The holidays are a wonderful time of year to give thanks.  It's especially important this year to take a step back and give thanks since it has been challenging for so many of us.  To say this has been a difficult economic year is an understatement.  As Dolly Parton has put it, many of us will be celebrating a "hard candy Christmas." 

While bartenders are one of the more notably recession- Give thanks for variety!resistant professions, breweries aren't immune to the challenges.  US Consumer spending on nondurable goods, an indicator of brewery sales, fell 4.3% in August year over year.  The consumer price index for food, an indicator of the cost of ingredients used by brewers, fell 0.2% in September 2009 year over year.  In other words, making beer ain't getting any cheaper and sales have dipped for the overall industry.  According to the Brewers Association, total beer sales dropped 1.3% from the first half of 2008 to the first half of this year.

On their way to a store near you...However, there is a bright spot in one of our favorite places:  craft brewing.  During the first half of 2009, small and independent brewers' volume increased 5% and sales increased 9% in the first half of 2009.  The numbers of barrels sold by craft breweries actually grew from 4 million to 4.2 million when comparing the first half of 2009 to 2008!  Also, the overall US brewery count grew to it's highest number in a century:  1,525 as of July 31, 2009! 


So what's the moral here?  Despite challenging times for even the brewing industry, people are gravitating toward the craft breweries and taking the time to savor a decent beer.  And I'm pretty sure that you faithful Beer Connoisseurs are the ones responsible for helping many of these craft brewers survive during this hard times.  Here's hope that our Beer Connoisseur Magazine will help you discover and enjoy many more craft beers over the years to come.

In the midst of this maelstrom of challenging times and folks prefering to play it safe, we just published the first nationally distributed issue of Beer Connoisseur Magazine. If you have been reading online,Raise Your Glass for the Toast but haven't seen the print version, you really need to check it out.  I couldn't be prouder of the effort put into the first issue.  It's filled with insightful articles and brilliant photography.  It's definately a magazine any Beer Connoisseur would be proud to display on a table outside their homemade cellar, willing to sit it alongside their most recent homebrew or even to share with a new friend sitting just down the bar.

Raise Your Glass over the holidays and toast yourselves, dear readers!  Drink that frothy glass with the knowledge that your patronage is deeply appreciated by each and every one of us.  Enjoy the holidays knowing that the entire staff here will be raising our glasses over the holiday to give thanks to you!