Is Beer Dying?

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cyanmonkey

cyanmonkey

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Is that bubble finally beginning to burst? With all the recent acquisitions, cash grabs, and attention seeking fads, everything feels so...manufactured? Is beer, and homebrewing at that, starting to wane in popularity?

Is that good or bad?
 
No.

Definitely no.

Seriously, no.

We haven't even seen a leveling off of new breweries opening. We might hit a saturation point in the next decade and the bad breweries will die off, and the good will stay on.

If beer was dying would the accountants for whoever bought Ballast Point, would those accountants and investors buy BP for a BILLION dollars? Investing that much capital into a craft beer company if anything means they know the market will continue to expand.

I look at it this way. You or I might not buy Blue Moon because we know it's made by Coors and we don't like to support a huge corporation like that, same thing with any of the faux-craft brands. A lot of us might stop buying Ballast Point or the several other craft breweries who were bought up recently. But how much of the market do homebrewers and craft-beer-white-Knights make up? Not enough that us boycotting faux-craft to sink that business practice.

Most beer drinkers buy with their eyes and mouths. Label looks cool? Buy it. Tasted good? Buy it again. The owner of the brewery doesn't factor into the equation (I am a strong supporter of "if it's good eat it/drink it" mentality). *by "most beer drinkers" I mean people who will spend the money on craft beer, ***most beer drinkers*** are still solidly BMC yellow pee water drinkers

Homebrewing as well is expanding all the time. People pick it up, people drop it. With the popularity of IPAs probably never ending we will always have the access to left over hops after big contracts buy it up, so we will still have good ingredients.
 
When does the bubble burst?

I don't think it will ever go away from mainstream at this point, but I think there will be a consolidation at some point.
 
I have to say I kinda hope the fad wanes a bit. We live 10 minutes from victory and we use to head out there once a week or so, however in the last couple of years it's gotten so crowded that you can't get seated on a weeknight anymore. Who knows maybe we'll begin to see a shift to the craft distilling thing as I really don't see drinking going anywhere.
 
Lol. Maybe it's just me getting fatigued by all the gimmicks? I walk into a store these days and I'm like...IPA, DIPA, sour something...sigh...

Or maybe I've just matured past the BEER IS AMAZING!!! EVERYTHING IS GREAT!!! And kind of come into my own as far as, I know what I like and I'm probably not going to go too far outside of my wheelhouse?
 
cyanmonkey said:
When does the bubble burst?

I don't think it will ever go away from mainstream at this point, but I think there will be a consolidation at some point.
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Well if we start seeing a bunch of breweries closing it might be the bubble bursting. Even then though it may just be the bad breweries or bad business practice that's sinking their business, not because the market for craft beer is imploding. Also the craft beer business doesn't have massive rampant wild financial speculation propping it up and keeping it going.

It will be interesting to see 30 years from now when the next generation is legal to drink and see what the alcohol of choice is then. But again people buy with their eyes and mouth, if in 30 years all craft beer tastes like brown starfish then that generation will definitely shun craft beer (though it's unlikely suddenly everyone starts brewing crappy beer).

The craft breweries being bought is good for the sake of craft brewing. I don't buy Ballast Point because it's expensive as hell, not because it's now owned by a huge corporation. Some will stop buying it because of who owns them "selling out" as its stated. Most will probably keep drinking BP. If New Glarus "sold out" I would have strong feelings but as long as the beer still is good and innovative I would still buy their beer. (How could I blame a business owner for taking a 6-7-8 figure pay out particularly if the quality stayed the same)
 
I would say no but the market is getting crowded in various areas of the country. I think if you aren't making good beer you better figure it out because beer enthusiasts are getting pickier and its unclear to me how many new beer drinkers can be convinced to join the craft beer movemeent. I've seen a few breweries close and the reason was they simply didn't produce a quality product and there were 3 breweries within a 10 minute drive. People said why go there and spend 5 dollars a pint when they could go spend the same somewhere better. When a market lacks competition there's a little more wiggle room. I would say it also depends on the demand in a given area to accurately answer the question as it could be more regional specific.

The breweries that are doing it right will stay but fast forward 10 years from now those who opened because they thought they could take advantage of a trend will fold.

