Chinese beer production fell for a third straight year in 2016. The tardiness of brewers to pursue efficiency gains has stirred speculation that major players may combine.

For the first time in New Zealand, the GABS Hottest 100 Kiwi Craft Beers has been announced. Created by the team behind the hugely popular GABS Beer, Cider & Food Fest, and supported by Liquorland and craftypint.com, the poll started life nine years ago in Australia as a way for craft beer fans to celebrate their favourite Aussie beers on Australia Day.

As if we did not know it: beer is political. Just ask Israeli craft brewers. Late last year, the non-kosher gastropub Libira in Haifa became the target of a shitstorm which threatened to drive away customers. Why? Because its owners had decided to sell beer of a Palestinian, West Bank-based brewery.

So Indian drivers don’t just collectively suffer from road rage, many of them actually drive under the influence. Drunk driving on Indian highways is a menace that has largely remained unaffected by measures adopted to ensure road safety.

Phew. Carlsberg will probably be glad to turn its back on this venture. After an optimistic start in 2006, when Carlsberg built a 1.0 million hl brewery in the country’s capital Tashkent and subsequently bought out its local partner to fully own the company, things began to turn difficult.

Here today, gone tomorrow. President Trump’s decision not to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), a regional free trade agreement of unprecedented scope and ambition which was his predecessor’s pet project, has Australia’s wine industry worried.

If a hospitality group and a decidedly non-craft brewery snap up two craft brewers it can only mean one thing: craft beer is hot. In early February 2017, Dixon Hospitality Group, Australia's largest non-gaming pub group, bought the Hawthorn Brewing Company for an undisclosed sum.

Analysts seem to be crowding in on Japan’s brewer Asahi to sell its stake in China’s number two brewer Tsingtao, media reported on 27 January 2017.

Call that a business plan? Australia's most decorated whisky brand, Sullivans Cove, was sold in December 2016 for an undisclosed sum with the owners admitting that they had underestimated the demands for capital needed to grow the business and therefore chose an exit.

Who is a craft brewer? Only one that is truly independent, Australia’s craft brewers have decided. That’s why the Craft Beer Industry Association (CBIA) has begun the arduous process of deleting the Big Brewers from its membership base.