This is regarding the AP story “Specialty beer brewers turn focus to local markets as boom goes flat” (Business, May 28).
It is unfortunate that the reporter only told half the brewing story.
Statements that U.S. small breweries have not transformed the beer industry and that the country’s thirst for specialty beers has not lived up to expectations are unfounded and misleading at best.
According to the Institute for Brewing Studies:
In 1990, 211 small breweries in the U.S. brewed 635,000 barrels of beer.
By the end of the decade, there were 1,447 small breweries brewing nearly 5.7 million barrels.
The craft-brewing segment that was virtually non-existent in 1990 went on to capture 3 percent of a stagnant U.S. beer market.
This was against the toughest consumer products marketing competition in the world.
The three biggest U.S. brewers have all made significant investments in existing craft brewers or launched craft beer entrants of their own.
By the end of the ’90s, total U.S. consumption of specialty beer, defined as the sum of import and craft beer sales, was close to 15 percent of total consumption, up from 5 percent in the mid-1980s.
The story also fails to mention that more breweries opened than closed during the period since 1996.
Small brewers have made the U.S. the best country in the world to drink beer in 2000.
And consumers have never had such a thirst for specialty beer.
