Craft Beer

Nearly three-fifths of Brewers Association (BA) defined regional craft breweries (57.02%) beyond the top 50 recorded production volume declines in 2024, according to annual data shared by the trade association in the May/June issue of the New Brewer magazine.

Highland Brewing founder Oscar P. Wong, known as the “Godfather of Asheville Craft Beer,” has died at age 84, the Asheville craft brewery shared today.

Volume at craft breweries outside of the Brewers Association’s (BA) definition of small and independent declined 4% on a comparable basis, to 6.752 million barrels, in 2024, the trade group reported in the May/June edition of The New Brewer magazine.

More than half of the Brewers Association’s (BA) top 50 craft breweries recorded year-over-year (YoY) production volume gains in 2024, in a positive shift from 2023 trends, according to annual production data shared by the trade group today.

Six of the 10 largest Brewers Association-defined (BA) craft breweries recorded volume declines in 2024, according to data from the trade group’s May/June edition of The New Brewer magazine.

In this episode of the Brewbound Podcast, leaders from Sierra Nevada and New Trail discuss their craft portfolios, innovation, packaging and recent wins during the 2025 Craft Brewers Conference.

Craft Brewers Conference conversations continue on the Brewbound Podcast with a pair of interviews featuring Right Proper Brewing co-owner and Brewers Association board chairwoman Leah Cheston and Hi-Wire Brewing co-owner Adam Charnack.

It started with a simple bag of grain. Later, that grain was processed into chips. But the fun really ramped up when West African food company Yolélé turned fonio, a niche “miracle grain” that the brand has made its hero ingredient, into a limited-edition beer.

Despite recent headwinds, craft beer continues to have the largest share of beer sales at Total Wine & More stores. But “it won’t stay that way” if industry trends continue, according to the chain retailer’s senior director, merchandising, Andrea Starr.

The craft segment’s dollar sales and volume declines have accelerated to start the second quarter, traditionally the lead-up to beer’s all important summer selling season, according to the most recent off-premise report from market research firm Circana.

Under new leadership for the first time in more than a decade, the Brewers Association (BA) is “relentlessly focused on members and what their needs are,” CEO and president Bart Watson said last week.

Rhinegeist is ghosting alcohol. The Cincinnati craft brewery will add its first non-alcoholic (NA) beer to its portfolio later this summer. Ghost is an “affiliated brand” that plays on the “geist” name, meaning ghost or spirit, Rhinegeist CEO Adam Bankovich told Brewbound. The NA beer is one of two big portfolio additions for Rhinegeist this year, with Cincy Light’s first line extension, Cincy Light Lime (4.2% ABV), rolling out now on draft.

Anyone looking for an answer to when craft’s current era of compounding hurdles and declines will come to an end received a reality check Wednesday during Brewers Association (BA) president and CEO Bart Watson’s state of the industry address, held at the start of Day 2 of the Craft Brewers Conference (CBC) in Indianapolis.

When her husband told her he wanted to start a brewery, Trillium co-founder Esther Tetreault had a pair of questions for him. “Do you want to be a brewer, which is cool, or do you want to start a business in craft beer?” she asked JC Tetreault.