Where Is Craft Beer Headed Now?

I have a couple of craft breweries in my small town in Western PA. Even though the quality of beer is not the best (both are rather new), it beats drinking Bud or Miller.

 

The obvious "movement" you left out is coffee. Back when Charlie Papazian was promoting Home brewing b/c there was no "micro" or "craft", coffee was $0.50 a cup - Diner or 7-11, home or work. Nobody would say that coffee today is a "movement".
I have been drinking "craft" since it was only made by legacy brewers that hadn't failed yet. Anybody remember Prior Double Dark? I was keeping track of breweries and beers I had back when it was conceivable that I might sample from a overwhelming majority of of the then 250 US breweries (up from about 80 when I started looking for something better than BudMilSchlitz - yes Coors was then still a smallish Rockies / West Coast brand).
Today if we aren't beyond being a "movement" we are on the cusp. Bud now sells more in China than the US. That dinosaur has spent nearly 30 years trying - unsuccessfully - to destroy craft, and has only now begun taking grudging steps to making something other than water substitute under the AB banner. Meanwhile my 96 year old friend who never liked beer, tried something I handed him and said "I may have to reassess my view of beer".
With 7,000 breweries - and local bars losing out huge to young folks who go to the brewery far more often than bars. And with young couples who bring their kids and dogs to a social place very different from a bar, we have won in all but market share - and Big Beer brands continue to bleed volume. Both will survive and craft will thrive, even though it will almost certainly consolidate significantly and many will suffer. The easy money (if any) has already been made. 7,000 breweries may not be the peak, but I question whether there will still be 7000 in 10 years.
So where in 10 years? Start with a 5 years ago retrospective. Belgians were little understood and rarely drunk, sours were a weird little Beligian niche, hazy was inconceivable, and pastry stouts - not only inconceivable but also WTF - why would you want beer that tastes like a marshmallow cookie? (I still don't get that.) In 10 years, stable, solid flagships will be readily available but rotating, and the bearded ones and hipsters will be chasing something we can't dream of. How about a hazy stout that is not only bitter and malty but also fruity and sweet, and you will have too chew it - but it will actually be well-balanced and delicious? Why not, if somebody hasn't already made it, they're working on it. Maybe a beef bourguignon stout - somebody is going to jump the shark and put meat in beer. (See my imagination is limited.) We'll at last get a good Szechuan IPA, and a Quinoa & CousCous Ale with hints of Ibiza and hipster sweat. But maybe they will just be mainlining lupulin..
I look forward to the ride.

 

I never really thought about it but I guess craft has only scratched the surface of taste possibilities. My daughter would love the Quinoa & Couscous Ale as these have replaced pasta and rice in her diet. So many gastro opportunities are out there that may not have been explored. Why pair a beer when you can have the tastes married and drink it in the brew?

 

I agree. A small corner brewery (Little Brother) opened about a year ago across from Natty Greene's. They brew on site, can occasionally, are always crowded, play great music, make very good beer and do seem to be thriving. This seems to be a model that people are drawn to. It adds to the beer business and does not dilute from the whole.

 

Perfectly stated, IMHO. I wish I had typed that.

 

I'm neither a former pothead nor a user of hallucinogens (NTTAWWTOC), but I firmly believe pot should be legalized nationally.

My wife is fully aware of how much alcohol I'm consuming.

Anecdotally, I'm significantly more worried about the person that's picking up a 12-pack of an AAL and consuming that every night than I am someone engaging in an afternoon or an evening at a taproom. I've been to a LOT of places in the last dozen or so years, and I've not seen anyone that was a "belligerent drunk" other than Dark Lord Day (different than any taproom I've seen), and the half dozen trips I've made to the Three Floyds taproom have not exposed me or my family to anyone that even remotely approached belligerent or drunk.

There may be a writer that goes after "craft beer" and alcohol abuse, but I don't think it'll alter the craft beer scene - if anything, I think it'll reveal that those that are truly engaged in "craft" are more responsible in their consumption than those that are not. We'll see.

