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[pablito]

lol @ one,

One doesn't just drink a light beer, one drinks 6/12 or 24/30 light beers in a single sitting. A lot of beer snobs in this thread are not really comprehending the fact that light beer drinkers are not sitting around cherishing the fucking taste of these beers for 5 - 15 minute intervals at a time, but rather drinking light beers while doing something actually eventful.

I understand the place of lawnmower beers. I don't really believe that light beers capture that much market share because people are doing something active. The majority is probably consumed by people sitting at home on the couch.

The "Bud is for people that have FUN" ads I've been seeing seem to be working. Meanwhile I just threw a 100 person bbq recently and the craft beer got decimated. People hardly touched the Bud and Corona and shit I bought.

Aaaaaand I'm not sure how you drink 6 beers in a sitting without spending 5-15 minutes doing so.

 

[ejabx]

For me, I went from drinking Corona and Heinekens to strictly craft beers (IPAs, sours, etc.), but the downside, of course, is that then tend to have more calories (the Sour Monkey I had last night was 285 calories),

I'm trying to get my weight back on track so this summer is strictly Corona Light - they're light, refreshing and has 90 calories.

 

[riotous]

Do you have source for that? I've heard buyouts by the big brewers are really slowing down growth and volumes were almost flat in 2016.

I'd have thought places like Brazil and China have faster growing craft beer markets right now.

I've read it numerous times. There were ~2,500 breweries in the US in 2013, there are now over 5,500.

That's a 120% growth rate over just 3 and a half years. Sheer numbers wise nobody is even close AFAIK.

All I could find on Brazil were sales numbers, not breweries opening. Same with China. You might be able to see the "flat" grow of 2016 and find a much smaller market who can top it percentage wise but I can't find anything; even the "flat" growth of 2016 is still upwards of 25% more breweries.

Short answer: no I don't have a good single link I can give you there doesn't appear to be anything out there. But I don't see any market anywhere claiming more than double it's growth over 3 years.

 

[krameriffic]

I completely agree.

But if you are going to make that argument, then you should at least get your facts straight.

I didn't state any facts nor make any argument. I simply pointed out that number of breweries is a bad metric. I should have gone a step further and pointed out that number of breweries per capita is an even worse metric. Number of people in the country doesn't make a lick of difference to what its breweries are up to.

I personally know people willing to drop thousands of dollars on unique, rare, and hard to find beers. It's not as crazy as wine and bourbon people can get, but the real craft beer enthusiast crowd is still young, and America is its breeding ground. The size of the market as a whole doesn't really matter. It's what the people at the absolute top are doing that matters. And those people are making beers that people travel thousands of miles, wait hours in line for, drop hundreds of dollars on single bottles of.

Whether you think that stuff is justified or not, that those are "real beers" or not, doesn't matter. The best American brewers (and, in fairness, Cantillon, Drie Fonteinen and Tilquin in Belgium) are the only ones who have driven that kind of passion in their customers. These are the people pushing the beer envelope, redefining what beer is. Most people don't even know who they are, and when they think craft beer, they think Avery or New Belgium or Goose Island.

 

[neurosisxeno]

The "Bud is for people that have FUN" ads I've been seeing seem to be working. Meanwhile I just threw a 100 person bbq recently and the craft beer got decimated. People hardly touched the Bud and Corona and shit I bought.

Aaaaaand I'm not sure how you drink 6 beers in a sitting without spending 5-15 minutes doing so.

That's a kinda poor example. I'm going to assume the BBQ you threw was people and their families, in which case people will generally have 1-3 craft brews over a decent amount of time because they are driving to and from. The last BBQ I had was for my bday and we had a party where people were crashing at out place. We bought a 30 rack of PBR, a 30 rack of Bud Lite, and about 36 craft brews (2 survival packs, and 2 6 packs). The PBR was gone, most of the bud lite was gone, and about half the craft brews were when we woke up the next day. When people are planning on getting drunk Light beer is unbeatable--especially in the summer.

 

[Deleted member 22576]

Ever hear of a cleansing beer?

You gotta drink both. Heavy at the start, light at the finish. To cleanse the system.

 

[neurosisxeno]

Ever hear of a cleansing beer?

You gotta drink both. Heavy at the start, light at the finish. To cleanse the system.

That's also a great use for it. Throw a bud lite between 2 higher quality beers to cleanse the pallet.

 

[The Albatross]

With the session market emerging over the last 5 years, that's really filled my need for low-alcohol, mouth-wetting beers. Although, if I'm at a bar that only has strong beer (e..g, anything higher than ~6.7% for me), then I'd honestly probably get a budweiser or a MGD (or if they have Narraganset, Pabst, etc). There's a handful of ignorant restaurant/bar owners who equate "good beer" with "strong beer," which is probably my most frustrating misconception (as someone who drinks a damn ton of beer).

I just don't like drinking high alcohol beer anymore. I might have like 4oz of a high alcohol porter, stout, quad, etc, but not anymore than that, especially high alcohol pale ales. THere's only a handful of high alcohol pale ales that I'll really drink because usually the malt character is too high... Lawson's Sip of Sunshine (8%?), Alchemist (8%, though I'd definitely choose Focal banger over Heady TOpper, which I think is kind of overrated), and a small handful of others, which drink a lot lower than their alcohol content.

 

[Futureman]

Do you have source for that? I've heard buyouts by the big brewers are really slowing down growth and volumes were almost flat in 2016.

yea... I can't remember if it was posted on GAF, but I remember an article from a brewer in the U.S. stating that while things have been great for the past 10 years, things aren't so rosy right now. I wish I could find the article now.

 

[NandoGip]

Craft beer lovers when they see someone drinking a cool, refreshing Pabst Blue Ribbon: