USA: Craft brews continue steady growth

With an estimated 7 million barrels of craft beer sold annually for a retail price of $4.3 billion, craft beer manufacturing is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the alcoholic beverage industry, the Examiner released June 29.

And industry experts don’t see the sector’s growth stopping any time soon.

Clipper City Brewing Co. produces about 14,000 barrels of craft beer at its Baltimore brewery each year.

“The craft brew industry nationally is certainly enjoying its greatest growth in a long time, but it’s been strong for years,” said Hugh Sisson, general partner of Clipper City.

He was also the founder of Sisson’s Brew Pub in Federal Hill, the first brew pub in the mid-Atlantic region. He left that company 12 years ago to join Clipper City.

It was the rise in craft beer’s popularity that spurred Flying Dog Brewery of Denver to purchase Maryland’s largest brewery, the former Frederick Brewing Co., for $1.6 million in May. The company has since changed the brewery’s name to Wild Goose Brewery.
“We were really looking to find a way to get our beer made on the East Coast,” said Eric Warner, president and chief executive officer of Wild Goose Brewery.

Warner said that the brewery still brews the original Wild Goose and Blue Ridge beer lines that put Frederick Brewing on the map, but it has also brought Flying Dog’s beer to the Maryland brewery. The company expects to double production at the brewery to 40,000 barrels in 2006. He added that he expects craft beers’ popularity to further increase.

“The craft beer industry was up 9 percent in 2005,” Warner said. “That’s the second year in a row that the craft brewing industry outpaced all other sectors of the alcoholic beverage industry.”

Paul Gatza, director of the National Brewery Association based in Boulder, Colo., said that the craft brew industry has grown every year since 1968 when it made its market debut.

“It’s kind of rare to find an industry that has seen such strong, steady growth statistics,” Gatza said.