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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

No beer for me, just drugs please.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Beer drinkers have diversified

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

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

Lets make America great again - have a beer!

Not for lack of effort on my part.

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.