Bell's Rumor?

[jpschust]

Any truth to the bell's rumor that they are pulling out of Illinois completely?

[MOREKASHA]

I live in NYC and have always brought back Bells from my journeys to Chicago and the rest of the midwest. It's truly one of the great, under rated American breweries. I love their Third Coast Old Ale.

[Chicago Mike]

I'll sure miss Expedition Stout, one of the very greatest "benchmark" imperial stouts out there... you can have the rest of Bell's.

[brentk]

Gladly, I will.

[peetoteeto]

I'll take some, too. Thanks, Chicago Mike!

Another NC beer drinker

[brentk]

NC just lifted the restriction on beers with an ABV above 6% about a year ago and, since that time, the market has gone crazy with a number of craft brewers trying to establish a foothold.

In the past year, we have added Victory, Weyerbacher, Ska, Fort Collins and Terrapin, not to mention lots of Belgians that were not previously available.

[mr mouther]

A friend of mine who works in bars in chicago said it had something to do with their distributor fighting bar management.

(I searched for this on beeradvocate and found nothing)

[brentk]

Here are the links:

http://beeradvocate.com/forum/read/849298
and
http://beeradvocate.com/forum/read/85...

[mr mouther]

thanks for those links brent. do you know any reason why NC and not any of the other 40 states Bell's is not distributed in.
I'm sure there's all sorts of background politics to distribution, but it seems crazy to me that such popular beer isn't more widely availabl.e

[Jim Dorsch]

It doesn't necessarily make sense for a relatively small (although large for craft) brewery to sell all over the US. Healthy sales generally require sales people, for example. (That said, some breweries, such as Rogue, do quite well casting far and wide. Stone, too.)

[brentk]

They are definitely pulling out of Chicago and coming to North Carolina.

See multiple threads on beeradvocate.com