Courtesy of: @allaboutbeer

[FULL ARTICLE…]

From January through the end of June 2015, approximately 12.2 million barrels of beer were sold by craft brewers, up from 10.6 million barrels during the first half of 2014.

As of June 30, 2015, 3,739 breweries were operating in the U.S, an increase of 699 breweries over the same time period of the previous year. Additionally, there were 1,755 breweries in planning. Craft brewers currently employ an estimated 115,469 full-time and part-time workers, many of which are manufacturing jobs, contributing significantly to the U.S. economy.

About the Brewers Association

The Brewers Association is the not-for-profit trade association dedicated to small and independent American brewers, their beers and the community of brewing enthusiasts. The Brewers Association (BA) represents more than 70 percent of the brewing industry, and its members make more than 99 percent of the beer brewed in the U.S. The BA organizes events including the World Beer Cup^®, Great American Beer Festival^®, Craft Brewers Conference & BrewExpo America^®, SAVOR?: An American Craft Beer & Food Experience, AHA National Homebrewers Conference, National Homebrew Competition and American Craft Beer Week^®. The BA publishes The New Brewer magazine and its Brewers Publications division is the largest publisher of contemporary and relevant brewing literature for today’s craft brewers and homebrewers.

Beer lovers are invited to learn more about the dynamic world of craft beer at CraftBeer.com and about homebrewing via the BA’s American Homebrewers Association. Follow us on Twitter.

Posted by: Brewers Association |@CraftBeerdotCom | Best Practices.

“The Brewers Association technical committee recommends that it is in the best interest of craft brewers, distributors, importers, and consumers that all craft beer be identifiable by some form of a date or lot code (“code”). It is the responsibility of all brewers, big and small, to ensure that their products are clearly coded for traceability.

The code should act as a vehicle to trace a package in the marketplace back to a package date. The assigned lot number should cross reference the specific brewed batch(es) of beer that encompass the specific packaged beer, through internal brewery tracking.

As stated by the Bioterrorism Act, breweries are required to insure traceability of their beer. Brewers must keep internal records of the specific ingredients, including manufacture lot numbers that were used in individual batches.”  [Full Article…]