Do Americans Really Care About Craft Beer Independence?

The controversy surrounding Big Beer’s ongoing strategy of acquiring craft beer properties and incorporating them under their enormous marketing and distribution umbrella, has led to a debate in the craft beer biz as to the importance of true independence to the industry.

The Brewers Association defines a craft brewer as small (an annual production of 6 million barrels of beer or less)…independent (less than 25 percent of the craft brewery is owned or controlled by an alcoholic beverage industry member that is not itself a craft brewer)…and traditional (A brewer that has a majority of its total beverage alcohol volume in beers whose flavor derives from traditional or innovative brewing ingredients and their fermentation).

Big Beer, on the other hand, argues that if it was craft beer before they bought them, it’s still craft beer even though it is now part of much larger organization.

Big Beer contends that if brewers like Wicked Weed (now part of AB InBev) continue to brew beer in the same manner that they did prior to selling out…their product is no less ‘craft.’

And if the quality of the beer from breweries like Devils Backbone remains high after having been acquired by a global beer entity, does that brewery’s ‘independence,’ really matter to the consumer?

The Brewers Association who recently introduced the official craft beer ‘seal of independence’ for brewers to add to their packaging is betting it does…

But if the UBS evidence lab’s third annual survey of roughly 1,200 US alcohol consumers is to be believed, most Americans don’t really care who makes the beers that they drink.

According to this study that was first reported in Business Insider, “almost half of Americans don’t care at all if a trendy craft beer is owned and produced by AB InBev or a small craft brewer completely independent from industry giants.”

And it has to concern independent craft brewers that only 30% of the survey’s respondents felt that “independence was extremely important in craft beer.”

UBS also found that “41% of respondents believe a craft beer brand’s quality is unchanged after acquisition by a major brewer, and 11% actually believes the quality of the brand would improve instead of deteriorate.”

And we have to ask, if this survey is to be believed, how does the craft beer industry deal with this?

Granted, this is but one study…and we’d love to know more about the 1,200 US alcohol consumers who were part of the survey…but still.

It’s sobering news…is it not?