Stealing and Dealing Your Beer
by: Paul R. Kan

Fontana Police’s capture of a recent beer heist

Without knowing it, you may have been drinking a stolen beer at your last happy hour. Organized rings of beer thieves across the United States have been taking thousands of gallons of beer from trains, breweries and delivery trucks. Rather than Robin Hoods—stealing beer from the rich to give to the thirsty—these criminals sell the looted beer to bars and restaurants.

Beer heists are more than shoplifting a couple of six packs from the local liquor store.

• $675,000 worth of beer was looted from a Houston warehouse.
• Two hundred cases of beer were robbed from a warehouse and discovered in a van after a police pursuit in Fontana, California.
• 719 cases of Dos Equis beer were swiped from an Austin, Texas distributor.
• Two refrigerator trailers containing 3,300 cases of beer were stolen from an Atlanta craft brewery.

But it was a ring of beer thieves busted last spring in the Northeast United States that perpetrated the widest ranging number of beer heists. For at least two years, the “Beer Theft Enterprise” stole hundreds of thousands of dollars of Corona and Modelo across four states. Often armed with guns, the group cut through fences, broke locks and hauled out beer from railyards and warehouses under the cover of night. According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s announcement of the gang’s indictment —and without realizing the pun—the criminal group had “left several beverage distribution and railroad companies ailing.”

How does looted beer get from railyard to bar? Understanding how beer makes its way to the black market—and potentially to your glass—it’s important to first learn why beer is targeted for heists.

The Felony in the Fridge

In many ways, beer is not an ideal product for a criminal gang to steal and deal. Unlike narcotics, criminals aren’t producing their own beer and selling it directly to consumers. Nor do they partner with illegal producers seeking to move their beer on the street. Beer thieves, instead, must rob businesses to procure the product. Breaking into a business heightens the risks of being caught, arrested and imprisoned. Not only do thieves have to burgle a location where beer is kept, but to be profitable, they have to take a lot of it. This makes clandestinely transporting and storing large quantities complicated.

Complicated, but not impossible. Despite the downsides, beer is an attractive target for organized thieves. Criminal gangs know there’s a demand among bar and restaurant owners for cut-rate beer. Criminals also know that stolen beer easily blends-in with the legitimately purchased stock. Glancing in a walk-in refrigerator, the difference between legally and illegally acquired beer inventory is nearly indistinguishable. The ease of concealing stolen beer is tempting enough for some business owners to risk paying criminals for some. All of this makes beer, unlike some goods from other robberies, easier for criminals to offload. No visits to shady pawnshops required.

Getting caught stealing and dealing beer also have lower legal penalties than trafficking illegal products like hard drugs. Police and prosecutors are often more focused on crimes that directly, and more severely, harm public safety. After all, it’s not cocaine; it’s just beer.

Beerfellas

Capture of stolen beer (photo courtesy of Fontana Police Department)

The relative ease of selling stolen beer, the lower criminal penalties and the potential of a high payoff can be seductive reasons for individuals to join a heist. In fact, the ringleader of the Beer Theft Enterprise openly recruited on Instagram for help with his robberies by promising lucrative paydays. One post read that participants “in the beer train method” would be guaranteed “100k+ in a month.” Another post included a picture of a railroad with the caption “Need workers who want to make [money bag emoji]” with a “Yes” or “No” vote button.

How many people hit the “yes” button for a heist isn’t publicly known. But the brazen recruitment on Instagram reveals how manpower is essential for a beer heist. Lookouts, drivers, and people with the ability to operate heavy machinery like forklifts are usually needed for a large-scale beer robbery. Someone willing to threaten or use violence to gain access to the targeted beer may also be included. A member of the Beer Theft Enterprise threatened railyard and warehouse employees at gunpoint for entry into railcars and warehouses.

To avoid the possibility of violence, criminal rings can include an employee where beer is stored to leave a door unlocked or an alarm unarmed. This insider may also be able to pre-position beer for accomplices to load more quickly. For example, an insider was intimately involved with the beer distribution warehouse robbery in Austin, Texas. On an agreed upon date and time, he moved cases of selected beers closer to the loading dock for easier removal by the beer thieves.

