If you’re a member of the Brewers Association, a trade organization for small breweries, you have the opportunity to listen in on the bi-monthly Power Hour, an on-line, interactive teleconference series. This morning’s topic was “Craft Brewing & Mid-Year Category Sales Review.” I didn’t listen in to this one, but happily Ray Daniels, he of the Cicerone program, was kind enough to tweet a number of the statistics quoted in the talk by Dan Wandel, with the Symphony IRI Group, and better still, Todd Alstrom, posted Ray’s tweets on Beer Advocate where they can live forever instead of being lost in the ether. Below is just a few of the more interesting tidbits.

• First half of 2010 sales data — Craft volume up 11.9%!
• Symphony IRI Group show craft beer being 8.7% of the total beer market in H1 2010
• Sales of craft beer 22 oz bottles up 28% in 2010 vs. 2009 in supermarkets.
• 3 of top 10 new brands are IPAs
• 8 of the top 15 new craft brands this year are IPAs.
• What recession? First half craft sales showing best growth of any year since 2007.
• Top 10 major brewer brands DOWN more than 5 million cases so far this year.
• 511 craft beer UPCs (products) being sold in California.
• More households in the US now purchasing craft beer versus a year ago—better than any other segment.
• Dan Wandel from SIG says craft beer the “shining star” of US beer market, on track for 6th (I think he said) year of >10% growth.

You can see the rest of Ray Daniels’ tweets here. Thanks again to Todd for saving me the trouble of having to go back and grab Ray’s tweets individually.