Festival set to celebrate craft beer's ascendance

DENVER — The craft beer movement continues its healthy buzz.

While overall beer sales have been essentially flat in recent years – and overall production has fallen slightly – craft beer continues to grow. Craft beer's share of the nearly $100 million U.S. beer market rose to 14% in 2013, up from 10% two years ago, while total sales have stagnated.

And interest in beer is overflowing, too. Sales of tickets for the annual Great American Beer Festival, which kicks off here Thursday and runs through Saturday, sold out in 32 minutes when they went on sale in July.

In all, about 49,000 attendees will descend on the Colorado Convention Center to taste — and serve — a festival record 3,500-plus beers from more than 700 breweries.

The annual festival comes as the number of U.S. craft breweries is multiplying at a phenomenal rate. More than 3,000 microbreweries and brewpubs, as well as regional and nationally-known brewers, are in operation today — the biggest boom in modern times.

And the public's appetite for craft beer is far from sated. There are more than 1,000 breweries in the planning stages, according to the Brewers Association, which puts on the festival.

If expansion continues, the number of U.S. breweries could hit a new high soon, surpassing the more than 4,100 breweries in the pre-Prohibition days of the late 19th century.

"Craft beer has been growing at double digits for quite a few years now, and as the major breweries are declining, people are turning to more interesting beers," says Ken Grossman, founder of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. "Craft brewers have really changed the dynamic of brewing in this country and even globally. A lot of breweries around the world now come to look at what's happened in the United States and the innovation and the excitement around beer and brewing."

National demand for Sierra Nevada's beer led Grossman and the company, based in Chico, Calif., to recently open a new brewery in Mills River, N.C.

Expansion is rampant among larger craft breweries. Colorado's New Belgium is also expanding into nearby Asheville, N.C., and Oskar Blues, another Colorado brewery, already has a second brewery operating in North Carolina just south of Sierra's.

Elsewhere, San Diego's Green Flash has a new brewery in the works in Virginia Beach, Escondido, Calif.-based Stone Brewing Co., which just announced a brewery in Germany, is still scouting a location in the eastern half of the United States. Lagunitas Brewing Co., of Petaluma, Calif., has a second production site underway in Chicago.

As craft beer sales continue to rise, brewers are creating experimental beers to satisfy ever-adventurous drinkers. That's reflected in several new styles that will be judged at the festival, including wild beers and historical beers.

While some industry observers have been forecasting a craft beer bubble that could burst soon, IBISWorld industry analyst Nick Petrillo expects craft beer growth to continue to outpace other parts of the alcoholic beverage industry for the next five years.

The research firm projects industry revenue to grow about 7% over each of the next five years. "Revenue increases from local craft brewers over the past five years have been unprecedented, especially when one considers the relatively modest growth that some of the largest global beer manufacturers are currently experiencing," Petrillo says.

That may mean growth will slow a bit, he says. But "there is no indication as of yet that consumers are slowing their purchases."

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