Category: News from Other Beer Writers

Session # 67 topic comes from Ramblings of a Beer Runner and requires putting on our Karnac the Magnificent hats to predict the future….

“There’s been much cheering and fanfare reverberating throughout the brewing community about the latest brewery numbers recently released from the Brewer’s Association, who counted exactly 2,126 breweries in the United States. To put that into context, you have to go way back to 1887 when the United States had that many breweries. It’s an astonishing 47% increase from just five years ago in 2007 when the tally was a mere 1,449, despite the United States slowly recovering from a serious recession over this period. And according to the Brewers Association, another whopping 1,252 breweries are in the planning stages.

Where is it all going? The growth shows no sign of stopping and the biggest problem most breweries have is that they can’t brew beer fast enough. But can the market really absorb all these new breweries? Are we headed for a cataclysmic brewing bubble where legions of brewers, their big dreams busted, are left to contemplate selling insurance? Or is brewing reaching a critical mass, only to explode even more intensely in a thermo-nuclear frenzy of fermentation?

Now you have a chance to weigh in on these questions. For this month’s Session, tell us how many breweries the Brewer’s Association will count five years from now in 2017, and why you think it will be that number.

We greatly appreciate international perspectives on the US brewing industry and look forward to predictions on US brewery numbers from outside America’s shores. Or if they prefer, they can make a similar prediction about the brewing industry in their home country.

Feel free to use complex mathematical econometric models, top secret brewing industry information, or your favorite dart board, and post your prediction on Friday, September 7th. Share your link in a comment to this post, or send it to me in an e-mail from a link you’ll find here. I’ll post the round-up a few days later.

And for incentive, if five years from now your prediction is the most accurate one, in addition to enjoying beer blogger bragging rights, I will personally buy you a beer.”

When I have been asked about the future of craft beer, either by doe-eyed optimists or sour pessimists, I give the same answer. But let me backtrack a little. I have no stats (damned lies in many instances) or hard facts to back any of this up. This is just the gut feeling of one guy in a corner of the craft beer world. But I think in this session that the closest guesses will be of the hunch variety.

After disdaining the use of stats and facts, I will base my estimates on only three numbers and one immutable fact. I was never fond of math and did whatever I could to get away from that building in college. So this will not be trig or algebra.

#1 – 2,126 The “now open” number
#2 – 1,449 “fermenting” breweries
#3 – craft beer market share 5.7% as of 2011 numbers from the Brewer’s Association

Fact – The major industrial water lager brewers will continue to not know how to or refuse to brew a craft equivalent beer

Taking that in. I see growth over the next five years. Maybe not the velocity that we currently enjoy as writers covering this sector but I see continual upward growth. My personal tea leaves see that the current craft breweries are not making enough beer (see expansion to Asheville or lowered distribution efforts). SO that means there is a void for new. I would guess that maybe 1/2 of the crop that want to open will make it. Probably augmented by some not currently counted. Some of the open ones may falter but I see around 3,000 functioning craft beer sites in 2017. That 3,000 may still be not enough to fill the pint glasses because….

….I see this as a long-term trend, I firmly believe that way more than 5.7% of people want to drink more than corn water. It may not be a majority but I do see 15% as not out of the realm of reason. Now some places like the NW are already past that and others (like L.A. where I am typing from today) have catching up to do and the laggards are where the bigger growth will be. But there will be an upper limit to craft beer. (And those will be interesting times to write in, let me tell you).

Masters of graphs and excel spreadsheets will surely be able to figure out that if the market stabilizes at 15% then X amount of breweries producing Y amount of barrels will need to be in operation based on population and drinking habits. I think that number will probably be north of 3,500 but I don’t think that number will be reached in 5 years.

But to the doomsayers or those worried about a second bust cycle, I present the one unbending fact. Since New Albion (pick your pioneering brewery and insert here) flung open it’s doors oh those many years ago, the big boys have yet to make a craft beer.*

Oh, they have tried. American Ale from Budweiser was watered down Fat Tire. But they have mainly stuck to what they are great at. Marketing and distribution. At some point in the future, I see the MillerCoors ABInBev suits just throw in the towel and distribute craft beer en masse to get in on the money that they are unwilling to create from scratch.

The case for growth in this industry is actually easy to see because the cause of craft beer is rippling around the globe. England has new breweries as does Italy and New Zealand. As the majors have taken over market share, the inevitable rise of the small has followed in it’s wake. The brewing epicenter may not be the U.S. in years to come but it will look an awful lot like it.

*I will agree that Blue Moon is the closest to the mark but they are kept quarantined away from Coors proper like Brett from a winery.