Dave Infante

1 month ago | vinepair.com | Dave Infante

There used to be a fierce semantic debate over what constituted “craft” beer. Some guy even sued Blue Moon over it at one point. (He lost.) The Brewers Association, as the segment’s trade group, has put forth its own definition over the years, revising it to the point that it now includes firms like Monster and excludes firms like Sapporo-Stone with a logic that is both technically sound and practically inscrutable.

1 month ago | vinepair.com | Dave Infante

INDIANAPOLIS — “How was everyone’s 2024?” Matt Gacioch asks. The near-capacity crowd in this conference hall here at the Indiana Convention Center murmurs. The Brewers Association’s new-ish chief economist surveys the room like an improv artist waiting for a prompt. “That wasn’t a rhetorical question,” he says. Finally, somebody chimes in. “Crappy!”No improvisation necessary: it’s an answer everybody sort of expects, including Gacioch.

2 months ago | vinepair.com | Dave Infante

The general thesis of the craft-brewing “movement” — such as it was/is — at its founding midway through last century was that beer wasn’t a commodity until macrobrewers made it into one. This was a compelling thesis, and I think it’s borne out by the facts.

2 months ago | vinepair.com | Dave Infante

Against all odds, another fiscal quarter is in the books. Did you pay your taxes earlier this week? Follow-up question: Why? It’s not like the people running this country do! And yet we soldier on. (Hopefully not literally.)Today, as has become Hop Take tradition, we take stock of the beer industry’s past three-ish months. Think of it like an earnings report, but more fun, and less regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Editorially speaking: Sh*t is gnarly out there, man.

2 months ago | vinepair.com | Dave Infante

There are not a lot of “dynamic” segments in the American brewing business at the moment, on account of the entire beer market — nay, the beverage-alcohol market writ large — struggling to find sales in the face of our various and sundry national sh*tshows. Of them all, though, light macro lager is about as dull as it gets.