Lotte Peplow, American craft beer ambassador in Europe for the Brewers Association, looks ahead to Thanksgiving and topline trends in the American craft beer world.
Before we gear up for Thanksgiving on 25th November — America’s traditional annual celebration of the autumn harvest — let’s take a look at topline trends that are playing out in the American craft beer market on the other side of the Atlantic.
Ageing demographic
In America, the population is getting older. Millennials, now aged from mid-20s to early 40s, are settling down, starting families, and changing the way they drink alcohol. And baby boomers are starting to retire and consume alcohol in different ways.
Generation Z are now coming of age and showing signs they’ll have different preferences, particularly towards
alcohol.
The 21 to 24 age group is reducing alcohol usage, and this may be a call out to craft breweries that they need to re-invent themselves to stay relevant.
Gender and BIPOC considerations
Dr J Nikol Jackson-Beckham, the Brewers Association’s equity and inclusion partner. Photographs: Brewers Association
For the first time, 21- to 25-year-old women are more likely to be consuming alcohol than 21 to 25-year-old men (source: Rabobank: The American Alcohol Consumer is Changing, December 2020).
We see the craft segment doing a better job of welcoming women into the industry than previously, and as the American population becomes more BIPOC (black, indigenous, other people of colour) and America becomes a higher percentage minority country, more changes will be needed going forwards.
Owner demographics
New research undertaken by the Brewers Association found that brewery ownership was 93% white and 76% male. We’re starting to see more efforts being made to build diverse organisations, grow the customer base, and foster a more inclusive and diverse craft brewing community.
For example, in 2017 the Brewers Association created its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) committee to highlight the association’s work, including publishing a series of resources on best practices, hiring a full-time equity and inclusion partner, completing the industry’s first benchmarking of brewery owners and employee diversity, and creating a DEI grants programme.
ABV preferences
Alcohol content is becoming increasingly important to craft beer consumers when making purchasing decisions. Some of this may be to do with demographics (for instance, the ageing customer base), but also to do with people thinking carefully about the occasion and what to drink.
Eighty-two per cent of weekly craft beer drinkers say they factor high-/low-abv into their purchasing decision, and 49% say it’s very important.
This is playing out in the market, where we’re seeing growth in styles at both ends of the spectrum. The top three share gainers are all IPA or IPA variants, and are driven by high-ABV, such as DIPAs. Other share gainers fall into either the high- or low-ABV buckets, such as session sours, session IPAs, wheat ale, and pale lager.
Consumers, particularly craft consumers, also want to drink across a range of beverages — 94% of weekly craft beer drinkers say they consume another alcoholic beverage category outside beer.
Thanksgiving
Whatever the latest trends, high-quality, style-diverse, American craft beer remains an ideal accompaniment to the Thanksgiving feast, such as:
- turkey with brown ale (eg Cigar City Maduro)
- mashed potato with pilsner (eg Oskar Blues Oskar’s Lager)
- vegetables with pale ale (eg Sierra Nevada Pale Ale)
- and pumpkin pie with stout (eg New Holland Dragon’s Milk Stout).
American craft beer can be found online, in bottle shops, supermarkets, pubs, bars, restaurants, and via beer subscription services.
World Beer Cup
Brewers, don’t forget to enter your beer into the most prestigious beer competition in the world, the World Beer Cup, taking place alongside the Craft Brewers Conference and BrewExpo America in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May 2022.
World Beer Cup registration is open now until 10th November and UK breweries are welcome to ship their entries to the UK consolidation point in Hertfordshire, instead of directly to the States. The Brewers Association will then arrange (and pay) for the beers to be shipped to the US.
Beers are due to consolidation points from 28th February to 9th March, 2022. Winners are announced on 5th May, 2022.
More info at www.WorldBeerCup.org
About the Brewers Association
The Brewers Association (BA) is the not-for-profit trade association dedicated to small and independent American brewers, their beers and the community of brewing enthusiasts.
The BA represents 5,700-plus US breweries. The BA’s independent craft brewer seal is a widely adopted symbol that differentiates beers by small and independent craft brewers.
The BA organises events including the World Beer Cup, Great American Beer Festival, Craft Brewers Conference and BrewExpo America, SAVOR: An American Craft Beer and Food Experience, Homebrew Con, National Homebrew Competition and American Craft Beer Week.
The BA publishes The New Brewer magazine, and Brewers Publications is the largest publisher of brewing literature in the US.
Beer lovers are invited to learn more about the dynamic world of craft beer at CraftBeer.com and about homebrewing via the BA’s American Homebrewers Association and the free Brew Guru mobile app.
Follow the Brewers Association on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
