Koln (Cologne)

I'm not bitching about America. America is great and I love going there. I'm bitching about Germany turning into a copy of America. I want Germany (and all it's fragments) to retain their identity.

 

Einhorn summed it up pretty well.
Always baffled to see 29pils flying off the shelf lol, hey its brewed according to the RHG!

- I gladly pay an extra .10 - .20€ more to get quality pilsners such as Rothaus, Pinkus etc... but I, like most of the others on the site, are not terribly representative of the general German beer consumer.

At my basketball teams holiday party last week I brought some beer (Rothaus pils and 12 bottles of SN pale ale), 2 others brought cases of Becks bc 1) it was on sale and 2) it is what they drink.
Interestingly enough, they rather liked the SN pale ale.

its funny bc it's true I am always reminded of the scene in Mallrats:
Jason Lee: what happened to customer is always right?
Ben Affleck: the customer is always an asshole!

- and just giving Stahlsturm a hard time as he is often want to deride many things American (as am I, which is why I reside in the EU

cheers

 

I know, see above, I was just giving you a hard time. I am in the same boat... I love many things from the multitude of countries I am living in between, as well as loathe some things.

 

BTW when are we all going to get together and have a beer and bitch session? and where?

 

Firstly, thank you for taking the time for putting together that thoughtful post. I appreciate your insight since you have the double experience of living in Germany for an extended period of time plus you worked (work) in the beer industry.

You made mention of: “The Little Voice in Every German's head tells him every Saturday morning, possibly rightly so: "Hmmm, all beers basically taste the same, I'll grab the cheaper beer. Because hey, it's all brewed according to RHG anyway, so it has to be good."

The above statement strongly suggests that vast majority of Germans will purchase cheap Fernsehbiere like Becks beer (that digita7693 made mention of in his post). How do the non- Fernsehbiere breweries stay in business? Do they have a different business model? Maybe they sell whatever beer they can to Germans (at a somewhat discounted price) but make money (profits) from export sales?

It just seems to me that if price is king in Germany for beer, that breweries that produce non-cheap beer will have difficulty staying in business.

Cheers!

 

Regionalism.
I could get a larger variety of German beers in Portland, Oregon (8k + km away) than I can where I live in Germany, often only 100-300kms away from breweries I would like to have beers from. People often drink whatever is brewed in the city they live in, regardless of quality.

 

This is quite an interesting thought. I'm still trying to decide if I agree or disagree.

As far as beer, mineral water, sodas & juices go, they have decided that they want inexpensive products. They vote every day with their wallets.

 

Look at what has happened to the regional middle-sized breweries - they are struggling and many are owned by larger groups (not including the beer Shangri-La in Franken and parts of Bayern). So it's not all rosy.

I agree with digita that some consumers decide to support the regional/local beers out of principle, and some because they simply make a better beer.

 

Well someone who works at Faust (sorry for forgetting your name!) invited us up for a brewery tour. How does Miltenberg work for you? "When" is the big question. HerrB said he's coming over on business sometime in early 2014 so we could try to coordinate around that? Hopefully @Stahlsturm could make it, too - we need some pro-Germany(&Bavaria) experts in this conversation.

 

In this respect, America is not as different from Germany as we'd like to believe. Do you know why Yuengling is king in PA? (1) It's regional (and family owned), (2) it's cheap.

 

I would even go further and say that U.S. "craft" would do well to follow this model. I've always admired places like New Glarus that produce accessible, fresh, (relatively) inexpensive beer exclusively for their local market -- instead of exclusive beers for hard-to-access markets.

 

I'm not sure if Germans percieve of the beer they buy as cheap or not, i.e the beer sold in kisten that take advantage of volume discounts, but surely they must realize that it's at least affordable. If the beer is affordable, then perhaps they are willing to purchase the local or regional beer over the national beer, even if the former costs a couple of euros more per case. That's just a hypothesis of mine. In most beer markets there exists a segment which is able to charge more money than the rest, either because it is seen as a better product or some other reason. Perhaps a local or regional brewery in Germany is able to charge a few cents more for their product due to regional loyalty.

 

The two that distinctively stand out in my mind are Rothaus and Augustiner. And I believe that it is not only the regional reason, but simply because their beer is superior.

 

I really think that Oettinger is the catalyst for all of the "cheap beer" discussion in (and about) Germany. Before they came along, it seemed like a case of Becks cost as much as a case of Mahr's/Schlenkerla/Spezial/(insert your regional beer here). The "expensive" beers were typically your Czech pilsners/lagers: Urquell and Budvar. Then Oettinger enters with their prices sometimes as low as 6 Euro plus change for a crate (ca. = a case of U.S. beer), and the landscape quickly changed.

Still, while nearly every German will tell you when asked about the country's "worst" beer that Oettinger takes that title, many continue to buy it. My in-laws even had a crate in their basement during our last visit, and, when I had polished off all the Tannenzaepfle, I pulled a couple of bottles. To be completely honest, it wasn't at all bad. And that, in a nutshell, is probably the reason for its popularity and other brewers dumbing down their beers and following suit with lowering their prices. A "not bad" pils for literally half the price of a quality one -- where many times the only difference is a few IBUs -- is for most non-beer geeks a no-brainer.

 

Permit me to follow up on the concept of regionalism.

Are regional beers more expensive then Fernsehbiere? What is your regional beer(s)? Is there a specific reason that your basketball teammate(s) prefer to drink Becks vs. the regional beer?

As a follow-up to the analogy that mjtierney2 made about Pennsylvania and Yuengling: while I am not a beer marketing person I would guess that price is just as important to the success of Yuengling in PA as is the fact that it is a regional brewery. In other words, if Yuengling was priced higher than the BMC type beers I highly suspect that Yuengling would not have such a dominant beer market share.

Einhorn has opined on multiple occasions that Germans have a strong desire for beer to be priced inexpensively. I believe that is something that the majority of American beer consumers have in common with the majority of German beer consumers: inexpensive beers in the US sell much, much better than expensive beers. The US craft beer drinkers (which are something like 5% of the beer consumption by volume) are willing to pay more for beer but the other 95% of beer consumption is largely cheaper BMC type beers. I am always amazed at how much some US craft beer drinkers are willing to pay for beer. Every time I see a 6-pack of Ballast Point Sculpin priced at $16.99 I think to myself: who is willing to pay 17 bucks for a 6-pack of beer? Needless to say the answer is a US craft beer geek. Is there the equivalent of beer geeks in Germany who are willing to pay 12 Euros for a 6-pack of beer?

Prost!

 

Yes, and his name is Tony.

 

Patrik, I posed a number of questions to digita7693 very much related to the topics you made mention of in your post. I hope to hear his answer to my queries.

Cheers!

Jack

 

I think this is still true. I'm not in Germany right now so I'm going off memory, but I think Beck's still is priced in the €0,80 to €0,90 per bottle range, which puts it around the "high-end" segment. Schlenkerla is around €0,90 to €0,95 per bottle. The big difference is that sometimes Beck's goes on sale for €11,00 per case, while Schlenkerla is never marked down.

The middle-of-the-road Fernsehbiere are priced usually from €0,50 to €0,80 (thinking Hasseroder and the like) and Oettinger is cheapest of all. Speaking of which, you really need to stop with this "Oettinger wasn't that bad" business. People who take your opinion seriously are being misled.