Nine Beers Americans No Longer Drink

[TampaYankee]

Nine Beers Americans No Longer Drink

By Michael B. Sauter and Alexander E.M. Hess | 24/7 Wall St – Fri, Dec 7, 2012 3:17 PM EST

After three years of declining sales, shipments of domestically sold beer are up by more than 1% in the United States this year. Sales of light beer and specialty beer, such as Budweiser Light Platinum, Shock Top, and Blue Moon, have been the driving force in the resurgence of U.S. breweries.

While sales of specialty, craft, and small-market beers have improved dramatically, many of the traditional, full-calorie beers that were once the staples of most breweries have fallen behind. In the five years ending in 2011, sales of Budweiser, which was once the top-selling beer in the country for years, have fallen by 7 million barrels. Sales of Michelob are down more than 70%. Based on data provided by Beer Marketer’s INSIGHTS, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the nine large — or once-large — beer brands with a five-year decline in sales of 30% or more.

While regular, full-calorie beer was once the mainstream, now light has become the primary beer of choice. Budweiser, once by far the most popular beer, has now fallen to third place in domestic sales, with 17.2 million barrels shipped in 2011, compared to Coors Light’s 17.4 million. The U.S. beer leader is, by a long shot, Bud Light, with 39.15 million barrels sold last year.

Budweiser did not quite make the 30% decline in sales cutoff for our list, but many other traditional brews did. Old Milwaukee, Milwaukee’s Best and Miller Genuine Draft have all lost 50% of their sales since 2006. Michelob shipped 500,000 barrels domestically in 2006, but sold just 140,000 in 2011.

While light beer has supplanted full-calorie beer in popularity, sales of most leading light brands have been flat over the past several years. In fact, many of the beers on our list with the biggest declines are light beers that either didn’t catch on or faded out of popularity. In an interview with 24/7 Wall St., Beer Marketer’s INSIGHTS executive editor Eric Shepard explained that it is specialty beers and craft beers — not light beer — that have eaten into sales of traditional full-calorie beer in the past year.

Shepard explained that like most major brand-centered industries, the beer industry has entered a period of aggressively marketing new brands and flavors. “I think that part of the reason that brewers felt we had three down years was primarily the economy… but it was also a lack of innovation, and so now you’re seeing [the beer industry] rev up these things,” he said. “The buzzword for this year was innovation.”

To combat the growing popularity of craft brews, major breweries such as Anheuser-Busch Inbev (NYSE: BUD) and MillerCoors have aggressively marketed their own specialty beer. Bud Light Platinum, which debuted during the Super Bowl, has been very successful, beating most expectations. Shock Top, also produced by Anheuser-Busch, sold 600,000 barrels last year, more than double the previous year’s sales. Another Belgian white beer, Blue Moon, which is sold by MillerCoors, was the 18th-most popular beer sold last year. Shepard expects the focus on nontraditional brews to continue at least through next year. This will likely further reduce sales of the declining brands on our list.

[More from 24/7 Wall St.: Most Educated Countries in the World]

24/7 Wall St. identified the nine beers Americans no longer drink based on INSIGHTS top 50 beer brands with at least 500,000 barrels in sales in either 2006 or 2011 with sales declines of 30% or more over the same period. Sales for flavored malt beverages and craft beers were excluded from the analysis.

These are the nine beers Americans no longer drink....

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[TampaYankee]

I grew up on Schlitz and loved it until they changed their recipe in the late sixties/early seventies to appeal to whom I have no idea. It was never the same after that. They were always chasing Budweiser which I couldn't stand -- the original soda pop beer.

I took to Miller Genuine Draft when it came out. I thought it was the best tasting 'regular beer' which was all I had known up to then. I later tried some specialty beers off and on, one I recall went by the name Maximus Super, I think, out of Utica NY. It was quite a flavorful beer and packed 6.7% alcohol. A couple of those would tune you up quite nicely. Eventually the Society Nannies got it removed from the shelves in the area I lived in at the time.

With weight problems setting in I vascillated between Genuine Draft and Miller Lite -- the only light beer that didn't taste like Yak piss. It wasn't Genuine Draft but it wasn't 225 calories either.

Once the microbrewery phenom hit I moved on to darker rounder beers. The best bottled equivalent I found was Boston Lager which is still one of my favs. However there are numerous boutique breweries that put out competitive brews whether one is looking for lagers or ales.

