Just a combination of everyone becoming more health conscious paired with decrease in socializing at 3rd places and honestly just how much more expensive it is to go out and drink. It is a recipe for disaster for these companies. I remember around the 2010s, still being able to go to the bar for quarter draft night. We paid 50 cents for a plastic cup of domestic beer. I haven't seen that in years.
Innovation stopped because the consumer wasn't interested. Beer nerds loved it but the average Joe didn't and a lot of the beer nerds got burned out and started drinking well done lagers. $24 4 packs of tall boys just wasn't sustainable
So true! I’ll splurge on sours every now and then, but really lost my appetite for IPAs, which still dominates tap lists. I’d say American breweries still lack quality on pils, lagers (not all of course), but leads to grabbing your beer of choice at a liquor store rather than a bar
I've brewed beer, wines, meads, and ciders (and mixes of them) for decades now as a hobby. The second I see a brewery with more than 2 IPAs on their list I get suspicious, 4+ I assume they're terrible and move on.
IPAs were created as a way to preserve and mask the flavor and smell of beer (specifically English pale ales) going bad on the journey from the England to India. They loaded the barrels with perishable beer and hops, which gave them their characteristic strong hop flavor and aroma, and helped preserve them for the journey.
If you're a small brewer and you brew 500-1000 gallons of beer, you'll have a lot of money tied up in any given batch. If it's horrible, you could trash it and eat the loss, or you could dry hop it and age it with hops for awhile, filter them off, force carbonate it, and sell it as an "IPA" with the hops covering how bad it otherwise tastes/smells.
I would wager that when you see a brewer with 10+ different IPAs, they're just really bad at brewing and are trying to cover it up with something they think people will buy because IPA became a marketing term more than an actual style of beer.
I like pale ales for the same reason I think that the best measure of a cook is making a scrambled egg. There's nothing to hide behind.
Innovation is still present, it's just that the good brewers all went to a few specific places and the rest of the breweries tried to rest on their laurels, which didn't work with increased labor and ingredient prices
All the inbreeding in the industry didn't help either. Craft beer is such a homogeneous product now.
What started say 20 years ago as a couple big name craft breweries quickly turned into all the guys who worked at those en masse leaving to start their own breweries in the 2010s craft beer explosion, and then there were more spinoff breweries from those in all these cities.
They are all working with the same general beer knowledge from many years in this industry, so there is little difference between beers/styles now from one microbrewery to another. A hazy ipa at one is about the same as a hazy ipa at another. You go to the grocery store and there is an entire section of craft beers but put two of the same style blind in front of someone and they probably won't notice much difference.
It used to be 15-20 years ago people would go line up for limited releases of beers like Kentucky Breakfast Stout, but these days you can get good bourbon barrel stouts year round from who knows how many breweries.
It's just largely all the same and the market isn't big enough to support that many clones. I'm sure the handful (relatively speaking) of big time craft beer nerds have examples of newer ideas and limited run special beers out there today, but that is an even more niche hobby than it used to be.
Why would I wait in line for Vermonster anymore when there are dozens of IPAs barely different from it? It's just not special anymore.
A friend used to travel all over to buy out releases of Dogfish Head 120 Minute wherever he could find it. I also remember a coworker paying something insane for scalped Kentucky Breakfast Stout.
A large percentage of craft beers quite literally didn't exist as a style, 25 years ago. Because nobody had ever made them before, or sold them. Pliny the Elder was like, revolutionary when it came out, a double IPA? It was outlandish and highly sought after. I used to do beer trading here on reddit (rip r/beertrade) and for a long time, I was shipping out 4-8 bottles of Pliny a week to people all over the country.
Now there's so much crazy crap out there, it's hard to keep up
And all the legendary beers of old have been copied and improved upon by the giant web of microbreweries out there that none of them are really worth seeking out anymore. Like you said, it used to take being in the know for a drop and getting in line to get a 4 or 6 pack of a beer like Pliny but now the grocery store probably has identical beers to that from a dozen breweries available all the time.
I used to stand in a line for the annual bottle drop at my small brewery and come back the next day for a huge, packed beer release block party with local bands, local merch, and local produce. Hell, I met one of my groomsmen at the brewery. It was more than just the beer, but it was the good beer too.
