When the American craft brewing industry was in its heyday, it was fairly commonplace that breweries that billing themselves as “craft” were actually independent. Nowadays, many of the breweries that initially began as craft operations have been scooped up by larger conglomerates. And after all of the major acquisitions, sell offs, and shuffles over the past decade or so, it’s not always clear which company owns what.
To keep everything in order, Matt Rice, founder of beverage alcohol industry strategy and analytics firm Thirsty Insights compiled a chart identifying the largest American beer brands (selling over 100,000 barrels per year) and the parent companies that own them. Given the high threshold for production, the list is certainly not exhaustive, with a few smaller producers missing from each conglomerate’s section. In their place, you’ll find many of the macrobrews produced by each company, like AB InBev’s range of Budweiser and Bud Light products and Constellation’s Modelo and Corona.
