During the next 100 years most disappeared, as fewer and fewer brewed for a regional market and fewer still for a local market. What I’ve never seen, and have been led to believe doesn’t exist, is what brewers were thinking when they abandoned ales, when they gave up on the local market. This includes both breweries that folded their tents and those that kept brewing.

What lessons could they have taught today’s consolidators?

In ten years, Miller and Coors have given back 5% of the market. So the little fish keep eating up even littler fish, but counterintuitively, they shrink. Not only do they not gain market share by picking up the small brands, but they actually lose ground over time.

Here’s what the brewing companies seem to miss: beer is a local product. With consolidation, the little local brewers get sucked up into a corporate borg and brewing is shifted hundreds of miles away–the beers change, they’re no longer local, and the market dries up. Who cares about Henry’s if it’s brewed in California–it’s just a label on a beer can at that point. Many of the brands will die a slow death, perhaps even Coors, which may no longer be made with “Rocky Mountain spring water.”

Here’s an early prediction: in ten years, SABMillerMolsonCoors will have reduced the number of brands in their portfolios substantially and will command less than 20% of the market. Of course, they’re unlikely to make it ten years before further consolidation happens. Which will be greeted, as always, as a shrewd business move by Wall Street.

But to another point. This blog is US-centric – no surprise, this is where I live – and we should remember that we are not the center of the beer universe. There is none. Despite the efforts of mega-brewers beer can still be a local product.

I was reminded of the US-centric part when a comment today pointed out that Doemens Academy has had a beer sommelier school for four years.

Molson Coors and SAB Miller haven’t merged. They are still two separate entities, one a US-Canadian company and the other British. They’ve just set up a joint venture in one country and one country only (the USA).

A fine attempt to kill the brand.

Hey, Lowenbrau was once brewed in Milwaukee! :O

And I wonder where Pilsner Urquell (SABMiller) falls into that plan…?