Just my 2 cents though...
 
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Perhaps the buyouts and consolidation and stupid gimmicks may be the start of a slowdown as the craft beer warriors who "oh my god I won't buy anything made by BMC until OMG Bourbon County Brand Stout GIMME GIMME GIMME" (not a knock on BCBS, just a knock on hypocrisy, I don't care who brews it if it tastes good) will move on to other things (craft distilling? who knows). But the fact that these things are happening more and more is because the opportunistic types realize that craft beer is still growing rapidly (especially compared to macro lager), and they're trying to ride the wave.

As said (which I agree with), the time will come when the gimmick of weird ingredients and obsession with local/small will fade, and breweries kicking out bad beer won't be able to sustain themselves. At that point, I don't think beer will collapse, just that point market share will shrink and only the best will be able to get shelf space. And the rest will rotate between opening and closing.
 
MFWINZLOW said:
Not what I originally thought it meant... :smack:
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eek.gif
 
Rock is dead....Well, according to Gene Simmons it is..So, umm, yeah, no rock, no beer...Shine on you crazy diamond!
 
I don't think it will "die" but I also don't believe the status quo is sustainable. All the gawdy labels and stupid names that use puns on the word "hops" will fade out of fashion due to overload and staling of the tactics, just like hair metal did in the late 80s.

There will always be a demand for craft beer but if people burn out on the "hopsploitation" bull**** then that just means the breweries will start to be "bold" by finding different ways to entice buyers away from the homogeneous masses. In other words, the branding and marketing will evolve, and things tend to go in cycles. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw the pendulum swing in the other direction over the next 5 years or so, with craft breweries starting to harken back to more of a classic and austere approach--tamer color schemes, less reliance upon off-the-wall naming, uptick in popularity of classic styles that are decidedly unhip in 2016, etc.

I, for one, would welcome this. When I'm out shopping for craft beers, I'm starting to feel like I'm on some kind of bandwagon with all of the "hey, look at me!" branding.. when the truth is, I just want to drink the legitimately tasty beer contained in those cans.
 
mattdee1 said:
I don't think it will "die" but I also don't believe the status quo is sustainable. All the gawdy labels and stupid names that use puns on the word "hops" will fade out of fashion due to overload and staling of the tactics, just like hair metal did in the late 80s.

There will always be a demand for craft beer but if people burn out on the "hopsploitation" bull**** then that just means the breweries will start to be "bold" by finding different ways to entice buyers away from the homogeneous masses. In other words, the branding and marketing will evolve, and things tend to go in cycles. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw the pendulum swing in the other direction over the next 5 years or so, with craft breweries starting to harken back to more of a classic and austere approach--tamer color schemes, less reliance upon off-the-wall naming, uptick in popularity of classic styles that are decidedly unhip in 2016, etc.

I, for one, would welcome this. When I'm out shopping for craft beers, I'm starting to feel like I'm on some kind of bandwagon with all of the "hey, look at me!" branding.. when the truth is, I just want to drink the legitimately tasty beer contained in those cans.
Click to expand...

Hopsploitation will only die out when we as consumers stop buying them. If we keep buying them they are gonna keep brewing them and keep breeding new varieties of hops. I wouldn't welcome this, I'm not a huge hop head, I'll make an IPA every 3 months of my rotation, but without the huge commercial demand there won't be left over hops for homebrewers to get their paws on. The huge IPA boom happened in a similar time frame as the explosion in homebrewers. The commercial brewing industry and homebrewing supply industry are in lock step nearly. If there wasn't a brewery making a couple thousand barrels a year of some beer with some esoteric ingredient we would never have access or supply of that ingredient (in an affordable and reliable way).

On a similar note. Flashy/colorful/daring advertising will only stop when it stops working. It's not just the brewing industry that utilizes this so it would take an earth shaking change in the science of advertising and consumerism to change how flash advertising and labeling works. I don't personally see a problem with flashy labeling, if the beer is crap the Internet will sort that out immediately. If we didn't have the Internet and rating sites it would be a little more pernicious but bad beer will put a brewery out of business no matter how flashy the advertising. Good beer with flashy labeling is just as good as good beer with boring labeling. Look at rodenbach, boring label delicious beer, cigar city jai alai, cool artwork on the label and its a delicious beer.

