Hark his words. Boston Beer, the maker of Samuel Adams beer and Angry Orchard hard cider, would be worth more to a foreign owner unburdened by the U.S. tax structure, founder Jim Koch, 66, told a Senate committee on 31 July 2015.

So it’s craft cocktails now. The number three brewer in the U.S., Constellation Brands, with brands like Corona and Modelo, has acquired a minority stake in bottled cocktail brand Crafthouse Cocktails through its new start-up investment arm, media reported on 19 August 2015. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

The Brewers Association’s definition of a craft brewer stipulates that in terms of ownership less than 25 percent must be controlled by a Big Brewer. This implies that craft brewers could keep their clout as the better beer guys if they were to take in non-beer investors, right?

The Coca-Cola Company has promoted an insider to the number two job which got media pundits and analysts speculating that Chairman and CEO Muhtar Kent needed a powerful deputy to help manage the far-flung business and try to reverse flagging soda sales.

How hard is this? After the “hard ice tea” craze, the U.S. is falling for another fad: “hard soda drinks”. The first such drink to see alcohol added to it is root beer.

The world’s number one drinks company, Diageo, has had an increasingly tough time in North America, its largest and most profitable region. Consumer tastes in the U.S. have shifted toward smaller “craft” brands – and away from Diageo’s core brands like Smirnoff vodka, Captain Morgan rum, and Johnnie Walker whisky.

The Brewers Association reports that there are more than 3,400 breweries in the U.S., the most since 1873. However, about 1,400 of them are brewpubs that aren’t putting beers on bar taps or store shelves. Also, the 1,900 or so microbreweries that exist are competing in a U.S. beer market in which exactly nine companies controlled 90 percent of all beer sold in 2014, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights.

Consumers may care a lot about company ownership when choosing a craft beer over a “crafty” one, but this seemingly has not stopped the rise of Blue Moon, the unfiltered Belgian-style wheat beer which is brewed by Molson Coors. In 2014, Blue Moon sold over 2 million barrels, which would make the brand, part of MillerCoors’ craft beer division Tenth and Blake, one of the best-selling U.S. craft beers, were it not considered “crafty” because it is brewed by one of the Big Brewers.

Who would have thought that the takeover of a Brazilian craft brewer by AmBev would have a fall-out as far away as Belgium? In early July, the Brazilian beer and beverages behemoth AmBev bought the local craft brewer Colorado for an undisclosed sum, thus continuing its new strategy of buying premium craft beer brands amid stagnant sales volumes in South America’s biggest beer market.

The non-committal headline says it all: Duvel Moortgat’s latest U.S. investment got everybody’s curiosity piqued: Did they buy Firestone Walker brewery outright (or just a stake) and how much did the Belgians’ fork out? On both accounts Duvel’s owners decided to keep the figures close to their chests.