EXPECT TO SEE A LOT OF PALE LAGERS WITH VAGUELY SPANISH-SOUNDING NAMES IN A CLEAR, SILK-SCREENED BOTTLES.

Years ending in multiple zeros fascinate us. Each turn of a century supposedly marks the passing of one era and the beginning of another. But as December 31, 1999, fades into January 1, 2000, the safest prediction is that things will continue pretty much as they are.

On the other hand, brewing history does have some surprising twists and turns. Who would have guessed, over an ice cold Schlitz in 1980, that America in less than two decades would have over 1,300 small breweries turning out every style under the sun? Keeping the hazards of prognostication in mind, here are a few predictions for changes in the beer drinker’s world between now and the millennium.

1. Macro micros are out; local beers are in

Last year, five of the top 10 craft brewers lost volume. Redhook and Pyramid experienced plant shutdowns and layoffs. Pete's Brewing Co. suffered a 15 percent drop in sales and wound up sold to the Gambrinus Co.

However, the craft beer segment still grew by 5 percent, which means that the smaller breweries must be picking up the slack. The Alaskan Brewing Co.—whose beers are rarely seen east of Idaho—reported a healthy 56 percent surge in sales, while Deschutes Brewery of Bend, OR, shot up 23 percent.

Craft beer drinkers, a notoriously fickle segment, are beginning to form strong brand allegiances. And increasingly, they're opting for the local guys whose beers aren't available beyond the state—or county—line. This parochialism can be extreme. “Craft brewing, when all is said and done, will get more regional,” predicts Peter Egelston, president of the Smuttynose Brewing Co. in Portsmouth, NH. “New England breweries will thrive in New England. Vermont and Maine, in particular, are very loyal to their own native-made products.” As Egelston recalls, “Several years ago, West Coast breweries began sending their excess capacity out here and got their noses bloodied. Their products were greeted by a great big collective yawn.”

These lessons aren't lost on craft brewers who have undergone major expansion programs. For instance, Great Lakes’ new brewery will eventually expand production to over 60,000 barrels annually. But that flood of beer won't reach beyond Ohio and contiguous states. "We don't have any plans for national distribution," assures owner Pat Conway. Craft beer drinkers can expect to see fewer out-of-state brands in beverage coolers—but a fresher product overall. Small breweries can police their accounts and rotate stock faster in their backyards.

On the same note, don't look for many new craft beers from large companies. Miller's Lowenbrau Marzen and Premium Pils sank with barely a ripple. The Jack Daniels Distillery axed its line of specialty beers at the end of 1997. Latrobe Brewing Co. in Latrobe, PA, will probably write finis to its Latrobe Pale Ale, Bohemian Pils and Bavarian Black. "The craft beer segment is in such disarray that it's not wise [to back these specialty beers]," Latrobe marketing director Brad Hittle told Advertising Age back in February. Anheuser-Busch quietly retired its American Originals line, preferring to bank on the less assertive Michelob specialty family.

Big breweries do some things well, small breweries do other things well, and they're both beginning to realize it.

2. Lagers, lagers everywhere

After focusing on ales for 20 years, craft breweries seem to be rushing into production with lagers. Pete's Brewing Co. in Palo Alto came out with its ESP (Extra Smooth Pub) Lager. Widmer Brothers Brewing Co. in Portland, OR, revamped its product line with Ray's Amber Lager. New Belgium Brewing Co. in Ft. Collins released Blue Paddle Pilsner as its summer seasonal. Brooklyn Brewery in New York recently premiered a southern German-style pils crafted from 100 percent German barley and hops. "At one time, this would have been seen as too light a style for a craft brewery," observed brew master Garrett Oliver. "But beer drinkers are more sophisticated; they don't need to be hit over the head anymore."

Even tiny brewpubs are dabbling in bottom fermentation. The Elliott Bay Brewing Co. in Seattle held a maibock festival this spring, with two guest beers and its own entry, My! Oh! Maibock, a pale doppelbock (original gravity 18.5 Plato) aged two months. That's a big investment in tank space for a seven-barrel operation. "The Northwest is associated with hoppy ales, but there are enough educated and curious drinkers that there'll always be a home for lagers," said brewer Doug Hindman.

Some lagers, like Pete's ESP, are aimed at the crossover drinker. But lagers don't have to be easy-drinking or boring. Tuppers' Hop Pocket Pils, from the Old Dominion Brewing Co. in Ashburn, VA, is an unfiltered, bottle-conditioned kellerpils with an aggressive noble hop spiciness. Kali Ganga India Dark Lager, an offering at the Blue N Gold brewpub in Arlington, VA, is a true Reinheitsgebot beer—one brewed with no respect for tradition. Kali Ganga is made with a malt bill typical of a robust porter, has the hop character of an India pale ale, and is fermented with a lager yeast but at ale-like temperatures. A small portion of each batch is racked off and served from the cask. "We were looking for India pale ale's evil twin," laughed Blue N Gold's owner Dan Litwin. "When you look at the family tree of beers, it's heavily lopsided toward the ales. The lager side is where you're going to get into uncharted territory," he added.