 

ISO: Quinoa & CousCous Ale

FT: anything in my cellar

TIA

 

I would agree about the guy drinking a 12 pack a day.

But, a 6 pack of a 5% ABV AAL would equal almost the same amount of alcohol as 3 pints of a 6.5% IPA.

 

@JayORear
Good points. I don't want craft to crash and burn but there needs to be an air it out session about alcoholism and craft beer.

It may have alot to do with the time of day or evening. I've seen worse drunks at craft breweries than at dive bars. Craft beer 'fests' with sampling have turned into total shit shows. Gabf a prime example. I was at a VT Brewers fest in March. That turned into a fun evening. ' Oh they're not drunk. They're having fun ' but redneck Billy and his 30 pack or Natty light is the devil.

I've seen some people beyond the loud drunk phase and right there at the passing out stage after 3 craft beers. My area has had three beer limits for a few years now. But people are going from one place to the next to drink their '3' at each one. I wouldn't say craft beer drinkers are more responsible persay. But they do tend to hide it quite well. I honestly wouldn't place one type of drunk ahead or below the other.

 

So, you missed 92-03. The reality is you didn't miss much in terms of beer today. You had lots of small brewers working hard to make great versions of classic styles with a little experiment here and there - essentially the professionalization of the brewers skills. Probably your biggest miss was when Bud overtly tried to crush micro by forcing their distributors to become single line in 95/96. The down side of that was killing off some great brewers who were blindsided and depended on distro lost in a heartbeat. The upside was that it forced the brewers to focus on building a healthy local business and a worthwhile business model. To this day we see aftershocks in the variety of business models being pursued. It was once beer & bar/food or distro. Now taprooms seat 100s, in industrial space with a food truck outside, & breweries that are super in demand have no distro but their own door.
But back to your gap, yes KBBS was intro'd in '95, but who outside Chi beer crowd heard of it. Same with DFH 90 Minute IPA in '02. Heady Topper - '03; Pliny the Younger '05. 100's of brewers came and went, but the total count climbed from 500 to abt 1800 where it had essentially plateaued from '97 to '07. And if you were a good homebrewer, you stepped back in better prepared than most to understand the good, bad and ugly. So don't discount your commentary.
As to PA/IPA world dominance - there is no evidence or reason to expect that will happen. Good beer is a premium product that costs more to make. The question is will a sufficient portion of the world be financially comfortable enough to fund that transition. And if so, will they want to transition. The reality is that even after decades of craft growth here in a wealthy country and at least a decade of shrinking majors craft remains only 23%ish of the market and total beer shipments were 170 mil barrels in '17. Most people don't care. That's why they eat milk chocolate and drink swill coffee: that is why McDonalds is so big and Heinekin is the best selling beer in Europe. If you look 10-20 years forward is the US alone, could all versions of IPAs beat out AAL. Highly doubtful but a sliver of possibility. But the variety of IPA styles will be so diverse (West Coast, East Coast NEIPA, classic Brit IPA, milkshake IPA. pale ale) that as a single style AAL will almost certainly still be dominant. We hobbyists/ beer geeks live in our own bubble and it is a growing but modest bubble.

 

Brewery tours have been around for many years here in SoCal. Not a small van but an airport van, maybe 20- 30 people. We have many active tour cos.

 

Your experience is not representative. Of course most have seen drunken peeps at a craft brewery and shit shows at beer fests, but those people Uber or have DDs most of them time. I certainly do for fests. However, part of the reason that many cities have openly embraced and encouraged craft breweries is that the law enforcement data has come back and these places are far less problematic than are those dive bars. In my city you could walk a 5k and visit 9 breweries and those aren't the only breweries in town. The City loves the industry b/c it generates sales taxes and jobs, but doesn't represent any significant use of law enforcement resources.

 

Like cavedave, I missed a dozen years beginning in 1992 after our first child was born. I had to focus on being that hyper responsible parent when the kids were young. I probably did not miss much either because I was living in a rural town that craft probably did not reach during those years. Fast forward to today, after considering your post, I realize that my liking of quality beer mirrors my desire for quality food. Give me good dark chocolate, great coffee and terrific burgers and I am happy!

