The Atlantic magazine had a good round-up of the State of American Beer, based on a report from the trade publication Beverage Industry. Beverage Industry’s March issue had a series of articles on different segments, including Craft brewers’ sales growth continues, Domestic beer case sales decline, Mexican beers dominate imported beer growth and Hard cider draws in consumers from outside the beer category. In addition, at the same time they released a separate report, the 2014 U.S. Beer Category Report.
You could spend the time to read through all of them (and I’d encourage you to do so) but to get an overview of the reports, The Atlantic’s coverage provides the highlights (and even does a better job with the charts). For example, here’s the top craft brands from 2013.
And here’s case sales by brand in a piechart.
And this last one, the percentage change in case sales, is amazing because is shows just how fast Lagunitas is growing, though Stone’s doing pretty well on the growth front, too.
Interesting for 2 reasons – Lagunitas’ huge growth, & Widmer’s drop-off. However, the study looked only at Brand names, not actual brewery output. Widmer’s been making the Kona label under license for at least 3 yrs & doing well w/it; their biggest seller by far is their hefe; the rest of their product line plays 2nd fiddle (at least in CA). Widmer shifted its business plan to its benefit & Kona’s as well; would be interesting to see the #’s if the 2 were combined.