(FORTUNE Magazine) – Making a buck at craft brewing has been as easy as falling off a barstool the last few years. So Wall Street is now bellying up for a couple of IPO brewers. They'd better start chugging; the party won't last long.

Investors went on a bender last month when Pete's Brewing Co. hit the market. The stock, priced at $18 a share, closed its first day of trading at $25.25 and hasn't sold below $23.75 yet. No Netscape this, but not bad for a 5,000-year-old product. Boston Beer, of Sam Adams fame, will roll out in mid-December; the Northwest's Hart Brewing, which makes Pyramid Ales, is not far behind.

This intoxicating roundup of offerings began in August when Redhook Brewing, a specialty beermaker started in Seattle by former wine marketer Paul Shipman and Starbucks co-founder Gordon Bowker, tapped the market. The stock was priced at $17, never traded below $24.75, and was recently at $27.25.

While total domestic beer sales slumped 0.6% in 1994, craft brews grew by 44%. The industry should grow more than 50% this year. That will give them perhaps 2% of the market. But industry watchers see the segment grabbing a 7% to 10% market share by 2000.

Growth is certainly slowing at Boston Beer now that it has reached national distribution, but sales still increased a hearty 20% in the third quarter, to $44.5 million. Pete's doubled its sales from the year-earlier quarter, to $19.8 million.

If Boston Beer and Pete's have a weak spot, it's manufacturing: They hire old-line brewers such as G. Heileman or Pittsburgh Brewing to make their products. These are troubled operators. That why Pete's is building a brewery with its IPO money.

Boston Beer founder Jim Koch's stake after the IPO could be worth more than $100 million, heady reward for a career preaching the virtues of small beer. But he has many pintsize disciples, brewing away like monks: Last year 64 new microbreweries opened; the count is up to 59 so far this year.

A microbrewhaha awaits. Specialty brews still carry beer-belly-fat margins, so some bars and grocery stores give them more than half their tap or shelf space. But as the competition thickens and margins thin, push will come to shove on the shelves. Piper Jaffray analyst Allan Hickok says first-tier brewers like Redhook and Sierra Nevada have staying power. The rest "are keeping the shelf space warm for them until they get there."

--Eileen P. Gunn