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. 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. 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, 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. 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." 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 plant in Rochester, New York, 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 beers, seasonal variety packs and several limited release products.