It’s so blatantly obvious. How to raise your profits? Answer: lower the excise. In late February 2016 and only a few days after announcing a 3 percent decline in volume sales for fiscal 2015, Australia’s major brewer Lion advised reductions in alcohol content for three of its major beers: XXXX Bitter, Tooheys Extra Dry and James Boag’s Premium Light.

After decades of rising sales, brewers in China have to adjust to a new reality: beer sales in China fell 7.3 percent in the January to September period last year. Beer sales dropped for the first time in 2014 and the downtrend continued into 2015.

Call it frontier spirit. A company owned by Western Australian grain growers and the Indonesian billionaire Anthony Salim is currently constructing an AUD 90 million (USD 64 million) malting plant in Vietnam that is likely to change the face of the local brewing industry.

The Brewers Association may boast that craft beer exports are growing by double digits, but on close inspection one can see which brands are actually benefitting from foreign markets’ pull: they are AB-InBev’s “crafty brands”. Last year already its Goose Island beers were sitting prominently on Dutch and Belgian supermarket shelves.

The 40th anniversary of the introduction of the Jacob’s Creek range by Orlando Wines in 1976 was marked by a feature in the Adelaide press which related the history of this now very popular Australian brand.

In 2016, Lehui celebrates its 25th anniversary. Over the last 25 years, the company has become one of Asia’s leading brewing and beverage equipment manufacturers, supplying their customers with high quality equipment and turn key solutions. It provides the full life cycle services to the industry, including planning, consulting, design, civil works, manufacturing, systems integration, project management, installation, commissioning, training, commercial production and more.

Trust Australian journalists to go snooping after Lion’s figures as soon as the market-leading local brewer submits its financial results with the corporate regulator. On 26 January 2015 media revealed that the Lion-Heineken joint venture suffered a 16 percent fall in annual profits in its latest financial year (ended 30 September 2015) as net profit after tax dropped to AUD 10.5 million (USD 7.5 million) from AUD 12.5 million a year earlier. However, sales increased 2.5 percent to AUD 67.4 million (USD 47.7 million) in the financial year 2015.

Same procedure every year. The announcement of annual beer production figures in Vietnam is usually accompanied by a bit of cacophony from the nomenklatura, some calling for further privatisations of the state-owned breweries with others reject such claims.

Oh Lordy, how many changes in ownership can the brewer CUB take? Until 2011 CUB was part of Foster’s, which then sold it to SABMiller for AUD 12.3 billion (almost USD 12 billion in those days).

Hopped ciders are supposedly “tasty as hell”. In South Australia, the Hills Cider Company released its Hop Edition cider (8% ABV) in bottles, following a few small batch releases in keg. Made with fresh Adelaide Hills apples and – probably dry-hopped – with a blend of Cascade, Chinook, Summer, Citra and Galaxy hops, the “fusion displays upfront pineapple, citrus and tropical fruit aromatics, with subtle apricot, melon, pink grapefruit and citrus flavours,” Hills Cider’s Steve Dorman was quoted as saying. “The astringency of the hops balances the sweetness of the fresh apples, to create a fresh, crisp and fruit driven cider … with the ever growing popularity of hopped cider styles in USA and an increasingly educated craft beer and cider market here in Australia, we thought this would be a very exciting addition to the Australian craft cider category,” he said.