Who owns whom...interesting beer chart.

I didn’t know much of this, thought it was interesting…

I wonder what the future holds for Sierra Nevada.

Is Sierra Nevada still indepedent of he big brands/corps? You see it everywhere. I think it’s pretty good when the date is within a few weeks of bottling.

Still independent and locally owned.

They are a true asset to the area. [cheers.gif]

I live in Delaware, very close to Dogfish. I once bought a six pack at a local store that was bottled the day before I bought it. Thought that was pretty great.

Where’d you get this, Anton. I’d love to check up on this list every so often. I was just at Pfreim in Hood River today and thinking about how many amazing independent breweries there are in Oregon.

I think most of those craft breweries bought by the big guys will be losers in the long term. Besides maybe Goose and Firestone they are all replaceable I’d think with the trend being hyper local these days. I wonder if they have preformed up to expectations.

Soooo
The vast majority of brewers are still independent. Not by volume sold maybe, but by total numbers. I like that.

New chart:
Brewery-Ownership.jpg

Agree on Goose Island and Firestone Walker. I might add Ommegang to that list, and definitely Lagunitas.

I’m not really that excited about almost any brewery making more than 20,000 barrels a year. When breweries get that big, the brewing become a manufacturing process rather than anything artisan. The manufacturing process is only as good as the worst/least experienced brewer working on the shift. This leads to inconsistencies in the product - one time, it’s great and the next time it sucks. There are a few breweries that do a really good job of training and retaining their brewers, but those are few and far between. Some breweries can lead a bifurcated existence where they brew tons of a few mediocre beers but then brew a bunch of small lot exciting beers. I only seen a handful of these. Personally I’d rather drink the small locals like Wayfinder and Upright, than drink the big boy stuff.

BTW, I found the same thing in Europe. The big Munich/Vienna/Prague breweries aren’t nearly as good (with one exception - Augustiner) as the smaller breweries in the region.