Beer drinking in America falls to the lowest level in a generation

Here is the key sentence in the article.

...an acceleration in the long-term decline of so-called domestic-premium brands, which include Bud Light and rivals Miller Light and Coors Light...

So, are people drinking less beer or are they drinking less piss beer? Could it be that people are having two Hazy Imperial IPA's with 8+ ABV instead of a six pack of Coors Light? I am taking this headline with a grain of salt.

EDIT: I found my glasses.

Who the hell thinks those three are premium?
- If that's premium what isn't premium? Steel reserve? That's just malt Coors with different marketing. Micky's? That's just malt Miller with different marketing. 10 barrel? That bud light wearing 2010's hipster clothes.
  
  I think we're giving these brand too much credit with the word premium.
- Cletus
- People who drink keystone, busch, and natty
- You ever had Milwaukees Best?
- Hey now, those Clydesdale horses worked hard to convert water into ~~piss~~ Budweiser.
Article has a vague accusation that soda-based drinks are to blame without covering any of the other possibilities here
- I thought soda consumption is also down? And the fizzy alcohols had leveled off or declining as well? I am curious myself.
I'm more of a once a week Porter, Ale and Hard Cider drinker, but it's still a Microbrew.

Grain a salt is right: People just don't like the taste of that crap anymore, not with so many options on the market now.

Coors/Bud/MGD/Corona? I haven't had one in years.
A Four Noses or Cerebrus Hazy is so much better than the domestic swill it’s not funny. We have so many more options these days that I’m glad it’s hurting the big guys. They’ve been making crap pilsners for decades.

I'm sure the weed legalizing has had an impact as well. I have completely stopped drinking in favor of weed. Saves my liver and no hangover.

Saves the brain, too. Not saying weed is exceptional, but alcohol fucks the brain up.
- I just don't do either anymore. Feels really good
- THC in weed hurts short term memory and can cause paranoia. I just stick with CBD.
I think that many people are switching to hard liquor because of the state of things, as well. My town alone has seen like a 7-800% increase in alcohol sales since covid.
- Can confirm, gave up crappy low cal water beer for vodka. Less carbs, better buzz.
- I mean just vote against Trump in 2024 and the world's gonna be fine...?
Now your lungs are taking the hit—do shrooms.

Stop making so many mediocre IPAs. Other styles do exist.

It's insane. I swear that some liquor stores I go to have a craft beer section that's 90% IPAs... and another 5% that are basically IPAs with cutesy names like "Super Duper Pale Ale."
IPAs are the easiest to make, that's why every small brewery makes one
- The problem is they're mediocre
- Idk if that's true, they oxidize easily. I would say brown ales or pale ales would be easier. IPAs sell, that's why every small brewery has one
- Why would they be easier to make?
- Pale ales are easier and cheaper to make than IPAs. They make IPAs because they are popular, not because they are easy.
Had the same thought to myself at the Sprouts today. All I wanted was a stout. Not even a Guinness anywhere, but an entire wall of IPA's and then the rest were hard seltzers.

beer shipments

That’s the problem. A lot of people are living in and around cities now. We buy beer at the brewery. Do these figures include 1st party sells? Distributors have always been a necessary evil and many states have laws saying you must go through a distributor for selling elsewhere, but many breweries are just doing taprooms now to not have to deal with that. I’d like to see those stats if they exist.

I do understand that many people are buying seltzers now, myself included.

It also doesn't help that the craft beer scene turned into a competition to push the most over the top bitter IPAs possible. A lot of the appeal of craft beer went away for me when 3/4 of the taps became unremarkable IPAs. A good IPA is wonderful, but the vast majority of what you run into isn't that.

It's only marginally more interesting than when the landscape was dominated by lagers.
- Hops are really awesome when used correctly, but many breweries just toss in hops to cover up bad bases. I’m lucky to have a few breweries around me that make really goods stouts and sours.
- At least around me that has improved. Ten years ago it was just a dick-measuring contest about who could make the bitterest beer. Once you hit 90+ IBUs you're not even pretending to make something good.
  