3. Domestic imports

Rather than risk large shipping costs, broken bottles and spoilage, foreign breweries will increasingly opt to brew their beer under license at American facilities. The recently opened Franconia Brewing Co. near Wilkes-Barre, PA, is producing the crisp Bamberger Herren Pils under an agreement with the Keesman Brewery in Bamberg, Germany. At the same time, Pretzel City Brewing Co. in Reading is brewing and kegging Bolten Alt for the Bolten Brauerei in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Larger foreign companies are also taking this route. Kirin for this country is now made at the Anheuser-Busch plant in Los Angeles, and it's been many a year since the Foster's we consume in America was actually brewed down under. And don't forget the Indian mega-corporation,UB Group, which plans to brew its Kingfisher Lager at the Ten Springs Brewing Co. in Saratoga Springs, NY.

4. Here come the Corona clones

Light beers, dry beers, ice beers…what will be the next mass-market fad? Expect to see a lot of pale lagers with vaguely Spanish-sounding names in clear, silk-screened bottles. Corona registered a 10-million case increase in sales last year, dethroning Heineken as the top US import.

Anheuser-Busch, quick to jump on the bandwagon, is test-marketing a pale lager called Azteca in southern California, as well as a tequila-and-lime-flavored brew called Tequiza in the Southwest. Fischer Breweries of Strasbourg, France, is poised to introduce Desperados, another tequila-flavored brew aimed at the nightclub and discotheque crowd. Fischer is so confident of the beer's success that it paid a six-figure sum to the Coast Range Brewing Co. of Gilroy, CA, to secure the Desperado trademark.

Micros can play at this game, too. B.A. Brewmeister, a brew-on-premises in Virginia Beach that markets its own beers as St. George Brewing Co., is doing a private label called Bitchin' Brew that's described as a "Corona clone with lime extract already in it."

5. New beer hot spots, and must-have beers

Many areas of the country are at or near the brewery saturation point, but there's still room in the Sun Belt and Rust Belt. The Atlanta metro area, as of last spring, boasted 15 microbreweries and brewpubs—not to mention one of the country's premier multitaps, Taco Mac in Snellville, GA, with 156 draft selections. Phoenix is truly an oasis in the desert; this Southwest metropolis and nearby Tempe have over a dozen craft breweries between them. And Cleveland has gone from being the Mistake on the Lake to Milwaukee on the Cuyahoga. The city produces an amazing varieties of beers, from the prize-winning ales and lagers of Great Lakes to a genuine Belgian-style gueuze from the Diamondback Brewery.

As far as states go, Michigan had 59 breweries as of early July, according to Mary Halfpenny, circulation director of The Michigan Beer Guide. Only California and Colorado have more. At the other end of the brewing spectrum, Mississippi has nowhere to go but up. On July 1, 1998, brewpubs finally became legal in the Magnolia State. According to a report in the Biloxi Sun Herald, there have been glimmers of interest from businesses in Hattiesburg, Jackson, Natchez and Oxford, not to mention some of the larger casinos.

Remember a couple Christmases ago when that guy in New York traded in his frequent flyer miles to jet to the West Coast, just to buy a few cases of Bigfoot Barleywine? There are still small breweries that inspire this sort of loyalty. Topping the list is Wisconsin’s New Glarus Brewing Co. Their exquisite Belgian Red cherry beer will be available in Manhattan, Portland, OR, and possibly Denver and Chicago by the time you read this; however, New Glarus's new Raspberry Tart remains for sale only within Wisconsin. "Two guys from Philadelphia drove here on a weekend just to pick up some cherry beer,” laughs brewery president Deborah Carey. “They're maniacs!"

Northern California's wine country is home to several newer micros which are attaining the same cult status: Bear Republic Brewing Co. in Healdsburg does a ruby-colored Red Rocket Ale with a wonderful resiny hop character. And from the Jack Russel Brewing Co. in Camino comes a range of British-style ales, including the soft, toffeeish Jack's Brown Ale.

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6. Blurring the distinctions between microbreweries and brewpubs, between contract breweries and brick-and-mortar breweries

An on-site pub or restaurant can be a useful showcase for a small brewery. The Old Dominion Brewing Co., a freestanding micro when it opened in Virginia in 1990, added an adjacent brewpub in 1996. According to brewery president Jerry Bailey, the pub is raking in between $85,000 and $100,000 a month, while filling 2,000 growlers to go. It's even attracted at least one celebrity diner: Washington Redskins owner John Kent Cook, who is said to drop by weekly during the football season.

Meanwhile, many of the more successful brewpubs have begun contract-brewing bottled versions of their more successful beers, or broken ground on production facilities. Approaching the problem from the opposite end, at least two contract brewers, Hudepohl-Schoenling of Cincinnati and Barley Boys of Omaha, have established tiny pilot breweries for experimenting with more exotic specialty beers.

