Welcome to Brewbound’s Inside Look at the Beer Business for the week that was … Saturday, May 10, 2025.

If you’re reading this newsletter on the day it comes out (please tell me I’m not the only reader 🤞), there’s still time to get mom a thoughtful present for tomorrow!

Otherwise, uh, you’ll have to roll the dice on finding one of these MILLER LITE “gold” cans, which were only made in 24 oz. cans for c-stores, and as part of the oh-so-popular 16 oz. can 12-pack format, so hopefully mom loves her tallboys.

But if you do find one – you’ll get invited to a mysterious group tour of the MILLER brewing factory in Milwaukee (do not fall into the beer river, no matter how tempting), where one of you will get the keys to the whole thing!

Oh no, wait, now that I’ve actually read the post on the MC site … uh, you can only enter to win some merch or prepaid value cards from the company. Yeah, that is definitely a far less climactic version of the movie in my head. 

Happy 50th MILLER LITE, and a Happy Mother’s Day to Jess, Mrs. Brewbound and everyone else celebrating out there!

PLUS: Gotta love BALL’s Chairman and CEO Daniel W. Fischer telling big beer makers to be more “aggressive” in their pricing policies (i.e. cheaper) to “push volume” (i.e. sell more cans of beer) as part of his remarks on BALL’s Q1 earnings call – citing the success that non-alcoholic beverage makers like energy drinks have had in that strategy.

I’m not saying he’s wrong, but I’m also saying that strategy would conveniently also involve greater sales of aluminum cans from, say, oh, I dunno … wait, who makes aluminum cans again? 🧐

As for BALL’s Q1:

• Sales: $3.1B (+7.7%)
• Net Earnings (Profit): $216M (essentially flat)

Justin has the rest of the numbers including breakdowns by region here.

$470.96 billion

– The U.S. beer industry’s 2024 economic output, or 1.58% of GDP, according to a study commissioned by the industry’s BI and NBWA trade groups. If Justin and I drank like we used to in our 30s, that would have hit a cool $471B. 

He has the other economic and employment numbers from the study here for the inclined.

Meet its new Ghost Haze and Ghost Pils non-alc SKUs, hitting shelves in 6ers across the brewery’s 9-state footprint and made in partnership with SUSTAINABLE BEVERAGE TECHNOLOGIES (SBT), which also helped DESCHUTES get into its prolific NA lineup.

RHINEGEIST is expecting the move to help boost its pretty impressive existing mid-20s share of the Cincy craft beer market.

CIRCANA L4W off-prem (MULO+C) craft beer data ending April 20 isn’t getting any better, by far:

• Sales: -6.3% YoY
• YTD is -4.9%
• Volume: -7.2% YoY
• YTD is -6%
• The biggest losses were seen in the grocery channel L4W (sales -7.8%, volume -8.1%)
• 10 of the top 30 craft brands saw both sales and volume increases in the L4W period in CIRCANA off-prem data. 20, uh, did not.

Overall beer category numbers in that time period:

• Sales: -2.8% YoY
• YTD is -4.6%
• Volume: -4.3% YoY
• YTD is -4.3%

Look at the makeover on #BabyShocktop – nicely done, TILRAY. Now, what can you do for a beer writer’s wardrobe? Oh, here we go.

21ST AMENDMENT 

Area Sales Manager – San Francisco, CA

TALKHOUSE ENCORE

MA Sales Lead – Boston, MA

COMMONHOUSE ALEWORKS

Or at least tax paid shipments were finally in the positive – granted, March was just +0.7% YoY, but we take what we can get in 2025, especially considering Jan. was -8.7% and Feb. was -14.9%.

Thus, YTD is still at -7.5% through the first 3 months of the year, and even Mexican imports are -1.1% for the quarter (March fell quite a bit to -7.3%). Gonna guess I don’t need to explain that one.

As Q1 net sales were -11.3% YoY … yeah, that’ll change one’s outlook on the year ahead (Q1 last year saw +10.7% growth).

• Sales to wholesalers (shipments): -14.3% (this was -15.6% in the Americas, although a year ago there was frontloading going on in anticipation of the Teamsters strike, and also it was still brewing for PABST)

• Sales to retailers (depletions): -8% (the U.S. was -8.8%)

The U.S. business also had a trio of negatives in Q1 ‘25:

• Revenue: -5.1% YoY
• Sales to wholesalers (shipments): -6.7%
• Sales to retailers (depletions): -5.4%

But as always, A-B is truly a global beer company (the U.S. is about 20% of its business, and North America about 15% of volume), so the total A-B picture was better:

• Revenue: +1.5%
• Volume: -2.2%

OF NOTE: Sales of NA beers were +34% YoY globally, and U.S. volume was up “in the high-twenties” percentage points. 

• A-B also shared that MICH ULTRA Zero, which launched at the start of the year, is now the #5 best-selling NA beer brand in the U.S.

• BREWDOG lost around $9M from its U.S. operations in 2024, according to a report in the Scottish Sun. Its Columbus, OH brewery was reportedly operating at about 30% of its capacity and is contract brewing for others. It also scaled down distribution from 33 states to 14.
• CONSTELLATION’s CORONA has now launched its Sunbrew 4.5% ABV beer with orange and lime juice and peels nationwide.
• NEBRASKA BREWING declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy this month, but is staying in business and not anticipating any business or distro disruptions.
• THC drinks are finding significant greenshoots (sorry, couldn’t resist) in the D2C/online ordering channel. 

BA president and CEO Bart Watson found some time between kicking boss field goals 🏈 and giving State of the Industry presentations to stop by good ol’ booth 512 at CBC to have a conversation with the BREWBOUND group.

On the docket:

• Keeping in mind the variety of outcomes in 2024 for breweries within the overall big numbers for the year;
• Why Jess will be able to drink shots of spirits at GABF this year;
• What’s front of mind for the BA in its advocacy work in D.C. on behalf of members;
• What impressed him most at CBC and more.

PLUS: The BREWBOUND crew talk about F1 so Zoe could try to expense her vacation costs (not sure on that one, Licata) and bev-alc’s latest sell-out: B.O.R.G.s. 

This week’s beer goes out to the folks at OMMEGANG in Upstate NY, for once again bringing back its Belgium Comes to Cooperstown weekend beer event this summer.

The beloved event had gone away for 5 years until coming back to life last year, and this summer it will be held August 22-24 – hmm, think my mom would like that as a birthday gift? Jess is shaking her head … no.

But it’s definitely heartening to see at least some of craft beer’s great events from “the before times” still have life here as the 2020s hit the mid point – I mean, where else besides Justin’s house else can you camp out for 2 days to drink beer in a yard and not be asked to leave? 

What? I left a few “surprise beers” around the grounds as a thank you, geez.

Slainté!

-Sean McNulty 

(you can always drop me a note here on LinkedIn)