I'm in a different city now and only one of the breweries here has any type of regular event other than a half-assed oktoberfest.
As a guy who loved IPAs long before they got popular, I've never gotten into double or imperial and there are just so many of them out there. I want to be able to have a few beers after work, not have 2 get me as drunk as 4 normally would.
My wife is crazy about this brewer that makes "smoothies" (Drekker brewing) and one of them is a chocolate peanut butter. There's also something along the lines of blueberry marshmallow fluff. I don't get it, it's definitely not for me, but it seems kind of popular.
Or just for women. Men tend to gravitate to more bitter flavors while women find them overly bitter and like things a bit sweater. Something to do with tasting poison for babies or whatever.
Hey man, the market speaks and people vote with their wallets. If they are producing a bunch of IPAs, it's a good sign that they are selling a bunch of them and that people want a bunch of them.
From what a few brewers have told me when I asked why the disappearing variety at many places (10ish rears ago), its about quality control. The overpowering traits of IPAs and sours can mask inconsistencies to a much better degree compared to a more delicate beer. Less chance of a bad batch.
Also, IPA became a buzzword for hipsters that wanted to look sophisticated and get a higher abv.
My bartender friend's favorite customers:
"Whats the strongest IPA you have? Wait, how much? I'll have a PBR." -hipster
I remember very well when SNPA was the only really quality beer you could get, yes. But it did not have that outlandish appeal that Pliny did at the time. Some of that is marketing and scarcity of course but the flavor is still absolutely on point, I had a Pliny the other day and it's still just as delicious
Brewery i used to go to would make a small infused batch every week for "one off Wednesday."
It could be anything from changing the type of hopps on a flagship beer to a jalapeño watermelon kolche. One time they made malt liquor, just cause.
This place also wasn't just IPAs and sours like many breweries now. They had dark lager, a light and dark saison, a chocolate stout. They would come out with a new beer and my friends and I would try it, talk about it, the bartenders were friendly and relay info on the new beer from the head brewer. We learned new brews, their origins, and more. It was the novelty and community that kept me going back.
Different ingredients, different proportions, different yeasts, fermented for different amounts of time, in different temperatures... there's a lot to beer.
It's kind of like asking, what possible innovation could there be in pizza? Make some dough, put some sauce on it, some cheese, and bake it in an oven. Right? But then you look around and there are a dozen major pizza styles in the US, and a bunch of hyper-regional ones that barely anyone even knows about. Take off all the toppings, okay, anyone can go to the grocery store and find random shit to lay on top of a pizza. Look at just the dough. How many different dough recipes for pizza are there? Basically every single pizza shop has its own recipe, their own starter, etc. If you kind of group them together into "I can't differentiate these crusts" you still get at least a dozen really obvious different styles of dough, and you find that over time those styles change and evolve to match consumer preferences - individual shops stay static as a matter of legacy and pride while others make big changes (or new shops open up) and see how it shakes out.
Unique yeast strains that create specific flavors during fermentation. Unique cultivars of hops, grains, & malts, that create unique flavor profiles while being fermented with different yeast strains. Uncommon styles or variations on styles.
Micro Breweries just became IPA factories. Consumer selection dried up to make room for the higher margins that please the owners.
IPAs are very forgiving for the brewers and are on the low side of required tank days. I used to be big into craft beer but it was noticeable how popular beers were pushed off menus to make space for a new type of IPA, and then another, then another.
Its the insurance industry. Almost all third places are financially untenable because of liability insurance. Bars are just one of the more visible casualties because of how ingrained in culture they were. Think of how many more street festivals and small time music there used to be? The casual art shows, the plays in the park, kids actually playing sports, all destroyed by the morgans and morgans of the world.
Insurance companies and law firms have basically been taken over by the types of people they were originally created to protect us from. Now it’s all just a scam
It's my personal experience as someone that owns a brick and mortar grocery store. You used to only get sued for "gross negligence" nowadays you get sued anytime anything at all. There isnt any safeguards against frivolous lawsuits, so there is a cost to defend irregardless of the vailidity of the case.
