American Craft Beer Week’s Quiet Return

, American Craft Beer Week’s Quiet Return

Photo © Brewers Association

For more than a decade, the Boulder, Colorado-based national trade organization, the Brewer’s Association has been promoting American Craft Beer Week, a week-long campaign celebrating independent craft brewers all over the US.

This year’s campaign runs May 15 – 21 and it might be the most subdued “celebration” ever. At craft beer’s peak it seemed like local brewers everywhere were enthusiastically involved, throwing special events at their brewery taprooms, doing all kinds of things.

American Craft Beer Week came into its own back in 2006, when the Brewers Association changed an annual monthly celebration, American Beer month, into a week-long coordinated effort scheduled to hit just before the busy summer beer season begins.

But American Craft Beer Week feels much quieter this year and we have to ask why?

One reason may be the campaign’s proximity to this year’s Craft Brewers Conference, an exhaustive four-day industry event that recently wrapped up in Nashville. Maybe brewers got side tracked, had too much on their plates?

Or maybe there’s just less to celebrate this year, with breweries still reeling from the economic impact of the pandemic and the highest inflation numbers in decades.

, American Craft Beer Week’s Quiet ReturnAnd let’s admit that the craft beer industry isn’t a kid anymore. The Brewers Association’s Chief Economist, Dr Bart Watson, now refers to the craft beer industry as ‘mature,’ how far away is that from ‘old’?

Craft beer remains a $28.4 billion industry providing more than 189,000 direct jobs to local communities around the nation. With an all-time high of 9,552 independent breweries operating in the US.

So maybe we’re overreacting, maybe we’re wrong about the participation this year, but still, it feels different.

Normally our inboxes wood be flooded with brewery event notifications. We’d be bombarded with newspapers covering the week nationally as well as locally.

Maybe the whole idea of American Craft Beer Week has grown tired, every campaign has a shelf life. Maybe breweries are feeling that it’s not worth their time to participate only to find out that less people than ever care.

Again maybe we’re wrong…We hope we are.

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(Image credits: Brewers Association)

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