Who Drinks What

There's an old quote misattributed to Mark Twain that says it's not what you don't know that gets you into trouble, it's what you know that just ain't so. So when Gallup posted some findings on drinking patterns in the US, I clicked on through to see if it might disabuse me of any persistent old myths. One finding lined up pretty closely to what we expect: the rich drink wine, the middle-class drink beer, and poor drink (cheap) liquor*.

So far, so good. But there was one surprising finding. There is a stereotype of the poor we sometimes visualize as a man sitting on a sway-backed porch, bottle in one hand, cigarette or rifle in the other. Well, turns out the poor are the least likely to be drinking. The wealthy, but a substantial margin, are the boozers. (And that correlates with education as well.)

There appear to be other factors here as well--education, race, and religiosity. Education is correlated with wealth, so it's not surprising that the educated drink more (that's the bit I clipped out of the first table). Religiosity leads one away from the devil's water.

While not as powerful a predictor as income and education, religiosity is also strongly related to alcohol consumption. Specifically, 47% of those in the current poll who attend church weekly say they drink alcohol, compared with 69% who attend church less often than that, if at all.

And the less-wealthy are more religious. Drinking is also more common among whites (69%) than non-whites (52%), and among men (69%) than women (59%), but those factors are also both connected to wealth and religiosity--so all these variables are nested.

Anyway, all you rich, white men out there--now we know what you're doing in your free time.

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*I condensed this table so as not to step on the big reveal later in the post.

A Hoppy Ale to Rule Them All

A couple-three weeks back, Zymurgy magazine released its annual poll of readers' favorite commercial beers.  Homebrewers do not in any way represent the average beer drinker, but they have been, since the 1970s, on the cutting edge of American brewing.  They were the first to use American hops, it was from their ranks that the first craft brewers emerged, and they have long been the leading practitioners of techniques now standard in professional brewing.  (I mentioned their latest innovation recently.) 

Where beer culture emerges, it does so buoyed by the enthusiasm of the most avid fans.  Look to their preferences if you want to see the state of the country.  The following list will therefore in no way surprise you.  It contains a surfeit of hoppy ales, a few dark ales, and a very thin smattering of outliers.  (Depending on how you classify things, 35 of the fifty listed beers were hoppy ales; another nine were dark ales.  Five were flavored, four were barrel-aged.  The first beer that is not either a hoppy or dark ale comes in at 25--Boulevard Tank 7.)  The top ten:

1. Russian River Pliny the Elder (hoppy ale)
2. Bell’s Two Hearted Ale (hoppy ale)
3. Ballast Point Sculpin IPA (hoppy ale)
4. Bell’s Hopslam (hoppy ale)
5. The Alchemist Heady Topper (hoppy ale)
6. Lagunitas Sucks (hoppy ale)
7. Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA (hoppy ale)
8. Stone Enjoy By IPA (hoppy ale)
9. Founders Breakfast Stout (dark ale) (flavored)
10. Goose Island Bourbon County Stout (dark ale) (barrel-aged)

I wondered how this stacked up to past years as a way to chart the changing preferences among the uber geeks.  Zymurgy has only been doing this for 11 years, unfortunately enough, yet even that span of time is instructive.  The American Homebrewers Association director, Gary Glass, sent me the 2003 list--actually a top-12.  Have a look:

1. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (hoppy ale)
2. Anchor Steam (steam beer)
3. Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale (hoppy ale)
4. Anchor Liberty Ale (hoppy ale)
5. Stone Arrogant Bastard Ale (hoppy ale)
6. Alaskan Smoked Porter (dark ale) (flavored)
7. Brewery Ommegang Abbey Ale (dubbel) (flavored)
8. Sierra Nevada Bigfoot (hoppy ale)
9T. Anchor Old Foghorn (hoppy ale)
9T. Great Lakes Edmond Fitzgerald Porter (dark ale)
9T. New Belgium Fat Tire (amber ale)
9T. Samuel Adams Boston Lager (Vienna lager)

Only half of those beers are hoppy ales.  It includes six different styles, including a lager and lager-like beer (there are no lagers on the current list of 50).  Vestiges of the early days of craft brewing--one is an amber ale and two are old-school barley wines--have now fallen out of favor (zippo of both on 2014's top-50 charts).  Eight--two-thirds--of those beers no longer make the homebrewers' top fifty (Anchor Steam, Anchor Liberty, Alaskan Smoked Porter, Ommegang Abbey, Sierra Nevada Bigfoot, Anchor Old Foghorn, New Belgium Fat Tire, and Boston Lager).

Eleven years doesn't seem like a long time in the scope of things, but we can see the distant past reflected in 2003's list.  It was still loaded with beers from the founders--half came from Anchor and Sierra Nevada, and throw in Sam Adams for good measure.  Even Fat Tire, which didn't go back to the beginning, represented one of the founding styles (amber ale).  What's really shocking is that there's only one IPA (though it's smuggled in under a different name).  You could slide Anchor Liberty uneasily into that camp, but it's no one's version of a modern IPA, no matter what the old-timers try to tell you.  Sierra Celebration, at 6.8% and 62 IBUs of c-hops, definitely is. It's America's first American IPA, and still loved by beer drinkers--it's number 15 on the 2014 list.

