Greetings, beer lovers! Happy Friday, and once (or not) again, ‘tis chingchongchinaman as your guest FNBB blogger tonight, with esquimaux taking a well-earned break from FNBB duties. The idea for tonight’s FNBB came from the very qualitative observation, without hard numbers or evidence, that at my regular grocery store, the section dedicated to craft beers seemed to be shrinking over the past year / 18 months or so. In parallel, the amount of space taken up by mass market beers likewise looked to be increasing. It gradually dawned on me that several out-of-town craft beer brands that I’d purchased from the grocery store in the past, like Surly Brewing Company (MN) and Alaskan Brewing Company (AK – well, duh), were no longer on offer there.
It turns out that I wasn’t too far wrong on that observation. Joshua M. Bernstein had this NYT article from this past January 26, where he notes early on:
“After years of offering a steady, often weekly, succession of new products, many breweries, bars and supermarkets have pared back the number they make, serve and sell.
In part, this is a concession to economic reality: Americans are buying less beer, opting instead for spirits and canned cocktails or refraining from alcohol altogether.”
Bernstein further parses some numbers:
“As of last November, sales of beer in stores had fallen 3.1 percent by volume from a year earlier, according to the market research firm NIQ. At bars and restaurants, sales declined nearly 4.7 percent. (For craft beer alone, the drop was even sharper: 5.3 percent in store sales and 6.7 percent in bars and restaurants.)”
From very limited personal anecdata, folks are still going to places like the Schlafly Tap Room, for one, which has been doing pretty well for 30+ years, and has come through the pandemic reasonably OK, AFAICT. But on my last visit there, I didn’t notice a large number of unfamiliar flavors, but mainly tried and true listings (i.e. listings that I recognize and/or have tasted already). Or to put it more selfishly, there seemed to be maybe only 1 or 2 flavors that I’d never tried before, or didn’t recognize at the outset. The ones that seemed unfamiliar were the Passion Fruit Galaxy Wheat and Shadow Band Pils, although now that I think about it, I’m not sure if I’ve tried the Tasmanian IPA. That will be one for the next visit there, if and when that happens.
Plus, back at my regular supermarket, while the size of the out-of-state craft beer section has shrunk, the MO and IL craft beer shelves look quite well stocked. This brings home (pun semi-intended) the point that while there are ~9500 (!) US breweries, per Bernstein’s article, one doesn’t have to travel far, so to speak, to partake of craft beer. So even with craft breweries cutting back on the number of different selections, plenty of individual flavors still remain to sample, many more than I’ll ever get to try.
Admittedly, my use of the word ‘degrowth’ in the title is potentially click-baity and far from 100% accurate or appropriate, since craft breweries shrinking their number of different flavors / offerings does not necessarily translate to a reduced overall production in volumes of craft beers that each craft brewery produces. In other words, all the resources that might have gone into 25 off-beat lower seller craft beers may simply get reallocated into the 10 steady seller craft beers, and craft brewer “A”’s overall output may not decrease. The larger general point of degrowth is, of course, reduced resources consumption, which especially us industrialized First-Worlders all need to do (myself included, of course). But that’s a whole ‘nother topic, to be sure.
Perhaps in the springtime spirit, and given how warm today has been, tonight’s featured beer chez 3CM is a “Saison de Lis” from Perennial Artisan Ales here in STL, if for no other reason than the bright flowery look of its label. And the chamomile is definitely noticeable :) . BTW, in an attempt to connect to the earlier theme, it’s interesting to note from Perennial Artisan Ales’ craft beer roster how the 30 flavors shown on their site divide out:
“Always” = 8
“Sometimes” = 12
“Rarely” = 10
For semi-obligatory videos, none of the following have anything to do with craft beer. But they are modest salutes to major people in classical music who’ve left us this month. The first two videos feature, respectively, pianists Byron Janis and Maurizio Pollini:
Byron Janis (1928-2024):
Maurizio Pollini (1942-2024):
For something considerably more avant-garde, this video features the Hungarian composer and conductor Péter Eötvös (1944-2024), conducting his own music, where the work features a Hammond organ, besides a standard concert hall organ:
With that, time to turn it over to you folks. What beers are on your menu tonight? Anyone brewing their own? Inquiring minds, and all that….