What Happened?

One of the local stores I go to just removed entire 2 shelves that used to be filled with craft beer and in its place they stacked boxes of macro beer on the floor. So there used to be 4 shelves of craft beer for a long long time and now theres 2 plus the import section.

 

And there weren't shelf turds 5/10/15 years ago? I don't care where u live in the US - if you can't find fresh beer you aren't trying.

 

In the post you replied to I stated: "Or sometimes drive to a nearby brewery to buy fresh beer direct."

 

By my observation there is less packaged craft beer on the shelves at grocery stores and places like Total Wine. You can still find most styles but I do think the overall selection and availability has decreased, especially among less popular styles. And since there are no stores opening to replace the bottle shops that have closed I think you're less likely to find those less popular styles, even from the breweries that still brew and package those beers.

Given the struggles of craft over the past few years that don't seem to be improving I don't expect anything to change in the near future.

 

I'm sure NY State laws had an impact on this decision (beer can't be sold in wine and liquor stores here), but it was still rather shocking to see the Total Wine in my area completely tear out their entire robust beer store (it was a separate physical space due to the law) in order to expand their wine and liquor store footprint.

 

You did Jack - but you made the point that lots of breweries does no mean fresh beer -- ie. the shelf turd problem. That's true now but has always been true -- and I submit has nothing to do w/OPs sense that we now have fewer choices than 5/10/15 years ago. Cheers Jack.

 

Something to consider about alternative products stealing shelf space from beer is that beer nobody wants is stealing shelf space from other beer. In stores large and small, you'll see dozens if not hundreds of SKUs of similar IPAs. Those are taking up space that used to be occupied by ambers, blondes, hefeweizens, non-pastry stouts, etc. etc. The funny thing is that people generally don't care about 95% of them, either. IPAs might be the largest selling SKU beer-style, but the category is top-heavy as hell. It's like 5-10 brands moving and hundreds of others that aren't. At least via packaged retail. Some of it is COVID pushing some places to package and some of it is distributors with misguided statistics, but it's not just White Claw and High Noon killing the beer aisles. It's a bunch of beer nobody wanted and stores pivoting to products with a better shelf life that people actually want.

 

Yikes. I didn't know that was legislation. Where do you buy beer now?

 

I think is more to the OPs point. There might be more choices, but the range of choices is narrower.

 

Grocery stores, mini-marts, dedicated beer stores, bars, breweries.

This is how it's always been in NYS. Liquor stores are for liquor and wine (with some exceptions for NYS wines that can be sold in grocery stores), and beer everywhere else.

 

And yet there’s not many breweries going under - how could that be ? How are these breweries that are not selling much distributed product staying in business ?

 

Sounded like @zid 's Total Wine once had a beer section.

If I walked into a Liquor Store around here and saw no beer section I'd be looking for Rod Serling in a corner!

 

Sorry if I wasn’t clear. It’s a confusing situation.

When Total Wine opened a beer store in NY, they worked around NY law by creating a separate company to be their beer and grocery store. When you walked in the front door of the Total Wine space, they had two interior doors for two separate spaces (and perhaps two separate companies on paper). One was a beer store that also sold some food and non-alcoholic “spirits.” The other physical space was the proper “Total Wine” that only sold liquor and wine. The Total Wine website basically pretended that the NY beer store didn’t exist. By Total Wine standards, this particular beer store was great. The story I was relating is that they ended up gutting the entire beer store. I really don’t know how they’ll end up using all that new space where the beer store once stood.

If you think that’s confusing, NY law has created a situation where certain hard seltzer brands can only be sold in grocery stores or beer stores (the seltzer brands that are legally treated as malt beverages), while other hard seltzer brands can only be sold in liquor stores (the seltzer brands that are made with vodka). I’ve wondered how confusing this is for customers who wouldn’t have an idea why the seltzers are split up.

 

Yeah, when I moved to the Finger Lakes region in the '80s, one of the best beer stores (about 25 miles away in Ithaca - where I bought my Koch's ) was set up like that.

After the mandatory deposit law went into affect, a number of huge beer stores (had the feel of a PA retail distributor, some in former grocery stores) opened in some of the smaller cities around the area - but they all failed within a couple of years.

That was common in a number of states due to the legal separation of wine/spirits and beer (or sometimes spirits and wine/beer) licenses when the "wine cooler" boom started in the 1980s, and a number brewers (Stroh [White Mountain Cooler], Heileman, Miller and AB - brands?) created "coolers" - the early FMB's.

Eventually, some well-known brands like Bartles & James, Boone's Farm and even Thunderbird had flavored products that were "malt beverages" so they could be sold in grocery/drug/convenience stores in states with those licensing laws.

 

I distinctly, yet vaguely remember them, and... No. It was merely exciting because it was shiny, and new. And more importantly. The young kids on the block were the ONLY kids on the block. Now, most of them have retired, and sold up to the fizzy yellow water manufacturers they used to make fun of.
From a drinker in the late 90s view. There was no such thing as a consumer getting a six pack of beer that was too fresh. There was also no such thing as a Two Hearted that poured without yeast cake.

 

Thank you to whoever changed this thread’s title. The misspelling made me want to scream every time I saw it.

 

The OP was probably afraid of violating a copyright with the correct spelling.

Of course, some of those early wiseass replies now make no sense.