Goose Island Beer names new president

Goose Island is getting a new boss, and it’s a homecoming.

Todd Ahsmann, a friend of former Goose Island brewmaster Greg Hall’s since childhood, has been tapped to take over as the brewery’s president and general manager. The man currently in that role, Ken Stout, is stepping into the newly created role of president of Goose Island International, a new division to guide Goose Island’s growing international footprint.

Goose Island’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch, also announced Monday that it has bought the entirety of Virtue Cider, the cider company started by Greg Hall after Anheuser-Busch bought Goose Island in 2011. In 2015, three years after launching Virtue, Hall sold 51 percent of his Michigan-based cider company to Anheuser-Busch for an undisclosed sum.

Ahsmann assumes day-to-day responsibilities for both Goose Island and Virtue Cider, whose Chicago team will move into Goose Island’s headquarters on Fulton Street. Greg Hall and his Virtue co-founder Steve Schmakel will remain active in the company, Anheuser-Busch said in an email sent to employees this morning.

Ahsmann, who worked as a bartender at Goose Island when it opened as a Clybourn Avenue brewpub in 1988, worked in the music industry before returning to Goose Island in a marketing role. He ascended within the company after its sale to Anheuser-Busch and in 2015 was named president and general manager of Blue Point Brewing, just outside of New York City. Anheuser-Busch, a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest beer company, bought Blue Point in 2014 as part of its strategy to penetrate the growing American craft beer industry. Anheuser-Busch has bought 10 American craft breweries since 2011; Goose Island was the first.

In recent years, Anheuser-Busch has launched Goose Island pubs in London, Toronto, Sao Paolo, Shanghai, Seoul and Monterrey, Mexico. Stout will oversee those operations, reporting to the company’s global vice president of craft and specialties, “to further strengthen the brand and culture of Goose Island abroad,” the company said.

jbnoel@chicagotribune
Twitter @hopnotes

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