Growth in the Craft Beer Segment *Accelerating*

I am slammed today and don't have the time to add a lot to the latest numbers put out by the Brewers Association. They're just pretty staggering:

• Craft* now has an 11% share of the beer market's total volume and 19% of the dollars.
• That's growth of 18% over last year's totals to 22 million barrels (the segment only hit 10 million in 2010).
• There are nearly 3,500 breweries, up from around 2,900 last year.
• So called "microbreweries" now outnumber brewpubs, which at the very least ought to give new entrants pause (though only 46 breweries closed last year, amazingly enough).

These numbers really help drive home the logic of consolidation and acquisitions. There is a ton of money in beer ($20 billion in the craft segment alone)--figures that make future purchases inevitable.  (And which will, paradoxically, make these numbers mean less and less as companies like 10 Barrel and Elysian are pruned from the rolls.)

_______________
*As defined by the Brewers Association.