Pliny the Elder has won the reader poll six years running, which shows how hops came to dominate craft beer.  There's a way in which it seems like we've always loved hoppy beers, but the 2003 list is proof that hops are a fairly recent phenomenon.  What convinces me that this isn't another trend destined to be replaced is the overwhelming dominance that vein of styles has in the beer geek's imagination.  When you look at the 2003 list, you can see different camps represented.  There are the homebrewers who liked balanced session beers.  There are those who liked exotic flavored beers.  And there are those who liked hops.  When you look at the current list, you see homebrewers who like hops and stouts, full stop.  They're not evolving toward diversity--they're coming to agreement on what good beer is.  Just like the English, Irish, Belgian, German, and Czech drinkers have done. 

If I had to bet on what the list will look like in 11 more years, I'd put all my money on hops.  It has become our national tradition.

How Charlie Should Really Designate Beer City USA

As John Foyston observes, Asheville did one thing right in winning--outright, I certainly hope--it's second BeerCity USA online poll: it excited the netizens.

I expected this year's competition to die the painful death of embarrassment--after last year's debacle, surely the craft beer world would have seen the absurdity of the exercise. (In the '09 edition, Portland rallied in the final moments, but host Charlie Papazian wouldn't offer the Rose City sole possession of the title; like a kindergarten teacher, he allowed Asheville to share the win.) Charlie Papazian is a giant in the beer world, and I celebrate his contributions with gusto. But holding an online poll to identify an annual "BeerCity" is not among his greatest achievements. He held the poll open for two months last year, and a paltry 15,000 people voted. A city like Chicago could sneeze and produce more than 15,000 votes. Obviously, this ain't a big deal among good-beer folks.

And therein lies the rub: it could be. Charlie has done a great job of promoting craft beer in the US, with impressive promotions like the just-completed Craft Beer Week. It creates a focal point for breweries to host events and raise awareness about craft brewing. In other words, during Craft Beer Week, the rest of the country does it's best Beervana impression. That's good.

However, one of the biggest functional barriers to the psychic growth of craft brewing is that it remains a mostly local phenomenon. For cities where there isn't a lot of brewing activity, Craft Beer Week doesn't provide an opportunity for much juice. So instead, Charlie should designate a different city BeerCity USA every year. Then, in the months leading up to Craft Beer Week, that city would be the object of a lot of national attention. The designee, working in conjunction with the Brewers Association and other breweries nationwide, could create a slate of events that really showcased craft beer. The local papers would get behind it, the mayor could make a show of it, and so on.

Such a system would have the side benefit of showcasing that city to the rest of the country. I know Philly's a great beer city, but I don't really know why. If it were BeerCity USA (or better yet, Beer City), I'd hear a lot about it in the weeks leading up to Craft Beer week. Every town has its idiosyncrasies, and this would allow us to learn them. Over time, we'd have a far better sense of the country's local scenes.

Despite how silly I think the current poll is, the virtue is obvious: Asheville, a city on exactly no one's radar 18 months ago, is now known to have a hardcore fan base for its nine breweries--a critical threshold for a strong beer culture. Going forward, I'd like there to be a new Asheville every year. And I'd really like to see the poll die.

Gallup: Beer Holding Steady Despite Recession

Gallup has some interesting results out today about drinking patterns. Bottom line? The recession hasn't affected consumption. However, below the bottom line are a few interesting trends.

America has pretty standard rates of consumption. Going back to 1939, the number of people reporting that they drink was consistently in the mid-60s (the low was in 1958 at 55%, the high in the late 70s at 71%). For the past decade, the number hasn't shifted at all--varying only within the margin of error. This year it was measured at 64%.

Where it gets more interesting is in what they drink. We generally consider the past 20 years to be a renaissance in both beer and wine consumption, yet overall beer consumption has actually fallen during that period. When Gallup started this poll in 1992 and for about the next decade, about 45% of American drinkers drank beer. But over the past five years, only about 40% of them did.



For those of us who just follow craft brewing, this look wrong--over that same period, sales of craft beer are way up. What the ... ? Actually, this is the same pattern we've seen in Oregon:

• Over the last 10 years per capita consumption of beer is down in Oregon, yet
• Over the last 5 years Oregon Brewed beer consumed in Oregon rose from 9.9% to 12%.

Gallup didn't dig down into the market segments of each kind of beverage, but we can intuit some patterns. While beer as a segment is down, there are winners and losers within the segment. I don't have the numbers on the large tin-can breweries, but they must be flatlining or declining. That's why we have seen products like Bud American Ale and the rise of the 'faux micro.'

Gallup also offered demographics of drinkers, and one number really jumps out: women. Only 21% of them are beer drinkers. They much prefer wine (50%). It is even true of younger women; only a quarter of them are beer drinkers. (Men are the big beer drinkers. Half of men drink beer, and two-thirds of young men do.)

This is very good news for craft brewers. The macros have encouraged a frat party sensibility about beer (sometimes bordering on mysogeny) and are going to find it hard to lure women. But craft brewing has none of the machismo. In fact, by highlighting taste and food compatibility, craft breweries are making a play for wine-drinking women. They could continue to grow at quite a clip for years to come simply by encroaching on that demographic. Based on who I've seen drinking in pubs and at beer fests, Oregon craft breweries are already doing great.

Winter Ales Season

The winter seasonals have been out for some time, but the season doesn't really seem, you know, wintry, until after Thanksgiving. Add to that the Holiday Ale Fest, which kicks off this week, and we're in the season for the big, burly ales that most of us love. But which do you love most?

This is an inexhaustive list, but it captures most of the regular winter seasonals. Add your selection if I missed it (you have to type it into the section after "other.")



Later this week, we'll look at some of the irregular (aka special) winter seasonals, many of which will be on display at the fest.