Winds Of Change In The Craft Beer Industry

The inescapable feeling that the craft beer biz is changing (and possibly not for the better) was one of most dominant takeaway’s from last week’s 2017 Craft Brewers Conference, craft beer’s largest and most important annual conference.

Sponsored by the Brewers Association, the CBC, as it’s affectionately called, has long been a great way to gauge the health of the industry. And fueled on double-digit growth for over a decade, these conferences have been understandably upbeat in the past – but not so much this year.

The tone at last week’s CBC was undeniably set by Jim Koch’s provocative Op-Ed in the New York Times which appeared  just days prior to the conference (which drew nearly 13,300 industry professional to Washington, DC last week) and everybody was talking about it.

With it ominous title “Is It Last Call for Craft Beer?, and the fact that it appeared in the nation’s most respected newspaper just before the conference was far from incidental…It was more like a shot across the bow.

The man who took Sam Adams from a kitchen enterprise to the billion dollar business, Koch is a true craft beer pioneer.  And he deserves all the credit in the world for his role in what craft beer has become today (both the good and the more complicated).

And although his somber take on the current state of the industry, (and the growing threat imposed on it by global beer entities like AB InBev) was more than a little apocalyptic – it certainly wasn’t wrong or any less concerning.

The BA’s Director Paul Gatza and Chief Economist, Bart Watson further hinted at impending storm clouds on craft beer’s horizon in their “State of the Industry” CBC address.

While highlighting the industry’s positives (craft beer volume grew by 6% last year and exports by 7%, – and many a business would celebrate a number like that), they did admit that double-digit growth is something that no industry can sustain forever and that it’s time has most likely passed.

Brewbound’s excellent Brew Talks CBC 2017 presentation, which was helmed by its Editor Chris Furnari and a panel which included Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione, Firestone Walker’s David Walker and Rhinegeist Brewery’s Bryant Goulding, was at once strategic and sobering in its appraisal of craft beer’s changing environment…

“Shit’s getting real,” Calagione told a packed house of 300 Industry professional. “Now is the time to rage against the machine.”

If the talk all over last week’s Craft Brewers Conference is any indication, the craft beer biz is already feeling the industry’s winds of change, with many of the smart players already assuming a more defensive strategy.

Clearly craft beer’s era of “frothy exuberance” is coming to an end, and the reality that “anything that can’t go on forever – won’t,” is sinking in.

And things could get very different going forward – so fasten your seat belts