Nine Beers Americans No Longer Drink

Yes, craft beer is taking over the world, and I'm glad I'm alive to experience it!!!

 

Yeah, "drink less of" would be accurate. The title is BS

 

I'm not sure if the effect's from craft beer or if it's just a general market downturn. I would say it's poor marketing that allows some of these brands to languish on shelves.

 

Of course, those 9 beers that "Americans no longer drink" together still outsell all the "craft beer" brewed by some +2000 craft breweries in the US almost 2-to-1...

 

I found a list of five beers that Americans no longer drinker
http://articles.philly.com/2011-08-11/entertainment/29876638_1_hoegaarden-wheat-beer-root-beer

 

But chances are those drinkers just switched to Michelob Ultra, because they have switched all their marketing to push Ultra (it's Gatorade beer for attractive people!).

Same thing with MGD and Budweiser. SABMiller and InBev have put all their effort into pushing Miller Lite and Bud Light.

 

Michelob Light declines, Michelob Ultra goes up. Budweiser declines, Bud Light goes up. You see where this is going...

I would guess that an exceedingly small portion of this decline is attributable to craft beer....no one is dumping their Michelob Light and picking up some 90 Minute IPA. It all has to do with marketing and the introduction of new brands. The sales of Redd's Apple Ale, Lime-A-Rita's, Black Crown, and all the other shit that was introduced in the last year have to come from somewhere. By the same token, no one is dumping 90 Minute IPA and picking up a case of Lime-A-Rita...

 

Yeah, how's that for some perspective. Craft beer has quite the long road to winning market share.

 

I'd rather they showed losses by brewery instead of by brand. As was stated by others in this thread, just because a beer drinker switches from Bud to Bud Light doesn't mean that InBev is losing any sleep (or money) over it. That's like saying no one drinks Stone IPA anymore because Enjoy By is the hotter brand right now.

 

Beer consumption has been trending downward for years even prior to '07. Adjunct Lager brewers will feel the same type of growing (or in this case shrinking) pains much in the same way the US auto industry did back in the 80's. Less demand for the flagship product while at the same time increased pressure from previously non existent or insignificant competition. In the case of beer it is craft breweries where in the auto industry it was foreign manufacturers. Budweiser for example will no longer have the luxury of competing with itself (mich and busch variants) and a few other adjunct brewers who make basically a very similar product. This was the same type of competition as was seen when pontiac, oldsmobile, chevy, gmc all "competed" for market share against each other and ford and mopar. They will need to streamline and improve the quality while at the same time adjust for the changing desires of the beer consumer.

 

Actual once-mighty beer brands now extinct include Falstaff, Ruppert, Brew 102, etc. The list is huge.

 

1.39 million barrels of MGD. Yeah.
16 million barrels of Budweiser. Sure, America is no longer drinking any of this stuff.
Just Budweiser alone is still outselling by several million barrels what the entire U.S craft brewing industry sold last year.

 

Maybe America's home gardeners have a really massive slug problem?

After all, the OP's claim was Americans don't "drink" those brands, not "don't buy".

 

You beat me to this post

I’ve got my opinions… Beer sales are down you say? Then why is craft beer booming? Oh. I see. Because you’re only considering Macrobrew as beer, apparently. I’d like to believe ‘beer sales’ are down because REAL beer sales are going up. What say you?