Colorado Has 6 Craft Brewers Among Nation’s 50 Largest...
The moral of the story...good news...
Colorado Has 6 Craft Brewers Among Nation’s 50 Largest, Up 1 From Last Year
SOURCE: Denver Business Journal (last week)
Six Colorado breweries now rank among the 50 largest craft breweries in America, an increase of one local beermaker over last year, according to rankings released Wednesday by the Boulder-based Brewers Association.
New Belgium Brewing Co. of Fort Collins tops that list, ranking as the third-largest craft brewer in the U.S. and the seventh largest overall brewer, based on 2009 beer sales volumes. That puts the maker of such popular beers as Fat Tire and Mothership Wit behind only top-seller Boston Beer Co. — maker of the Sam Adams beers — and Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. on the list.
Craft breweries are defined as beermakers that produce less than 2 million barrels of beer a year, are at least 75 percent locally owned and do at least 50 percent of their business in all-malt beers. There are 115 craft breweries in Colorado, and their sales make up an increasingly larger percentage of the state’s economy.
Also ranked on the list were: Odell Brewing Co. of Fort Collins (No. 33), Rock Bottom Brewery Restaurants of Louisville (No. 34), Oskar Blues Brewery of Longmont (No. 44), Breckenridge Brewery of Denver (No. 46), and Boulder Beer Co. (No. 48). The only state with more craft breweries ranked in the top 50 was California, with 11.
Oskar Blues, which upped the number of barrels it produced from 17,000 in 2008 to 29,000 in 2009, was the Colorado newcomer to the list. It reported an 83.7 percent increase in revenue in 2009 and a 70.5 percent increase in shipments, according to a separate news release from the brewery.
In addition to New Belgium, two other Colorado breweries made the list of the top 50 overall brewing companies in the country: Odell (No. 44) and Rock Bottom (No. 45).
MillerCoors, which markets products for Denver- and Montreal-based Molson Coors Brewing Co., is the second largest brewer in America, behind only Anheuser-Busch InBev, whose U.S. headquarters is located in St. Louis. (Post Author Note: MillerCoors = 55% SABMiller and 45% Molson-Coors owned).
National sales of craft beer sales grew by 10.3 percent in 2009, despite the fact that overall beer sales in the United States fell by 2.2 percent, according to the Brewers Association.
“Beer lovers continue to find great value and enjoyment in fuller flavored craft beers,” said Paul Gatza, Brewers Association director, in a news release. “Americans have an increasing appreciation of craft beers and the growing numbers of brewers behind them.”
