Craft beers - a touch of glass Do you know your Blue Moon from your Tin Man, or your Goose Island from your Mad River? Big brewers are betting that the answer is no as they battle the independents in the US "craft beer" market - highly flavoured drinks that are made (or made to look like they are made) by small brewers. Craft volumes grew by 12 per cent in the first half of the year, while Euromonitor expects the overall US beer market to fall 1.2 per cent this year. After a slow start, the big brewers have been muscling in. SABMiller, via its MillerCoors unit, owns craft brands Blue Moon and Leinenkugels. Last year ABInBev spent $39m on a stake in Chicago-based Goose Island. The drawback for investors is that this tasty battle is tough to get into. There are more than 2,000 breweries in the US, but most are small and private. And while the big brewers are getting in on the act, craft beer is only a small part of the business - Blue Moon accounts for 3 per cent of MillerCoors" volumes according to Bernstein, while the 150,000 barrels that Goose Island produced in 2011 was just 0.04 per cent of ABInBev's volumes. There is scope to increase those volumes through both market growth and market share gains, but craft will be a small part of the picture for some time. The exception is Boston Beer Company which, with a market capitalisation of $1.8bn, stands between the microbreweries and the international brewers. Operating profits have more than doubled in five years and in December it increased its earnings guidance for 2012 by 10 per cent. Margins are good - its 16.5 per cent forecast margin for this year is ahead of both Heineken and Carlsberg. The shares are up 300 per cent in the past five years against an average of 35 per cent for the big four global brewers. But on 30 times forecast earnings its shares, like some of its beers, are not for the price sensitive.