Look for the traditional categories of microbrewery, brewpub and contract brewer to become increasingly meaningless. For the craft beer drinker, this will mean total immersion. You drink your favorite brew in the shadow of the brew house, eat a meal prepared with that same beer, and pick up a six-pack on the way home.

7. Mergers and buyouts will continue

Besides Pete's bombshell, this year we've seen Carmel Brewing Co. of Carmel, CA, merge with Mendocino Brewing; Poor Henry's of Philadelphia has taken over the Dock Street labels; and New York's Spring Street Brewing Co. (contract brewer of Wit Beer fame) has entered a partnership with Longshore Brewing Co., a brewery with attached restaurant on Long Island.

It all makes sense. Too much underutilized tank space and too many bottling lines are lying idle five days a week. This has happened twice before in American brewing history. The turn of the century saw immense conglomerations, such as the 21 breweries that merged to form the Pittsburgh Brewing Co. in 1899, or the 16 Baltimore companies that coalesced into the Gottlieb-Bauernschmidt-Straus Brewing Co. in 1901. Prohibition hit the reset button, but by the 1940s the bigger fish were gobbling up the minnows again. Right now, there are 1,300-plus small breweries in the country and a pie that's not growing fast enough to feed every mouth.

For the consumer, this will mean less choice—if by choice you mean 14 amber ales in your beverage store cooler instead of four. But the distinctive brands will survive.

So far, we've been sticking with safe predictions. Now let's go out on a limb.

8. Greater availability of craft beer in cans

The real problem with cans is their image. They evoke a vision of Homer Simpson guzzling a Duff or Bluto Blutarski in Animal House smashing the empties against his forehead. "Cans are for baked beans and soups, not fine beverages," Pyramid Breweries' CEO George Hancock once scoffed at the idea of craft beers in aluminum. "Never!" answered Steve Harrison of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. when asked if the company ever considered canning its pale ale.

Be truthful, though. Aren't there occasions when cans come in handy? Say you're parched and you forgot to stock the refrigerator. Cans chill down faster than bottles. Have you ever been turned away from a beach or a picnic grounds because you were carrying bottles? Cans don't present a threat of broken glass and are welcome in places where bottles are banned. Have you ever been on a five-hour flight with no beer to choose from except some ho-hum national brand or import? Airlines prefer cans because they're lighter and take up less room.

The widget cans marketed here by Guinness, Murphy and other European brewers have removed some of the stigma. Pete's Brewing has been toeing the waters by offering its Wicked Summer Brew in cans on a limited basis. Boston Beer Co. has produced a cream ale-type product called Boston Beer that is available in 440 ml cans only in Great Britain. Others will follow. There's a niche here and somebody is going to fill it.

9. Non-alcohol craft beers

O'Doul's Amber, the only American NA beer brewed with specialty grains and made in conformance with the Reinheitsgebot, doesn't bridge the yawning chasm between near beer and the real thing—but it narrows it a little. Will we ever see a NA ale, bock or wheat beer? The trouble is, the non-alcohol category as a whole fell by 10 percent in 1997. But if anyone can revive a failing niche, it's Anheuser-Busch with its limitless advertising budget. A-B has launched a $10 million ad campaign to push O'Doul's Amber, not as an ersatz beer for designated drivers, but as an anywhere, anytime drink "when all you want is taste."

In a way, that's precisely what Miller did with light beer. As long as Lite was marketed as a health product for the dietetically challenged, a sudsy version of skim milk, it went nowhere. As soon as Miller began bragging about the great taste and using healthy, active, macho types to push it, sales zoomed.

If the anti-alcohol lobby succeeds in making a .08 blood alcohol content the national standard for drunk driving, we'll all have to be more careful. Soft drinks and iced tea don't always satisfy. Wouldn't it be nice to have a NA beer that actually resembles a real beer in taste? The big breweries would love to sell it to you. They price NAs about the same as normal beer but make a much larger profit because they don't pay excise taxes on non-alcohol beverages.

10. Small brewery/distilleries

So far, the only one to pick up on this idea is Anchor Brewing Co.'s Fritz Maytag, who has released an Old Potrero Rye Whiskey and, more recently, a gin. But it will be surprising if no one else follows suit. Because beer and spirits are taxed at different rates, the brewery would have to segregate its facilities, but the industry is already familiar with "alternating premises" arrangements. Beer making is a necessary first step in the production of whiskey. If a batch of beer turned out less than satisfactory, the brewery would have an option besides dumping it down the drain.

High quality spirits demand premium prices. The Brickskeller Restaurant in Washington, DC, sells Old Potrero, when it's in stock, for $8.50 a pop—a "pop" being equal to 1 1/2 ounces.

Wouldn't it be a blast to celebrate the workday's end with a beer and shot chaser that both began their existence in the same tank, from the same batch of grain? The pioneering spirit of craft beer brewers may one day make this possible.

Greg Kitsock is senior editor of Barleycorn and a frequent contributor to other beer-related publications.

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This story originally appeared in All About Beer Magazine in November 1998.