Beer Institute

Good morning,

Linked below is the December 2017 State-by-State Shipments to Wholesalers Report. Please note changes to historical volumes as some state totals may have changed with newly released state-level data.

U.S. beer shipment volume, including both domestic and import brands, declined an estimated 8.2% in raw terms or 3.8% on a selling day adjusted basis in December.
Beer distributors reduced net inventories by 10-12% during December, which is essentially normal. However, distributors had reduced their net inventories by only about five to six percent in December 2016—which was less than normal for a typical December. This change in warehousing practice exaggerated beer’s decline for December 2017.
Additionally, real earnings among American workers declined by 1.1% during the fourth quarter of 2017, which contributed to beer’s soft performance during the fourth quarter.
Our current estimate for full-year beer shipment volume performance is down 1.3%. However, as with all of our unofficial estimates, that figure will continue to be revised as we gather additional information.
In particular, 2017 may be subject to above average revisions because it is the first year that many small brewers will report their sales to TTB for all of 2017 in 2018 rather than reporting quarterly (a change which had been brought about as part of the PATH Act of 2015).

If you have any questions, please contact me at either 202-737-2337 or muhrich@beerinstitute.org.