  Since then, craft breweries here have course corrected. Most of them here are focusing on making a well- balanced IPA as their flagship, then experimenting with sours, stouts and saisons.
- As a lover of pale ales and browns, has been a tough few years. I used to love IPAs but the flavor is mostly played out and predictable for me at this point
- Oh god I love those sorry, it’s probably my fault. A regular old bitter IPA or with citra is perfect for me, and lately everywhere I go has like 10 beers I want. It’s amazing and I’m very happy.
- That might have been the case 10-15 years ago (and I guess maybe it still is in some areas that are slow to follow the trends of craft beer) but these days that's just not the case for most of the small scale craft beer.
  
  Sure, IPAs have become the iconic style of American craft beer and they'll likely be overrepresented in the US craft market for at the very least the next several decades, but for the past 5-10 years things have moved away from there over saturation that those who dislike the style still like to pretend dominates the scene.
  
  Since the peak of ultra-bitter-IPA-mania, we've seen similar (if smaller) fads/trends for sours, NEIPAs, and most recently hazy IPAs (the latter two of which are not in the excessively bitter trend of the IPAs most think of). We've also seen fruit beers and seltzers take over, maybe even beyond the degree that IPAs ever did.
  
  In the meantime, we've seen these extreme hop bombs relegated to the sidelines of the modern craft beer scene. My personal theory being that lots of brewers wanted to get in on that trend, tried, and found out just how tricky it can be to craft a good imperial IPA, and once people found good ones with wide availability, they stuck with them and the rest of the market dried up. While there's nuance within hop bills, it's still all hops. With fruit beers, it's far easier to do something that nobody else is doing.

It might have something to do with weed being easier to get. Where I live it's easier and faster to get weed than it is to get beer, especially on sunday.

Alcohol is expensive and makes you feel like shit. Who does that to themselves by choice when there's alternatives?
- It only makes you feel like shit if you want to get wasted irresponsibly. I like beer and outside of some college benders I’ve never felt like shit after. Stay hydrated folks.
- Because beer tastes great
- I respond poorly to weed and well to alcohol. Bodies are different.
- I enjoy the buzz from alcohol and I rarely drink enough to make me feel like shit. While I'm generally a social person, I also enjoy that it is a social lubricant, while I find other highs to not be nearly as social, and often even anti social.
Yup. I’m smoking on new years. Not drinking.
Where do you live?
This is part of why alcohol companies spend insane amounts of cash towards anti legalization efforts
- The DEA, or Distiller's Enforcement Apparatus, is an army of masked thugs licensed to rob, defame, kidnap, or kill those suspected of preferring other drugs over alcohol.

A 4 pack is $12. I'm just going to get a bottle of whisky instead.

that's gonna be some good whisky.
- Depending on the size of the can, At $2-3 per standard unit of alcohol, would put it at like $40-60 for the equivalent whisky bottle. So, yeah it could be.
- There's a bourbon called ancient age which is made by Buffalo trace. Sells for $11 a bottle here. It's not fancy, it's just a perfectly decent bourbon for a very low price.
  
  But a bottle of whiskey and a four pack of craft beer have different amounts of alcohol, so you could end up getting a much nicer bottle of whiskey.
$12 is a steal. A 7% IPA in Jersey will run you 16-22$. Yeah, and add to that that the craft beer market is just oversaturated, I think I'll pass.
Right there with ya.

I also wonder how liquor sales are as well.

My wife and I are obviously only one couple, so this is confirmation bias, but alcohol in general just isn't as appealing anymore. With all this general stress we've been going through (struggling with inflation, insane work hours, insane work conditions) alcohol is causing more migraines, sucky morning-after-drinking symptoms, high calories, expensive prices, there's just no good reason to drink as much as we used to. And it's not like we drank that much earlier in our lives as well.

Tie this all together with marijuana availability which has none of these cons except for high taxes, then alcohol doesn't sound as appealing anymore.

I also wonder how liquor sales are as well.

Up a staggering amount. The US is in the throes of an alcohol-abuse epidemic.
- If that's the case, keep on keeping on alcohol drinkers. 🫡
  
  As long as nobody is drunk driving, being a public nuisance, or hurting people in any way then I won't tell people how to live their lives.
  
