No Future in Industrial Beer

Miller and Coors became the same company last week, which means they now control 30% of the beer market, leaving the "micro" brewers to supply 2 out of 10 American beers (Budweiser sells half of the beer bought in the US, mostly Bud Lite). Ten years ago when I brewed for Austin's Hill Country Brewery, we were one of about a hundred US craft breweries. Now there are 15 times that many, and sales climb every year.

Over there in Brooklyn, Garret Oliver cranks out some of the most delicious beer in the world (he's a regular winner of GABF medals). He guest Op-Eded in the NYT today, and this article pops.
Photo: David Shankbone

Don’t Fear Big Beer

By GARRETT OLIVER
Published in the New York Times: October 19, 2007
JUST 10 years ago, the proposed merger of SABMiller and Molson Coors into MillerCoors would have worried craft brewers. Back then, “American beer” was thought of as a cheap product with very little beer flavor. But today the United States has by far the most exciting beer culture in the world, and America’s 1,500 craft brewers are undaunted by the prospect of a juggernaut that would have 30 percent of the domestic market. The age of American industrial brewing is over.

Craft brewers used to be called “microbreweries,” but many of us are not so micro anymore. And the people who once thought the craft brewing movement was a fad can now see it for what it really is — a welcome return to normality.
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