Plateau no. In my area, Houston, the craft beer scene is growing in leaps and bounds. New brewery's are continuing to pop up along with new craft centered beer bars complete with growler fills. It's a great time to be a Texan, well, that's all the time. Last year Dallas got Ballast Point and this month they are expanding to Austin and Houston. Later on this year we are rumored to get Southern Tier and Firestone-Walker have already confirmed distribution to Austin and Dallas for this year.
This only works if you use a high end BMC ( nobody in my area likes bud or drinks it). If you consider cheaper beers such as miller high life and pbr and also consider a lot of people are drinking this beer while out at a bar, BMC is cheaper. Take in point a local hipster bar in my town known as the baby bar. You can almost always get a 16 oz pbr for two dollars and on wednesdays, make that one dollar. Pbr is like what 4.5 percent alcohol? So you have a local micro craft stout on tap that is like 7 percent? and it sets you back 5? Thats over twice the value ( if you dont care about anything other than inebriation ) for your dollar and over four times the value on wednesdays.
Not meant to be insulting, just when many talk about the future of craft beer they look at a very small window. My response was directed towards that trend just as much as it was towards the original post. A lot of us know a lot about beer but very little about the industry from a business side. We can speculate but are largely inadequate at painting are accurate picture.
Lets see, off the top of my head I can name the following that I'm sure are making a profit: Hair of the Dog Deschutes Laurelwood Fire on the Mountain Cascade McMenamins HUB Upright Alameda Bridgeport Full Sail Lucky Lab New Old Lompoc Widmer
Well, Southern Tier appears to be contracting the Blackwater Series to just Choklat & Creme Brulee, so I'm thinking instead of a plateau, we may be on the verge of implosion http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/blackwater-series.59380/#post-796848
You're arguing a point that is unrelated to mine. My point was that because beer is consumable it will always be a growing market (so long as population trends continue, which is more than likely) and that like the dot-com in particular, parties who do not fully understand the market may actually be able to gain a temporary foothold until such time that the "supply" is so beyond the demand that said breweries can not survive (being outweighed by the higher quality suppliers [i.e. google, ebay, facebook; stone, three floyds, russian river, etc.]). Knowing when such a nexus, node or bubble burst occurs is irrelevant, the point is that we don't have to worry about craft brew "plateauing".
Breakfast Stout being easy to find this year isn't exactly scientific proof that craft beer has plateaued. Founders has expanded since last year and is expanding more this year in output. They are trying to have their speciality beers for at least 2 months except for the limited devil dancer and KBS
OP-No I dont think so. I have alot of friends who are fairly indifferent to the ber they drink and they recognize the difference in quality and taste and often purchase craft beer as well as BMC. They often seek me out to tell me of a new beer they tried that they liked. Americans taste for flavorful beer is just warming up IMO.
Nah, my beer buddies and I often have this conversation and we tend to agree that the good craft breweries will simply become medium-to-large sized craft breweries. Most would likely agree that America is still recovering from Prohibition. Distribution will expand to satisfy demand and local breweries will continue to have the freshness advantage. Macros will continue be forced to introduce better beers and/or buy micros and mass-market. The days are dwindling, however, when anyone with some venture capital and a couple staple beer recipes can make money hand over fist (even if they continue to go directly to can for implied 'craftiness'). The poor brewers will step up their act or fall by the wayside and we'll all benefit either way. As long as craft coffee roasters can continue to open up on every corner here in Chicago I don't see any reason why small breweries can't do the same.
