In an open letter to the Brewers Association, Molson Coors’ Chairman Pete Coors complained about the “cheap shots and insults” made by the BA’s top brass during the opening session at the Craft Brewers Conference in Nashville. In his view, the BA undermines its credibility “by pitting us against one another to the ultimate detriment of the entire beer industry.”

In December 2017, US Congress passed legislation that includes a two-year provision of the Craft Beverage Modernisation and Tax Reform Act (CBMTRA), which lowers the federal excise tax for breweries, wineries and distillers.

AB-InBev has filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission that Heineken’s bag-in-bottle beer dispenser, introduced in 2015, infringes the company’s four US patents covering the concept, media reported in early May 2018.

US brewers big and small prefer not to be drawn out over recreational cannabis’ impact on beer consumption, once it is legal across the whole of the US. So it was remarkable that Deschutes Brewery CEO Michael LaLonde told media that in his opinion cannabis has hurt sales.

Highland Brewing Company is Asheville’s first craft brewery and has been around for nearly 25 years. But recently it bid adieu to its iconic tartan wearing Scotsman and the bagpipes to give its flagship brews, like Gaelic Ale, a more contemporary look.

The temperance women would be aghast. In Evanston, north of Chicago, where they had their headquarters, the craft distiller FEW has collaborated with a coffee company from Texas to produce – shock horror – a bourbon whiskey finished in coffee barrels. The bourbon – FEW Chameleon – won the collaboration award at the Beverage Forum, held in Chicago 24-25 April 2018.

Over the past two years, taprooms and satellite retail outposts have emerged as both lucrative profit centres for craft brewers and opportunities to deliver unique experiences to thirsty consumers, says Brewbound in a recent post.

The Brewers Association (BA) released on March 14, 2018 its annual lists of the top 50 craft and overall brewing companies in the US, based on beer sales volume. Of the top 50 overall brewing companies, 40 were craft brewing companies.

If craft brewers can collaborate, so can the industry’s big players. AB-InBev and drinks company Beam Suntory announced on 3 April 2018 that, through their brands Budweiser and Jim Beam, they will collaborate on a limited-edition “Budweiser Reserve Copper Lager.”

It is becoming clearer why AB-InBev on 1 January 2018 replaced its North American chief Joao Castro Neves by another Brazilian company veteran, Michel Doukeris: Mr Neves, who was widely seen as a potential successor to CEO Carlos Brito, not only failed to stem the decline of the brewer’s major brands Bud and Budweiser, he was also held responsible for Goose Island’s bruising 2017.