The Brewers Association shyly toasted to 6% growth last year (a clear slowdown), even as its largest members graduated out as a result of their ownership, size, or portfolio make-up breaking their vows. They took their significant barrels and dollars with them.

For those larger brewers still in the club by one technicality or another, there are serious market forces at work that serve to undermine their success and invade their former optimism—an optimism that the smallest members of the industry tend to still feel. And they’re looking to fortify their position for the contraction that seems imminent.

Larger players such as MolsonCoors, Constellation, AB InBev, and other foreign conglomerates such as Sapporo, Kirin, Duvel, Heineken, and San Miguel, and private-equity companies like those behind SweetWater, Dogfish Head, Oskar Blues, and many others—even those as small and coveted as The Bruery—are hoping to be well-positioned in what amounts to a segment of the industry where they can get the highest margins for the lowest volumes. Because as the beer category shrinks against wine and spirits, and consumer trends show less drinking happening overall, the volumes that contributed to former growth patterns is unlikely to return.

As a result of these pressures, and some existential angst, the craft sector is facing some fracturing and reorganizing of its priorities. The Brewers Association, which is the most vocal, populated, and influential tribe amongst brewers, is sometimes a unifying voice for craft. “The association is an organization of brewers, for brewers and by brewers,” and boasts more than 4,000 members. (Good Beer Hunting is an individual member.)

In the recent boom years, the story of the BA has mostly focused on its growth, celebrating the sizable bites it’s taken out of corporate beer’s market share. As growth slowed and smaller brewers were starting up at an alarming pace, the message switched to a demand for quality, lest anyone “fuck it up,” as Paul Gatza so eloquently put it. But now that their largest brewers are exiting through acquisition and becoming competitors to their growth, and that wave of tiny brewers continues to poke at the plump, vulnerable middle of the organization, an interesting behavior is occurring. Despite the unprecedented size and diversity of the craft sector in 2017, the BA decided to do what it’s always done: double down on the arbitrary definition of its membership and market the intrinsic value of “independent.”

Who’s in, who’s out. Who’s real, who’s fake. Who possesses qualities that are inherently good, and who’s aping those characteristics for commercial gain. This has always been a thread, even as the terminology evolved from microbreweries, to craft breweries, to the now-hopefully-more-defensible term “indie breweries.”

The BA is desperate for the consumer to align with its view despite the increasing complexity and caveats of the terminology. Where it was once the goal to get drinkers to love “craft,” a malleable and therefore useful term for consumer adoption toward all sorts of new and exciting beers, the goal now seems to be to slice up that 12% market share gained in the last 30 years into ever-more specific and arbitrary lines, and to then ask the consumer to be wary of whatever lies on one side of 25% ownership vs. the other. Drink craft. Well, not that craft. This craft. Technically, that’s not craft. Or at least it’s not indie. But it’s still great beer. But it’s not certified. But they do have a lot of private equity. But it’s still craft. No, Anchor isn’t craft anymore. Those guys are making too much cider now, so their beer isn’t technically craft anymore.

The Brewers Association, despite conventional wisdom, is not just a trade group. It’s a marketing organization. Their stated purpose is: “to promote and protect American craft brewers, their beers and the community of brewing enthusiasts.”

Seems straightforward enough. But it’s that last part, protecting enthusiasts, that creates dissonance in the purpose beyond what a trade group typically tasks itself with accomplishing. What are they protecting us from? And why would a trade group looking to sell us one kind of product use its self-appointed role and an arbitrary definition to protect us from being sold someone else’s product? A consumer group the BA is not. It’s not the consumers’ best interest they have at heart, though many of their goals certainly align with consumers’ best interests. Their interests are their own.