Following years of double-digit growth in the craft beer market, the beer industry as a whole is flatlining. Consumers had their first tastes of new and unique beers from thousands of breweries popping up all across the country, but now, growth has stalled and new watering holes for craft beer fanatics are beginning to dry up.

On-premises retailers, or places where beer can be consumed on-site, are changing dramatically, and such establishments “could be the top story to watch in the beer industry in 2018,” according to Lester Jones, chief economist of the National Beer Wholesalers Association.

“The reality is we’ve seen a change in the on-premises retail marketplace,” Jones said. “Classic bars and taverns are in decline, but the options for on-premises are growing.”

According to Statista, the number of bars, taverns and nightclubs in the United States has dropped dramatically since 2003. There were 71,969 of those establishments in 2003, but in only 12 years, the number of such businesses has shrunk by more than 8,000 to 63,862 in 2015.

On the other hand, the number of breweries in the United States has grown from 1,485 to 4,548 from 2003 to 2015, and has exploded to more than 6,000 today.

The beer industry is also concerned about the growth of wine and spirits, the latter of which replaced beer as the most valuable on-premises product, according to Nielsen.

#100

91
by David Sapsis
Phantom Bride IPA
Belching Beaver Brewing Co.

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#99

A new year is upon us, and with it come the sweeping changes we so quickly attempt to inject into our everyday lives. While New Year’s resolutions are a dime a dozen, craft beers certainly fetch a prettier penny, and this issue of The Beer Connoisseur is stuffed with all the brew that’s fit to drink.

Seeing as this is our year-end issue wrapping up the action-packed craft beer news and reviews from 2017, our headlining story is 2017’s Beers of the Year led by an impressive 11 world-class concoctions that were rated above a 96 by our panel of judges.

For those 11 special brews, we asked the judge who reviewed them to revisit the beer and tackle it from a different angle than the rote technical deliberations of a beer review. We also asked the brewer responsible to answer a few special, year-end questions regarding each world-class beer of the year.

Jonathan Ingram checks in with a Connoisseur’s Corner covering the changing business landscape of the craft beer sphere, including the sizeable differences between competition, co-opetition and co-option, and how each one affects the industry to varying degrees.