After the gang accesses the beer, it’s loaded in vehicles for transport to another location. There, the criminal gang inspects the beer for any damage. Broken bottles, burst cans or cracked kegs are worthless on the black market.

For the gang, selling the undamaged beer is the next step. In one instance, the Beer Theft Enterprise sold its looted beer to a middleman…and a middlewoman. According to a West Haven Police arrest warrant, one of the ring’s members admitted that after a heist the group unloaded “the stolen beer at a garage in the Bronx next to a bodega, where the receiver was ‘a Russian guy and a young girl.’” The pair paid the thieves in cash for the beer, which was likely destined for bars, restaurants and stores around New York City.

Over a Barrel

The beer industry is uniquely vulnerable to large-scale thefts by criminal rings. America’s three-tier liquor distribution system almost invites beer heists. Put in place after Prohibition, the system is comprised of producers who make alcohol to sell to distributors in the middle who collect alcohol tax when selling to retailers. The first and second tiers create the black market for criminals—by taking beer, criminals remove the costs of tax for retailers while pocketing the money for themselves.

The result is millions of dollars in lost revenue for brewers, distributors and communities. Because of their economic damage, these crimes deserve to be a higher priority for law enforcement. But it’s unknown how often beer heists occur. Neither the U.S. Department of Justice nor beer industry groups keep statistics on large-scale beer thefts. Beyond media reporting, there is little information about these crimes. This dearth of information is part of the
problem. Without knowing the scope and scale of this type of criminal activity, prioritization won’t happen, and effective solutions will be wanting.

Without a more comprehensive examination of beer heists along with serious efforts to combat them, your happy hour beer will always be a little suspicious….

Paul R. Kan

Paul R. Kan is the author of Hawai’i Beer:  A History of Brewing in Paradise which was a North American Guild of Beer Writers’ award winner and a #1 new release on Amazon’s Books on Beer.  He has written for Good Beer Hunting and is Editor-at-Large at The Beer Thrillers.  Along with beer reviews, book reviews and interviews, he also writes about the interesting ways beer intersects with people and society.  His current book project is Red, White and Brew:  The Beers and Battles that Shaped America. He lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

ʻOi kau ka lā, e hana i ola honua (While the sun yet shines, do all you can).

Paul R. Kan Articles

The following are articles that Paul R. Kan has written here for The Beer Thrillers:

• Book Review: Beer and Society: How We Make Beer and Beer Makes Us (Eli Revelle Yano Wilson and Asa B. Stone)
• Book Review: A Woman’s Place is in the Brewhouse – A Forgotten History of Alewives, Brewsters, Witches, and CEOs (Tara Nurin)
• From Central PA to the Pacific: A Beer Lover’s Hawaiian Journey An Interview with Alexander B. Gates
• Book Review: The Greatest Beer Run Ever (John Chick Donohue and J.T. Molloy)
• Twofer Brewfer Brewery Reviews: Gearhouse Brewing Co. and Liquid Art Brewing
• Tapping into Heritage and Hope on Maui
• Book Review: Brewed in Japan (Jeffrey Alexander)
• Three Questions and a Pint: with Josh Dourte
• Three Questions and a Pint: with Noah Reighard
• Visiting Four Breweries in Phoenix: Getting to Visit Tombstone Brewing Company, Wren House Brewing, PHX Beer Co, and OHSO Brewery and Distillery
• Book Review: Revenge of She-Punks (Vivien Goldman)
• Beer Heists: Stealing and Dealing Your Beer

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Yuengling Brewery – America’s Oldest Craft Brewery

Yuengling Begins To Take the Market Share From Number One Selling Beer Bud Lite

Yuengling seems poised to claim a new title as “America’s number one,” building on its reputation as the nation’s oldest craft brewery—a distinction that sometimes gets overlooked online. The brewery, based in Pottsville, is reportedly encroaching on the market share of America’s best-selling beer, Bud Light.

A recent Newsweek report highlighted a shift in beer popularity in bars and restaurants, showing Bud Light falling to fourth place in terms of popularity, while Yuengling’s market share has expanded. This shift brings the Pennsylvania-based brewery closer to becoming the top beer in America. Data from Bump Williams Consulting indicates that Bud Light’s market share has increased by 8.1%, whereas Yuengling experienced a substantial 25% growth in market share over the same period, moving it up the ranks among America’s largest breweries.

