Why Craft Beer Will Be Almost Unrecognizable by the Year 2020

Why Craft Beer Will Be Almost Unrecognizable by the Year 2020

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By Jason Notte of MainStreet

NEW YORK (MainStreet) – The folks at the Brewers Association craft beer industry group want a 20% share of the beer industry by 2020. It’s how they get to that point that should concern beer drinkers.

As the Brewers Association revealed during its Craft Brewers Conference in Portland, Ore., last month, craft beer now accounts for 11% of U.S. beer sales by volume and 19.3% of beer sales by dollar value. When the Brewers Association talks about that 20% share in five years, it’s looking for volume and doesn’t see any reason that kind of growth shouldn’t be possible.

Back in 2012, craft beer’s market share was only 6.5% by volume. That’s a roughly 4.5 percentage-point swing in just two years. But it took some tweaks to the Brewery Association’s definition of a craft brewer to make that happen. In 2010, BA tweaked its definition to change the production limit for a craft brewer to 6 million from 2 million to accommodate Samuel Adams brewer Boston Beer. Just last year, it changed the definition again to include YuenglingAugust SchellMinhasStraub and other brewers once banned for brewing with corn, rice and other forbidden adjuncts.

That said, the Brewers Association has also trimmed its ranks in recent years because of less-flexible portions of its craft brewer definition. Widmer Brothers Brewing of Portland, Ore., and Redhook Ale Brewery of Woodinville, Wash., were kicked out of the BA and stripped of their craft status after forming the Craft Brew Alliance and selling a 32.2% stake toAnheuser-Busch InBev. That exceeded the 25% stake BA deems acceptable for ownership “by an alcoholic beverage industry member that is not itself a craft brewer.” Chicago’s Goose Island lost its craft status when it sold to ABI in 2011. It was followed by Patchogue, N.Y.-based Blue Point, Bend, Ore.-based 10 Barrel and Seattle-based Elysian, which all sold to A-B last year…. CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY AT MAINSTREET



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