 

23% is the Brewers Association's estimate of the craft brewers' dollar share of the market;

Craft brewers' share of the total beer market measured by volume (long the conventional way to measure the beer market), it's 12.7%.

The "captured"/ex-craft brewers and macro/craft beers (Blue Moon, etc) add up to another 8.5M bbl., or about another 4% of the market.

The total US beer market in '17, including imports, was 196 Million barrels, again based on the Brewers Association's stats.

 

Even if they produced average beers if the environment is right and people enjoy it, then even serving up aals would still be a winner. Most of these peple IMO are not beer geeks, they like beer but they’re good with Corona, Bud is fine etc. I’ve never had their beers but that’s irrelevant to a point, they’re creating an environment where people want to hang and have fun, and good for them. The fact they produce good beers is a huge plus, maybe they’ll turn some heads.

 

Big Beer is two beasts - AB and Everybody Else. The EE hasn't done what AB has done, I am fine with EE. AB didn't and doesn't understand craft or its attraction. The 95/96 move on distro was specifically meant to crush craft and it did that to many that were distro dependent. And yet craft brewers grew in numbers with stronger business models and then new distro entities focusing on craft were set up and AB's attempt only made the industry stronger. Then starting in '11 they began buying craft: Goose, Elysian, Wicked Weed etc. They didn't even know what they were buying - their first GI boss didn't know you could put rye in beer - rice is Buds principal brewing grain. Some interesting articles on that period and what was financially important to AB in buying flyspeck craft brewers (not amounting to Bud's spillage). It really helps them with a horrible goodwill problem and their shrinking sales. The latest - the merger with SAB was a desperation move for shrinking AB and also runs a big risk for distro dependent craft as the even bigger AB will own 250+ brands including a dozen former craft. Now they can go to retailers and say we will give you a full line from craft & imports to crap AAL, just give us all you beer shelf space, saving a little for MillerCoors, just so we don't look anti-competitive.
Make no mistake AB has been an angry and scared dinosaur in its thinking and actions. They are so driven by quarterly barrel shipments that they can't conceive of how to make craft generate enough revenue to work for them - unless they own all of it or none exists. The fact that they publicly announced that they were done buying craft is evidence that the negative reaction by us hobbyists was enough to hurt the growing businesses they bought. When they bought Ratebeer it became largely irrelevant - I know I haven't looked at it since and noone has said check it. I've had one GI since '11 - I tried a BCBS a few years ago - and I thought it was, and is, overhyped. Make no mistake if AB manages to become a dominant presence in craft level beers, they will begin watering them down in the interests of the financial statements. AB remains the enemy of craft and all other brewers just as it has been since prohibition.

 

Dale, on the same block as the Conshohocken Rec Room is a brewpub called Crowded Castle. I have yet to step inside Crowded Castle because I have heard from several folks, who I trust, that the beers there are just OK (at best). But every time I have walked by the place it has been crowded (pun intended). Yup, people will visit and drink at these places with no absolute requirement that quality beer be served.

Cheers!

 

Thanks for the clarifications. Note:
I used some quick googled numbers, no claim of precision. I saw references to 176 Mil bbl as total US shipment in '17, I don't know how that accounts for craft or why the BA has the much larger number. As to barrels/dollars, I think that as AAL shrinks a big portion turns into fewer pours of more expensive beers, so unlike the old days where only barrels mattered b/c pricing was all similar, now $$ measurements do matter much more than they once did. If you only look at barrels, US beer shipments have dropped very significantly, if you look at dollars beer sales may be about static or a small drop (don't have $ stats). Re captured craft (former craft) and macro craft (fake craft - fake is fair b/c they generally hide on the labels who made it - trying to pawn it off as some small innovative brewer). If your bbl nos. are right, that means total craftish market may be well over 20% on a $$ basis - I like that. But of course you would have to go yank Yuengling's and other legacy but defined craft's AALish beer out of the numbers too. I haven't researched good stats on that. I would love to see a full breakdown of it all by brand w/ bbl and $$ info - big beer, former craft, fake craft as well as craft.