So – who’s ready for 194 non-alcoholic beer stories in a 2-week period!? 🥳 Enjoy this very brief sweet spot between folks moving on from their “Top Holiday Drinking Recommendations!” missives and into their “People don’t drink anymore!” stories. 

Ya know, kinda like the calm that comes from the eye of a hurricane.

AND: Here’s how your top 3 beers in America are shaping up in 2024 sales through Dec. 1, according to CIRCANA data cited by Beer Marketer’s Insights:

1. MODELO: $4B (+9%)
2. MICH ULTRA: $3.2B (+5%)
3. BUD LIGHT: $3.1B (-12%)

BUT: As for November, Zoe has your breakdown of who’s up & who’s down. 9 of the top 25 brand families saw sales increases for the month, according to CIRCANA data. The other 16, uh, did not.

• #2 CONSTELLATION: +6.5%
• #4 MARK ANTHONY: +4.3%
• #7 DIAGEO: +4%
• #8 KIRIN-LION: +3.3%
• #12 SIERRA NEVADA: +5.9%
• #13 GELOSO: +8.1%
• #20 MAHOU: +1.5%
• #22 DUVEL: +1.7%
• #24 ATHLETIC: +46.5%

FINALLY: The 2nd week of December (ending Dec. 15) saw a -5.6% decrease in total bev-alc sales YoY, according to CIRCANA data.

• Beer: -3.5%
• Spirits: -5.1%
• Wine: -10.7%

OK, this is mostly here for the gif, but Jim Koch announced this week that his ownership stake in BOSTON BEER will be inherited by his wife, Cynthia Fisher (by all accounts, 75-year-old Jim is doing just fine BTW, and not retiring). 

Fisher is on the BOSTON BEER board, and founded and sold a successful company herself for $300M called VIACORD. 

AND: DOGFISH HEAD announced the rollout in February of a new beer called Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale in collaboration with the band. It’ll be sold at WHOLE FOODS to start as well as at Dead shows at the Sphere in Vegas. 

AUSTIN STREET BREWERY

Packaging Manager – Portland, ME

MANHATTAN PROJECT BEER CO.

Director of Operations – Dallas, TX

NEW TRAIL BREWING

LAWSON’S FINEST LIQUIDS named Russ Todia as its new director of brewing and operations, coming over from VT cannabis company CERES COLLABORATIVE.

Incoming BA leader Bart Watson hopped on the pod with the BREWBOUND gang this week to talk about his vision for the organization in 2025 and beyond, and brewers out there – it sounds like Bart’s phone line is open and welcoming intel from members on what’s needed most from the organization! 

Listen here!

AND: Here is your list of the Top 10 Most Popular BREWBOUND podcasts of 2024. I mean, I think I was on 3 episodes all year … and one of them made the Top 10. #JustSayin 

OK, fine, it was probably due to the conversation around the closure of a major online retailer this year, but still – talent shines through, folks. 😁

• WORLD OF BEER has emerged from bankruptcy proceedings, and plans to open “four to five” locations annually over the next five years. It just opened a location in Ft. Worth, TX, and has a location in Annapolis, MD, opening in early 2025. 

This week’s beer goes out to … beer! Which I think could use one after the year that was. But, let’s be optimists folks! 

Sure, the NY Times made the 2024 brewery decline story street-legal this week … and this story about “5 American Craft Breweries Worth Visiting Over the Winter Holidays” couldn’t even think of 5 different parts of the country to feature, and tries to cram in STONE’s 2 locations that are about 30 minutes away from each other as locations 4 and 5. 

Really? Couldn’t think of a 5th brewery somewhere else outside of HILL FARMSTEAD, BOSTON BEER, JESTER KING and STONE? Man, maybe that Times story is right! 😬

But even though the BA is projecting another down year for volume in 2025, look – craft beer is now a mature business and this slow rightsizing is what a mature business cycle looks like after a boom! 

What it’s not though, is a total bust for most craft beer businesses … like it is for many companies in some other categories that, say, rhyme with hard seltzer. 

Folks are still finding success in craft beer by:

• Creating hospitality-focused on-premise locations that actually mean something to the people who live around them, and can communicate that effectively to audiences;
• Making quality, shelf-stable beer that still finds fans on shelves (let’s face it – consistent quality was a huge part of the problem);
• And refocusing on core SKUs, which gives teams a feeling of building something for the long term vs. the never-ending, tiring, churn-and-burn nature that craft beer had for many years.

Businesses will survive and thrive largely based on, lo and behold, how good their actual business fundamentals, people and products are. While I’m not naive to the resulting pain of going through the process of attrition that will continue in 2025, there’s no other way to go to get to a stable business, and one that will also hopefully find a way back to growth in the latter half of the decade.

So, make time to venture out in the cold and into the environs of a warm neighborhood tavern or taproom and enjoy a draft beer or 2 as part of your New Year's itinerary to ring in 🍻 this new flip of the calendar into 2025, with entirely fresh sales comps to be had!

And Justin, maybe throw an extra “nice beer” in the basement fridge in case the one you were planning on having on New Year’s Eve mysteriously disappears. I hear the deer in Iowa are very thirsty and stop at no bounds.

Slainté!

-Sean McNulty 

(you can always reach me here on LinkedIn)