(See our articles on Top Producers in Beer:

• Top 50 Overall Brewing Companies (2023)

• Top 50 Craft Brewing Companies in the United States (2023)

This shift appears to be influenced by the negative reaction Bud Light has faced since early 2023. The brand has been losing market share following its partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in March of that year, a move that has been widely covered and critiqued in the media.

Yuengling has somewhat capitalized on Bud Light’s misstep. Following the controversy, Yuengling took a veiled jab at Bud Light on Twitter, highlighting the latter’s connection to Anheuser-Busch, which is owned by a foreign entity. This detail has prompted some consumers to switch to Yuengling, seeking an American-made beer option.

The impact of Yuengling’s rising sales on Pennsylvania’s beer production remains uncertain. While a significant amount of Yuengling beer is produced in their Pottsville facility, the brewery has been expanding its operations beyond Pennsylvania. This includes a brewery in Florida and a new 42,000 square foot facility in the state, alongside a partnership announced in 2020 with Molson Coors to brew beer outside their traditional East Coast market. The full effect of the sales increase on the state’s beer output is still to be determined.

This is going to be something different, and don’t expect much more of this kind of thing. I’m not a huge fan of doing the mainstream beers, and I definitely don’t want to be doing macro beers (so have no fear, no Naturdays review coming up or Bud Lite Platinum or whatever other BS their peddling).

Yuengling is Pennsylvania though, through and through. You walk into any bar in Pennsylvania and say ‘lager’ you are going to get a Yuengling. Simple as that really. So if I have to drink the “lesser” beers, or the “swill” or “macros” or “mainstream” or “lower quality but mass produced beers”, Yuengling is usually my go to. Over the other heavily distributed beers like Miller Lite, Coors, Bud, Corona, or Heineken. I am not above drinking macro and I’m not making this a beer snobbery post, I drink, and I’ll drink anything/everything if nothing else is available. For instance, family parties where say a brother in law has just Corona, I’ll drink the Corona. So be it.

At the Boneshire Brew Works 3rd Anniversary party on Friday night (which by the way, look for an upcoming joint blog post from both me and J. Doncevic) I was hanging out with J. Doncevic and we discussed this exact drink, and we also discussed Yuengling in general, and macro beers as a whole. He’ll be upfront with any of you who ask him, he takes his beer snobbery to a whole new level, and he’s damn proud of it. He was telling me he’s never had Miller or Coors or Bud and won’t, and would rather not drink at a party then drink those. My unabashedly candid alcoholism tells me to drink everything and anything if available – so I do. Different strokes; different folks. Nothing wrong with either approach (in my opinion). But we did have a consensus that Yuengling is craft (it is by definition of the Craft Brewer’s Association) and that we both are willing to drink it.

In the South Central PA area, primarily every Hershey bar/brewery, beer place, etc, as well as in Harrisburg, Hummelstown, Elizabethtown, etc, nearly every place that has a good enough distributor got this (the Chocolate Porter) on tap. Specifically Hershey, Hummelstown, and Harrisburg. The Warwick, the Bear’s Den, Hershey Biergarten, Primanti Brothers, Hotel Hershey, Boro Bar and Grill, Chick’s Tavern, Boneshire Brew Works, The Sturgis, Ted’s Bar and Grill, Arooga’s on 422, Arooga’s on 22, just to name a few places that carried this.

Most places even did a glass give away the first night of the tapping. I know Boneshire Brew Works did (thus the glass in the picture), as well as the Gin Mill in Lebanon did. Hershey Biergarten did as well and I believe the Primanti Bros. did also. It is a lovely glass, a nice tulip with the logo in gold on it, looks very lovely and is a nice drinking glass for stouts, porters, belgians, etc.

So, on Wednesday the 16th, Boneshire Brewery announced that they were going to be tapping a keg of the Hershey’s Chocolate Porter and giving away the glasses. I got done with work at 5:40 (NEO from my work) and went straight to the library to drop off books, and was going to be meeting a friend at Newfangled Brew Works, but stopped at Boneshire to try out the porter.

