There are so many things to talk about in a weekly beer column but, without fail, something else always floats to the surface.

I’d really love to discuss how Great American Beer Festival organizers and craft beer clubhouse rule makers at the Brewers Association printed their list of the top 50 craft breweries in the country and continued to contort the definition of “craft brewer” by including Founders (30% of which is owned by huge Spanish brewer Mahou San Miguel). At the same time, they excluded the Craft Brew Alliance’s Widmer Brothers, Redhook and Kona (32.2% owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev BUD, -0.75% ). At some point, the definition of a craft brewer will be “not Anheuser-Busch InBev or MillerCoors.”

But no. Hopes of all of the above were dashed March 27 when Oskar Blues said it was not only buying Comstock Park, Mich.-based Perrin Brewing Co., but selling a stake to Boston private-equity firm Fireman Capital Partners. That sale would allow Oskar Blues and founder Dale Katechis to buy up more breweries in various regions of the U.S.

That all sounded really familiar. In November, San Diego’s Green Flash bought its longtime neighbor Alpine Brewing. Boston Beer Co. SAM, -0.23% , makers of Samuel Adams, purchased Los Angeles-based Angel City in 2012 and followed that up by buying New York’s Coney Island Craft Lagers in 2013. Long Trail Brewing of Bridgewater Corners, Vt., bought Vermont neighbor Otter Creek in 2009 before purchasing longtime Vermont brewer The Shed in 2011.

However, only that last deal involved private-equity money — from Fulham and Co., which has owned Long Trail since 2006. In fact, the last time we heard from Fireman Capital Partners, it was buying a $35 million stake in Utah Brewing Partners and their Wasatch and Squatters beers. Since then, Southern Tier in Lakewood, N.Y.; SweetWater in Atlanta; Uinta in Salt Lake City; and Full Sail in Hood River, Ore., all sold stakes to private-equity firms.

But they aren’t Oskar Blues. We’ve spoken with Katechis on a number of occasions and, since canning his first beer in 2002 as a gimmick to draw people to his Lyons, Colo., brewpub, he’s been thinking big. He’s turned Oskar Blues into a 146,000-barrel operation that, according to the Brewers Association, is the 30th-largest brewery in the country. In Colorado, its presence has expanded to two brewing facilities and brewpubs, a burger joint, a “bicycle cantina,” a small bicycle-manufacturing facility and a canning system for take-away beer called The Crowler. After opening an East Coast brewery and taproom in Brevard, N.C., in 2013, Oskar Blues began making its beers available to NASCAR fans at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

From the cans to the low-alcohol Pinner IPA to distribution in 42 states and Washington, D.C., Katechis has made clear that he wants Oskar Blues to be as accessible as possible. If that means buying up some of the more than 3,200 breweries in the U.S., he seems up to the task.

Granted, the business of buying up small breweries forced one of Boston-based Harpoon’s founders to quit and sell his shares to employees. But if Katechis can make this work, Oskar Blues might be able to rewrite the definition of mainstream beer to “not Anheuser-Busch InBev or MillerCoors” as well.

Jason Notte is a freelance writer based in Portland, Ore. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post and Esquire. Notte received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in 1998. Follow him on Twitter @Notteham.