The Brewers Association recently updated the organization's purpose, mission, core values, beliefs and definition of a craft brewer, which would now include D.G. Yuengling and Son Inc., Pottsville.
Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association headquartered in Boulder, Colo., said Tuesday that to the best of his understanding of Yuengling's operation, it would fit the craft brewer data set starting with the 2014 statistics that the association compiles in the first two months of 2015.
It will continue to use the old definition for the 2013 statistics of the craft beer market that will be presented in press releases starting March 17.
"Yuengling has been a voting member of the Brewers Association and they have engaged with the association throughout the years, so, in some ways, they have been supporting the community of small and independent brewers, and Brewers Association has been supporting Yuengling already," Gatza said. "The craft beer marketing element is what will be new."
Yuengling could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
According to the BA website, the former purpose of the BA, defined by its board of directors, was "to promote and protect small and independent American brewers, their craft beers and the community of brewing enthusiasts."
It said Monday that while that purpose defended "craft beers," the association does not define craft beers, so it promoted and protected all small brewers, but only the beers that generally fell in the traditional part of the craft brewer definition.
The new purpose addresses the small breweries in the U.S. and all of their beers, with the revised purpose reading, "to promote and protect American craft brewers, their beers and the community of brewing enthusiasts."
The next part changed what previously stated if small brewers were called craft or not based on the types of beers that made up their majority of sales or those served as sales flagship.
Those that relied on standard lager and light lager as the majority of sales, such as Yuengling, could be small, but not craft.
"While this division made sense in earlier days of the craft brewing revolution, we see evolution leading many craft brewers to consider the use of adjunct grains in their recipes," the association said. "Some craft brewers do use adjuncts to bring greater palatability by lightening some of their stronger beers. Other brewers are deliberately going for lighter bodied beers in sessionable offerings. When one looks at the millennia of brewing practice, one common thread for the vast majority of time is that brewers employed ingredients that are readily available to them."
The previous definition also left out traditional brewers who had been around for generations and "a brewer that has been around for over 100 or 150 years not being considered a traditional brewer didn't make a whole lot of sense."
The changes to the BA purpose and craft brewer definition, in essence, now clarify that the association supports all independent small brewers as craft brewers and promotes all of their beers, but the board did not discuss individual companies in the review of the purpose and definition and the result is a more inclusive Brewers Association.
One thing that the board did not change is the required annual production of 6 million barrels of beer or fewer.
The "small" pillar of the craft brewer definition included a minor addition to contextualize the 6 million barrels in terms of the market share, which is about 3 percent of the just under 200-million-barrel annual U.S. beer market.
According to the most recent statistics, Yuengling sold 2.5 million barrels of beer in 2011, sharing the title of largest American-owned brewery with Boston Beer, according to the trade publication Beer Marketer's Insights, based in Suffern, N.Y.