Brewers Association: Craft Beer is Now a $10 Billion Category

In this week's BottleBlog News article originally post here, the Brewer's Association has some good news about craft beer. 

As part of its annual report on the state of the U.S. craft beer industry, the Brewers Association (BA) — a trade group representing small and independent brewers — indicated that U.S. craft beer volumes reached an all-time high last year.

With 2012 production swelling past 13.2 million barrels — a 15 percent increase from 2011 — craft sales grew by 17 percent, taking total retail revenues for the category up to an estimated $10.2 billion.

“Beer is a $99 billion industry to which craft brewers are making a significant contribution, with retail sales share hitting double-digits for the first time in 2012,” BA director Paul Gatza said in a press release.

Craft beer sales have been steadily increasing since 2005, when 1,394 breweries made just 6.3 million barrels. Fast forward eight years, and nearly 1,000 new breweries have opened their doors, helping to more than double the industry’s total production of craft beer. In the last two years alone, 684 new breweries have launched, while only 80 have shut their doors, according to the BA.

“On average, we are seeing slightly more than one craft brewery per day opening somewhere in the U.S. and we anticipate even more in the coming year,” Gatza said.

But the BA definition of “craft ” only includes those brewers who produce less than 6 million barrels annually and are less than 25 percent owned by another non-craft brewer. That means production from Craft Brew Alliance (which markets the Kona, Redhook and Widmer Brothers brands), Goose Island, Magic Hat and Pyramid goes unaccounted for. The BA definition also excludes production from the independently-owned D.G. Yuengling & Son, which produced over 2.5 million barrels in 2012, and so-called “crafty” brews like Shock Top (owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev) and Blue Moon (owned by MillerCoors). Collectively, more than 6 million barrels of what many believe is better quality beer than most domestic premium offerings is left unaccounted for.

Nonetheless, the new BA figures confirm craft’s upward surge across multiple retail channels, which Symphony IRI’s senior vice president of beverage alcohol services, Dan Wandel, reported during last month’s “Power Hour” seminar. The research company said craft dollar sales increased 18.5 percent in food, drug, club, dollar, military, multi-outlet and convenience channels.