That beer is often read as deeply American has always seemed a reasonable assumption. A recent survey commissioned by the Beer Institute, the US trade association, just ahead of the Fourth of July, gave that idea some numbers to sit behind it: about two-thirds of American adults consider beer part of national tradition, and more […]
The German beer market is going through a period of adjustment that is easiest to understand through a few recent cases. Rather than a sudden turning point, it looks like the result of several pressures at once: tighter margins, softer domestic consumption and growth models that are becoming harder to sustain. In that context, the […]
There is a paradox running through the beer market right now. Several segments are still under pressure: domestic beer, imports, flavored malt beverages and craft all face a difficult backdrop. Yet the conversation keeps circling back to growth, opportunity and new consumers. One reason is straightforward: non-alcoholic beer is moving in the opposite direction and, […]
The death of Humphrey Smith, proprietor of Samuel Smith’s in Tadcaster, closed a chapter that is hard to pin down with simple labels. Smith was neither a craft-era visionary nor a market-driven manager. He was closer to an old-style owner who had ended up running a twenty-first-century business by inheritance rather than design. His pubs […]
The beer market is contracting in several European countries, and the industry keeps circling back to the same question: how do you connect with people who are drinking less, or simply drinking differently? Low-ABV beer has moved back into the spotlight as one possible answer. On paper, the segment has clear appeal; in practice, it […]
There is a question the beer industry would do well to ask more often: who, exactly, is it talking to? Not in a purely demographic sense, but in a simpler and more direct one. Who is the person holding that beer? Where are they drinking it? Why did they choose it? In the 1970s and […]
There is something revealing about two very different beer stories arriving at almost the same time: on one side, the numbers from the biggest brewing groups; on the other, the renewed attention around a British brand born more than two centuries ago. Read together, they do not point to a single industry-wide reset. Instead, they […]
Beer starts with living raw materials, grown in specific places and shaped by seasons, rain and heat. It also depends on economic and regulatory conditions that can make production easier, or more fragile, at scale. Two recent episodes, one in Oregon and one in Bavaria, help read those pressures without pushing the argument beyond what […]
For years, beer growth followed a familiar script: more volume meant more shelf space, more taps and more occasions to drink. That story looks less convincing now. Not because the category has stopped everywhere, but because in different markets a similar message is starting to emerge: simply selling more litres is no longer enough. In […]
There is a way some beer brands are increasingly choosing to be read: they start less from taste and more from image. In these cases, beer does not disappear, but it moves behind the setting around it, the occasion of consumption, the graphic code or the place where the brand decides to live. That logic […]