Magic Hat Brewing Company is a

brewery A brewery or brewing company is a business that makes and sells beer. The place at which beer is commercially made is either called a brewery or a beerhouse, where distinct sets of brewing equipment are called plant. The commercial brewing of be ...

and wholly owned brand of Florida Ice & Farm Co., which is headquartered in

Costa Rica Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...

. 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.

History

Magic Hat Brewing Company was formed in 1994 in

Burlington, Vermont Burlington is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Vermont and the seat of Chittenden County. It is located south of the Canada–United States border and south of Montreal. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the population was 44,743. It ...

by serial entrepreneur Alan Newman and Bob Johnson, the company's original brewmaster. It expanded and moved to an industrial park in neighboring South Burlington in 1997. By 2005 it had 64 employees. In 2008 the company purchased

Pyramid Breweries Pyramid Breweries, Inc., is a brewing company headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It produces beer under the Pyramid brand at two breweries and several brewpubs in Washington, Oregon, and California. It was founded in 1984 as Hart Brewing, and ...

, makers of the Pyramid and MacTarnahan's brands, expanding to 129 employees.

Acquisitions and eventual shutdown of Vermont space

In 2010, Alan Newman sold Magic Hat and all of its assets to North American Breweries.Rochester, North American buys Magic Hat, Pyramid and MacTarnahan's
/ref> 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 Flipping is a term used to describe purchasing a revenue-generating asset and quickly reselling (or "flipping") it for profit. Within the real estate industry, the term is used by investors to describe the process of buying, rehabbing, and sell ...

." 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. FIFCO soon began producing some Magic Hat beer at their

Genesee Brewing Company Genesee Brewing Company ( ) is an American brewery located along the Genesee River in Rochester, New York. From 2000 to 2009, the company was known as the High Falls Brewing Company. In 2009, High Falls was acquired by the capital investment fi ...

plant in

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...

, but the Vermont brewery continued to operate as well. 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. 43 of Magic Hat's 46 Vermont employees will lose their jobs, although Zero Gravity is in talks to rehire some of them.

Brands

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 beer A seasonal beer is a beer that is typically brewed during or for a particular season, holiday or festival period. Many breweries and microbreweries produce seasonal beers. Seasonal beers may be produced when fresh ingredients are available during ...

s, seasonal variety packs and several limited release products.

References

External links

{{Commons category
Company website
American beer brands Beer_brewing_companies_based_in_New_York_(state)