when exactly did craft beer have such an explosion?

I would think the sellout speed of KBS and Dark Lord day tickets wouldn't be representative of the growth/state of the craft beer market overall. Those are about as much of "outliers" as you can get.

That said, craft beer has been seeing rather steady growth for years. Better product, made in the USA, buy local, etc.

Damn though, people on this site really need to stop sounding like missionaries. "Conversions"??

Yeah, that'll really get people excited about craft...

 

i thought it was a bad sign when bcbcs was so easy to get and bcbvs, which came out later, was not. seems to narrow the boundaries a bit.

 

It was sad to see the first wave crash because there were a lot of really great brewers that got caught in the backwash. I'd say that the second wave started somewhere in the early 2000s.

Recent momentum has been greatly aided by sites like this, but without the beer geeks who take the information provided here out to the less obsessive beer drinking masses, the brewers wouldn't have nearly as much market share. Word of mouth is the best form of marketing.

I love those rare releases as much as the next beer geek, but I think it's getting close to the time where you need to pick your favorite breweries and start supporting them, because this wave too shall crash. Who do you want to see survive?

 

% of barrels. % of total revenue. Flavor profile. How are they not outliers?

You're definitely talking the far end of the bell curve with those beers- wrt availability, select styles, intensity, price, hell even throw quality in there. They're interesting, they're fun and all that, but they certainly are not the heart and soul of what craft beer is all about. This community should be about inclusiveness, not exclusivity. One mustn't let the online chatter and hype skew their perspective of where things stand with craft beer, barrel for barrel.

I think jacksback has it right- things are steadily growing and have been for decades, and I bet many more people are coming to the craft scene (fwiw- I include classic beers from other countries in my own definition) from the 'bottom' up- Magic Hat, Fat Tire, SABL, etc- than from the collector's perspective. If we are seeing more beers in our shops these days, it because these breweries have built a strong base from which to expand.

 

I disagree. As a buyer for two different wine/beer shops, I taste 50-100 wines each week, and really think they aren't as dissimilar as you might think.

I feel that wine is traditionally much more subtle and delicate. The flavor profiles of beer are EXTREME!! and IN YOUR FACE! - it takes a lot less background knowledge or tasting experience to "get" many good beers then most decent wine.

For better or worse, it typically takes having to sample much more wine (specifically lots of one varietal) to pick out the "good" bottles vs beer, which puts everything right out in front 99% of the time.

I do think that this is part of the reason the craft beer scene has "exploded" so to speak in recent years. It's a lot easier to "get" the nuances of most beer, liquids that put their balls out there from the get-go.

I equate beer to a typical frat boy: ready to party anytime, anywhere. Wine on the other hand, is like a beautiful woman who needs much more attention before jumping in the sack.

Just my two cents.

 

As far as the most recent explosion, it is due to Millennials (aka Gen Y). As they are turning 21 and getting serious about beer, they are exploding the market.

I went to a talk with Jamil Zainasheff last week and he explained some stats from a survey.

10% of Boomers prefer craft or local beer
20% of Gen X'ers prefer craft or local beer
50% of Millennials prefer craft or local beer

Plus, account for the fact that the M's are a larger generation than mine (X), and that is the reason. Also, keep in mind that we are just on the edge of this generation turning 21, so we can expect that this boom in demand is going to continue for 10 years.

 

Craft beer actual sales (not poll-based) have been growing at a similar rate for the last half decade or so - it's not as if the the last year's increase is so out of the ordinary that it'd be called a "boom".

 

Huh? The figures you quoted - "5% to 5.7%" - are craft's market share for the last two years.

"In 2011, craft brewers represented 5.68 percent of volume of the U.S. beer market, up from 4.97 in 2010" - ---Brewers Association Press Release

Nothing to do with "demand" (which is kinda hard to quantify).

 

The only explosion going on is in limited releases. Craft beer is growing at a nice rate unless your a whale hunter.

 

I totally agree that it's been nice and steady overall. But what that chart doesn't show anything for is the "rarity/cellar" angle. Thus the overall numbers more accurately reflect the Sam Adams, Sierra Nevadas, and Dogfish Heads of the industry. Meanwhile, what I think most of the diehards around here refer to more as a "boom" is how hard it has gotten to grab limited releases in just two year's time, despite the fact that there is so many more limited releases today than ever.

 

And those "diehards" (which seems a rather foolish term to describe people drinking beer, unless we're talking diehard alcoholics) are entirely UN-representative of the VAST majority of people who drink craft beer. I'd be willing to bet that more people drink SNPA and Magic hat in ONE DAY than people who drink all the KBS that's released in a year.

Really, do people on this site actually think that the whale-hunting, release-obsessing, trade-speculating way they partake of craft beer represents anything other than an obsessive group of outliers?

Go ask anyone outside of BA and RB how many times they're traded through the mail for beers. Go ahead.

Craft beer enjoys steady growth due to more people slowly but steadily turning to Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, and their local alternatives.

Not because of people following trucks to buy a $30 4pack.

 

I 100% agree with everything you're saying, but my interpretations of this thread was that the question was being asked from the perspective of the "diehard". The OP talks about KBS, release parties, ebay scalping, etc. Thus I'm merely framing my thoughts around that. We are the diehards, and the world has changed for us in the last year or two when it comes to limited releases. That fact has nothing to do with the steady massive growth of the big sellers.

 

Understood. I wasn't entirely sure what context you were approaching the question from, and that clarifies it nicely.

But can you call the behaviour of a tiny minority in regards to beers that exist in even smaller quantities a "boom"?

If it goes boom, but no one really notices, did a tree really fall in the forest?

 

It's definitely all relative. But look at it this way - if a beer had 10,000 bottles released every year, and up until 2009 there were never more than 2000 people that cared about it, then in 2010 you had 10,000 people that cared about it, then in 2011 you had 50,000 that cared about it, that's a pretty significant change. "Boom" is a strong word, sure, but I'm not sure what else you'd call this kind of surge in our small little shared niche here.

 

I would say this is the second real growth, I turned 21 in the late 90's in Maine and I can remember Sea Dog, Shipyard, Allagash, and Oak Pond opening as I was turning 21 to add to Grittys and Geary's .

 

I turned 21 last year and can personally tell you that is correct. A lot my friends just recently got into the craft beer scene. However, a lot kids my age still don't know what it is and I see a majority of themwalk out with 30 of Bud or Miller. The knowledge of it is growing though.

 

Anyone think it would be nice to have it like the old days where there was a brewery in every community? Maybe the bubble doesn't burst but just deflates a bit.