The growing landscape of independent U.S. craft breweries now in the hands of corporate owners has a Colorado-size hole.
The past year has seen megabrewer Anheuser-Busch InBev and private equity firms either take over or purchase stakes in a number of smaller breweries outside.
More moves are expected, and Colorado is a lucrative target with well over 225 craft breweries, with scores more in planning and with serious street cred as one of the centers of independent American brewing.
Sooner or later, will we see a local brewery born in a garage or dreamed up on a cocktail napkin snatched up by one of the big boys?
“I think it’s likely that we will,” said Kim Jordan, president and CEO of New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins. “My sense is, with A-B anyway, they are probably looking at a regional strategy. They have a brewery here (in Fort Collins). They have a distributorship here. It makes sense to me we would see an announcement about a craft brewery as well.”
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