The 2017 sales and volume data has been released by The Brewers Association (BA) and most people are going to probably see one number the 5% rise in volume and start to get nervous or gloom and doomy.
I won’t be shooting rainbows myself but that volume number and the retail dollar value growth of 8% are closer to what we will see going forward. There was a tremendous lack of small breweries even in 2013. Now that void created by consolidation has been filled to a great extent. There is still room for new breweries but the heady days of double digit growth is now part of #independent beer history and perhaps future.
That 5% looks even better when compared to the overall -1% in the total beer market. The other “good” number is that the closing rate of breweries was 2.6%. My hunch is that that number will grow in next year’s report if the Green Flash situation is any indicator. We may be getting closer to finding our number of breweries equilibrium. Once that magic point is found, decisions can be made from a point of firmer ground. If you know that there are X amount of breweries, then questions from how much hops are needed to how to distribute can be answered with more certainty. Remember that business hates unpredictability.
You can check out the handy infographic for the marquee statistics.
