Magic Hat Brewing Company

Magic Hat Brewing Company is a brewery and wholly owned brand of Florida Ice & Farm Co., which is headquartered in Costa Rica. It began production in 1994, and is distributed across the United States. Their flagship beer, the apricot-tinged #9, is widely regarded as a significant early force in introducing many Americans to craft beer, especially in the late 1990s and early 2000s.[2]

Magic Hat Brewing Company
LocationSouth Burlington, Vermont
United States
Coordinates43°9′39.7″N 77°36′39.3″W
Opened1994
Key peopleAlan Newman
Annual production volume154,236 US beer barrels (180,992 hl)[1]
Owned byNorth American Breweries
Websitemagichat.net

History

Magic Hat Brewing Company was formed in 1994 in Burlington, Vermont by serial entrepreneur Alan Newman and Bob Johnson, the company's original brewmaster.[2] It expanded and moved to an industrial park in neighboring South Burlington in 1997. By 2005 it had 64 employees.[3] In 2008 the company purchased Pyramid Breweries, makers of the Pyramid and MacTarnahan's brands, expanding to 129 employees.[4]

Acquisitions and eventual shutdown of Vermont space

In 2010, Alan Newman sold Magic Hat and all of its assets to North American Breweries.[2][5] That company was established by New York City private equity company KPS Capital Partners. Newman described the purchasers as a company looking to "make money by stripping out expense and flipping."[2] The new owners did exactly that - in December 2012, North American Breweries was purchased by Florida Ice & Farm Company (FIFCO), a Costa Rican food and beverages company.[6] FIFCO soon began producing some Magic Hat beer at their Genesee Brewing Company plant in Rochester, New York, but the Vermont brewery continued to operate as well.[7]

In June 2020, FIFCO announced that it intended to consolidate the rest of Magic Hat's brewing operations to the Rochester location. Another Burlington based brewery, Zero Gravity, will assume the lease on Magic Hat's physical plant, along with the brewing and retail assets within the space.[8] 43 of Magic Hat's 46 Vermont employees will lose their jobs, although Zero Gravity is in talks to rehire some of them.[2]

Brands
Magic Hat #9 in a mug

Magic Hat brews five year-round beers: #9 "Not Quite Pale Ale", Taken for Granite, Mother Lager, Citrus Box, Ob-La-Di, What's on Stage, Nirav, Elder Betty and Single Chair. It also produces up to four seasonal beers, seasonal variety packs and several limited release products.[9]

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gollark: I should probably move the big-incompressible-file backups to rsync.
gollark: Anyway, how do I "use" "rsync"?
gollark: You'd expect the tar format designers would have thought of the idea of an "index" or something.
gollark: Oh, this entire CPU core is busy doing "iowait".

References
  1. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-10-12. Retrieved 2017-09-09.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. "Magic Hat Leaves Behind a Transformed Craft Beer Industry in Vermont". www.sevendaysvt.com. July 1, 2020. Retrieved July 1, 2020.
  3. "Business People-Vermont: Magic Hat Brewery". www.vermontguides.com.
  4. Baird, Joeal Banner (29 July 2010). "Magic Hat reportedly 'days away' from sale". Burlington, Vermont: Burlington Free Press. pp. 1A, 4A.
  5. Rochester, North American buys Magic Hat, Pyramid and MacTarnahan's
  6. "Cerveceria Costa Rica to buy North American Breweries". Oct 26, 2012. Retrieved May 21, 2013.
  7. Blumenthal, Rachel Leah (2 July 2020). "Boozy updates from Boston and beyond". Eater Boston. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
  8. "Magic Hat Brewing Is Leaving Vermont; Zero Gravity Will Expand". www.sevendaysvt.com. June 16, 2020. Retrieved July 1, 2020.
  9. "Elixers". www.magichat.net. Magic Hat Brewing Company. 2013. Retrieved May 22, 2013.
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