Is Beer Still Big?

The craft beer revolution has certainly put a dent into ‘Big Beer’ sales over the past two decades and increasingly affects how the big beer companies market their product against the craft frontier. It has also forced them to develop new product lines, strategies, and purchases of a growing breweries to compete with craft brewers.
Let’s define what craft brewed beer is first of all. To quote a recent publication on craft vs mass produced beer, ‘Craft beer is made with specific, hand selected ingredients, and it is only produced in smaller batches by master brewers who truly love beer.’ This pretty much sums up what we in this article have come to desire. Mass-produced beer is nothing more than a formulation combined to produce a large capacity based on a public who have come to accept that product as something they imagine is good beer at a cheaper price than craft.
Does this seem simplistic or crass? Having been around the beer world now approaching 16+ years, I’ve tasted many mass-produced beers, even imported beers, and still prefer the flavor options of craft.
Brewery sizes are rated in capacity of ability to brew annually and are given size names. Nano and micro breweries both brew less than 15,000 barrels of beer per year with much of that product sold off-site, meaning restaurant kegs or cans, etc. Brewpubs are businesses that sell more than 25% of their beer on-site along with food and the ability to either can or growler their beer as well. Then there are regional breweries that produce 15,000 to 6,000,000 million barrels annually. Remember that the barrels of beer you may see being delivered to an establishment are half barrels so obviously every barrel brewed is actually two half barrels sold. Any brewery over six million barrels is considered to be a large brewery or Big Beer such as Budweiser, Miller, Coors, Corona, etc. Lastly, there are larger breweries that ‘contract brew’ for smaller breweries to gain market share of their recipes. An example of this is Connecticut’s Two Roads Brewery who contract brews Sip Of Sunshine for Lawson’s Finest Liquids (an amazing IPA).
Now that we are caught up on size and ability, let’s look at what makes Big Beer tick.

The global beer market for 2018 was $106 billion (yes, with a B) and is projecting into 2024 gaining momentum to $119 billion. But the key take-away here is that craft beer is growing at an exponential rate while big beer’s market share continue to flatten (see graphic). Does this worry producers like Bud, Miller-Coors, Corona and the like? Hell yes! Because Budweiser is so big, it has historically both produced competing beverages to imitate popular craft beers (personally a frail attempt) and purchase emerging breweries who sell out to big bucks offered by Bud.
Another similar model to the Bud story is the Boston Beer Company (Samuel Adams), owned in part by Jim Koch and started in 1984. Sam Adams was very successful at the beginning of the craft market, expanding so quickly that it became hard to maneuver and produce competing styles compared with much smaller brewer’s recipes. For example, as a successful IPA like Long Trail Limbo came out, Sam Adams tried to produce a copy of it to compete in that niche share. Rebel IPA was introduced in 2014, but by then, Long Trail had dominated with Limbo. Jim Koch even bemoaned this inability in a 2017 Boston Magazine article saying it was hard to compete with the ever-shifting craft market because the company was TOO big. Instead, they focused on alternative products like Twisted Tea and Angry Orchard Hard Cider to help keep the Sam presence alive.

One of the last elements to argue here is the finicky imbibing public who have actually been spoiled by the ability to chase after the next big thing in craft beer tasting. Waiting in line for hours to get two $25 four packs of Tree House or Hill Farmstead Beer (Vermont) in my opinion is ludicrous. But lovers of great beer seem to put up with this situation. The public craves sensations like sour beers, hoppy or hazy IPAs and bourbon-aged stouts. They are willing to pay an exorbitant price for the taste of something beautiful in their eyes. Beer trading over the internet is a recent craze fetching high dollars for a known and wanted product.
How can big beer keep up with the many millions looking for the next great beer? They, for now, remain on top only by sheer numbers and capacity. Shelf placement is a strategy finely crafted (and paid for) to grab the buyer’s eye first. There will always be a Bud-something to buy. It used to be that every 1.6 beers sold were a Bud product… no longer the fact. There are just too many great new beers to slowly swallow up (literally) the big beer biz who have rested on old traditions and sales models too long.
Be encouraged craft drinkers; your numbers are growing!