There's a brewery in my town that only does really simple labeling and do more traditional styles of beers. They attract certain beer drinkers. There's another brewery that goes with the more modern labeling and advertising. As well they make quite a few very delicious IPAs and all their beers have a "strange" ingredient. Both places are successful, both places make really delicious beer. They have overlap in their consumers, but they both go for a different part of the market. There's probably a lot of breweries going the traditional route but they're only going for that certain beer drinker that likes beer without flashy labeling and beer that falls into "traditional" categories. Not everyone will flip to this u less there's a massive change in the demographics of beer drinkers in America.
 
Just look at the grocery store space for beer, It now has sections as large as the wine sections, and BMC is just a small spot in the cooler. I don't think we've peaked, but I do wonder about distilled spirits. We now have two distilleries in the area. It looks like everything is working together, we have wineries, breweries, cideries, meaderies and now distilleries, all packing in one area. One heck of a tourist area now, alcohol alley!
 
KWright_VT said:
Just look at the grocery store space for beer, It now has sections as large as the wine sections, and BMC is just a small spot in the cooler. I don't think we've peaked, but I do wonder about distilled spirits. We now have two distilleries in the area. It looks like everything is working together, we have wineries, breweries, cideries, meaderies and now distilleries, all packing in one area. One heck of a tourist area now, alcohol alley!
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Jesus...we must either be in the best of times, or the worst of times to be needing this much boozin'.
 
And if you wander off the road into the mountains a little bit, you can get some really good stuff!
 
matt2778 said:
I have to say I kinda hope the fad wanes a bit. We live 10 minutes from victory and we use to head out there once a week or so, however in the last couple of years it's gotten so crowded that you can't get seated on a weeknight anymore. Who knows maybe we'll begin to see a shift to the craft distilling thing as I really don't see drinking going anywhere.
Click to expand...


Graduated HS from Downingtown and used to live in Eagle.....did a lot of work in Glenmoore on my summer job. Wasn't any craft or local breweries in the area when I lived there.......
 
For a bubble to pop, there has to a be a bubble in the first place.

It's just a solid, growing industry.
 
Not dead....but the level of growth we have seen the last few years is not sustainable. I have done a ton of research and the breweries make money by selling their beer in the tasting room. The problem is that there is a real limit to how much beer you can push from a bar. The other way is via distribution. Then you are competing against hundreds of other breweries for shelf/tap space.
 
It's already dead.

That beer you're drinking? Not really there.

THERE IS NO BEER.
 
Believe it or not, it's just getting started. The market will grow and grow and grow for better and better beers. Higher quality and higher priced Beer is in the early stages of a long term growth trend.
 
TaoBrewer said:
Believe it or not, it's just getting started. The market will grow and grow and grow for better and better beers. Higher quality and higher priced Beer is in the early stages of a long term growth trend.
Click to expand...


Is it all IPA? How can hop crops keep up with that? At some point hops are going to be SO expensive and only the big boys will be able to afford them.
 
cyanmonkey said:
Is that bubble finally beginning to burst?/QUOTE]

Beer as an Industry has been dying slowly for at least the last two decades, three depending on if you go by sales or dollars.

CRAFT beer is a small-but-increasing slice of the MUCH larger beer market as a whole.

CRAFT has been doing better, beer has been doing worse, and only by getting NEW drinkers can CRAFT expand much more.

This has come up before, but I will re-state... if your local store will only carry "X" many IPA's, then after a very low point, more in the market means less growth for all.

That's why there's so many "gimmick" beers, and fewer new beers of the same kinds. Because they hope to get a piece of an increasingly small market.
Click to expand...
 
cyanmonkey said:
Is it all IPA? How can hop crops keep up with that? At some point hops are going to be SO expensive and only the big boys will be able to afford them.
Click to expand...

Classically, market forces would stimulate production.
If there's a fly in that ointment, it'd be Mother Nature.

Still, if there's a buck to be made by increasing acreage in a particular - available - strain, someone's likely going to do it...

Cheers!
 

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