The Craft Beer Boom Has Gone Flat

Maybe some of these bigger craft brands will start buying up the smaller guys. Like oskar blues did with cigar city and perrin.

 

Personally, I haven't been happier with the beer market.

I have 2 great local breweries, Conclave and Lone Eagle, that I can get growlers and cans of quite easily. the beer is amazing and lasts me through a week with homebrew supplementing the rest. i've had a lot of beers in my young life and have tried many of the good beers on my local shelf so i buy the stuff i really like, buy local and drink homebrew.

Life is Good friends.

 

Why aren't more craft brewers making Belgian Witbiers if Blue Moon is outselling all craft beers? I rarely see Belgian Wits in local taproom lineups or regional/national.

 

Because the folks drinking Blue Moon aren't craft beer drinkers.

 

But, they think they are!

 

Now, for the first time, we’re adding a new beer to the Fat Tire family: Fat Tire Belgian White. Taking inspiration from our decades of experience brewing Belgian beers, Fat Tire Belgian White is made with Seville oranges and Indian coriander, both freshly ground less than a mile from our Fort Collins brewery. It’s a fresh, perfectly sweet, natural tasting Belgian White.

 

When in Rome...

But there is some sense to it, too- that acronym just seems to be the way they're referred to around here, and most users will immediately recognize it. Of course, I also have to throw the word 'industrial' in there as a carry-over from how Michael Jackson used to call them. That makes even more sense these days, though, because we're starting to see some independent takes on the style (especially if you include CAPs among them).

 

A great example of market saturation and a mature market is Boston Beer Company. They are in a very slow downward spiral that is going to be tough to stop. Too many choices and no compelling reason to buy their beer. They make really good beer but not great when compared to all of the new choices that the consumer has.

 

Well, this has just started very recently in Austin, Texas with Christine Celis once again brewing Witbiers (and others):

https://www.craftbeeraustin.com/celis-brewery-austins-first-craft-brewery-is-set-to-reopen/

Maybe we will be seeing more of this in other locations?

Cheers!

 

Because if the met the price point it would imply their other labels might be overpriced.

 

who says you have to meet their price point? Typically around here btw they are available on sale at $14.99 a 12 pack, which ain't all that cheap. I see Avery 12 pack cans priced on sale maybe a buck more. I think the 6 pacs are usually $8.99, again Avery is a good comparison at $9.49 or $9.99.

at the store I worked at our biggest seller was probably Dry Dock Apricot Wheat, not a witbier obviously but in the ballpark. Speaking of Avery, White Rascal probably moved almost as fast as the Dry Dock, and faster than Avery IPA or Elle's Brown Ale.

[I will say Melvin moved about that fast, we just didn't get as much of it. Also any NEIPA we could get, principally Codename:Superfan from Odd13. If we got 20 cases at a time like we did of Dry Dock Apricot Blonde, and if word got out we had it, we could have moved it.]

To a very casual craft buyer, and there are more of them than there are of us, there's not a big difference between Witbier, Wheats, and even Saisons, and I used to try to get shoppers to move from Blue Moon or New Belgium Sunshine, or Blue Moon, into say a Funkwerks, even though there was a pretty big price differential there. But I think the Next Big Thing at least in volume sales will be exactly in that sort of Wheat/Witbier/Saison triangle.

EDIT TO ADD: I see from @jesskidden post above, New Belgium is, as the saying goes, all over the mother***er. Should have read the whole thread top down, instead of page one and skip to the last post, though it does make me feel marginally cleverer to see that NB agrees with what I've been thinking for awhile...

 

they think they are, and they can be led into our definition of it.

 

Let's see. Allagash White is their flagship. There is this little resurrected brewery in Austin called t that has a Wit. Jolly Pumpkin makes a nice one. There are more, but that is a niche that Blue Moon staked out.

 

but--if you look at the issue of New Brewer every year where they report (May I think), and read the footnotes, you'l see a very large number of "estimated" numbers--a guy sends in "1000 bbl" and if you'd ever been to the brewery you'd know they can't be doing 500--also a large number of folks who never ever submit their numbers to the BA.

I personally believe the BA numbers are directionally correct but wouldn't place much faith in their accuracy to a decimal point (i.e. 5.8%), for sure, nor probably any better than plus or minus a couple percentage points. (i.e 5% = 3-7%) But good for trendlines.

 

I believe so if they wish to compete. Around here Blue Moon six packs sell for two to three dollars less than the craft brands. Granted that's not a large difference, the Blue Moon customers I know are not bargain basement shoppers, yet it is a perceptible difference.

 

I don't think this answers the op Question. I am thinking they meant is there good quality beer from VT that is available everyday at a good price.

In your post I don't think an equivalent of $56 a case is an everyday good price. While $12.50 is a good price for the beer you use as an example I don't think most can spend that as an everyday beer. That's over $1100 a year just to have one beer a day each year.

Is there any VT brewed beer readily available in the $8-$10 a six pack range?

Enjoy

 

As I said, voluntary. I have looked at the recent copy, and the volumes matched the breweries I know locally in MI.

 

I mean they act like BMC drinkers in that they drink Blue Moon and nothing else. They don't even seem to be interested in trying other Wits. There is a bar one town over that always has both Blue Moon and Allagash White on tap. Most of the Blue Moon drinkers there have tried Allagash White but aren't impressed. They just keep drinking Blue Moon.

 

That just means they aren't like BA members.

 

Which only goes to show how predjudiced and narrow minded the hard core beer geeks are...Budweiser American Ale was actually a very well made product.