| In Praise of Session Beer submitted by Patti Muller Hello Bob - While it might be great to have a sour beer, an IPA, whatever, I sometimes go looking for something I can buy in a 12-pack or even a case that I can keep in the garage, I just throw it there and that’s what I drink between serious craft beers. There's something to be said for those kinds of simple macro beers..To be honest, sometimes’ al I'm really looking for is something that I can drink every single day, because it's refreshing and easy to drink. What if—now, hear me out—what if the pandemic has helped to turn us all into basic style beer drinkers? What I mean is are more and more people becoming what I call garage-beer drinkers now? t’s not just the sales boom in larger packs that followed the lockdowns.. Those sale increases continues today, as people fill their shopping carts and minimize trips to the supermarket. Breweries able to get their products in front of our eyes on store shelves are in better shape today than those who had been relying heavily on taproom draft beer. (And with no vaccine expected to be widely available until sometime in 2021, it’s reasonable to expect that trend to continue for a while. There are other trends I see that speak to garage beer. One is the rise (at last!) of craft lager. Lager never stopped being popular, just as Miller Lite never stopped being a garage beer. But in this context, we’re talking about lagers brewed by smaller, independent breweries, almost invariably with more character than the mass- market brands. More breweries are adding pilsner, helles, Vienna, and the like to their tap lists—er, online shopping menus—alongside all those IPAs. Interestingly, the growth in thee styles among craft breweries appears to have taken a modest hit recently, as smaller breweries leaned more heavily into their tried-and-true brands. However, according to the Chicago-based market research firm IRI, craft pilsners were still up 8.8 percent over the past year in retail stores. . Meanwhile, “other pale lagers” were up 11.8 percent, and bocks were up 15 percent. Those numbers can’t keep up with IPAs (up 18.6 percent), but they’re nonetheless encouraging for lager-heads. And check out this year’s Reader’s Choice poll of your favorite styles. Pilsner has jumped into third place, up from fifth last year. Helles is in 10th, up from 15th. Vienna lager dropped two spots but in reality held pretty steady in terms of votes. Then we have the rise in independently brewed light beer—and whether that means lower-alcohol or lower-calorie is academic because it amounts to the same thing. This growth in “craft” lightbeer—still a tiny sliver of the pie, but that sliver grew 31 percent over the past year—cuts across a range of styles. They include low- calorie IPAs, such as Bell’s Light Hearted Ale, Deschutes Wowza, Dogfish Head Slightly Mighty, and more. For those of us who’ve been hoping for years that brewers would make more session- strength beers, this is good news. That trend also includes lighter lagers. One brewer I know who’s proud of his lower-strength (and thus lower-calorie) lager tells me that he would love to fill supermarket shelves with the stuff at a low price point. Brewers call it session beer, I call it healthy-lifestyle beer. I know a lot of who like me are buying it by the case. Bob, I hope your readers might join me in the "session" beer revolution. Thanks! ------ Thanks Patti for a most interesting article. Sales statistics don't lie, session beers and approachable lagers are indeed experiencing big sales increases. You make a good case for their popularity. Thanks! I'd like to invite everyone to send me their own columns about anything related to beer in any way just as Pattie did. I select the best and publish them here. So join in and get writing! Cheers! Bob |
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