Craft Beer Keeps Growing as Consumers Go Local
Craft beer is still growing in 2019, with production volumes up 4% during the first six months of the year. With nearly 7,500 craft brewers operating in the U.S., over 1,000 more in existence than there were at this time last year, and with as many as 3,000 more in the planning stages, the craft beer industry still has plenty of life.
Yet craft brewing isn't the same as it was five years ago, let alone a decade or more in the past. Today, the most popular alcoholic beverages are non-beer drinks like hard cider, hard tea, and hard seltzer. Boston Beer has been able to show growth only because of its Angry Orchard hard cider and Truly hard seltzer, which has a 39% share of the market and quickly became the second-largest hard seltzer behind White Claw.
The popularity of these niche beverages has attracted the attention of Anheuser-Busch, which intends to make a big splash, while other brewers, such as Pabst Brewing, look to expand the category in new directions with their own innovations, like hard coffee.
Source Fool.com
