American Beers -- What if?

[Stone]

What if Bud/Bud Light, with its massive brand loyalty and ad campaign, suddenly changed their recipe to add flavor?

What if Rolling Rock, MGD, etc., did the same, backed by their ad campaigns of scantily clad nubile women and the "drink me and you'll get laid" message?

What if Miller and its "we have taste" ad campaign actually backed it up with taste?

Would they lose market share because a significant percentage of their drinkers really don't like "beer", or would people throughout the country open their eyes and say, "hey, this stuff actually has taste, and it's good?"

Edited August 9, 2004 by Stone (log)

[johnnyd]

They would lose market share because the costs involved in providing actual flavour would raise the price of the beer. Not a problem if all the players do it, "cartel" style, otherwise the Keystones and Schlitzes would win out IMHO.

[Mayhaw Man]

It is, as Johnnyd alludes, ultimately about money.

Beer, in and of itself is relatively cheap to make. Grain prices, worldwide, are pretty stagnant and have been for years. The only major price fluctuations seen in beer over the last 25 years or so have had as much to do with energy than with labor or raw ingredients (and there is advertising, as well. Which, for someone like AB or Miller in the US, can be HALF of the total profit of the company-ads drive sales directly, not indirectly-spend a ton of money on Saturday and beer sales are up on Sunday).

Beer is made with malted barley and other cereals (in the us, this often means rice) and the barley must be malted before it is useful for brewing. Malting is simply toasting the barley after it has been soaked in water. It is dried/toasted quickly as close as possible to the point where the endosperm is about to pop out of the seed. This is the point where the seed has the highest percentage of fermentables and so the closer you get it to perfect, the more yield you get per pound. I takes a lot of gas to malt barley.

Same thing with brewing, gas fires the boilers.

Then the stuff has to be delivered. Gas and diesel run the delivery trucks.

All of this adds up to a ton of gas usage, and adds quite a bit to the cost of that glass of beer.

My point here is that breweries, in order to make more full flavored products, will have to add more ingredients to their base to make them taste more full/better. They are not going to do this for a couple of reasons

1) The brand that they have built up has some consumer loyalty and big breweries desire that more than anything else.

2) More ingredients cost more money and that means less to the bottom line

3) The average drinker of these products (please understand that this means damn near everybody drinking big brewery products) like them the way they are. If they did not, the consumer would drive brands like Abita, Full Sail, and Bell's on to greater things. THe demand is not there. That is not to say that there is not SOME demand, but not enough to spur the big breweries to change their ways.

Their goal is to achieve the highest sales at the lowest cost while building brand loyalty among their core demographic (sorry, I don't mean to use sales talk, but it is useful here) and to that end, they are willing to spend whatever it takes-to a point. Clearly some money needs to be fed back to the stockholders-but unlike other businesses, beer is not exactly the most profitable stuff to make. Beer producers have a much lower profit point than many other producers of beverages and other foodstuffs. Volume is the way to make money, not high prices.

So they will stick with the lighter type beers because they are substancially cheaper to make, and when you are going to make 50 million barrels or so of beer, and make very, very little per bbl. profit, ingredient costs count.

[john b]

I've done my own not so scientific research on this topic. At a party I hosted, most of the guests were Budmilloors drinkers. I bought variety cases from Victory and Flying Fish. At the end of the night, the lighter flavored beers (Victory Lager and FF XPA) were still in the cooler, most of the bigger, more flavorful beers were gone (my plan backfired! I was hoping they'd drink the light stuff and leave the rest for me )

On the flip side, I've seen people spit out a sip of something "good" and say, "That doesn't taste like beer!" So who knows...

[Mayhaw Man]

I've done my own not so scientific research on this topic. At a party I hosted, most of the guests were Budmilloors drinkers. I bought variety cases from Victory and Flying Fish. At the end of the night, the lighter flavored beers (Victory Lager and FF XPA) were still in the cooler, most of the bigger, more flavorful beers were gone (my plan backfired! I was hoping they'd drink the light stuff and leave the rest for me )

On the flip side, I've seen people spit out a sip of something "good" and say, "That doesn't taste like beer!" So who knows...

By frequenting this website one can assume that you are a above average, discernining individual and one can also quite naturally assume that your friends are as well. Or maybe not. My friends are mostly moronic misfits, but they drink well (and alot, but that's another issue ).

Taking a little bigger sampling will ALWAYS give you a different answer. For exampe, there are over a hundred Bud and Bud Light taps in the Superdome. There are 6 Abita taps (all, not coincidentally located near the exits for the pricier seats). There is always a line for the Bud, but you can generally walk right up and get an Amber or a Turbodog.

Now the Dome buys all beer at the same price per 1/2 bbl. They don't care what they sell as long as they sell it. They have given the nod to good beer fans by putting in a few taps of interesting brew, but they know better than to do some kind fo massive switch. They keep what the average fan wants (and, in fact, needs-if they are a long suffering fan of what is historically the worst team in the NFL-even though they sell out every week-we are dumb but very loyal fans ) and what they can sell.

[paul o' vendange]

You are asking what would happen if the big three ever entered into making more flavorful beers. To what has been written I would add that to some extent, they already have, either under their own label or by acquiring existing breweries making "flavorful" product. I don't have the stats before me, but, at least as far as Miller is concerned, the early forays into "craft beer" proved largely to be a big wash.

Paul