(Recordnet) - Imagine this scenario:

You're sitting at the dark mahogany counter of a craft brewpub. Exposed bulbs are dangling from a thatched roof, aluminum pipes snaking across brick walls to red copper conditioning tanks.

The building is a repurposed garage, and the doors open onto the outdoor seating area strung with fairy lights.

On the handwritten 20-by-10-foot blackboard, you have more than three dozen choices, but it's clear what you're not going to get at a pub like this.

Heineken, Coors, and Miller Lite.

It's in places like this that craft beer has managed — perhaps by happy accident — to bridge the demographic gap between beer and wine. So far, the effort has contributed to craft brewing's success.

While the traditional beer industry has been losing both market share and the interest ofmillennials — who are turning in part to wine but largely to spirits — a report from the Brewer's Association showed that craft-beer volume is up 16% this year.

Nearly 700 craft breweries, which operate at a smaller scale than the traditional brewers and put a stronger emphasis on experimenting with flavors, have opened this year.

And this week, a global mega-brewer, Heineken International, announced that it would acquire half of Lagunitas Brewing Co., valuing the sixth-largest craft brewery in the US at a rumored $1 billion, according to the Press Democrat.

The craft-beer industry has marketed itself as different from the large brewers: tasty, interesting, and elevated, as well as casual. Perhaps even more important, craft brewing is alocal experience for consumers. In many cases, the beer is made close to where it is consumed.

This has allowed craft beer to slot itself between wine and traditional beer as a beverage option. What had kept beer and wine separated was their disparate demographics. If wine were the dress donned for glitzy parties, beer were the pair of khakis worn for a Fourth of July barbecue. Wine was for women, while beer — along with spirits such as whiskey and bourbon — was for men. And while wine could be drank for a quiet night in, beers was for loud and rowdy pubs.

Craft beer offers a third choice. Traditional beers, many of them mass-produced pilsners, are criticized for being bland. According to Tripp Mickle at The Wall Street Journal, craft brewing has embraced flavor and a wide range of beer-making styles, experimenting by adding ingredients such as chamomile, chocolate, and orange peels.

This overlaps with what consumers have usually associated with wine, that it has "delicious taste" and "pairs well with food," according to Nielsen.

Goes with food

"The number one objective of the craft-beer association is beer-food pairings," said Kellie Shevlin, the executive director of the Craft Beverage Expo, which brings together makers of wine, beer, and spirits in an effort to share knowledge among industries.

The Brewer's Association also released this chart of food and beer pairings, while a 2011 Demeter Group analysis of the industry showed that craft brewers met a consumer demand for "extreme flavor" and "high alcohol content."

Craft breweries are also tapping into a key demographic that has money to spend, a demographic that is stereotypically associated with wine: women. According to the Beer Association, women between the ages 21 and 34 now consume 15% of the craft-beer volume.