The numbers are out, and once again Oregon's breweries continued to flourish, and the beeriest state in the union got more beery. But for the first time, I worry that Oregon may not represent the future of consumption in the US; we may just be an anomaly.
Read MoreLast week, Duke Geren posted the picture you see above on the Beervana Blog facebook page. In case it's not immediately obvious what's going on, he added the following description: "This is a grocery reset in progress. When done about 1/4 of the beer in this set will be craft. Was closer to 3/4 when this store opened."
Read MoreOn one end of the market, flavor is driving sales. Leaders in the craft segment may be suffering, but as Bud (down 5.6% this year) and Bud Light (-3.6%) both continue a slow death spiral, mass market craft like Goose Island are flying off shelves. So how does a flavorless, blandly corporate beer becoming one of the few success stories in the domestic mass market sector? Branding is the only answer anyone can identify.
Read MoreSpeakeasy was a big brewery. In 2015, it was the 86th largest craft brewer--or among the largest 1%. Small breweries close all the time--and have, even during that growth boom in the past few years. Not every business plan is well-conceived, not every brewery capable of making good beer. But Speakeasy has been around 20 years and understands the business of making and selling beer.
Read MoreABI and MillerCoors account for 40% of all gains among the ten breweries growing the fastest. There is probably a lot of context one could provide to explain why these two brands grew so much (discounting, distribution, etc), but the fact is they did. Oregon has one of the most parochial markets in the country, and they still posted these remarkable increases. Two of the top five best-selling brands in the state are owned by companies in Chicago and Leuven, Belgium.
Read MoreBryan Roth, beer's Nate Silver, has applied some data journalism to the idea that rare beers dominate "best of" lists--and beer geeks' hearts. Riffing on that, he wondered about causality: do we just happen to like rare beers, or do we like them because they're rare?
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