Do you have a source or any studies that support this? Cost of insurance really just tells you how expensive it is for the carrier to insure you, so it’s hard to imagine that as the root cause. Maybe symptomatic of something else.
Also it’s such a “perfect” answer to the questions being asked here that I’m a bit skeptical.
Here in South Carolina we've been in the midst of a "liquor liability crisis". Some years back lawmakers passed a bill that's caused insurance rates to skyrocket. They've been working on fixing it, but we've already had many bars and venues close their doors as a direct result of insurance rates skyrocketing:
https://www.postandcourier.com/news/liquor-liability-restaurants-bars-insurance-costs-sc/article_5a29e694-74e1-11ef-836b-9f73936da736.html
Maybe it's just because I live in Milwaukee, the city of festivals for every little thing, but there are constantly street festivals. Every weekend, all over the place, from Spring to mid-to-late Fall.
Yeah, my city had to put out a framework for approving street festivals last year because there were so many, and some people got up in arms that they weren't going to be EVERY weekend.
The problem is when you have them that often, they mostly become "events to sell stuff," not actually special or fun. Most of the mad people were...selling stuff.
I'm in a different Midwest city and we have festivals all the time. We have a weekly food truck lunch fair, a weekly farmers market, a monthly night market, church socials, park festivals, music events at parks and different "porch festivals". There's so many! From the other towns I spend time in throughout the midwest, it's much the same. There are events all the time...maybe this is a regional thing?
My city requires terrorist insurance for any small local street festival type event. The going rate for what the city requires in $10k+ in just insurance to have something small and casual. Which just nuked things like car and art shows.
Additionally, the end of the ability to insure things will be the true end of our culture once climate change makes everything too insecure to invest in, ending with water itself. No one will take any more risk & there will be only decline. This is a step toward that phase of collapse.
I am building upon your point, extrapolating toward the coming future where actuarial tables fully break down and insurance is no longer viable in any effective sense. After they’re through the roof they will dissipate entirely, “It’s cheaper just to gamble.”
I did research in college on the brewing industry, large and small brewers, barley and hop farmers, and yeast producers. Beer isnt getting cheaper in our lifetimes, the cost of the water in the beer and production is more expensive, the production of hops is more expensive (as well as demand outpacing growth of farms), and yeast production is more expensive. That and environmental initiatives for clean water make the production of 'cheap' beer almost impossible in the US
Edit: forgot about the bars and taphouses themselves, but rent and cost of landownership has also exploded, so if you want a beer out $6.50 is about the cheapest most can go nationwide before they are losing money. In a city its more like $8+ to be making any money
Small in comparison, but there was also consolidation in the home brew suplly market. Their used to be great local and regional suppliers in the 00-10s. Northern, Midwest, Adventures, and Austin all had their followings and niches. Now? Private equity bullshit took so much if the fun out of it. It's been over 10 years since I made a batch.
This may make me a cheap bastard, but I never understood the thinking behind tipping for the minimum amount of service required to give me what I paid for. Carry the drink to my table? Sure you earned a tip. Pour it and hand it to me at the bar? No.
And it’s even worse with any cocktails or mixed drinks. Can buy a full bottle of decent vodka for the same as 2 drinks going out (that have the shittest booze in them).
Yeah. I know I graduated 20 years ago, but I could get properly drunk for $20 on high life Tuesday when I was in college. A big night on the weekend with several mixed drinks or shots when there were no specials would still only cap out around $60-70 with tip. These days it feels like it costs double that per person when we do go, and my wife and I are primarily beer drinkers.
Don't forget that multiple studies are finding that weight loss injections are reducing desire for alcohol. Thus patrons are eating less food and buying fewer drinks.
People sleep on the fact that glps are somewhat ‘curing’ addiction in a way we didn’t think was possible. Turns out the mechanisms that drive hunger for food are the same that drive it for things like alcohol and drugs.
Isn't Splenda just an extract from the stevia plant? I have a crapload of powdered stevia that's super sweet, from plants I put in last year and grew like freaking weeds.
I'm 2 years sober so take that how you will, but I do think that the campaign to get people to stop drinking and driving has had an impact as well.
10 years ago everyone I knew and drank with would drink and drive - maybe not completely sloshed but definitely above the legal limit.
