USA | Call it a sign of how desperate industry watchers have become that a merger between France’s drinks firm Pernod Ricard and US distiller Brown-Forman is being talked up again, following Diageo’s recent launch of a share buyback programme.

USA | Heineken, AB-InBev, Molson Coors – all the world’s major brewers want to move beyond their traditional male, beer-drinking image and attract more female and younger drinkers. Fact is: beer has lost its oomph to other alcoholic beverages like wine, spirits and a host of beverages, which defy previous classifications.

USA | It is still early days for Boston Beer. But like all the major brewers it is seeing a huge growth potential for cannabis beverages. Therefore, it has set up a Canada-based subsidiary for non-alcoholic beverages infused with cannabis.

USA | The unstoppable rise of cans. Sales of beer in cans were up 11 percent in 2020, says Beer Marketers Insights, a trade publication. While domestic draught beer sales dropped 7.9 million barrels (9.3 million hl) and bottles fell almost 3.6 million barrels, cans picked all that up.

USA | On Earth Day (22 April), New Belgium shocked its punters by releasing Torched Earth Ale, a beer made entirely with ingredients available in a climate-ravaged future.

USA | BrewDog signed the lease for Las Vegas’ first and only carbon negative bar, which is believed to be opening later this year.

USA | Constellation Brands is finding itself in an awkward situation with no easy way out. In March 2020, Mexicali residents, in a referendum, rejected the completion of the 10 million hl brewery at a cost of more than USD 1 billion, which Constellation had already partly built.

USA | It is a social experiment of sorts. TRU Colors, a start-up brewery from Wilmington, North Carolina, which hopes to stop street violence and unite communities by employing gang members, is getting a boost from Molson Coors.

USA | Republicans passed and signed Georgia’s new voting law on 25 March 2021, which is aimed at scaling back early voting and other options that became popular during the pandemic.

Canada | No joke. On 1 April 2021 the government’s excise tax on beer was increased for the fifth time in four years, and the second time during the pandemic. This increase will place additional stress on struggling bars and restaurants, as well as the 149000 Canadians whose jobs are supported by the production and sale of beer, Beer Canada, a trade group, said.