For the first time in 16 years, the American IPA is not the most-entered Great American Beer Festival competition category. Entries in the Juicy/Hazy IPA category surpass it in the new category’s first year as a competition style. You can see all the GABF 2018 medal winners here.

The Brewers Association, the Boulder-based trade group for U.S. craft breweries, introduces the Independent Craft Brewer Seal. The certification mark is launched to help beer lovers tell the difference between independent craft breweries and acquired breweries. The BA will later release a supporter seal for retailers, distributors, guilds, websites, beer lovers, and any organization that wants to show it supports small and independent craft breweries.

The Brewers Association is part of a coalition that rallies together to lower excise taxes for breweries. With the reduced rate, breweries are able to reinvest in their businesses and employees.

Currently, our excise tax is: 1-60,00 Barrels: $3.50/barrel 60,000-2 million Barrels: $16/barrel Over 2 million Barrels: $18/barrel

Before 2017 it was $7 on first 60,000 barrels for brewers who produces less than 2 million barrels. $18 per barrel after the first 60,000 barrels.

Heineken International buys 50% of Lagunitas Brewing based in Petaluma, California. Before the purchase, Lagunitas is one of the most advanced-producing craft breweries in the United States. Heineken International will go on to buy the remaining 50% of the brewery in 2017.

Wyoming and West Virginia establish state guilds, meaning every state now has grassroots representation within their governments.

Mississippi and Alabama legalize homebrewing, a move that finally makes homebrewing legal in all 50 states! Mississippi’s law went into effect July 1, 2013, marking it the first day since Prohibition that the entire United States of America permitted homebrewing on the state level.

Homebrewing goes to the White House. Sam Kass, former White House Chef and executive director of First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign to decrease childhood obesity, uses honey from bees kept on the White House lawn to brew batches of Honey Porter and a Honey Ale. You can get the recipe and to watch a video of Chef Kass and Sous Chef Tafari Campbell brewing those recipes, click here.

A hop shortage reportedly due to a fire in Washington state and bad storms in Germany leads to brewers to band together to solve a problem in the supply chain. Some brewers start brewing Belgian-style beers, sours, and beers with lower IBUs. Other brewers with contracts securing their hop sources share what they can with breweries who need the hops. The Boston Beer Company sells its supply of hops at cost to other brewers. Boston Beer Co. Founder Jim Koch writes: “The reason I support competitors becomes obvious if you think about the way yeast ferments beer. If enough yeast are working together, they can change the ecosystem for the mutual benefit of all. If they aren’t, other organisms take over, and the yeast will fail. Craft brewing is kind of like that.”

As the newly-formed Brewers Association, the BA set its mission on promoting and protecting small and independent craft brewers. In order to collect data and serve its membership, the trade organization and its board of directors created the craft brewer definition. The BA board of directors voted to update the definition in 2007, 2010, 2014, and 2018 to reflect the continued innovation by U.S. brewers.

See the current definition here.

The Pro-Am competition is established at the Great American Beer Festival. Amateur homebrewers and professional brewers team up to make the best beer possible. Interested in competing? More information here.

50 different categories are judged at the Great American Beer Festival See what beers won in 1997

According to Dale P. Van Wieren in “American Breweries II,” California begins 1994 with 84 operating microbreweries and brewpubs, which is one more than were operating in the entire nation 10 years earlier.

Excise Tax. Small brewer, $7, Big Brewers: $18/barrel under luxury taxes. This rate doubled for breweries producing over 2 million barrels/year with no breaks given after 60,000 barrels. The brewing industry will not see an excise tax reduction for another 26 years.

Great Lakes Brewery opens in Cleveland giving Ohio its first craft brewery.

The Great American Beer Festival begins to award beers by category. The 12 categories are: Ales, Alts, American Cream Ales, American Lagers, American Light Lagers, Bocks/Doppelbocks, Consumer Preference Pool, Continental Pilsners, Porters, Stouts, Vienna Style Lagers, and Wheat Beers.

Iowa’s first craft brewery: Millstream Brewing Co.

Oregon’s first craft breweries: Columbia River Brewery (1984-1987) Then became BridgePort Brewing Co. (1987-2019)*, McMenamins Hillsdale Brewery & Public House (1984-)

The inaugural Micro-Brewers Conference is held in Boulder, Colorado. Conference attendees are a combination of amateur and professional brewers. The conference will later be named the Craft Brewers Conference.

This year marks the inaugural Great American Beer Festival. Twenty breweries are on hand serving 40 different beers to 750 people during the one-day festival.

Colorado’s first craft brewery: Boulder Beer

Homebrew is legalized federally, allowing states to create their own homebrew laws when Jimmy Carter signs H.R. 1337. Homebrewers start working to legalize the hobby in their home states.

The Brewers Association of America condones the pull-tab as a worthy product upgrade for beer lovers and brewers alike.

The Small Brewers Excise Tax Differential is passed in September 1976. This was significant because taxes were the same for all brewers, despite the number of barrels produced. The tax was long fought for, starting in 1975 by members of the Brewers Association of America (BAA). The secretary of the BAA, William M. O’Shea, wrote in his correspondences with members of how important this was to breweries and their futures stating “One awfully nice brewer phoned me at home over the week-end, asking how it looked for our Excise Tax Program. He apologized for calling me at home but told me his Board of Directors was going to vote on the closing of the Brewery if I thought the program would not pass. This is how urgent things are.”

Remember, a phone call back then was expensive! There was a real effort put forth and it was greatly celebrated when passed. Instead of being a blanketed $9/barrel, no matter how many barrels were brewed, breweries producing 2 million barrels or less would pay $7/barrel up to 60,000 barrels and $9/barrel up to 2 million barrels. The big brewers in this deal? No break at all. And they helped to pass the measure for “the betterment of the brewing industry at large.” Fun fact: The representative who brought the bill to the House Floor was named J.J. Pickle, a democrat from Texas. Thanks Mr. Pickle!