The Bar Towel

Found this list very interesting...and depressing at the same time.
Check out
http://www.breweryage.com/archives/wint ... 203-06.pdf
Find your favorite U.S. craft brewer and his sales. Now, remeber that almost all Ontario craft brewers sell less than 1200 U.S barrels per year!
Wow.

I was admonished on another thread when I asked why our macros can't put together a decent Pale Ale like Sierra Nevada's...looks like I was right...they are a macro or damn close to it.

Perry: neat find on the Micro keg sales.

I think this chart is a little decieving because it plots everything on an overall national basis and the micros look like they're getting killed....what is more telling is a study I once read where they looked at the hottest beer markets regionally....in that one the micros were punching above their weight against the macros. In some local markets Micro beer sales were as high as 64% with an average of 32% overal market share in the agrigate of high sales regions.

What this study indicated was in markets where beer sales have a higher dollar value than average, Micros are the big reason and also have a major local market share. These regions were decribed as "hot" beer markets because of the money generated from retail sales not volume sold....in regions where volume was higher most often the amount of money people spent on beer was less.

So I guess this study going on region by region with a dollar value bottom line rather than volume, determined where micros were present the beer culture flourished, the pub and restaurant industry was more healthy, drinkers were more affluent and upscale or refined in their tastes and willing to spend their money on craft beer rather than wine or liquor. Shows there was many peripgeral benefits to a local market/culture that supported a healthy Miro beer industry.

Interesting study I must find it again..I think it was done by a US beverage makers association or something like that.

BeerMonger wrote:I was admonished on another thread when I asked why our macros can't put together a decent Pale Ale like Sierra Nevada's...looks like I was right...they are a macro or damn close to it.

Nothing wrong with a larger brewer having capacity to pop out production as long as the micro process remains and the beer is craft quality.....a number of the large volume US Micros show that volume capacity does not mean a sacrifice in micro taste and quality.

Those numbers ARE crazy.

Bear Republic doubled production to 9600 barrels... only to acheive 0.01% market share! You can see how some bean counters might think that craft is insignificant.

City is #7, with over a million sales... yet their down 25% and in trouble again.

AB lost 1.9 million barrels, yet they increased market share from 49.47% to 55.26%. That's a serious drop in overall volume of sales.

Maybe those fat americans are starting to look at quality over quantity?

Very interesting.

BeerMonger wrote:I was admonished on another thread when I asked why our macros can't put together a decent Pale Ale like Sierra Nevada's...looks like I was right...they are a macro or damn close to it.

I never said they weren't big - but comparing what SN produces to what Labatt or Molson could or would produce is a bit silly.

pootz wrote:Nothing wrong with a larger brewer having capacity to pop out production as long as the micro process remains and the beer is craft quality.....a number of the large volume US Micros show that volume capacity does not mean a sacrifice in micro taste and quality.

Germany is a good example as well. I walked around the Spaten plant in Munich & it appeared to be about 6 times the size of the Labatts plant in London, Ontario. Spaten may not be as good as some craft... but it's certainly a heck of alot better than Labatts!

And there's what, 5 more big brewers in Munich? Crazy volume.

Too bad Spaten and Labatts are owned by the same people.

I don't find anything depressing about those numbers at all. (But then again, I'm not a Rock Bottom shareholder...) Almost every craft brewery is up in production and sales, and I just received a press release stating that the craft category on a whole is up 11.7% south of the border. That's health, big time.

As for Perry's tacit comparison of Ontario craft brewers and the Americans, remember that this chart illustrates the sales of only slightly above 15% of all American breweries. Or in other words, about 90% of American craft breweries are likewise selling fewer than 1200 U.S.barrels per year.

It's not the size of your market share, folks, it's what you do with it. As in Canada, imports and craft brews are in double digit growth while mainstream beer sales are down. It's still a big tide, but it continues to turn...

http://www.beertown.org/images/craft%20beer%20graph.jpg

PRMason wrote:Too bad Spaten and Labatts are owned by the same people.

Yet the products are quite different.

I'm not saying Labatts is incapable (their John Labatt Classic all-malt lager WAS alright), they just seem to spend more on their marketing than on their product.

