Brewers Association Releases Top 50 Breweries of 2016

[bucketnative]

https://www.brewersassociation.org/...ssociation-releases-top-50-breweries-of-2016/

Hopefully this hasn't been posted elsewhere in the forum, I did look for it prior to making this thread. Both small/independent and overall (major + independent) sales rankings are given.

One of the more interesting parts is the notes section: https://www.brewersassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2016-Top-50-Brand-Ownership.pdf - It gives some good descriptions of who owns what.

 

[Pappers_]

That's interesting. Lagunitas isn't on the list, I presume because they sold a portion of the business to Heineken, for distributing purposes in Europe.

 

[jerbrew]

Lagunitas is #9 on the second list. Since Heineken owns a quarter of it they're no longer considered "craft", whatever that means, by the people who decide these things. It surprised me they're higher up than ballast point (#13) so I did some research and found out that they have huge capacities for brewing in Chicago (600k barrel total production) and are opening an even bigger one is Azusa. Crazy. A far cry and away from the cool little place they have in Petaluma. Didn't realize they had grown so much. Good for them. No wonder they have money to sue Sierra Nevada over a font.

 

[bucketnative]

Lagunitas is #9 on the second list. Since Heineken owns a quarter of it they're no longer considered "craft", whatever that means, by the people who decide these things.

The criteria for "craft" are given in the footnote at the bottom of the page:

"Figure based on companies that met craft brewer definition for all or part of 2016. An American craft brewer is small, independent and traditional.

Small: Annual production of 6 million barrels of beer or less (approximately 3 percent of U.S. annual sales). Beer production is attributed to the rules of alternating proprietorships.

Independent: Less than 25 percent of the craft brewery is owned or controlled (or equivalent economic interest) by an alcoholic beverage industry member that is not itself a craft brewer.

Traditional: A brewer that has a majority of its total beverage alcohol volume in beers whose flavor derives from traditional or innovative brewing ingredients and their fermentation.

Flavored malt beverages (FMBs) are not considered beers."