2 Years Later....

I realised the other day that it has been two years since the announcement was made that Devils Backbone Brewing had been purchased by the craft division of Anheuser-Busch, The High End. What followed on social media was the fairly predictable caterwauling and butt hurt statements about selling out and people never spending another penny on Devils Backbone beer, and even disgraceful abuse of Devils Backbone employees.

With it being two years out from the sale, I thought it would be good to reflect on how Devils Backbone is today. For the sake of full disclosure let me say that I am friends with several people that work at Devils Backbone, including Jason Oliver, and I have worked with them on a number of brewing projects to bring Czech style lagers to the drinkers of central Virginia.

I will admit that I don't get down to the brewpub location nearly as often as I would like, it is about an hour's drive from my house and since the birth of Mrs V and I's twin sons going anywhere much further than Charlottesville is an exercise in logistics. However, the times that we have gone down recently have been as they always were, superb. The beer has been excellent, the service on the ball, friendly, efficient, and it is great to see so many of the same faces as before the sale. I don't know how much airtime this got, but Devils Backbone have always believed in creating full time jobs, with benefits, and one plus of the sale was that DB immediately doubled the match for employee 401(k) pension plans from 3% of earnings to 6%.

This is though a beer blog and in my experience in the past 2 years I have not had a single bad beer. Have I had beers that were not my thing? Sure. Did that beer display poor brewing or quality traits? Nope, not once. Devils Backbone have, by virtue of the purchase, been able to invest in their equipment at the brewpub, and at the production facility, so that they can further explore the craft of making great beer, including getting in horizontal lagering tanks. That investment is paying off in the quality of the beer being made.

Every summer I produce a thoroughly subjective list of the best Virginia made beers that I have drunk in the previous year, and Devils Backbone are regulars because Jason and co know how to make great beer. As I said in my initial reaction to the sale "as long as the beer remains good, then I will remain a happy Devils Backbone drinker", 2 years later and I am still a happy Devils Backbone drinker.