Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 17, 1995 TAG: 9508170073
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By F.J. GALLAGHER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Sellers of Star City Lager are hoping their brew will quench a thirst for a local beer, even through it's made and bottled in eastern Pennsylvania.
"We wanted to produce a local beer," said Mill Mountain Brewing Co. spokesman Joe Ramsey. "The people who are involved in this are local, and we hope to promote it as local."
Although Mill Mountain Brewing doesn't actually brew anything in the Star City, backers of the business maintain their product gives local beer drinkers a taste that reflects - according to its promotional brochure - "some of the finest pleasures found in the area. ... History and tradition. Regional color. Cultural diversity."
Star City Lager, the beer Mill Mountain Brewing has begun distributing this month, actually is what's the brewery business calls a "contract" brew, said Sheri Winter, a spokeswoman for the Institute for Brewing Studies in Boulder, Colo. By contracting with another brewery to provide the product, a would-be brewer can avoid high start-up costs associated with actually establishing a local brewery. Those costs she said, can run as high as $500,000, substantially more than the approximately $100,000 investment it takes to market a brew made by another company.
"The idea is that you get somebody else to handle the production," Winter said, "and you handle the marketing and promotion. Sam Adams products are probably the best example of this."
The Boston Beer Co. distributes Samuel Adams beers and ales that are produced at a number of breweries around the country, she said.
Star City Lager is brewed by the Lion brewery in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Ramsey said it is based on the Lion's "1857" recipe, which won the 1994 Great American Beer Festival's Gold Medal in the American Premium Lager category.
That formula served as a starting point. Lion personnel made changes for Mill Mountain Brewing's owners, Ramsey said, to deliver a consistent product with respect to flavor, freshness and quality.
"Extensive tasting was done ... [on] dozens of brands over a period of months and this is the one that was chosen," Ramsey said. "Lion was the one that could deliver what we wanted."
Although Ramsey declined to say who owns Mill Mountain Brewing, documents on file at the Virginia State Corporation Commission indicate that the owners are Kenneth Dill, Steven and Elizabeth Liedtke, and David and Linda Newman, all of Roanoke.
Mill Mountain's first order of 9,000 cases arrived last week and is being distributed by the Blue Ridge Beverage Co. of Salem, which also handles the Miller Brewing Co.'s line.
While Ramsey hopes to get Star City Lager into more of the area's bars and restaurants, local drinkers already can sample it in several downtown Roanoke establishments. It should be on shelves at Kroger supermarkets near the end of the month, where it is to sell for around $6 per six pack.
Jimmy Woodson, who with his brother, Bill, owns the Full Moon Cafe in downtown Roanoke, said Star City Lager enjoyed better-than-average sales in its debut last weekend, considering the relative lack of promotion that accompanied its arrival. While Star City sales proved strong at the outset, he said, the product's true test would come after consumers have tried the beer and gotten used to having it around.
"We sold quite a bit this weekend," Jimmy Woodson said. "It's pretty good. It has a little bit more flavor than Bud or Lite." He sells Star City for $2.50 a bottle.
"For now, the novelty is working," Woodson said. "I don't know how it'll do for the long haul. From what I've seen in the past, it'll do real well at the start and then level off."
by CNB