[caeron]

I live in Portland OR, ground zero in the craft beer movement.

I don't drink a lot of beer because I have gout and don't want to test my limits, but I've mostly avoided these kind of mainstream beers for years because as Tampa says, most of them taste like Yak piss to me. I can't stand light beers either, they taste like watery yak piss...

But there are some great real beers brewed around here that actually taste like something so when I'm going to indulge, I want a beer that actually tastes like something. I really do like a good wheat beer with lemon.

[AdamSmith]

The local craft brews, if you are anywhere they are made, are so much better than any mass-produced and -distributed yak piss, as so aptly put above.

A business acquaintance who once worked in a brewery in Australia (Carlton) explained to me that so many mass-market beers are so shitty, watery and bitter because the brewers save $ by skimping on the malt content, then covering up the resultant weakness by dumping in too many hops.

Another thing we have to put up with in U.S. is the legal requirement that beer has to be pasteurized. One U.K. pub visit and one sip of their unpasteurized brews can put one off of our boiled-to-death crap for life.

[lookin]

It's been a while since I've enjoyed a serving of yak piss, so I'm grateful to those whose memories are fresher than mine. But what I can say is that, like much of the U. S. food and beverage supply, mainstream beers seem to have been formulated primarily to withstand several years in our national distribution system so they're stripped of as many perishable ingredients as possible and dosed with sufficient preservatives to keep them from further deterioration should they find themselves at the back of a hundred-twenty degree warehouse for several months at a time.

In general, I think the closer you can get to where the beer is actually made, and the more you can avoid the U. S. mass-market distribution system, the better the beer is going to be. Craft beers are generally better but even a craft beer bottled for wide distribution is going to have some flavor problems. I first discovered this in the late sixties when I stumbled into the Löwenbräukeller in Munich and stumbled out again an hour later full of mein host's weisswurst and a liter of the best dark beer I had enjoyed up till then. I was surprised to find a bottle of the stuff in the U. S. when I returned and, while it was good, it was not much like its velvety namesake in Bavaria.

Same with Belgian beer which, in situ, is the best beer I've ever had. The stuff that makes it over here in a bottle is only distantly related to the original.

Grateful also to AdamSmith for the insight on hops. I've recently discovered that the difference between a beer I can drink and one I can't is the amount of hops they put in it. Hops are just way too harsh for me and I was wondering why folks seemed to like the taste so much. Now that I learn it's the manufacturers' way of making an extra penny or two, rather than catering to American tastes, it all makes much more sense.

Kind of amazing to think of how much care the old brewmasters put into creating the best products they knew how and building brand names that lasted for centuries, and then to realize how quickly the quest for profits can undo their efforts.

Scheisse!

[AdamSmith]

Your point about food products (what a term itself -- "processed cheese food spread," etc.) being processed for 50-year bomb-shelter shelf life is the heart of the matter.

When WWII ended, the American food industrial complex -- General Foods, General Mills (funny all those generals, huh?), etc. -- were suddenly deprived of their market for military rations. And so the marketing genuises jumped to work ... and promptly convinced the American housewife that these companies' prepackaged salt-laden crap was not only a "convenience" but, somehow in one of the more stupendous marketing triumphs, even "more nutritious."

James Beard and numerous others have noted how this was the ruination of a two-century-plus tradition of homely but extraordinary domestic cuisine.

Alice Waters, certainly Julia Child, Beard himself and others have all helped start the long march back. Thank the gods.

[TampaYankee]

Actually all commercial packaged beers sold in the US have a pull date on them. On bottle labels look along the edge and you will see a very small legend or line near the edge and a tiny cut in the label paper next to one of the legend markings. Specifies the month or day of year to pull the product. It is usually coded. They are usually pulled after six to eight weeks of bottling, never more than ten weeks. Not only does light do a job on beer but the caps permit an imperceptible leak of CO2 which causes the beer eventually to go flat. I do not recall where it is marked on the can although I suspect it is easy enough to find.

So if a beer tastes shitty it is because of the basic ingredients or the brewing expertise.

One reason Budweiser tastes shitty is because it is brewed from more rice than malt. It's brand-leader status over decades shows the power of advertising on the marketplace.