The blurring boundaries of craft beer

Total beer volume sales fell 2.5% in the 12 months to March this year, although value sales increased, according to The Morning Advertiser’s (The MA) Beer Report 2026.

World lager continued to dominate the on-trade, accounting for 30.3% of volume sales during the period.

Craft beer accounted for 6.8% of total beer volume, with sales down 4.9% year on year and 10% over two years. Value was more resilient, rising 0.7%.

Licensee of Barking Cat Ale House in Poole, Dorset, Mark Ambrose, said demand for craft beer remained strong, with footfall continuing to increase and the business recording double-digit growth year on year.

The pub has also seen more 18 to 30-year-olds coming through the door, with a good mix of men and women looking for “something better”.

Ambrose told The MA hazy pales and pastry stouts were doing particularly well, while interest in traditional English IPAs, heritage bitters, old-style stouts and porters had also grown.

The pub has 24 lines and only serves independent beer, giving customers a constant stream of new beers to try.

Broader appeal

Some are looking for the latest flavour-led beer, while others are interested in more traditional styles, Ambrose said.

However, price and availability remain barriers, with independent breweries often difficult to source.

He added the pub had also seen a rising number of non-craft drinkers who knew there was better beer available and could be persuaded to change what they drank regularly.

That broader appeal is part of what has made the word craft so difficult to define – but was also part of what attracted people to it in the first place.

Beer writer Pete Brown told The MA craft still had an emotional pull with drinkers, but the industry was increasingly shifting towards describing the segment as “independent” or “indie”.

“It’s more definable,” he said. “But craft, despite all its flaws, is more evocative and emotionally centred.”

“The number of people who care about independence, while significant, is not as big as the number of people who were seduced by the idea of craft,” he continued.

Brown added the acquisition of leading craft brands by larger brewers had taken some of the romanticism out of the category, while giving those businesses greater control over routes to market.

He said: “Very few beers were ever actually labelled craft, it was more a case of it looks different from mainstream beer and that led you to expect something different.

“Its indefinability, its vagueness, was part of its appeal and that’s something the whole industry has swerved because it’s difficult to respond to.”

Though Jubel founder Jesse Wilson shared a different view when it comes to how much those distinctions mattered to consumers.

He said drinkers were more likely to choose a beer based on taste, a recognised brand, glassware, what they saw others drinking and what was available on the bar over whether it fitted a particular category.

Jubel’s volume sales rose 117.9% in the 12 months to October 2025, according to The MA Drinks List.

Wilson attributed part of the growth to reaching people who would not necessarily describe themselves as beer drinkers, offering an accessible and distinctive proposition not requiring an in-depth interest in beer.

“Conventional beer has struggled to recruit the next generation, so our philosophy is that you might have to do something a bit unconventional,” he told The MA.

“Unconventional was probably one of the nicer things people would say about peach lager in the early days, but over time we have proven this unconventional approach has really worked.”

Distribution challenge

However, he highlighted distribution as a consistent barrier to growth, particularly for smaller brewers competing for limited tap space against major brewers.

“There are lots of fantastic breweries making fantastic beers, but there is a distribution challenge, which means lots of consumers aren’t able to try those beers,” Wilson continued.

“That said, even if the distribution challenge wasn’t there, craft beer accounts for up to 10% of the total beer market given the less accessible style of liquid and the naturally narrower consumer appeal, so the sky is not the limit for the craft category and there is a ceiling.”

Non-alcoholic beverage company DioniLife global, which distributes Mash Gang, marketing director Jo Taylor added low & no beer had helped shift focus towards the skill and quality behind the liquid, rather than simply whether a beer fitted the traditional craft mould.

She described the category as “fragmenting, in a healthy way”.

“Sub-category lines are blurring,” she said. “Consumers are increasingly seeing non-alcoholic drinks as offering more freedom rather than restriction.”

With the market no longer divided neatly between mainstream beer and craft, traditional styles sit alongside fruit lagers, hazy pales and alcohol-free beers, while drinkers can be drawn in by independence, flavour, provenance or simply what looks appealing on the bar.

Craft still matters, particularly in pubs where discovery and variety are part of the offer. But its boundaries are becoming harder to pin down and the qualities once associated with the category are increasingly appearing across the wider beer market.