So let’s break down the beer thats basically taken the beer industry, Twitter, social media, and the internet by storm. The beer that all of your non-craft beer friends have been bugging you about and asking you about for your opinion of it. Well, now here you go, you can just point them to this article, because I’m sure I speak for everyone. ………I kid…. I kid.

I feel like I could just break down Hershey’s syrup and that would be all the review needs to be. A slightly alcoholic version of the syrup, and bam-o there you go, review done. But, its not quite that simple, and there are a few more subtle notes.

This does seem to be the point of contention, for some it tastes like the syrup, for some it tastes completely different, it seems theres two sides to the coin of this beer, and the multitude of my friends fall on both spectrum(s).

Beer: Hershey’s Chocolate Porter
Brewery: Yuengling Brewery (or D.G. Yuengling and Sons Brewing Company)
Style: Porter – American
ABV: 4.7%
IBU: No IBU
Untappd Write-Up: Yuengling, America’s Oldest Brewery, and Hershey, America’s most iconic chocolate, are collaborating, for the first time in their history, to provide a once in a lifetime creation for their loyal fans to enjoy. America loves beer and America loves chocolate, so Yuengling and Hershey joined forces to bring the best of both worlds to their fans with a limited-edition Yuengling Hershey’s Chocolate Porter. This collaboration gives consumers the opportunity to savor and indulge in the unique beer from America’s Oldest Brewery and America’s most beloved chocolate brand.

Yuengling Hershey’s Chocolate Porter is a fresh take on Yuengling’s 200-year-old Dark Brewed Porter. Don’t miss your chance to enjoy, for a limited time only, America’s #1 craft brewery, Yuengling, come together with America’s most iconic chocolate brand, Hershey’s, for their first-ever collaboration — Yuengling Hershey’s Chocolate Porter.

Thats quite the marketing ad write-up right there. Gotta give an A+ to the ad team on this one, or at least a raise or something, that was a very well crafted (ah….. pun intended) and well made Untappd write-up for the beer. You can tell if a Brewery has a good marketing or ad-team with their social media presence, and things like a good Untappd write-up for their beers (like Troegs usually has a fantastic write-up, even for their Scratch beers) is a good sign of it; great Twitter posts, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc posts are always a good sign of a good marketing team which reflects well on a brewery as a whole.

So you have the oldest American brewery (left) and a staple of the East Coast (specifically North East Coast) dive bar, and the “most iconic” chocolate company in America teaming up to make a beer. Yuengling is the oldest brewery in America; by process of elimination. It wasn’t the oldest founded, it wasn’t the first founded, but it has survived through prohibition, and other stretches when most American breweries folded, by changing what they sold, how they sold, downsizing, upsizing, etc, and they are to be commended for how they were able to achieve and survive and thrive despite times like prohibition, etc.

Hershey’s is iconic, insofar as anyone from the United States has heard of it, if not had it. From Pennsylvania to California, from Maine to Texas, Hershey’s is distributed. And that’s not speaking internationally. I could go into the history of Hershey’s (or even Yuengling) and talk about how the company was started, by who, how they’ve grown, etc. I could talk about Hershey Park, Chocolate World, the town of Hershey in Derry Township, etc, but its all stuff we pretty much know, and its all stuff that’s not really necessary or relevant to the beer review. Suffice it to say that the write-up is pretty spot on despite everything; Yuengling and Hershey are both iconic. Perhaps some hyperbole but it is mostly true, and a sound argument, and a pretty remarkable thing for the two of them to hook up and collaborate on this beer.

The idea of these two brands hooking up and collaborating on a beer is pretty amazing and impressive in its own right. I don’t know what the process was; who contacted who; what the involvement was that each brand had (I can’t imagine Hershey had much say, I have to assume its kind of like how the write-up reads, that they took their recipe for their old Dark Porter and just added Hershey’s ingredients to it, and called it a day – it tastes that way as well). But its brilliant marketing and strategy plan, especially given the anniversary of Yuengling, and with Hershey doing their big launching of the new entrance to Hershey Park and everything.

But enough of all this gibberish and jibber-jabbing…. lets get onto the actual beer itself.

