Interesting…
My 30 second driveby response
Yes.
And for for Shiner supposedly being such a garbage beer it is right up there with our favorite craft breweries. Granted, they have a slew of fantastic seasonals all year long.
Just about everywhere I go Blue Moon is offered, so there may be a kernel of validity to the claim it is a national “favorite” but more likely due to nation-wide availability!
The question that comes to mind is “Will we continue to see double digit growth in the Craft Beer sector” and for how much longer?
My optomistic opinion is that we should continue to see this trend as long as the beer quality stays within the realm of excellence. However, there seems to be some slipping in this regard so time will tell.
At least another 5-10 years.
I think these types of studies are really encouraging for the craft beer industry. What I see is that, although the overall beer market may be slowly shrinking, the available market share for craft beer (market share they do not currently hold) is still huge. Sure, there will be lot’s of folks that never move away from the BMC line up except maybe to blue moon but there are still so many folks out there that will try some craft brew and decide they like that as well.
It will be interesting to see the figures in a year or two. The new Lagunitas Chicago brewery is up and running, with capacity of 500K barrels and it will be 1.3 million by the fall. Some pictures here