  Although, I feel the same way about any drug really. There's enjoying yourself and then there's hurting yourself.

No beer for me, just drugs please.

I just want weed. I didn’t even think of buying alcohol for new years, but I did purchase a screen for my pipe.
You son of a removed, I'm in.

Meanwhile my drinking has hit personal record highs this year. Yay depression.

18 days sober today for me! You can do it friend.
Even if you don't stop completely, and instead only drink socially as opposed to alone I think you'll feel a lot better. I know I did! Plus, the feeling of waking up every day 100% sober with no hangover is better than all the drunken nights. Whatever you choose, good luck...
I peaked during the pandemic and was also depressed. It's a difficult cycle to break but I got out of it. If you want to chat about it let me know.
Please, be careful with that, alcohol usually makes depression worse
I don't know you, but I understand how tough depression is. Just remember when things get bad that this stranger on the internet loves you. I want to see you happy and I'm sure you'll make it there :)

Because it's expensive, calorie intensive and takes longer to drink than something like whiskey or vodka.

If I'm thirsty, I'll drink water. If I want to get drunk, I'll drink whiskey. Beer is the middle ground that just isn't worth it anymore.

There are some that taste good. But it's only every once in awhile for me.
Best I can understand, beer is more of a social drink than anything. Slow enough to get most people wasted that they can easily drink for the 2-4 hours they're at a party or event for without getting too badly drunk

The beer fests near me are filled with selzers, ciders and stuff like mead. As someone who doesn't like beer, I think it's a positive change to have alternatives for different tastes.

I think beer is gross, personally, so this isn't a post about me but reading the comments it is interesting to see beer drinkers here decide against it due to cost and wanting other choices. I have news for you guys there are cocktails and other great alcohols that cost as much as your 7 to 10 dollar beer and they taste fucking great.

Well, I personally get intoxicated a bit even by sweets, and also feel worse from sugar. While beer (IPA-s mostly) makes me feel better and not that much drunk.

Ah, and that "good alcohol" you're talking about makes me nervous, shaky, paranoid and it's as if my hangover always started when others are only becoming drunk.

Metabolism can be different from person to person.
sweet drinks are fine to have 1 or 2 of, but the sugar content will fuck your stomach up badly. learned that the hard way
You say "gross", now that's an intriguing choice of vocab...because it's just a watery liquid, it doesn't have a texture like snot or slime or similar typically "gross" things. I'm not saying you're wrong in your dislike of it, the taste, smell, etc. but could you elaborate what you think is "gross" about it?
- Beer tastes like carbonated ass with added bread flavouring. That specific enough for ya?
- Smell and taste is terrible. I rather have a coke with amaretto if I HAVE to drink. Never saw the appeal of beer. Plus who has money to spend on this kind of stuff. Least soda is sweet and cheaper than water.

No joke, it's all the seltzer marketing that gets people to spend way more on way less alcohol.

It was successful as fuck. Just look at all the streamers shilling it.

How is it spending way more on way less alcohol? In my area a 12 pack of Trulys is comparable to a 12 pack of Corona and they have roughly the same alcohol content
- A 8 pack of seltzer here is $20 and 12 pack of beer $15.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think hard Seltzer is technically classified as beer?

It says “BEER” on the back of White Claw cans.

Can you clarify your point?
- If I was making hard seltzer at scale, I'd consider two options:
  
  Cut some Everclear 97% and some flavorant into water, and throw 30psi of CO2 on for it a few days (expensive)
  
  Ferment some dextrose, rack it off the yeast cake, add some flavorant, and throw 30psi of CO2 on it for a few days (cheap)
  
  My hombrew club hated me.

I don't like alcohol. I like fried food and obesity is certainly on the rise in America.

What a fuckin' comment.
This sentence could have been uttered with the same validity 100 years ago.
- This sentence could have been uttered with the same validity 100 years ago.
  
  Nah, obesity wasn't a thing back then. It started around the 80s.

