I am craft beer
I’m about to turn 34. As far as a craft-beer consumer goes, I’m about as typical as you can get. I’m, “one of those guys who would buy a $7 can of beer,” as one lady in our creative department put it the other day. I have a family, I visit the tap rooms at least once a week for a beer, more often with family than not. I don’t go to taverns, and I actually buy beer to drink at home. These demographics shouldn’t surprise anyone. It’s people like me who keep the craft beer industry afloat, and, as such, I’m the typical person they want to reach with new seasonal offerings, promotions and advertising. (I’m only using me to show the average craft-beer consumer, not because I believe I actually keep the industry afloat)
What is most interesting about the craft-beer industry is that the shoulders it stands on are the sons and daughters of baby boomers, the boomer echo, so to speak.
Prohibition isn’t something we have any memory of, and the memories and fears of our parents and grandparents don’t seem to have any residual effect.
It’s not that we are the only age group to drink craft beer, it’s that we are the largest. Sure, my dad likes a good craft beer once in awhile, but he doesn’t visit tap rooms that often, and he certainly doesn’t keep much at home, unless I leave a six pack there when I’m visiting.
My point in all this is that to understand the craft beer industry, you have to understand the people that it appeals to.
Want to know why people are so excited about these crazy, hoppy, high-alcohol beers called IPA? Because a generation of people became intensely interested in IPA more than a decade ago, right about the time they started to turn 21. And the beer has only improved since then.
Want to know why people are brewing beers with all kinds of crazy stuff like chocolate, berries, ginseng and wood chips? Because somewhere along the way this same generation decided that more variety is more fun. This generation decided that German purity laws, as good as they are for high-quality beer, need not apply in the good ol’ US of A.
Please don’t accuse me of ageism here. I’ve had plenty a pint with a grandfather or two, in fact, it was my own grandfather who helped me develop a taste for good beer. (He forsook American lagers for Canadian imports long before that was popular) It’s just that the overwhelming majority of craft-beer consumers fall under the categorization of a generation with a big X after it.
Pepsi may have been the Choice of a New Generation in the 80s, but here in the new millennium, craft beer rules the beverage aisles
Prost,
GG
Well said, Tim. I echo your sentiments. I’m 35, married and my idea of a vacation is to thoroughly chart out the best places to buy and drink beer within a reasonable proximity of wherever it is we’re going. Is that so crazy? After all, people do this sort of thing for wine, no? With American craft brewers, like Dogfish Head for example, producing complex and exotic beers to rival the rarest of wines, why wouldn’t there be a “sub-culture” of devotees willing to (literally) go the extra mile to find and imbibe in these storied beers. This phenomena isn’t exclusive to our generation, as you point out, but there is little doubt we are the driving force. After all, we’re a little too old to go bar-hopping with the express purpose of loading up on whatever swill happens to be on tap for .50 cents a draught at the local college bar. By the same token, we’re too young to resign ourselves to drinking our “father’s beer” simply because thats the way it’s always been …
The craft beer industry’s lifeblood is it’s experimental spirit. Sometimes, perhaps, it’s a little too unrestrained, but more times than not it is the taste of invention and innovation in a glass. And my glass genrally tastes pretty darn good.
Cheers!