Could be. The other side of the argument could be that “Craft Beer” never should have been redefined by the Brewer’s Association into the strange and convoluted definition they’ve come up with (“Small, Independent, Traditional”).
If anything comes from news like this, it’s that I hope that people wise up and stop being so ridiculous about who owns what.
“So-and-so is majority owned by a non-alcohol venture capital firm so it’s okay, but not okay if they’re only partly owned x amount by a big brewery, even if it’s less than the VC firm’s stake in the other brewery. So-and-so merged with this other brewery and now they’re at 6.1 million barrels, so they aren’t craft, but so-and-so is a wholly owned subsidiary of another brewery and if you combined all the other wholly owned subsidiaries from the parent brewery, they produce 9.2 million barrels, but it’s okay because they’re considered separate entities.”
The Brewer’s Association could wake up tomorrow and say that a brewery that is 15% or more owned by venture capital firms is not acceptable and breweries like Dogfish Head would be out of the BA and outside the definition of “craft.” In that scenario, overnight many people would turn on Sam and would “never drink 60 minutes again.”
Of course, people still buy Bourbon County in droves, even though many of those same BeerBros claimed they’d never spend another penny on anything that “Big Beer” supports.
“The Colorado Brewers Guild (CBG) was founded in 1995 by Colorado craft brewers in an effort to promote the quality and diversity of the growing Colorado craft brewing industry. The CBG provides valuable information to the beer-drinking public and the media while also serving to protect the industry and promote positive legislative for Colorado craft brewers.”
I guess the reasoning would be that they no longer fit the definition of what the BA serves…and with a stake in San Miguel, it seems they no longer need the help of the BA/CBG in order to promote, sell and diversify their product, no?
