Month: September 2011

At this rate, beer will disappear in 7 years

The latest Gallup Poll screams the news from the mountain tops. DRINKERS PREFERENCE FOR BEER FALLS 5%.

And, as in 2005, wine gains. So now 36% of drinkers prefer beer (that will be down to 1% in seven years if beer continues to lose 5% per year) and 35% favor wine. Lots of numbers that people who sell wine must love (look at the preferences of college graduates). Then, of course, there is the last paragraph.

While meaningful, this year’s shifts are not much different in magnitude from those seen in 2005 – changes that proved temporary. Whether beer continues to lose ground to other forms of liquor or rebounds may depend on the future direction of young adults’ drink preferences.

Maybe this will turn out to be a big deal and maybe it won’t. Certainly anybody running a brewery, particularly one with shrinking sales, should be bothered if it turns out that younger drinkers are abandoning beer for wine.

But what Gallup apparently missed when it formulated the questions — at least the ones we’re seeing the answers for — is that there’s beer and there’s beer.

Which beer is not like the others? (Reprised)

This was so much fun at the beginning of the year I’m not sure why it took this long to do it again.

The goal is to identify the outlier and explain why it doesn’t belong on the list. There may be more than one answer, although I happen to have a specific one in mind.

a) Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA
b) Schlafly Oatmeal Stout
c) Il Vicino Slow Down Brown
d) Geary’s London Porter
e) Arcadia Scotch Ale

In case you’ve forgotten: Round one ~ Round two ~ Round three.

The next big market for small breweries?

Beer made with mango cider, from local grains, with jaggery (sugar) and local berries . . .

“It’s very easy to sell the idea of a good beer,” he says. “Our clientele is typically aged 25 to 35. They are young, working professionals, typically from single- or double-income families with no kids.”

But he says they are not drinking to get drunk.

“It is an identity,” says Mr Talekar. “Saying I drink single malt, vodka or better beer is a way of showing I have evolved, because of the nature of the product I am consuming.”

From another story about the 600 or so American breweries planning to open in the next couple of years? Nope, this one is from India (the jaggery should have given it away).

Bars and restaurants are also stocking a growing variety of beer brands to attract an average of 4.3 million young adults coming of drinking age each year. But here’s the most striking number: “Some 600 to 700 million Indians are below the age of 30… that’s three times the size of Europe.”

The world’s largest brewering companies already knew this, of course. For a bit of perspective, Indian breweries made an estimated 15.6 million hectoliters in 2010, about a quarter of what Japan brews and 3 percent of China’s production.

So Americans no longer drink Budweiser?

OK, it makes a nice headline: “8 beers Americans no longer drink.”

Problem is the first example is Budweiser. Yes, sales shrunk 30 percent in five years, and that amounts to 7 million barrels (at 31 gallons a barrel) lost. But A-B InBev still sold 18 million barrels of Bud. So it’s not like nobody drinks it.

Beyond the questionable headline the numbers from 24/7 Wall St. are quite interesting; most notably the demise of Michelob. And the 72 percent drop in sales from 2006 to 2010 to 175,000 barrels just begins to tell the story.

Look deeper and you’ll find that in 1988 Michelob commanded 66 percent of the “super-premium” category (the beers people pay more for, like “microbrews” today) despite losing 46 percent of its sales between 1980 and 1988. Anheuser-Busch sold sold 8 million barrels of Michelob in 1980, 4.3 million in 1988.

And last year 175,000.

I’m trying to figure out how to put that in perspective. How about this? It took A-B only eight days in 1980 to sells a much Michelob as it sold in all of 2010.