If you’ve been reading us this week, you may have already checked out our fearless Craft Beer Predictions for 2014– Part I & Part II. And now in an effort to totally hedge our bets (and hopefully have a couple of our predictions come true), we thought we should maybe get a little more adventurous with what we think might happen in the craft beer world this year.
Hey, we get that all these predictions are long shots – but if any of them do happen, we’re going to look like f**king geniuses!
The 2014 GABF Won’t Sell Out – After years of being one of craft beer’s most anticipated and in-demand events, festival fatigue will set in and ticket sales for the Great American Beer Festival will grind to a halt! In a desperate effort to generate some kind of interest, the Brewers Association will stoop to Facebook page giveaways and Groupon programs in hopes of bailing this disastrous situation out.
Consumers Will Abandon The IPA – After years in the spotlight as America’s most beloved beer style, the American IPA will lose its sheen and be acknowledged as the cliché it has become. Sensing its declining coolness and its fall from grace, craft beer fans will abandon the once popular IPA in droves for newly anointed and now-fashionable styles, such as Hefeweizens and Brown Ales.
Russian River’s Pliny the Younger Release Meets with a Collective Yawn – In yet another sign of IPA burnout, Russian River‘s release of their once-vaunted Imperial IPA will be met with massive consumer indifference. Panicked bar owners desperate to move the pricy brew will resort to tactics like “Pliny the Younger Wet T-shirt Contests” in hopes of turning things around – but to no avail.
Stone Brewing Will Purchase A Disneyland Theme Park – Having been stymied in their attempts to build a new brewery in Europe in 2013, and with their newest hotel project moving more slowly than expected, Greg Koch and his crew will surprise the industry with their bold acquisition of the Anaheim-based Disneyland theme park. It remains unclear if Stone Brewing’s future plans will include moving the newly acquired park closer to Escondido and their World Bistro & Garden operations – but we wouldn’t be surprised. We also predict that Stone’s employee outings will be even more fun in 2014 and now include Space Mountain tickets.
Anheuser-Busch InBev Will Purchase Stone Brewing – Having successfully built a craft beer empire together, punctuated by years of brewing award-winning beers and culminating in the unexpected purchase of a Disneyland, Stone’s founders Greg Koch and Steve Wagner will again defy expectations by selling their entire Stone holdings (including Disneyland) to Anheuser-Busch and walk away from the biz. Koch’s future plans include possibly getting “the old band back together” and bringing his brand of arrogant metal back to the majors in LA – but others have him disappearing into an ashram in Tibet. We also predict that Anheuser-Busch will move quickly to incorporate their newly acquired theme park into their Busch Garden’s family and that they’ll debut their newest attraction, the AB-InBev Double Bastard Roller Coaster at Disneyland, in 2015.