It's Time for a Return to Flavour

We live in a world that ofttimes seems defined by the twin concepts of doom and gloom. Justifiably so, perhaps, but omnipresent and mentally debilitating nonetheless. And sadly, the beer business, which one would think exists solely to bring a smile to our lips and stimulate a friendly conversation in a bar or pub, is not immune to this.

This reality was on vivid display at the start of this year, when social media commentaries and ‘Dry January’ stories held a looking glass up to how detrimental alcohol supposedly is to our well-being and how much joy – Uninterrupted sleep! Lost weight! Heightened energy! – was to be found in sobriety. (Never mind that most of these month-long evangelists went eagerly back to drinking the moment February 1 rolled around.) For those within the brewing industry, the same was largely true.

In the United States, the crisis was predicated by the meteoric rise of hard seltzer, a sort of successor to alcopops that combines the appeal of unsweetened and gently flavoured carbonated water with, well, booze. Meanwhile, in Canada, a drop in beer sales was being directly attributed to the year-old legalization of cannabis, never mind that most provinces are said to have bungled the introduction to the degree that illicit sales still thrive, and that cannabis companies once viewed as certain cash cows are now haemorrhaging money.

While I remain unconvinced that either of the above industry scenarios are anywhere near as doom-y and gloom-y as most commentators would suggest, neither am I so myopic that I do not recognize the threat they legitimately pose to beer producers. More so to the big multinationals, of course, since when you have more market share, you also have more to lose. But also to large and mid-sized craft brewers who are facing the twin threats of external forces like hard seltzer and cannabis – as well as growth in the wine, cocktail and spirits markets – and the intra-industry challenge of the ‘drink local’ crowd who eschew any national name in favour of the cult brewery down the road.

So far, the North American craft brewing industry’s response to the above can be neatly summed up in two words: novelty and trends.

Largely turning their backs on the beers that helped make their businesses, many breweries have bought fully into the new-beer-every-week ethos that keeps beer consumers interested by appealing to their short attention spans. Or, and usually in combination with the previous approach, they will chase whatever style fads or trends happen to be of the moment, never mind that it might involve the creation of a beer they don’t particularly like or wish to brew.

In my view, neither approach is sound for the long run, and here’s why.

As neither hard seltzer nor cannabis really exist in the social sphere – you can’t smoke anything in most bars and coffee shops, and hard seltzer’s sales are almost exclusively in the offpremises segment – I think it is safe to surmise that the bulk of their audience is made up of younger drinkers who don’t have a lot of disposable income to throw around in bars. As such, these are also largely inexperienced drinkers, so still forming their views on what they do and do not like and enjoy.

Here is where smaller-scale brewers can learn from the mistakes of the big breweries. When craft beer really hit its stride in the late 1990s and first decade of the new century, breweries marketed directly to those who hadn’t yet made their minds up about what to drink, using a combination of approaches to show drinkers in their 20s that beer with true flavour, crafted locally, was both superior to and quite different from their parent’s beer. Big brewers, stuck in their decades-old ways, didn’t believe the strategy would work, didn’t change their style over substance approach and consequently began to lose market share.

For this fate not to befall craft brewers, they should return to their roots, emphasizing tradition and flavour, craftsmanship and beer styles rather than novelty and fashion. In other words, they need to again convince a new generation of drinkers that IPAs and pale ales and pilsners and porters are desirable, rather than trying to combat the rise of fruit-flavoured seltzers with fruit-flavoured beers such as smoothie-like milkshake IPAs.

To address cannabis smokers, they need to re-emphasize the social aspect of beer drinking, bringing people back into bars for conversation over a pint or three. Position this as an alternative to the solitary lifestyle that computers and smart phones and social media often beget, and with which weed is a logical fit, and the two products will begin to happily co-exist.

Finally, it is time to de-emphasize the buzz. One thing that seltzer and weed are very good at doing is intoxication delivery, so beer sellers need to instead rely more on beer’s unassailable strengths: flavour, enjoyment and camaraderie. Position beer as what it has always been, the world’s most flavourfully diverse and eminently sociable beverage, and the future just might stop looking so bleak.

Stephen Beaumont

A professional beer writer for 29 years, Stephen Beaumont is an award-winning author or co-author of thirteen books on beer, including his latest, Will Travel for Beer: 101 Remarkable Journeys Every Beer Lover Should Experience.

He is also the co-author (with Tim Webb) of the recently released Pocket Beer Book, 3rd Edition, and 2016’s fully-revised and updated second edition of The World Atlas of Beer, as well as author of The Beer & Food Companion.

His new website is beaumontdrinks.com and he can be followed on both Twitter and Instagram @BeaumontDrinks