Boston Beer Company’s Q1 volume woes eased in 2024, after Q1 shipments and depletions declines in both 2022 and 2023.

For craft breweries to return to growth, they have to do more than just make great beer, Brewers Association (BA) chief economist and VP of strategy Bart Watson said during his state of the industry address Tuesday on Day 2 of the Craft Brewers Conference (CBC) in Las Vegas.

The 2024 Craft Brewers Conference (CBC) and BrewExpo America will take place from April 21-24 in Las Vegas, Nevada, hosted by the Brewers Association (BA).

The Craft Brewers Conference (CBC) was the first industry event I ever attended, so I see it as the unofficial start to a new year. It’s also a great pulse check on how the industry – and all the folks you catch up with – have changed and evolved since the last CBC.

Consumer sentiment toward Anheuser-Busch InBev’s (A-B) Bud Light continues to decline more than a year after the initial boycott of the brand, according to a HundredX survey, shared by Goldman Sachs in its latest Beverage Bytes report.

“Beer is a culture as much as anything else, and we need to do a better job of reminding policymakers,” Justin Kissinger, president and CEO of the World Brewing Alliance, told attendees Tuesday at the National Beer Wholesalers Assocation’s (NBWA) annual Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C.

In a time when it seems like just about anything can be an alcoholic beverage (Distilled Doritos Nacho Cheese, anyone?), some craft breweries have embraced the trend, expanding their portfolios with canned cocktails, flavored malt beverages (FMBs) and even bottled spirits.

Constellation Brands capped another strong year for its beer business with full-year net sales growth of +9% for its beer brands, hitting the top end of the company’s +8% to +9% growth expectations for fiscal year 2024, company leadership shared Thursday.

Constellation Brands is expected to be the biggest winner in shelf resets this spring, according to the most recent Beverage Bytes beer distributor survey by Goldman Sachs.

Craft’s performance in the grocery channel continued to lag behind the overall category, as both dollar sales (-1.9%) and volume (-2.9%) declined in the four-week period ending March 24, according to market research firm Circana’s monthly report.

Craft beer dollar sales declined -1.2% year-over-year (YoY) in Circana-tracked off-premise channels (total U.S. multi-outlet + convenience) in the four-week period ending March 24, according to the market research firm’s monthly report.

An estimated 11.9 million barrels of beer were shipped in February, a +7.9% increase year-over-year (YoY), marking the “strongest monthly growth in almost three years, since May 2021,” Beer Institute (BI) chief economist Andrew Heritage wrote in the trade group’s latest round of economic reports, citing estimates from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB).

Eight industry members are the latest to be awarded scholarships from the Michael James Jackson Foundation for Brewing and Distilling (MJF), a foundation meant to further the careers of Black, Indigenous and people of color in the brewing and distilling industries.

Retailers are “paying increasingly more attention” to the sales rates/velocity of beer brands and it has resulted in the contraction of the amount of brands on shelves, as well as the amount of new brands entering the marketplace, according to Bump Williams’ monthly report for Bump Williams Consulting (BWC).