Yet even as overall volume consumption declined, the largest beer makers remain financially resilient thanks to prices that climbed alongside — or even surpassed — broader inflation, Steinman said. Beer drinkers also continued to shift toward more expensive beer brands, especially imports like Modelo Especial, which became the No. 1 beer in America in 2023.

So people aren't willing to pay higher prices for worse product.

We're much more health conscious these days. We've seen how alcohol can wreck your health and quality of life. There are more and more people that don't drink alcohol at all. And so on.

No we're not

We've replaced drinking and snacking with smoking and snacking

Your liver can grow back and repair itself from moderate damage. Lungs cannot.

And I say that as someone who uses both.
- Three words, edibles.

I drink IPAz when I only want to have 2 drinks instead of 10.

Turns out, that's most of the time

Is this trend only the US? Would be interesting to see how it is in other countries and how it correlates to economic and social indcators

ليس هناك مصير إلا ما نصنعه لأنفسنا

I find it hard to believe that the idiot Republicans who boycotted Bud Light stopped drinking beer entirely.

More expensive, but also just all around bad for the body. Just really not worth it.

I feel like a lot of people don't know that alcohol is a carcinogen. Totally not worth it
- Just about everything useful or fun is a carcinogen. Just practice moderation and you'll probably be okay.
I just literally can no longer afford alcohol. It's partly a relief to just no longer have to think about it or spend time on it, though I do miss the treat and the relaxation that it can bring. But like many others facing poverty, I sometimes feel a little angry at my fellow consumers who kept right on buying beer and everything else as food and beverage prices rose about 30 percent in five years. I wish everyone had been like "sorry, no, you're not seriously charging that much, forget it." Then again, as a child in the 70s I thought for sure consumers were going to reject the move to plastic food packaging. D'ohh.
- Yeah, depending on what you drink and how much, it's almost $10 for a six-pack of beer now, maybe $100 month on average, so that's about $1200 a year, just on something you're literally going to be pissing away.
  
  To be fair though, the last few years probably caused people to start drinking more than they normally would. My consumption definitely ticked up during the worst parts of the pandemic to where I was plowing through multiple six-packs a week. I've come down quite a bit since then, though it was kind of scary deciding to quit altogether because I was afraid, "What if I can't do it? What if do have some kind of dependency?" But it actually ended up being easier than I thought since it's mostly for health reasons (cholesterol and reducing risks for dementia). I just decided to stop and I stopped and that was it, it's been relatively easy. I probably just have other habits that I started compensating with.

As someone who rarely drinks and fucking hates being around dumb drunk fucks.

Good.

Keep going, don't stop, fuck alcohol.

David Nutt knew what was up. He argued alcohol and tobacco should be illegal and marijuana, LSD, and mushrooms should be legal, based on real-world harm (he also had the data to back it up). He got shitcanned for suggesting this.

Humanity needs to wake the fuck up to how fucking bad alcohol is for us as a species.

I’m not one to put down someone else’s hobbies. My wife and friends and I all go out and drink for the flavor. Cocktails are entertaining and delicious, beer gardens and breweries have a chill laid back atmosphere and really helps us get out of the house. We don’t drink to get drunk. Sure, alcohol isn’t that healthy for us, but it takes the edge off. I can’t take mushrooms, weed, or LSD every day after work to relax. Booze is nice sometimes to just have a bit of a rounding out of the day.

There are many precautions that need to be in place to protect drunks from harming others, and I get that it’s exhausting to be around drunk people.
- If you ever worked in a hospital or worked on the social services side of things that tune might change.
  
  Just like tobacco, alcohol is patently terrible for society. DUI deaths, domestic violence, longterm brain deterioration, carcinogenic effects.
  
  Alcohol costs society so much. Just because some can handle driving over the speed limit doesn't mean everyone should.
- First I would like to say that millions of people do consume weed every day after work. Without weed, a vast many of them would perhaps be daily alcohol users are.
  
  My second point is, the fact that you have a category of acceptable drugs to consume daily, and include alcohol in it, might be something you should evaluate.
  
  I will drink a bottle of wine on a Friday and Saturday night, but the idea of drinking every night, even if just 1 or 2 drinks, terrifies me.
- Nutt's argument relied on large amounts of evidence based on how dangerous each drug actually is in reality.
  
