Craft Beer Sales Flatten as Craft Spirits Popularity Grows

$28.00 DIPA four-packs. $24.99 bottles of Stout. $10.00 tap hits, + tip, at breweries and pubs.
Ever seen a TV commercial for Jai Alai? Bourbon County?
Gen Z seeks alcohol alternatives. Consumers tightening belts. Cost of ingredients and packaging rising, along with wages. The distribution problem. Stale beer languishing on retail shelves.
The shine is off, the bubble bursting for our favorite beverage, whose last gasps are high ABV quick grab buzz bombs sold in gas stations.
Over or Under: 500 craft breweries close in 2024? I say ‘Over’.,
Makes me wonder if it’s murder, suicide, changed demographic,,. Or Money.

Follow up read:
https://www.statista.com/topics/1806/craft-beer-in-the-us/#topicOverview

 

When in doubt follow the money.

 

I haven’t had a pre-packaged mixed cocktail out of a can/bottle that tastes even close to as good as a standard made mixed drink. Are there any well made ones? They all seem like a compromise.

 

Craft spirits will be another bubble. What won’t be is craft coffee. Multiple roasters seem to be popping up in every town mirroring the craft beer boom. The main difference being that people need coffee throughout the day and there is a big market to cannibalize from the thousands of inferior Starbucks stores.

 

Americans are so obsessed with being cool. Anything that uses discretionary income had better produce likes on social media. Fads come and go, look at beanie babies and Stanley cups. It's happening to beer. It will happen to craft spirits. It is what it is, beer had a good run.

 

Most of the people in my FB beer groups have shifted from trading pastry stouts back and forth to trading former shelfie bourbons back and forth. What hasn't changed is that nobody actually drinks any of it.

 

A tiny part of me just died inside

 

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Trading has really tailed off from what I’ve seen. Those ‘razzle’ groups are still going strong though, particularly the bourbon ones.

 

I'm sure the VC money (and those brewers beholden to it) won't like to hear it, but this is probably what a mature American beer market looks like. "Craft" beer had a boom that was largely created by the relaxation of prohibition era laws that made small scale beer production and distribution a viable business model. Producers rushed in to fill that vacuum and consumers responded to the kind of excitement that comes from a boom like that.

Now, just about every market has access to a variety of beer options alongside their other alcohol options and brewers will compete for the dollars of beer drinkers.

The trends with younger generations that have been reported are a bigger question mark for beer makers for sure, and if they are consistent that contraction of total beer drinkers will be the bigger anchor on the industry.

 

I wouldn’t mind it if there were fewer craft choices than there are now. Too much crap to dig through to find the good stuff these days. Not saying I want it to go back to the nothing but BMC days, of course.

 

Nah, beer has stood the test of time. It'll still be around long after the seltzers, hard coffees, "craft" spirits, and their ilk have flamed out. We've seen this stuff come and go in a span of only a few years. Beer ain't goin' nowhere.

 

I've been thinking about this upcoming wave for a while now...I've come to the conclusion that the biggest reason why craft spirits will have a hard time going mainstream is this simple fact: the BIG distilleries make EXCELLENT products and because of volume, will always be less expensive.

Let's also not forget that the distribution nationwide, even on a local basis, is in the hands of a few companies. It takes a lot to get into anyone's portfolio.

 

Yeah, local distillers can get in to the clear liquor game easy enough if they've got some skills but brown liquor takes years and serious volume of barrels to dig through to make blends that are truly excellent.

We've got some local distillers that make fine vodka and one that actually makes my favorite gin ever. But all the brown liquor I've tried from them has been hot garbage. I'd take a shelf bottle of Evan Williams over any of them, and it's half the price at least.

Boldest marketing choice I ever saw though, a local place offered a half gallon of unaged whiskey along with a half gallon wooden barrel and invited you to age your own whiskey!

 

Beer sales in the US for all categories has been flattening over the past few years.

Below is a graph from the Brewers Association up to 2022. It will interesting to see their report of sales for 2023.

Cheers!

 

Yeah, but who has time for that?

 

And lots of them just buy barrels from MGP which operates the huge former Seagrams distillery in Lawrenceville, Indiana. DISTILLING SOLUTIONS Premium whiskeys, bourbons, ryes and other whiskeys for small or large distillers.
How Can Different Craft Whiskeys Come From One Big Distillery?

Worked for Jim Koch and, for a time, Pete Slosberg...