As consumers face higher costs for nearly everything they buy, there have been reports of shoppers trading down to cheaper brands in different food and beverage categories, including beer. But not all beer makers are seeing a wholesale switch to economy brands.
WISEACRE Brewing Company today announces its plans to launch statewide distribution throughout Texas in August 2022. Thanks to a new distribution partnership with Austin-based Dynamo Distributing, three of WISEACRE’s year-round beers, Bow Echo Hazy IPA, Gotta Get Up to Get Down Coffee Milk Stout, and the Great American Beer Festival Bronze Medal-winning Tiny Bomb Pilsner, as well as a rotating seasonal beer lineup (which currently features Oktoberfest), will be available at throughout Texas, including close to 200 H-E-B locations in the four major metro areas of the state.
On July 13, the top story on The New York Times’ homepage wasn’t about the war in Ukraine, the January 6 Committee hearings, or President Biden’s diplomatic trip to the Middle East. It’s about inflation, which rose to 9.1% in June, its highest rate since 1981.
Fresh off the heels of opening a new distribution center, Hi-Wire Brewing has unveiled 2022 expansion plans for its Biltmore Village Production Brewery and South Slope Specialty Brewery, both located in Asheville, N.C., in addition to the opening of three new taprooms in the same year.
Big Drop Brewing Co., the world’s first craft brewery dedicated to non-alcoholic beer, is celebrating Dry January by launching its fourth NA brew in the U.S. – a new Coba Maya non-alcoholic Mexican-style brew. Coba Maya has a crisp, clean taste with a balanced malt punch on the palate and a gentle, spicy, herbal aroma. It’s ideal with a wedge of fresh lime and offers a delicious new NA option for any day of the week in January and beyond.
The National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) recently released the Beer Purchasers’ Index (BPI) for December 2021. This December’s total index reading of 71 is the highest ever recorded for a December survey. Continued supply chain challenges combined with planned/expected price increases in 2022 are driving higher index readings as distributors and retailers seek to build their inventories heading into the new year.
To find the best new releases of the past year, we asked brewers, cicerones, writers, podcast hosts and other beer professionals to share their personal favorites. These are the 50 beers that debuted and dazzled in 2021.
The current state of affairs for shipping beer direct to consumers (DTC) is not that great. Breweries in the United States can only ship to nine states plus the District of Columbia, which equates to only 17% of the U.S. population. For comparison, U.S. wineries can ship to 47 states and 97% of the U.S. population. Beer DTC is still in a state of infancy, but the good news for breweries is there’s a tremendous amount of untapped opportunity.
A host of small breweries have been finding themselves at the mercy of Instagram in particular since autumn, struggling against a rash of (hopefully) random technical woes, which in many cases have seen their posts taken down, and in some cases have seen beer industry businesses locked out of their accounts entirely. Many theories have since been proffered, but none fully explains why so many breweries continue to be affected.