Deck the site with one more column,
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‘Tis the season to re-view ‘um
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Post we now Hop Take’s 2024 recap,
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And hope next year that beer gets less crap,
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Don’t you just love the holidays? Your humble Hop Take columnist sure does, reader. But I don’t have a whole lot of cheer for the American beer industry to share in this, our final column before Christmas and Hanukkah. The upshot of 2024 was: another tough year for beer. Is there a silver lining in the fact that it wasn’t a great year for beverage alcohol across the board? Maybe? But this column is about The Drink of Moderation™️, and things went moderately poorly for it these past 12 months.
As is holiday tradition around these parts, below I’ve put together a shortlist of what I believe to be the most important storylines and turning points for the industry in 2024. Think I missed something? Shoot me an email: dave@dinfontay.com. I’d fa la la la l-ove to hear from you.
The big ol’ macro reshuffle continuing apace.
Coming off last year’s brutal performance, Bud Light’s losses have kinda-sorta moderated, and Michelob Ultra is cooking, with the latter beer actually outperforming the former in dollars, off-premise volumes, and even draft by some measures. Coors Light and
