Craft beer has entered “no to negative growth territory,” Brewers Association (BA) chief economist Bart Watson said during a year-end webinar last week. “We were in double-digit growth as recently as 2014, 2015, and then we moved into kind of a more developed, slow, single-digit growth rate,” Watson said. “COVID hit, and we had the worst year in craft history in 2020 with a partial bounce back in 2021.
This year will be the first, other than 2020, in which independent breweries’ volume has declined in the modern era of craft beer, according to the Brewers Association’s (BA) 2023 Year in Beer report.
A majority of legal-drinking-age (LDA) consumers believe that states need to allow for direct-to-consumer (DTC) shipping of beer, according to a survey conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Sovos ShipCompliant, a bev-alc shipping and distribution compliance company.
California craft breweries may soon have an easier time selling their beer at special events beyond their taproom walls, thanks to the California Craft Brewers Association’s (CCBA) sponsored bill in 2024. AB 2174 would “authorize a licensed beer manufacturer to apply for, and the department to issue, a beer caterer’s permit for the sale of beer manufactured by or for the licensee for consumption at specified locations and events, including, among others, conventions, sporting events, and trade exhibits.”
Domestic tax paid shipments increased +1.8% in January 2024 versus January 2023, marking the first year-over-year (YoY) increase since February 2023, according to the Beer Institute (BI), citing estimates from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB).
California Craft Brewers Association (CCBA) board member Alicia Barr (5050 Brewing Co.) and former director Peter Hoey (Urban Roots Brewery) join the Brewbound Podcast to discuss the state of craft beer in California, the country’s largest craft market, in advance of the CCBA’s annual California Craft Beer Summit next week in Sacramento.
This time last year, Brewers Association (BA) chief economist Bart Watson warned that the U.S. hop supply was becoming “unsustainable,” and predicted a drop in hop production in 2023.
Craft industry members are constantly asking about “price elasticity,” according to Brewers Association (BA) chief economist Bart Watson in his latest deep dive for the trade association.
Brewers Association (BA) president and CEO Bob Pease acknowledged 2023 was “challenging for many small and independent brewers” in a recorded video accompanying the organization’s annual report.
Domestic tax paid shipments declined by more than 10.59 million barrels in 2023, according to the Beer Institute (BI), citing estimates from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB).
November domestic tax paid shipments from U.S. brewers were down -6.8% year-over-year (YoY), to an estimated 10.95 million barrels, according to the Beer Institute (BI) in its latest round of economic reports.
Chief economists Bart Watson (Brewers Association) and Lester Jones (National Beer Wholesalers Association) spent much of the past couple years staving off fears of a recession and preaching about how beer is “economically resilient.”
October domestic tax paid shipments from U.S. brewers were down -10.8% versus October 2022, to an estimated 11.35 million barrels, marking a loss of 1.38 million barrels year-over-year (YoY), according to Beer Institute (BI) chief economist Andrew Heritage.
After a seven-month slowdown, beer inflation “has reemerged in the past three months,” Brewers Association (BA) chief economist Bart Watson wrote on Twitter/X, following the release of the October Consumer Price Index (CPI) from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
