Here is the key sentence in the article.
…an acceleration in the long-term decline of so-called domestic-premium brands, which include Bud Light and rivals Miller Light and Coors Light…
So, are people drinking less beer or are they drinking less piss beer? Could it be that people are having two Hazy Imperial IPA’s with 8+ ABV instead of a six pack of Coors Light? I am taking this headline with a grain of salt.
EDIT: I found my glasses.
If that’s premium what isn’t premium? Steel reserve? That’s just malt Coors with different marketing. Micky’s? That’s just malt Miller with different marketing. 10 barrel? That bud light wearing 2010’s hipster clothes.
I think we’re giving these brand too much credit with the word premium.
Article has a vague accusation that soda-based drinks are to blame without covering any of the other possibilities here
I thought soda consumption is also down? And the fizzy alcohols had leveled off or declining as well? I am curious myself.
I’m sure the weed legalizing has had an impact as well. I have completely stopped drinking in favor of weed. Saves my liver and no hangover.
Saves the brain, too. Not saying weed is exceptional, but alcohol fucks the brain up.
THC in weed hurts short term memory and can cause paranoia. I just stick with CBD.
CBD isn’t psychoactive so it’s not gonna be the same for most people, but good on you! Honestly probably just drinking water is really the way to go for health. There is probably an argument for psychoactive substances relieving stress (which is a potent detriment to health) but there are also healthier ways to do that
Nothing fun is good for us. Just use substances in moderation and you’ll most likely be fine
I think that many people are switching to hard liquor because of the state of things, as well. My town alone has seen like a 7-800% increase in alcohol sales since covid.
Stop making so many mediocre IPAs. Other styles do exist.
IPAs also hide the off flavours that would be easily detected in a larger or pils.
They take less time to brew than a pilsner so when you only have a small capacity you can churn out more product if you’re targeting IPAs. This is generally why (beyond the general trend) microbreweries will opt for IPAs over lagers.
beer shipments
That’s the problem. A lot of people are living in and around cities now. We buy beer at the brewery. Do these figures include 1st party sells? Distributors have always been a necessary evil and many states have laws saying you must go through a distributor for selling elsewhere, but many breweries are just doing taprooms now to not have to deal with that. I’d like to see those stats if they exist.
I do understand that many people are buying seltzers now, myself included.
It also doesn’t help that the craft beer scene turned into a competition to push the most over the top bitter IPAs possible. A lot of the appeal of craft beer went away for me when 3/4 of the taps became unremarkable IPAs. A good IPA is wonderful, but the vast majority of what you run into isn’t that.
It’s only marginally more interesting than when the landscape was dominated by lagers.
Hops are really awesome when used correctly, but many breweries just toss in hops to cover up bad bases. I’m lucky to have a few breweries around me that make really goods stouts and sours.
At least around me that has improved. Ten years ago it was just a dick-measuring contest about who could make the bitterest beer. Once you hit 90+ IBUs you’re not even pretending to make something good.
Since then, craft breweries here have course corrected. Most of them here are focusing on making a well- balanced IPA as their flagship, then experimenting with sours, stouts and saisons.
A brewery near me is owned by a guy from India, and has been very creative with spices reminiscent of different foods from that region, that I just haven’t seen anywhere else! Maybe it’s a sour or has tamarind or a juicy IOA with different fruit notes, or a mango lassi dessert beer, etc
That might have been the case 10-15 years ago (and I guess maybe it still is in some areas that are slow to follow the trends of craft beer) but these days that’s just not the case for most of the small scale craft beer.
Sure, IPAs have become the iconic style of American craft beer and they’ll likely be overrepresented in the US craft market for at the very least the next several decades, but for the past 5-10 years things have moved away from there over saturation that those who dislike the style still like to pretend dominates the scene.
Since the peak of ultra-bitter-IPA-mania, we’ve seen similar (if smaller) fads/trends for sours, NEIPAs, and most recently hazy IPAs (the latter two of which are not in the excessively bitter trend of the IPAs most think of). We’ve also seen fruit beers and seltzers take over, maybe even beyond the degree that IPAs ever did.
In the meantime, we’ve seen these extreme hop bombs relegated to the sidelines of the modern craft beer scene. My personal theory being that lots of brewers wanted to get in on that trend, tried, and found out just how tricky it can be to craft a good imperial IPA, and once people found good ones with wide availability, they stuck with them and the rest of the market dried up. While there’s nuance within hop bills, it’s still all hops. With fruit beers, it’s far easier to do something that nobody else is doing.
It might have something to do with weed being easier to get. Where I live it’s easier and faster to get weed than it is to get beer, especially on sunday.
Alcohol is expensive and makes you feel like shit. Who does that to themselves by choice when there’s alternatives?
After you’ve acquired the taste. It was social pressure that got me to acquire it, but if that social pressure is dropping, it doesn’t surprise me that fewer pick it up because beer tastes kinda awful at first.
This is part of why alcohol companies spend insane amounts of cash towards anti legalization efforts