Could be a matter of history. Very few North American brewers survived prohibition, so they didn't need a quality product to compete (and almost anything would seem to be high quality after the bootleg brewing).

Maybe it's been like this for 70 years (which is a long time in North America, yet only a small part of brewing history)... but hopefully our history is changing.

America's regional craft brewers (and even some of Germany's big macro's) are showing that you can still have a successful business making large volumes of a quality product.

Not that I'm advocating big business. You still can't beat fresh, local craft (assuming it's good).

But I'm preaching to the choir... everyone here knows that the North American brewing industry is seriously messed up!

PRMason wrote:Too bad Spaten and Labatts are owned by the same people.

If Inbev owns Spaten then why the hell do we have to put up with wildcat and Blue when they could import Spaten octoberfest and bock as easily as hoegaarden or Heineken

Labbrat could go off the market/shelves tomorrow and I doubt I'd care as long as they left the Inbev Euro imports.


Derrick: Even the commercial Munich lagers are miles ahead of our macro sudz in quality and style.

I'm just soooo grateful I can get H-S Edelhell or Stiegl or Schneider Aventinus or Paulaner here...keeps a Teutonic lager head from popping a gasket.

Slowly German styles are appearing in local Ontario craft fair and this is very encouraging..we have 2 decent local dunkels, acouple of decent hefeweizens, a decent seasonal bock, an Alt, a Kolsh and some decent Bohemian pilsners. ....anyway gotta run I;m drooling on the keyboard again thinking about that cooling Brooklyn lager in the cellar.

pootz wrote:

PRMason wrote:Too bad Spaten and Labatts are owned by the same people.

If Inbev owns Spaten then why the hell do we have to put up with wildcat and Blue when they could import Spaten octoberfest and bock as easily as hoggaarden or Heineken

Even the commercial Munich lagers are miles ahead of our macro sudz in quality and style.

Uhh, because people don't buy them?

Bobbyok wrote:

pootz wrote:

PRMason wrote:Too bad Spaten and Labatts are owned by the same people.

If Inbev owns Spaten then why the hell do we have to put up with wildcat and Blue when they could import Spaten octoberfest and bock as easily as hoggaarden or Heineken

Even the commercial Munich lagers are miles ahead of our macro sudz in quality and style.

Uhh, because people don't buy them?

How can you say that with any certainty? Import sales are 10% of the local market now and a lot of it is Inbev importing that expanded it.

Somebody probably said the same thing about Hoegaarden wit or other clouded wheat beers at some point in the past

And God forbid we shouls attempt darker beer styles with more falvor...it'll never fly in Canada's "white bread" beer culture...glad most Micros didn;t take that cautionary atitude.

pootz wrote:

Bobbyok wrote: Uhh, because people don't buy them?

How can you say that with any certainty? Import sales are 10% of the local market now and a lot of it is Inbev importing that expanded it.

Somebody probably said the same thing about Hoegaarden wit or other clouded wheat beers at some point in the past

Most of that 10%, I would venture, is Stella, Heineken, Corona, and the like. Sure I would buy it and you would buy it, but Joe Sixpack is buying Blue and the Bay Street crowd is buying Stella and Heineken. InBev understands beer drinkers like Joe Sixpack and the Bay Street crowd. They don't understand us, pootz. Do you actually buy Hoegaarden anymore, other than when you have no better choice? Do you think the people that do buy it because of its quality, or because of its image?

I do think that InBev actually helped the craft beer market by bringing in Hoegaarden and Leffe by making people realize there was more to beer than pale lager (and by that I mean crappy pale lager not lovely Munich Helles). But they didn't do it with that intention, they did it in the hopes of getting craft drinkers to switch to InBev products, which didn't work. Because they don't understand the craft beer drinker.

pootz wrote: And God forbid we shouls attempt darker beer styles with more falvor...it'll never fly in Canada's "white bread" beer culture...glad most Micros didn;t take that cautionary atitude.

Actually, most micros (at least in Ontario) DID take that attitude, which is why there are still so many micro-brewed macro-wannabe lagers on the market (no need to name names, I'm sure you know who I'm talking about).

Things are undoubtedly getting better year by year, but for every Scotch-Irish or Black Oak, there's a... well, y'know.