Craft Breweries Are Embracing the World of Mild Lagers

It’s been a tough time to be a craft brewery recently. The tip of Anchor Steam is however one half of a bigger story — one which’s additionally seen exhausting seltzer and comparable drinks eat into beer’s market share and brewing big Anheuser-Busch InBev dump numerous its craft beer holdings. Whereas there’s nonetheless no scarcity of nice craft beers on the market, one other pattern within the business reveals an fascinating facet of the place the business is perhaps headed — craft breweries embracing types of beer you may not anticipate.

In an article for Good Beer Looking, Kate Bernot explored the rise of craft breweries making gentle lager — a few of that are bought below totally different names to determine their very own niches. Beer gross sales consultant Tommy Pacholik instructed Bernot that the phenomenon was “craft breweries’ reply to themselves.”

There’s a decidedly intelligent considering behind this push into gentle lagers. Bernot cites the instance of West Sixth Brewing, whose foray into gentle lagers — Sixer — is bought in 12-packs in order to not compete with West Sixth’s personal choices for shelf area. In the previous couple of years, the strains between craft brewing and macro brewing had been blurred when massive breweries purchased up smaller ones. Now, that line blurring appears to be coming extra from the facet of the smaller breweries.

After all, the large query is how effectively it will work. Some observers of the area — together with Dave Infante at his always-informative publication Fingers — are skeptical that this shift shall be sufficient to brighten the way forward for craft beer. And it brings to thoughts a existential query for beer as an entire: simply why do you drink a given beer at a given time? This business foray into gentle lagers may present some fascinating solutions.