re: The price of a pint

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I do like the thought of the brewery getting the entire cut of that pint, and not getting less money than both the distributor and retailer. For that reason alone, I'll support the brewery.

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I agree, but I do most of my drinking in tap rooms, because the breweries just aren't as convenient. Having said that, I support Oregon breweries when I go to the taprooms.

I was just at ABV, and the beer manager told the Firestone Walker distributor that FW beers weren't selling because they were not interesting. I told the beer manager that the real reason is that there are more local options that are better.

While the market for every other product in the world is consolidating into a few major corporations, craft beer seems to be going in the other direction. I think breweries like Parish aren't going to go the way of Abita and become national, but they will become regional and stay just big enough that the quality of the beer doesn't suffer, but big enough to almost satisfy the demand of all the people who consider it to be "local".

I think we're going to see more smaller breweries and fewer megabreweries. I consider Abita, Firestone Walker, Widmer Bros, Oskar Blues, Dogfish Head, Lagunitas, etc, to be megabreweries. They might buy smaller breweries, but I think as soon as a megabrewer buys a small brewery, they will lose customers and another small brewery will pop up to replace the one that got absorbed.