2018: The Year in Craft Beer

With the year fast drawing to a close American Craft Beer looks back at the year’s biggest stories, industry trends and most popular beers.

A Record Number Of American Breweries Now In Operation

In September, Bart Watson, the chief economist for the Brewers Association told Brewbound, that he expected “7,000 breweries will be in operation in the United States in 2018.”

Watson called that milestone “virtual certainty” and added that “with more than 9,000 active permits filed with the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau at the midway point of 2018, more breweries are on the way.”

Craft Beer Taprooms Emerge As Powerful Profit Drivers

While momentum in the craft beer sector, which has enjoyed double-digit growth for almost a decade, slowed to 5% last year, business is booming at brewery taprooms and brewpubs across the nation, thanks to regulation changes in many states.

Successful legislation, which put an end to post-Prohibition constraints, have allowed breweries in many states to avoid burdensome liquor license costs, cut out the middleman, sell directly to the consumer and generate greater profits.

Statistics from the Beer Institute showed that direct-to-consumer sales at taprooms grew 24.2% in 2017 representing one in every dozen craft brews sold in the US according the Wall Street Journal.

But the success of craft beer taprooms is also brewing a potential backlash led by distributors and bar owners who argue, that the legislative deck is now stacked against them, and increasingly state legislators are being lobbied to limit certain provisions seen as unfairly favorable to craft breweries.

On January 1, 2019  Pennsylvania will impose a tax of 6 percent on every retail dollar generated at a  brewery taproom…the new law will add, for example, 42 cents to the cost of a $7 craft beer.

The Rise Of Cannabis Beer

With the legalization of recreational pot in Canada this year, and more states in the US looking to make recreational marijuana legal, interest in brewing with cannabis was one of 2018’s biggest stories…

Larger craft breweries like New Belgium and SweetWater are riding the hemp train with widely promoted new products like The Hemperor and SweetWater’s 420 Strain G13 IPA. And although both of these beers are crafted using the non-psychoactive parts of the cannabis plant, you wouldn’t know it from their marketing which couldn’t be more pro-stoner.

Last March ex-Blue Moon brewing legend, Keith Villa announced that he was taking his decades of brewing experience in a different direction, and that along with his wife Jodi had formed Ceria Brewing a company committed to developing beers that substituted a THC high for the more traditional alcohol buzz.

Going into Christmas Ceria released its first mind-altering brew, Grainwave which the company describes as a “refreshing, medium-bodied ale brewed with blood orange and coriander and infused with THC for a new spin on a Belgian classic.”

And the industry’s growing interest in brewing with cannabis was hardly limited to craft breweries, Big Beer is investing heavily in the development of Cannabis drinks.

In August Constellation Brands (home to Mexican beer leaders like Corona and crafty properties like Ballast Point, Funky Buddha and Four Corners) upped its stake in Canopy Growth a major cannabis producer from 9% to 38%, a massive $3.8 Billion deal.

That same month, MolsonCoors announced that they’d entered into a joint venture with HEXO, (a recreational cannabis subsidiary to Canada’s The Hydropothecary) to form a standalone company to develop new non-alcoholic, cannabis-infused drinks north of the border.

And just before Christmas, Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewing company and home to Budweiser, Bud Light, as well as a global family of beers, announced that it would be partnering with Canada’s Tilray to research non-alcohol beverages containing both the mind-altering THC compound, and the health promoting CBD.

2018’s Beer of the Year: The Hazy IPA

Whatever you call it, a New England-style IPA, a Hazy or Juicy IPA, it was all the rage in 2018.

The hazy/juicy/ New England genre was fully anointed by the Brewers Association when they officially added Juicy or Hazy Pale Ale, Juicy or Hazy IPA and Juicy or Hazy Double IPA to its style guidelines, and in doing so making them eligible for the 2018 Great American Beer Festival competition.

And adding fuel to the ‘haze craze’ fire, the total number of GABF competition entries for all three juicy/hazy styles was a mind-blowing 706!