Lagunitas, Sierra Nevada, and Market Maturation

This week's big beer news involved a (hastily withdrawn) lawsuit filed by Lagunitas Brewing against Sierra Nevada, in response to a new beer/packaging announcement from SN.

Inside Scoop SF has a good summary of the situation, including pictures, and Tony Magee's twitter musings both before and after the lawsuit was withdrawn.

I'm curious about the broader implications this whole event might have for the brewing industry. By and large, craft brewers are very chummy - sharing recipes, resources, ingredients - and it's been this way essentially since the rebirth of the industry in the early to mid '80s. It's possible we're seeing the end of those times, in some respects, and the beginning of a new era where brewers see each other as business rivals first and friends/peers second.

There's been a lot of hand-wringing over craft's explosive growth, and whether the industry will turn ugly once we stop seeing double-digit yearly expansion, and some pessimistic craft followers are forever looking for signs that this cutthroat time has dawned. I don't think we're there yet.

My reasoning is this - even in Portland, the most beer-saturated city in the country, new breweries are popping up at a frankly astonishing rate (I've seen plans for at least half a dozen places under construction - all slated to open this year) . And at this point, I have no idea how many small brewers the city can comfortably accommodate. 80? 100? Regardless, I think if there's still room in Portland, the rest of the country's got a long way to go.

I don't believe that a mature market's going to look much different than it does now - you'll have your regional/national breweries like Stone, Sierra Nevada, and Deschutes, supplemented by lots of 7-10 barrel brewpubs and micros who only operate in one city or one state. I'm really looking forward to the time where I can travel to any medium-sized city in the country and be likely to find at least one local brewery. And I wouldn't be surprised if that becomes a reality within the next 10 years.