The beer business is currently experiencing what is often referred to as a “premiumization” trend, or a period where beer lovers trade up across the beer aisle. This isn’t the first premiumization trend beer has …More

Another year, another record number of entries for the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) competition. Once again, all 50 states entered the competition with 19 states sending more than 100 entries—up from 18 states in 2015. In …More

Q3 Update The mid-year production survey made clear that craft brewing growth has slowed in 2016, but did that deceleration continue in the third quarter of the year? The answer is complicated, and illustrates the difficulty in nailing …More

A map of the 364 active brewery licenses in Colorado. Data comes from the Colorado Department of Revenue. While all of these licenses are active, many breweries shown on the map may still be in …More

I’ve written extensively about the importance of taprooms for many breweries’ business models. What I’ve never written before is how important they are becoming for overall craft growth. Through the first six months of the …More

Despite a decade of success, I STILL get calls asking if the current growth in the craft industry is a bubble. Since apparently no number of “non-bubble” posts can dispel this notion, for this post …More

Craft Update: Q2 2016 The results of the Brewers Association mid-year survey were announced today, with an estimate of 8 percent growth in the first half of the year. Although the top level number is interesting …More

So as not to bury the lede–if you are a brewer, please fill out our very brief mid-year survey. Link to Survey How fast is craft brewing growing in 2016? Over the past few days, there have been …More

Most of the data reported in the beer media comes from off-premise. This makes sense for a couple of reasons. First, off-premise is more than 80 percent of overall beer volume. Secondly, the data is easier to …More