Chicago’s Goose Island brewery was only the first. In its effort to expand its range of craft beer (or “crafty”) offerings, AB-InBev has agreed to buy the Blue Point Brewing Company, famous for its Toasted Lager brand. The deal was announced on 5 February 2014.

Take it as a sign that competition among craft brewers is heating up that, since December last year Boston Beer, the brewer of Sam Adams beer, and California’s Lagunitas brewery have been engaged in a slugfest. For Jim Koch, the founder of Boston Beer, this row cannot have come at a worse time as in 2014, Boston Beer celebrates its 30th anniversary.

Innoval Döhler, based in Mexico City, became fully integrated into the Döhler Group in January 2014. The Mexican company Innovación Alimentaria was founded in 1992 by Gustavo León and renamed Innoval Döhler as the German ingredient specialist acquired 40 percent of the company back in 2006.

Together with Krones AG, Neutraubling, Germany, Brazil’ s second-largest brewing conglomerate, Grupo Petrópolis, privately owned and headed by proprietor Walter Faria, has now built two new breweries with a capacity of six million hl each. The first of the two production facilities had already gone into operation during late 2013, in Alagoinhas near Salvador de Bahia, following around one year of construction work, right on time for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. The second facility, in Itapisuma near Recife in the state of Pernambuco, is scheduled to start up in mid-2014. This represents massive expansion for the group into the north of Brazil.

“They might as well have bombed the harbor [Pearl Harbor] again. This is a sad, sad day for America” was one of the less than kind comments on U.S. social media after news broke on 13 January 2014 that Japan’s Suntory is acquiring U.S. spirits company Beam Inc for USD 16 billion including debt. Beam Inc owns brands like Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark, Canadian Club whisky and Courvoisier cognac.

Corona’s previous Mexican owners should be tugging their forelocks. Their previous partner and now owner of Corona in the U.S., the wine-to-beer company Constellation Brands, has shown that Corona does very well on draught.

That’s courageous. Kirin plans to produce its Ichiban Shibori draft beer in Brazil as of March 2014, Japanese media report. The Japanese probably hope to benefit from increased demands for beer forecasted for the 2014 World Soccer Cup to be held in the country.

According to a new analysis by the Brewers Association (BA), small and independent American craft brewers contributed USD 33.9 billion to the U.S. economy in 2012 – this corresponds to a 17 percent growth of the craft brewing market.

So much for those lofty economic growth forecasts. Both Brazil and Mexico have had to revise their GDP growth rates down: Brazil is heading for growth of less than 3 percent this year, while Mexico is expected to expand by 1.2 percent. Beer markets have taken a hit. Consumption of beer in Brazil and Mexico is expected to decline in the low single digits this year.

Except for Crown Imports, the top U.S. brewers saw beer sales flat or decline in the nine months to end of September 2013, Beerinsights reports. Meanwhile, lots of craft brewers continued to score double-digit growth.