Tinkoff Brewery
Tinkoff Brewery is a Russian brewery founded in St. Petersburg by local businessman Oleg Tinkov in 1998 as a brewpub. In 2005 it was sold to InBev who in turn sold it to Detroit Investments in 2010.
Brief details
After opening as an American style brewery restaurant in 1998 in St Petersburg, Tinkoff expanded to become Russia's fourth largest independent brewery, opening a 2 million hectoliter state-of-the-art brewery in 2002 in Pushkin near St Petersburg. The company opened several more brewpubs across Russia. By 2005 the company had ten brewpubs, a firm and growing share of the market for premium lager, and was exporting to Europe and America. In July 2005 InBev bought the Pushkin brewery and the Tinkoff brand name for €167 million and in 2010 sold the Pushkin brewery for $150 million to Russia's Detroit Investments. Oleg Tinkov retained the chain of restaurants (located in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Samara, Russia, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Ufa, Yekaterinburg, Sochi, Almaty and Kazan) which he sold to Mint Capital in 2009. In May of 2010, Mint Capital announced it was looking to sell. In late 2010, Mint Capital announced that it sold its interest in Tinkoff Brewery and although no price was announced, it was widely reported that the chain was offered for sale for $1 (and assumption of all debts).
Beers
The main brand was Tinkoff Zolotoe (Tinkoff Golden) - a golden coloured cold filtered lager.
Availability
Bottled Tinkoff is no longer available. InBev shuttered the facility that produced Tinkoff in December of 2008 and decided not transfer production to any other facility.