(Portland, OR) – Profit was up big for Craft Brewers Alliance in the second quarter with the sale of its hefty stake in Goose Island but the real story is always in the barrels. Let us take a closer look…

Total shipments topped 191k barrels for the second quarter, up nearly 12% from the second quarter of 2010.

Remember when I hinted that Kona Brewing may actually pass RedHook Brewery as the second largest CBA member this year?

Well, it’s already happened. Through the first half, Kona shipped 90.6k barrels of beer to 89.5k Redhook’s barrels. Kona shipments grew 35% in the 2nd quarter and have grown 41% for the year so far. The majority of that growth is coming on the off-premise side.

Kona may even win the race to be the next small brewer to hit 200k barrels, passing Bell’s, Harpoon and Boulevard who were each around 150k barrels produced in 2010.

Solid all around for Kona once again…

How about the other two members of the Craft Brewers Alliance? The first quarter that we’d see some results from the mega re-branding efforts that launched early this past spring…

RedHook had an improved quarter, up 4.4%. Widmer Brothers was down 5.1%.

Off-premise growth for both breweries was steady, if not improved in the case of RedHook, but draft sales are declining. Widmer draft sales alarmingly sank 11% to just over 33,000 barrels. Recall that Widmer Brothers was a draft-only brewery through 1995. Draft sales are down to their lowest mark for Widmer Brothers since 1992 when it produced just shy of 30,000 barrels (Modern Brewery Age Year-in-Review 1993). Almost two decades.

All in all, some troubling numbers considering selling, general and administrative expenses rose 41% for the quarter.

On the bright side, CBA did trim cost of sales by nearly 5%.

As far as individual brands go, some recent Symphony IRI data (courtesy of Modern Brewery Age) breaks things down even a bit further.

Year-to-date through June 12, Kona Longboard Lager emerged as one of the nation’s top 100 brands in the food channel with 53% growth. Long Hammer IPA has been doing well for RedHook, up 5% in the same channel. On the flip side, sales of Widmer Brothers’ flagship brand, Hefeweizen, are down nearly 8% across all channels for the four weeks ending July 10.

The next plotline? It is not a matter of if but when does Kona overtake Widmer Brothers as the largest member of the Craft Brewers Alliance. If these second quarter numbers are any indication, 2012 isn’t out of the realm of possibility.