt of individuals and groups to establish, rebuild, and cultivate local ties, local identities, and increasingly, local economies.” Writing specifically about craft breweries, Schnell and his co-author Joseph Reese, stated that craft breweries represent a desire on the part of increasing numbers of people to “reestablish connections with local communities, settings, and economies”.

There is no doubt that buying a locally brewed beer supports a local business. Advocates of purchasing locally produced food are quick to point out the economic, social, and environmental benefits of doing so – keeping more money in the local community, encouraging cultural diversity, preserving genetic diversity etc. On the other hand, economists Jason Winfred and Philip Watson point out buying local conflicts with Ricardo’s two hundred year old principle of comparative advantage. Of course, there is the whole issue of what constitutes “local”, a topic I discussed in a previous blog entry.

Many breweries are rightly proud of the contributions they make to their local communities. And on their websites, they are not hesitant to articulate their community commitment. Crazy Mountain Brewing Company of Denver, CO, for example, state that, “although beer is our passion, one of Crazy Mountain’s core values is our commitment to community involvement”. According to Fairport Brewing Company in Fairport, NY, “our commitment to the local community run deep”, while Roadhouse Brewery of Jackson Hole, WY is “committed to supporting the local community of Jackson Hole”.

I got to thinking about craft breweries and their connections to the local economies the other day, when I was putting away a t-shirt that my oldest daughter had gave me as a Christmas gift. It was a t-shirt from Boulevard Brewing Company in Kansas City, MO. My daughter had been to Boulevard recently, while visiting a friend in Kansas City. I visited Boulevard myself while attending a conference in Kansas City in June of last year. Anyway, as I picked up the t-shirt I looked at the label just inside the collar. I was curious as to where the t-shirt was made. The label said, “Made in Honduras”. That got me wondering – where were all my other brewery t-shirts made? How many were made in the United States? I took each of them from the closet and examined them. Here is what I found:

Bare Arms Brewing, Waco, TX – Nicaragua
Black Cloister Brewing Company, Toledo, OH – Nicaragua
Boulevard Brewing Company, Kansas City, MO – Honduras
Church Brew Works, Pittsburgh, PA – Nicaragua
Dogfish Head, Milton, DE – USA
Earnest Brew Works, Toledo, OH – USA
Elevator Brewing, Columbus, OH – Mexico
Grapevine Brewery, Grapevine, TX – Nicaragua
Kona Brewing Company, Kona, HI – Mexico
Lansing Brewing Company, Lansing, MI – Mexico
Market Garden Brewery, Cleveland, OH – Nicaragua
Maumee Bay Brewing Company, Toledo, OH – Nicaragua
Pike Brewing Company, Seattle, WA – Honduras
Rhinegeist Brewery, Cincinnati, OH – USA
Round Barn Brewery, Baroda, MI – Honduras

First off, I own fifteen t-shirts from breweries. I never knew that. Of the fifteen t-shirts, seven were made in Nicaragua, three in Mexico, three in the United States, and two in Honduras. Now I fully realize that my fifteen t-shirts do not constitute a scientifically valid sample, so I am not going to make any generalizations regarding the larger population of American breweries. Thinking scientifically, I thought that it might be interesting to have a control group. So, I randomly selected fifteen of my non-brewery t-shirts that I had purchased in the United States, and examined their labels. All of them were manufactured in Latin America – five in Mexico, four in Nicaragua, and three each in Honduras and El Salvador. These, albeit non-scientific, findings do hint at the possibility that American craft breweries may be more prone to purchase American made t-shirts than the average retailer.

My t-shirt from Church Brew Works in Pittsburgh, PA was made in Nicaragua

That most of the brewery t-shirts I own are made in Latin American countries did not surprise me. I teach this stuff in my Industrial Geography course at The University of Toledo. By and large, it comes down to labor costs. Manufacturing labor costs are significantly cheaper in Latin America than in the United States. For example, according to IVEMSA, a company that assists U.S. companies interested in establishing manufacturing facilities in Mexico, American manufacturers who locate in Mexico will pay 20-30% less in labor costs. Add to that a forty-eight hour work week (before requiring overtime pay) and the advantages of manufacturing in Mexico soon become apparent.

Three breweries in my non-scientific sample do sell t-shirts manufactured in the United States. They are Dogfish Head in Milton, DE, Earnest Brew Works in Toledo, OH, and Rhinegeist Brewery in Cincinnati, OH. The t-shirts sold by Earnest Brew Works and Rhinegeist Brewery are made by American Apparel, who are based in Los Angeles, CA. The company makes apparel in countries all over the world, including Bangladesh, Honduras, and the United States. Interestingly, one of American Apparel’s commitments is supporting the economies in which they are located. They do this by “using local suppliers for transportation, food services and raw materials and accessories for our production facilities such as dyes, buttons, zippers, boxes and office supplies.” The two American Apparel t-shirts I have were as I mentioned above, made in the USA. The components used to manufacture these two t-shirts came both from the United States and other countries

My t-shirt from Rhinegeist Brewery was made in the USA, with US and imported components

The t-shirt sold by Dogfish Head Brewery is manufactured by a company called TS Designs, who are based in Burlington, NC. Not only are TS Designs’ t-shirts made in North Carolina, the cotton that they are made from is grown in North Carolina.

It would be nice if more breweries who sold t-shirts, baseball caps, wool hats and other souvenir items sourced those from inside the United States. If these items came from inside or close to the community in which they reside it would be another indication that the breweries are committed to supporting their local and/or regional economy.

Aloha

February 29, 2016 The Beer Professor 2 Comments

Aloha is one of those words that has multiple meanings. It is a Hawaiian word, of course, and in the native language of America’s fiftieth state it can mean both hello and goodbye. My wife and I just spent eight days on the Big Island of Hawaii. It was a trip that mixed
business and pleasure. I was there for the 55th Annual Meeting of the Western Regional Science Association. We arrived a few days before the meetings started so that we could Continue reading Aloha →

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Tag Archives: Kona Brewing Company

North, South, East, and West

Made in Honduras

Aloha

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