What Will Drive Beer in 2026? (A Follow-Up)
I am pretty bad at predicting the future. Probably everyone is—futurism has a famously mixed record. That is why I was shocked to discover a post from almost exactly ten years ago predicting what beer would be like right now. Shocked not because I was stupid enough to put my prediction on the internet, but because it was not far off. (I of course have no memory of writing it.) The post was called “What Will Drive Beer in 2026? (Not Beer.)”
“Excluding Blue Moon and Shock Top, four of the top ten makers of "craft beer" are partly or completely owned by large beer companies. In ten year's time, probably only two or three of the top makers of beer within this segment is going to be independently owned. There will of course still be thousands of small breweries scattered across the country, but a large portion of the craft segment will be made by big breweries.”
There are currently three independent breweries on the largest craft list, so that wasn’t bad.
The bigger point I was making had to do with the maturation of the industry, which I alluded to in the title’s parenthetical. Keep in mind that in 2016, craft beer was as hot as it has ever been. Hazies were just puncturing the national consciousness, and the number of breweries would double in the next five years. At that moment the beer industry was all about the beer. Things change, inexorably, and I guessed it wouldn’t take a decade for us to exit the red-hot phase.
“Looking to the next decade, I think we're going to see structural issues driving beer. Until recently, beers became best-sellers by a combination of quality, timeliness, and business savvy. In the next decade, I think we'll increasingly see best-selling beer driven by a combination of lower price, distributor access, and marketing support.”
I didn’t get everything right. I assumed that “mass market craft” would dominate the sector; I gave the example of Goose Island IPA, a beer that is … not dominating the craft sector. (Note to self: when making predictions about the future, stay general and don’t give specific examples.) Yet the main point was that the business of beer would come to dominate the beers we drink rather than the liquid itself, and whether it had four or six pounds of hops per barrel. In a post-seltzer, post-Covid, stovepipe double IPA and craft lite lager world, it seems like that has come to pass.
One comment I hear a lot is that beer “isn’t fun” anymore. I certainly have as much fun with beer as I used to, and indeed in these fallen times, sitting with a pint and a friend is about the funnest thing I do. But the comment points out that an industry now focused on COGS and EBITDA and supply chains and tariffs—all for very good reasons—is not as purely joyful as one focused on Citra hops and milkshake IPAs and taproom openings.
Over the weekend, I riffed on CODO Design’s advice to breweries to use more simple language in describing their beers. Somewhere between that post and this one is another one I wrote in 2017 called “Coors Light Is Lagered Cold,” and they somehow seem to all connect, though I’m still working out how. Perhaps consider this an invitation to think about these matters and explain them to me.
Here is the paragraph where I would go out with a big prediction for 2036, and I’d be willing to take a swing if I had one. But unlike 2016, I see only my bald reflection in the crystal ball. This moment feels too unstable to allow even a vague guess about what might happen. That’s in part because the beer industry feels harder to read, but also because of the social and economic instability I see all around. Consider this a second invitation to make your own predictions.
Unrelated programing note. I have gotten way behind in work of all kinds, a situation worsened by getting sick late last week. I have some interesting posts half-reported, but I’m not sure how soon I’ll be getting to those. If it’s quiet around here, that’s what’s going on.