  But sure, because some people consider it a hobby we should definitely keep it legal and let people continue to ruin theirs and others lives!
I mean, yeah, booze isn't great for people. But it's been a fairly important part of humanity since, like, the first city. According to wikipedia, humans have been making booze since the Neolithic period (10,000 BCE). Many, many, human cultures have some sort of relationship with it. Removing it would not be easy or well received.
- There are a few theories that propose alcohol tolerance is baked into our DNA. Pre-humans that were able to breakdown alcohol were able to survive off of fermenting fruit when needed and not get so blackout drunk they became easy prey for something else. While that is just theory, the ability for us to process alcohol had to start somewhere.
  
  I find it strange that a substance that helped us evolve is also a major sponsor of the Darwin Awards.
Lol people know how bad alcohol is.

Maybe you'll understand when you're a little bit older, bud.
- I don't know how young you think a guy who is referencing an obscure UK government official being sacked 14 years ago would be.

Tap water probably got drinkable so no need to buy it in bottles or cans

Not for lack of effort on my part.

There was a while when everything was watery beer, Bud Light, Coors etc. Then there was a sort of golden era, with lots of variety and lots of companies. There was certainly a good bit of crap, but the huge variety meant that there was always something good to drink. Now we've gone back to consolidation, with only two companies in the entire world, and only one kind of beer: poorly done IPAs. Monopolies are bad for consumers. No one wants to buy this piss.

Now we've gone back to consolidation, with only two companies in the entire world, and only one kind of beer

Wat? We did? When did this happen?

Where I live there are microbreweries all over the place. As far as I can see we are still in the golden era and it’s only getting better.
- I'm in the PNW and it's just shitty IPA's everywhere. I also seem to get judged every time I ask if there's a stout, or really any dark beer, on tap.
  
  Even going to visit other areas with more microbreweries around, there are more options... still wading through IPA's though.
  
  Edit: while I'm at it, sour beers suck.
Are you shopping at the Dollar General?

Last time I was at a Walmart/Target/Publix/Ingles/etc all that shit watery beer is still there plus the largest selection of ales lagers and IPAs that there has ever been. Not to mention the ciders and seltzer that are huge now too.

Just wanted to chime in that I wholly disagree with this “beer was better back then” bullshit.
I've been all over the US and my impression is there are more local and regional craft breweries than ever. Sure some of them get gobbled up by the InBev monster but not all. Personally I'm only looking for a bottle or two per week during football season or maybe an occasional tap pint. In those small quantities you barely feel the price difference between Bud/Coors and better beers. Might as well drink the better stuff that isn't owned by an evil multinational conglomerate.

Lets make America great again - have a beer!

Same happened in Japan.

Anecdotally, I and many of my friends are way more likely to purchase liquor than beer. Personally it's just too much liquid for me, especially because I still want to be drinking water alongside the booze.

I'm going to credit Dylan Mulvaney for this improvement in American social discourse. People boycotting bud light has been amazing for beer consumption.

Lower beer consumption means lower community violence. These things take time to recognize, let's start planning Dylan's parade for say....2026? Plenty of time to make it fabulous.

I swear to fucking God if gen Z fucks up the local brewery thing I will burn down the building.

Millennials and Gen X worked so hard to make a plethora of local brews by killing so many industries and not having kids, it would be such a shame to lose all of that due to people with a 7 second attention span.

For every beer yall don't drink, I'm going to drink 3. 1 because I want a beer, 1 for the beer you passed on, and 1 to make the beer industry even more awesome.

US beer is shit anyway 🤷 Took them a good while to notice!

I’ve noticed that the people who say this aren’t beer drinkers and have zero experience with beer beyond what they see on TV.
- I've been drinking beer for thirty years, am well versed in the beers of different countries, and I don't own a TV, so pull another one.
The US has some great craft beer. Some of (if not the) best in the world. Our beer that sells well is shit though, I agree. Out of the "popular" (which mostly just means cheap) beer, the imported ones are generally better.
Craft isn't bad but still not good for most of america.