Craft Beer Seems To Be In A Great Place

I believe craft beer is in a really good place. I’ve been doing research, and I think I have the statistics to prove it. In 2018, craft and import sales were all growing while overall beer consumption fell. The big three breweries(You know who they are!) are watching their hold on the US beer market slowly dwindle. If they weren’t worried, they wouldn’t have bought so many craft breweries to put under their umbrella! When the numbers come out for 2020, it’s safe to say that four out of every 10 beers consumed in the US are either a craft or an import beer. It’s a far cry from even 15 years ago when the big three probably controlled 95% of the market. As of 2019, they barely have 63% of the market! It seems to me that there is far too much good beer out there for the mass produced tasteless beer to out sell craft beer forever!

I will be writing a future article about craft breweries that can trace their ancestry back to before prohibition. A lot of these breweries adapted with the times and to stay relevant, make a lot of good craft beer. It’s interesting to note that craft beer as we know it developed in the late 60s-early 70s right about the time that light beer was introduced! That can’t be a coincidence. Those first breweries in that initial wave had to work very hard in a very small market. Most people weren’t even aware of craft beer until the 1990s when there were less than 300 breweries in the country. By the end of 2015, there were 4,144. This number surpassed the 4,131 breweries in 1873 which was the pre-prohibition high watermark. In 2019 the numbers doubled and we had 8,275 breweries in the US. The numbers are still growing and we might have as many as 9000 by the end of this year!

9000 breweries makes for a lot of great places to drink beer. No matter where you live, the odds are good that something is nearby. When I canvassed the entire state of Indiana last year, I was impressed with the overall quality of beer. And not everybody was making crazy beer either. Some of the best breweries I visited are excelling making traditional styles of beer. And I was talking to a friend the other day who tells me if you really want to know the quality of beer made at a brewery, you should try their Pilsner or Lager. The simplicity of these beers is sometimes an excellent way to appreciate the craftsmanship of the brewery.

Another reason I think that craft beer is in a good place is breweries are not content to rest on their laurels and continue to experiment. Just this weekend I came across something very unique at the Devil’s Trumpet in Merillville. They are making lactose infused IPA’s that are then fruited. They call these Soda Pop IPA’s and they were quite good. Fruited beer is all the rage right now, and craft beer drinkers either love them or hate them. I think it’s funny that five years ago someone shared an article with me that was discussing the end of craft beer. It was on the Daily Beast website and said that fruit beers would cause the end of craft beer as we know it! Sometimes people are really wrong!

I have been writing about craft beer for over five years. Over that time the subject of a looming crisis has often been a subject of interest. I want to look back at my first blog when I discussed that breweries come and go. I have certainly seen all over the state of Indiana where a new brewery opens where one shut down. And I’m talking outside of Covid here. It’s sad that some places just aren’t going to make it. We see this in restaurants as peoples’ tastes change. I know just in my backyard nearly a dozen breweries are set to open this year. There’s still plenty of small towns and entire counties that don’t have a brewery that I think could support one. I have traveled to nearly every corner of the state I live in and there literally is a brewery at every corner. It’s an exciting time to drink craft beer because we just have so many options to choose from!

So the numbers seem to indicate to me that craft beer will continue to grow as long as brewers are making excellent beer. New generations of drinkers now come up in a society that sees craft beer differently then the time when I grew up. I collected beer cans in the 80s for extra money, and while I liked the diversity and colors of the beer cans, they all smelled like piss. And that’s the thing with domestic beer because when it warms up, it is just gross. So it took me a long time to appreciate beer from the traumatic experience. Fortunately for me I turned 21 and was in a town that had a microbrewery. And I had a friend in New York who told me there was really good beer out there and you just had to know where to look for it! I remember my first stout back in 1997. It was like nothing I had had before and I owe my love it’s a craft beer to Horace sharing with me a Murphy’s Irish Stout!

None of us knows what the future will hold, and hopefully we get past Covid soon enough. In the meantime, I feel that breweries have an opportunity to excel in these times. I was in many breweries this weekend and I’m happy that sometimes it was hard to find a seat. People are embracing craft beer at a rate I have not seen before. When I talk to people about what I do as a hobby, even people that don’t drink beer often at least tell me one that they like. The beauty of craft beer is that it is so diverse and there are hundreds of styles to choose from. I tend to like most beer, and of course this is why I named my blog Somuchbeersolittletime!

As I finish up this blog I’m in Lake County Indiana. It’s early on a Sunday afternoon and the place I’m in is starting to fill up. I like being able to visit breweries and the fact that I get a different experience at each one of them is one reason I like craft beer. I was in South Bend yesterday, and on the second floor of the fancy Tippacanoe Place, the Studebaker Brewing Company is making some superb beer. There literally are breweries everywhere, and if you like craft beer, you have no reason to complain. So if you have time and the interest get out and explore the breweries, no matter where you are there’s plenty of them to enjoy. Hopefully then can see for yourself just how great craft beer in our scene at large really is!

The author did a lot of research for this article and most of the statistics were obtained from the Brewers Association. I also mentioned the Daily Beast where is the article I mention can still be found. If you go to their site, search for “Will the Craft Beer Bubble Burst?”