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The Supermarket Guide To Beer
Series Preface
One thing is for sure, Americans buy and drink
plenty of beer. In the US during 2006, $94 billion worth of beer
was purchased and the equivalent of 214 billion bottles was
shipped. That’s a lot of hangovers! For many years the US beer
market has been dominated by the Premium American-Style Pale Lager
category. Even if you’re not familiar with this terminology, you
are more than familiar with big three US brands and brewers,
Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors. But the past 20 years has seen an
explosion in the variety of beers being brewed, imported, and
offered in the marketplace, much to the benefit of our taste buds!
Over the past 3 years alone, the craft beer category has grown by
30%, more than any other alcohol beverage category in the
supermarket sales channel.
We are creating a series of monthly articles
with a fun goal and a challenge to you, the beer drinker. Our job
will be to demystify the enormous number of beer options available
to you, and your job is to try different types of beer other than
your typical favorite. We’re not out to bash the Budweiser drinkers
of the world, we’d just like to give you a ‘taste’ of all the other
options out there.
Disclaimer! We are NOT going to be
microscopically accurate in all of this. To simplify things and to
keep us all sane, we’re going to use a ‘Supermarket’ approach. When
you walk into your typical supermarket, we just want you to know
what kinds of beer you can typically find and what the basic
differences between them are. We’re not even going to delve into the
expanded choices you’ll find at specialty shops (yet!)
Now many purists and critics will argue that
this is a woefully inaccurate representation of the options out
there. Guess what, they are completely correct! Supermarket
competition is fierce and expensive. There are only a tiny number
of breweries and distributors that can even get their beer onto the
shelves of your local grocery store. But supermarkets are finally
stocking up with more varieties in recognition of the changes in the
beer customer’s expectations and preferences, so we think is a good
place to start (plus it’s an easy place to try something new.)
If you do want to delve into this topic at the
microscopic level, then we recommend the Brewers Association’s 2007
Beer Style Guidelines publication which describes over 130 different
classifications of beer. That should be more than enough to satisfy
even the most discerning palate!
If you haven’t already done so, we’d suggest
initially reading two articles in TheElegantDrunk’s Fun Facts
Learning Center which help describe lagers and ales, the two major
categories of beer. They’re short and easy reads, and will help put
more context into what you read:
§
Lessons in Lager
- Discovering the lighter side of beer
§
Dark Secrets -
Learning the ins and outs of Ale
We’re going to start off our series with the
big boys of the US market: Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors. Then
we’re going to branch out and look at the other options out there,
including the next tier of corporate breweries, the large
craft-breweries, micro-breweries, foreign beers, fruit flavored beer
and much, much more! In recognition of the fact that everyone’s
preferences and taste buds are different, we’re going to focus on
what the breweries themselves say about their beers. This way,
you’ll learn what they are self-promoting, then you’ll be able to
decide if they’ve achieved that goal.
Ready to have some fun and learn about beer?
Then join us next month as we start our series!
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