State of the craft beer industry

April 29, 2019 12:29 PM PT

By now, it’s clear that the S.S. Craft Beer is sailing through choppy waters. Both Ballast Point and Stone are cutting costs, the former closing a tap room and a warehouse, the latter selling its German brewery/restaurant. Yet we’re still seeing new projects like AleSmith founder Skip Virgilio’s return to commercial brewing at Mira Mesa’s new Gravity Heights.

These up and down trends are being seen across the country. Recent statistics from the Brewers Association show American craft beer still thriving, although not enjoying the head-spinning growth of a decade ago. This industry is still growing, though, and that’s worth toasting.

Read more from Peter Rowe’s Brewery Rowe column, here.

Craft Beer Eat | Drink

Peter Rowe

Peter is a freelance writer who writes about beer in his bimonthly column Brewery Rowe for the San Diego Union-Tribune. He worked as a reporter and columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune from 1984 to 2020. A native Californian who grew up in Encinitas, Rowe is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Northwestern University. He is past president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and a former Fulbright scholar. He has won a few journalism awards, but would trade them all for a chance to avenge his 1994 “Jeopardy!” loss. Married to a terrific woman who has saved him from errors in writing and in life, he has three sons.