We don’t have the production numbers just yet, but the rankings are in for the Brewers Association’s (BA) annual list of the top 50 craft breweries by volume in 2022. This isn’t a best of list but a ranking of output for the breweries that meet the BA’s small and independent craft brewery definition.
The list is the appetizer before the main course of volume numbers, which we’ll get next month. A few takeaways from what we did get:
- Non-alcoholic beer maker Athletic Brewing is knocking on the top 10, coming in at No. 13 with production clearly over 150,000 barrels;
- Vermont’ s Fiddlehead Brewing gained 13 spots to rank No. 36;
- Massachusetts’ Jack’s Abby jumped 16 spots to get into the top 50 for the first time at No. 47;
- Lots of brewery collectives made the list, including some newcomers such as Made By the Water at No. 50 that was built through mergers and acquisitions.
The BA also shared the list of the top 50 overall breweries by production and former craft stalwarts New Belgium and Bell’s Brewery under the Lion Little World Beverages banner ranked 10th.
In other news …
In California, Allagash has moved its distribution business from Wine Warehouse to the Reyes Beer Division in Southern California and parts of the Bay Area.
Only a few craft breweries have successfully unionized and one of them – San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing – is looking to negotiate its next contract. Those talks have been delayed. More details on the situation from Zoe.
Another international brewer has closed a U.S. outpost as BrewDog shut down its Pittsburgh taproom.
Molson Coors is going deeper into the fourth category with Coca-Cola, with 24 oz. singles of Peace Hard Tea on the way in September.
Diageo is giving Smirnoff Ice a packaging makeover and a fresh new campaign to help it reach new legal drinking age consumers.
I caught up with Arlin Zajmi, director of national buying for adult beverages at Aldi, about the discount grocery chain’s summer reset and entry into the hard tea war against Twisted Tea with a private label brand All Play. More on the new products coming to Aldi’s sets as of today (Friday).
Spring and summer also means beer festival season is back. Finback Brewery’s Basil Lee discusses the upcoming Whale Watching festival in Rhode Island, as well as the New York brewery’s taproom and farm brewery expansion plans. Listen here.
Goldman Sachs’ quarterly Beverage Bytes survey of convenience store retailers unsurprisingly found that Constellation Brands’ Mexican imports are doing well, White Claw is clawing back up the charts and Boston Beer is struggling.
A few caveats before this next link: It’s only one week, in the off-premise only. The comps are wonky due to Easter falling on a different date. Bud Light has been shedding volume for double-digit years. With those out of the way: Bud Light’s sales and share losses accelerated in the first week of the conservative-led boycott of the brand due to the brand giving some commemorative cans to Dylan Mulvaney, a transwoman who documents her life on social media.
“[W]hile the increased declines for Bud Light were apparent, they were also not completely earth shattering in terms of magnitude,” Dave Williams of Bump Williams Consulting shared.
We’ll see what next week brings.
Finally, a housekeeping note: The full agenda is now available for Brew Talks. Get your tickets now to join Zoe and I and our all-star list of speakers for networking, beers and business chats during the week of the Craft Brewers Conference. This is one of our best lineups yet and we cannot wait to see you all in Nashville.
And that’s a wrap on the week. A big thanks to Zoe for being my tag team partner this week while Jess was off, making us less the Fabulous Freebirds and more of the Midnight Express. And thanks to all of you for reading and supporting Brewbound. If you’d like to become a Brewbound Insider and get access to all of our exclusive news reports and videos, follow this link.
We’ll be back next week.