Tuesday, I saw a Beervana post that I found pretty interesting - in it, Jeff analyzes the recently-released 2014 in-state sales figures for Oregon breweries. It's a great bit of info - definitely check it out. You should take a look at the figures - they're available in PDF form here.
What most interests me about this sort of analysis is assessing how a brewery's change in sales might give some insight into their long-term goals.
As I live and drink in Eugene, seeing its three largest (and best) breweries listed in the top 20 is heartening. The really interesting number here is Hop Valley's - its in-state beer sales have nearly tripled since this time last year, while Oakshire and Ninkasi have experienced small declines. Without having more information, I'd venture this simply means that Hop Valley's been pushing in-state sales expansions really hard, while Oakshire and Ninkasi are currently more focused on selling more beer out of state.
Of the other breweries in town, only Hop Valley's Springfield brewpub and Falling Sky sold more than 1000 barrels of beer in Oregon last year - everyone else has done significantly less than that.
It's also a neat exercise (with the obvious disclaimer that excluding out-of-state sales necessarily skews the numbers) to comprehend the relative size of local breweries. Roughly, Ninkasi is twice the size of Hop Valley, which is itself twice the size of Oakshire. We can also probably say that Falling Sky, Steelhead, and Hop Valley's brewpub are all about the same size. The same is true of Claim 52 and Sam Bond's. Rogue's since-closed Eugene pub and Viking also made about the same amount of beer last year.
The true value of having all this information publicly available is that it allows folks like me to create narratives to flesh the data out into an interesting story. So here's what I'd like to say.
It's clear that Eugene's craft beer movement is still gaining steam - pretty much every brewery in town grew in some capacity last year. Hop Valley is definitely leading the pack in terms of aggressive growth - they installed lots of new fermentation tanks over the course of the year, and are really starting to fill the large warehouse space that seemed so empty when they opened. But Ninkasi's drive to essentially own their little corner of the Whit is continuing unabated, with their new production facility, office building, and the fact that they hosted last year's Sasquatch festival.
Claim 52 and Viking have both really come into their own in the last year - their beers have become much higher quality and much more consistent, and I'm starting to see them around town quite often. And of course, there's the new guys - Elk Horn and Sam Bond's - which still have quite a long way to go but are making strides in the right direction.
There's also Mancave Brewing, which looks to be on track to open sometime in the summer, and I'm sure there's plenty of other breweries in various stages of completion.
It's certainly an exciting time to be a beer lover in Eugene - the sales numbers are a concrete reminder of this reality.
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