2015: The Year Craft Beer Cashed Out

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namely abita selling off to Harpoon.

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Abita didn't sell to Harpoon. The ex-president of Harpoon started Enjoy Beer, funded by investment groups, that purchased Abita.

Harpoon is completely employee owned.

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Is that accurate? Is there another source for this besides this article?

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Yes. I've heard of almost all of these acquisitions via beer news blogs and beer podcasts. Abita, Dogfish Head, and a couple of the smaller ones i didn't know about.

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funded by investment groups, that purchased Abita.

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this is true. Abita high ups played it pretty close to the chest

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cash beer

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Was this intentional?

My concern is not with the acquisitions, but with the beer laws. If InBev acquires Parish and Great Raft, and their quality suffers because of it, the then the business climate needs to be such that a new brewery can step in and fill the void. Right now, that isn't the case, and the barriers to entry in many markets prevent that from happening.

In Oregon, we've had breweries like Rogue, Ninkasi, and Bridgeport that were once cutting edge, and their product quality went south, either because they changed personnel, or got bigger and couldn't maintain the quality on a larger scale. There are many other smaller breweries that just went out of business for a variety of reasons.

But, we've had many breweries step up and become the new face of beer in Oregon. In craft beer circles, the hot beers aren't from Widmer, Bridgeport, Rogue, and Ninkasi, but from Boneyard, De Guarde, pFriem, and Block 15, to mention a few. All of those breweries are recent start ups within the last 2-7 years.

I suspect the big breweries want to acquire microbreweries to expand their product line because its clear that craft beer isn't going away anytime, soon. However, I think they would also like to double down on that and try to ensure that barriers are in place that prevent new breweries from entering the market and diluting their market share further. Distributors are probably in favor of that, too. They make more money per beer on selling craft beer, but would probably prefer to work with one company that represents 50 breweries, than with 50 different companies.