Clever AB-InBev. With consumer interest for U.S. craft beers rising in many parts of the world, they did not wait for their competition to fill the shelves, they did it themselves. After launching the Goose Island craft beer brands in The Netherlands and Belgium last year, they are now taking the Hawaiian Kona beer to Australia and Latin America.

Should Jim Koch, the founder and public face of Samuel Adams beer ever seek a career change, he should consider becoming a motivational speaker.

BrewDog is building a new location for its production plant in Ohio, USA, where it plans to produce all top-fermented and bottom-fermented BrewDog beer brands for the US market.

They are wowing the world. As of 1 December 2015 there were 4144 breweries operating in the U.S., the most ever, says the Brewers Association. According to historians, the previous high-water mark of 4131 was back in 1873.

It’s so easy to get hoodwinked by the big guys. When shortly before Christmas 2015 AB-InBev picked up two U.S. craft brewers – Breckenridge in Colorado and Four Peaks in Arizona – the craft beer commentariat around the world screamed “oy vey”.

These guys have a great sense of humour. The soon-to-be opened Lincoln’s Beard Brewing Company from Miami, Florida, at the end of December 2015 made an offer for the world’s major brewer. They did not stint. They offered the grand total of USD 26,000 dollars. Incidentally, they have not had a reply from AB-InBev yet. We wonder why?

Just when everybody thought that Colorado’s New Belgium, the brewer of Fat Tire Amber Ale, was safe after its founder Kim Jordan in 2012 had sold a 41 percent controlling interest to its employees, word leaked in late December 2015 that the company is considering selling.

It is no secret that the U.S. craft beer industry has boomed. But what of the craft brewery situation elsewhere? Are other countries experiencing a similar rise in craft brewing? As data are scarce, the yeast expert Alltech did its own research and discovered that there are more than 10,000 craft breweries worldwide.

In case you wondered why AB-InBev shortly before Christmas last year clinched deals with two more U.S. craft brewers – Four Peaks in Arizona and Breckenridge in Colorado – the answer is: “It’s the geography, stupid!

It was only a matter of time. Due to the decline in beer sales, MillerCoors, the joint venture between Molson Coors and SABMiller, decided to close down one of its eight U.S. breweries. The decision was made public in September 2015 and will affect the Eden brewery in North Carolina, which has 520 employees. It is to shut in September 2016.