Well, the old year is over and the New Year has begun and it’s time to review my predictions for 2007 that I made last January.

To recap, they were:

• Continued "extreme beer" growth
• Dogfish Head brews another historic beer
• Anheuser-Busch continuing to go after the craft brewing segment
• Beer and food and "beer knowledge/appreciation" increase

Nothing earth-shaking, but interesting to look back on. Let’s see…

Continued "extreme beer" growth

I think this was pretty much a no-brainer, like I said originally. Off the top of my head, the "Wild Dog" series from Flying Dog, half of Lagunitas‘ beers, Pyramid’s Imperial Hefeweizen, Dogfish’s "Red & White" and "Black and Blue", and barrel-aged goodness from Lost Abbey all were good examples of the extreme beer thing, and I might even venture to say the Imperial Hefeweizen was a tipping-point for it.

Dogfish brewing another historic beer

Nope, struck out on this one. I figured they’d brew that Bronze Age Irish beer or something, too.

A-B’s craft beer foray

Yep, this was also pretty much a given. Just look at the blogging time I spent on Winter’s Bourbon Cask Ale to get a feel on this; A-B’s craft beer push is a recognition of the double-digit growth of the craft brewing segment of the market. Expect to see more—much more—of this.

The beer knowledge/appreciation thing

Wow, this took off even more than I figured, considering. Two prominent examples: the Beer Dinners website (a Flying Dog production) and the Cicerone Certification Program. The former is just what it sounds like, a site dedicated to pairing food with beer and facilitating beer dinners. But the latter? I simply predicted, "The main indicator will be a marked increase in the mainstream media coverage of this topic"—I had no idea a whole movement would be launched.

So, overall I had 3 out of 4 predictions—granted, they weren’t hard predictions to make, I played it safe. (That’s the secret to being a good prognosticator.)

I’ll give it some thought and come up with some more predictions for 2008.