With the clocks being turned back a few days ago, change is in the air, and I feel it’s time once again to clear my virtual desk off and write about some notes of interest.
Low-alcohol and no-alcohol brews are trending upward. For the past year or two, craft beer has started embracing low-alcohol brews. Beers such as Brooklyn Brewery’s Special Effects (0.4% ABV) is a hoppy brew which is tagged as having “all of the satisfaction, none of the buzz,” may provide a blueprint for other brewers.
In the U.K., a third of young adults have reduced alcohol consumption, with 23% going completely without booze, according to research by the Society of Independent Brewers over there. Guinness just released its alcohol-free stout. While high-octane beers are still extremely popular, there seems to be a growing thirst for beer that can be enjoyed over longer periods of time with the accompanying buzz (and hangover).
How many smaller craft brewers will adopt this model and offer low- or no-alcohol beers remains to be seen, but the trend seems to indicate that some should get a jump on the competition
Next up is a topic I touched a while ago in the column and which (correctly) remains under the spotlight: the lack of diversity in the craft beer business. The most recent numbers I could find from 18 months ago show that only 1% of independent craft breweries have Black owners and a slightly higher number, 2.4%, are Latino-owned.
While this is being addressed by a variety of industry leaders, there is a new book that I’d like to read that addresses this issue: “Beer and Racism: How Beer Became White, Why It Matters and the Movements to Change It” by Nathaniel Chapman, assistant professor of sociology at Arkansas Tech University.
The book doesn’t seem like a beach read, (it’s described as a “much-needed critical and interdisciplinary path to examine and understand the racial dynamics in the craft beer industry and the popular consumption of beer”), but that’s fine with me. If craft beer is going to continue to grow in our modern society, it needs people to take a hard look at its politics.
Last but not least: cans.
As some readers may have heard, this now-popular delivery system for drinking beer is on shaky ground. The recent run on cans has produced a shortage of them as more brewers are selling beer via retail shelves now that the coronavirus pandemic has somewhat strangled draft sales to bars and restaurants, which gets delivered via kegs.
In trying to compensate for lost sales, brewers have been forced to try and up their can sales, thereby adding to a supply-and-demand problem that has also been influenced by an uptick in other canned beverage sales during the pandemic, as people are forced to drink more at home. The reduction of single-use plastics has also made cans more popular for all types of beverages.
Industry experts have said that they could sell hundreds of millions of more cans if they could be produced fast enough. Here’s to hoping they soon can (no pun intended).
November 02, 2020 at 05:31PM
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Beer Nut: Low-alcohol, no-alcohol brews trending upward. - masslive.com
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