The smell of fresh cut grass wafts on the spring breeze. March Madness is over, baseball season has just begun. How many Major League stadiums have adopted Anheuser-Busch InBev’s daft rebrand of “domestic beer” this year? If you don’t call it “American beer” you’re woke and communist and probably don’t even Respect The Troops™. For shame!!!
Ahem. Where was I? Oh, right. As American taxpayers prepare once again to tithe at the imperial altar of blood, so too must American brewers tithe at the editorial altar of Hop Take. That’s right: It’s time for our Quarterly Beer Business Report Card for the first frame of 2026.
Subject: Government
Grade: A
By last autumn, it was pretty clear that the beverage-alcohol industry’s powerful lobbying corps and “Science Over Bias” messaging operation had gotten over on the doctors and public-health officials behind the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking’s (ICCPUD) “Alcohol Intake and Health” study, which highlighted links between drinking and certain forms of cancer. Mission accomplished! But from what I hear, even trade insiders were a little shocked by the totality of the victory when in early January, Dr. Mehmet Oz — who we’re all supposed to take seriously despite the fact that there’s an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the various quackery he promoted on his eponymous daytime television show before becoming the 17th administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) — announced alcohol was, eh, probably fine. “Don’t have it for breakfast,” he said, adding later that “Brunch is obviously different than breakfast.” Well, that settles it! But just as the Oz giveth, the Oz taketh away. In early April, CMS announced it would begin covering up to $500 worth of certain hemp-derived tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) products under certain plans. To quote ABI’s North American head honcho Brendan Whitworth, “Are we actually still talking about that?” Apparently. But hey: The CHEERS Act got reintroduced!
Subject: Fluid (Sales) Dynamics
Grade: C+
Is that… could it be? Light at the end of the tunnel? Or maybe it’s one of those luminary deep-sea fish you find floating just above rock bottom? The first quarter was a real mixed bag pack for the industry, and riding the week-by-week scanner snapshots, a total rollercoaster. In March, we learned that the trade had gone a staggering 13 straight months without posting shipment growth, per Beer Institute analysis of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau’s (TTB) tax-paid data. But in April, we learned that February 2026 put the business back in the black. (Barely; see Hop-ocalypse Now for more.) On the draft side of things, BeerBoard recorded a big, honking uptick in both volume and dollars — 35.5 percent and 15.5 percent, respectively — for St. Patrick’s Day, with on-premise packaged stuff up 39.2 percent and 41.5 percent for the holiday. Industry vets know you can slice these data any which way, and there were still more bad slices than good ones last quarter. But something to build on.
Subject: Innovation Lab
Grade: D
I guess somebody showed George Clooney the Athletic Brewing Company episode of “How I Built This,” because last month he finally launched his long-rumored nonalcoholic beer brand with some of his old Casamigos amigos. I don’t get it, but hey, as long as “George” — that’s how the press release referred to him — is happy, I’m happy. (Fact check: no I’m not.) Everything is just a copy of a copy of something that used to work, like Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man in The World, which beleaguered parent company Heineken brought back this past quarter for an uninspired ad campaign that made the Svedka sexbot’s Super Bowl debut seem cutting-edge by comparison. (Fact check: no it didn’t.) Most of the excitement over the past three months came from mergers and acquisitions, which is more or less the antithesis of innovation: ABI closed on BeatBox and cozied up further with Southern Glazer’s, Molson Coors closed on Monaco maker Atomic Brands, Reyes Beverage closed on a third of Republic National Distributing Company, and Tilray Brands closed on BrewDog USA (more on that below). Oh, also, Michelob Ultra launched some sort of World Cup tie-in aluminum bottle with the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team. Is that something? (Fact check: no it’s not.) All while those dastardly liquor interests (read: Stateside) moved in on sports-ade, which brewers kinda-shoulda-coulda had cornered.
Subject: Social Studies
Grade: B+
Execs at publicly traded companies spent another quarter saying either nothing at all about the Trump administration’s racist and deadly mass-deportation tactics across the country, or opining bloodlessly about “the new realities” facing “the Hispanic population” while remaining careful not to say anything that could be construed as empathy for those customers as they were harassed, arrested, or worse. Ah well, there’s always Q2. But while Big Beer leaders heaped another helping of shame upon themselves, craft brewers and beer-industry types in Minneapolis and St. Paul brought honor to the trade by throwing themselves into the cities’ mutual-aid networks, fundraising efforts, and civil disobedience actions, even as their sales tanked thanks to the “economic terrorism” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection shock troops. Far from the front lines of America’s cold-but-warming civil war, Tilray’s acquisition of BrewDog and its U.S. subsidiary finally provided an answer to the question I first asked in this publication way back in 2021. Namely: How on earth would the Scottish firm’s “equity punks” ever make a return on the collective $100 million in retail investment they dumped into the Good Ship BrewDog’s cargo hold over a decade and a half? They would not. Buyer beware, and all that, but the outcome certainly didn’t make equity crowdfunding look, y’know, good.
Subject: Craftology
Grade: C+
Let’s just stay on the Tilray of it all, because nobody in the struggling segment is doing it quite like the Canadian vice conglomerate. To be clear, it’s struggling, too: Its beverage division posted a 23.8 percent decline in revenue for the quarter; a trademark lawsuit over SweetWater Brewing Co.’s logo was allowed to proceed another step closer to a bench trial; it got sued by Bob Marley’s estate over $11 million in allegedly unpaid royalties. But it acquired BrewDog, which… well… I mean, it definitely happened. CEO Irwin Simon’s wheelhouse also put forth a new high-ABV varietal of Shock Top to chase some Voodoo Ranger-style c-store revenue, and did a deal with Popsicle for reasons I still don’t understand. On the other hand, Shock Top’s former portfolio, ABI’s The High End, is leaner, meaner, and more lucrative than ever now that “good enough” is, y’know, good enough. It is nice that Dogfish Head has a legit hit in its Grateful Dead-themed pale ale, which it is now doubling down on; it is nice that Firestone Walker acquired Trumer Pils from Gambrinus; it is nice that like a dozen different craft brewers across the country linked up to form their own “platforms” and “collectives” in hopes of weathering the second shakeout. I mean it! Less nice: The Brewers Association posted its 2025 annual report earlier this quarter, and mamma mia, -24.6 percent revenue is not nice. Not nice at all.
🤯 Hop-ocalypse Now
Beer is growing again, bay-bee! Our long national nightmare is over! After 13 straight year-over-year declines in monthly shipment tax-paid data analyzed by The Beer Institute, the latest batch o’ numbers revealed that February 2026 was actually in the black! WE ARE SO BACK. [touches earpiece; frowns] I see. Uh-huh. But… no, yeah, I get it. All right folks, quick update here: While shipments were technically up for this year’s second frame, they were only +0.2 percent, and only against an historically bad comp from 2025. Also these figures are still subject to revision. Also-also, shipments are at -4.7 percent by volume year-to-date. Our sincere apologies to anybody who popped the Champagne (of beers) prematurely.
📈 Ups…
After its pale ale with the Grateful Dead did big sales last year, Dogfish Head is doubling down with another Steal Your Face-badged beer, this one a citrus-y lager… Speaking of re-ups, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. is back at it this year with an expanded partnership with the National Park Foundation…
📉 …and downs
Aluminum prices on the London Metal Exchange hit a four-year peak thanks to Trump’s illegal war in Iran… “Unfortunately not a ton of good news for craft brewers” in Trump’s new executive order about aluminum tariffs, said Brewers Association president Bart Watson…
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