Appearance is a typical porter, Razor Ramon hair black, full bodied, thick, like some entertainers of the evening. It has a nice head to it, foamy, bubbly, a good half-inch that dissipated with nice interspersed and varied bubbles. The foam has a light brown look to go with the richness of the beer.

Aroma is chocolate syrup… Hershey’s chocolate syrup to be exact. Like flipping the lid of the syrup container and immediately getting that whiff of it. You get malty roasty grains from the porter to go with it, but the chocolate smell overpowers much of that. This is fine, this is what its being billed as, and it works well for this.

Moving on to taste; once again the very first thing you are going to note and taste is the Hershey’s chocolate syrup. I’ve likened this to drinking an alcoholic version of the famous Hershey’s syrup. But even in that aspect, its not too much of it, since the ABV is only 4.7% anyway. So its not a boozy version of Hershey’s syrup thats for sure. There is some malt, some roast, some dark notes underneath the chocolate syrup abundance, but its pretty subtle and mute. The mouthfeel is heavy, its thick like a good porter, and it hangs and feels right in your mouth, all signs that the beer is well made. I think beyond the chocolate syrup, there is a blandness to the beer. The chocolate syrup wears thin on the taste as you start to sip, and then its just a kind of generic bland porter with not enough malt backbone to really keep the taste alive or to really hold the beer. The more you sip and drink it, the less notable and profound the chocolate syrup taste is, and the weaker the beer as a whole gets. This is in general a discussion of mass market beers typically; that they don’t usually have the most flavorful beers, the most robust character notes, that there is just an underlying general blandness to most beers, like Bud, like Coors, like Miller, like Yuengling lager, like Corona, or Heineken, etc, theres just a ‘blandness’ or ‘been there’ kind of taste. Like McDonald’s to your local diner or restaurant, might be a very apt comparison for that sake. There’s just a mute blandness that this beer takes on as you sip it more and the chocolate syrup dissipates more. …or perhaps I’m full of it and reading too much into things and have my head up my own…..

Either way on this beer, it has certainly gotten the beer universe a flutter for a while, from Twitter to Instagram, from your friends at work and family who know you like beer “so how was it” or “did you hear Hershey and Yuengling are teaming up?” to actual craft beer enthusiast nerdy hipsters willing to try it out, it has gotten the attention, and the marketing it was aimed and designed for.

Overall, its not the worst beer you are going to drink, you know the hype is overblown, like it usually is for anything; not even just the craft beer industry, but all aspects (stares at the latest Star Wars trailer…. I know what your game is….). Its worth seeking out for the novelty of it. I couldn’t imagine myself ordering this again, but it was acceptable, and a fine drink at the moment of.

My Untappd Rating: ***.25
Global Untappd Rating: 4.03 (as of 10.27.19)

This review was started yesterday morning (Sunday, October 27th) but I wasn’t able to finish it before work, and then work happened, and then post brewski’s happened with my friend D. Scott. Which, he has finally finished the podcast that we did discussing Breaking Bad and El Camino, so I will provide the links for that, its two podcasts (a two-parter) because of how ridiculously long it was. This was done with our friend Esty and its for their podcast channel “WTF did I watch”.

You can check them out here:
WTF Did I Just Watch: Breaking Bad and El Camino – Part 1
WTF Did I Just Watch: Breaking Bad and El Camino – Part 2

Just as a heads up, there is some language in the podcasts, it would probably receive a R rating from the FCC, they are also long podcasts, so devote some time if you are going to watch them.

Thank you all for reading, please click the like, follow, subscribe, comment, etc. we always appreciate that here at The Beer Thrillers. When I do more podcasts with D. Scott, I’ll be sure to post them here (I won’t be posting the ones I’m not involved in). Also look for an upcoming collaboration article between myself (B. Kline) and J. Doncevic about the Boneshire Brew Works 3rd Anniversary Celebration. I also have plenty of beer reviews to post up. So please be on the lookout for all of that!

Tonight will be busy, work from 10-6, then blood donation at the Hershey Library, then the Hummelstown Parade, and then a party at a brewer from Tattered Flag’s house, so most likely no posts or blogs from myself tonight, but I’m sure I’ll have something for you all tomorrow, so be on the lookout!

Cheers!

-B. Kline