A recent report by NBWA Chief Economist Lester Jones states that the number of brewery permits has topped 4,500. For many, I’m sure this begs the question: what if all of those breweries open? Can the US take 4,500 breweries? As …Read More

A couple of months back, I noted that IPAs had finally caught up with seasonals in annual scan data sales. Well, here we are seven months on, and the race for 2014 doesn’t even seem close. IPAs have sold over …Read More

Pardon the sensationalist headline, but the new Gallup alcohol consumption poll numbers are out and with them I’ll bet we see a horde of news articles about how much better those numbers look in 2014 than they did in 2013. …Read More

So despite my earlier efforts to dispel the notion that the number of breweries in this country represents some sort of bubble, “are we at the saturation point?” or “is this a beer bubble?” continues to be the most popular …Read More

When do craft beer sales occur across the course of the year? Or put differently, do craft brewers sell more beer in the first six months of the year or the second six months? This topic has been on my …Read More

The American brewing industry reached another milestone at the end of June, with more than 3,000 breweries operating for all or part of the month (3,040 to be precise). Although precise numbers from the 19th century are difficult to confirm, …Read More

One common worry I hear about in the craft beer space is the ongoing proliferation of SKUs. Is there enough shelf space? Are their enough tap handles? These questions typically are based on blunt measures, like the number of SKUs …Read More

The craft beer story du jour is about how America’s insatiable love of IPAs and the craft brewers who brew them is driving up the price of hops. Now, I have no issue with the idea that craft is changing the …Read More

In part two of my focus on the states series I want to look at state growth. Although the national story of 18% production volume growth is an interesting one, there are plenty of exciting sub-stories at the state level.Read More

As we near the publication of the 2013 craft brewer data set, I’ve been thinking a lot about the states. In the medium/long run, the most important stories about craft brewing are state stories. How high is the peak in …Read More