Now I see a lot more people really stick to 1 or 2 drinks so that they can safely drive home. Nobody wants the penalties or shame of a DUI.
Some of that may be age and maturity as well but when people are only having one or two instead of 5 or 6 that means bars are making less money.
And even though rideshare options are widely available they aren't cheap. If I'm spending $8-$10 a drink to have 6+ and get drunk, having to spend another $50 to get home makes a single night out really expensive. Especially when you can drink at home significantly cheaper.
I moved to a walkable area with good public transport in my 20s and a significant factor in that decision was that I could be ready to meet friends for a drink whenever without having to plan around a vehicle. It was great.
Yeah when I lived in a city with a bar about 2 blocks from my house I drank a lot more knowing I didn't even have to contemplate driving. It was great!
Uber also made it very cheap to not drink and drive during that same period which further stigmatized DUI as now people were seen as incredibly cheap and reckless if they drove drunk instead of calling a $10 Uber. Now that rideshare has matured beyond being wildly subsidized by PE and ride cost has dramatically increased its far more expensive to go out and drink responsibly paying fares both ways but the attitude of “why didn’t you just order an uber” persists (IMO rightly, don’t be a danger to others because you’re cheap).
Drinks are expensive, rides expensive, and the culture around drinking increasingly a minefield of social risk due to more restrained attitudes towards it and prevalence of recording devices and information sharing platforms that make binge drinking fraught with opportunities to make a fool of yourself to a national audience.
The whole "impairment begins with the first drink" thing which is ridiculous. Most drunk driving accidents are way more than a couple drinks in and road fatalities keep rising as alcohol consumption falls.
Don't you think it's probably better to land on the safer side of things? It might be a little counter productive if the messaging was, "Absolutely, if you've only had one you are all good to drive!"
I vehemently oppose any attempt to lower bac limits below .08 like MADD is trying to do. No, sorry I'm going to need peer reviewed replicated studies studies that show significant impairment above and beyond the ability of the average driver while sober.
IMHO that push comes from neoprohabitionists who would love nothing more than have prohibition 2.0.
People doing drugs doesn't directly kill other people.
People driving cars inhibited absolutely does.
It's hardly the rational approach to say that we shouldn't do things to prevent people from directly killing people by driving drunk. Get as fucked up as you want at home or a bar or wherever. You take that shit on that road, you follow the fucking rules.
I mean yes in practice 1 drink won't substantially impact anyone's ability but normalizing any amount as ok is a slippery slope and anti drunk driving advocates picked a good approach. It's clearly helped reshape drinking culture.
No amount of alcohol makes you a better driver. Any amount above the legal limit makes any accident, even one that you would have gotten into sober, significantly worse for yourself. The dopamine of drinking one extra beer in an hour is not worth the lifetime of consequence.
Bingo. Would go to the East Village in NYC. Drink saki bombs or get pitchers of beer. Sangria pitchers and share among the group. We could get smashed for under $50 with tip.
Some places in my city (700,000 people) list draft beers for $6 at happy hour.
While it isn’t the $2 cans a few other dive-ish places offer, it’s not a crazy price when cocktails are $12-$16.
But with sales tax, alcohol tax plus tip, you’re looking more at a $9 beer.
Buy two and it is $18 to have two “happy hour” beers at a decent place in a medium-sized city. Take a date who buys two cocktails and you’re looking at $50 just to “go get drinks” … at happy hour.
We either try not to go out or only order food if we do.
I think the expense part of it is not getting enough credit when people ruminate on the causes. It's absurdly goddamn expensive to go out for a few beers now.
So we mostly drink at home now and just make wells vodka drinks. It's not fancy but who can be fancy in this economy?
The health thing has really gotten to me as of late. Even drinking a single beer I'll think to myself, "this isn't healthy for me, why am I even drinking it?"
Also don't underestimate the legalization of cannabis. In the evening when before I might have consumed a drink to unwind, now I much prefer a toke. Most of the people I know feel pretty much the same.
Also people don’t go out as much. I think big tech has done a good job at making us feel that everything we need is in our phones. We have mass home based entertainment options and social substitution via apps.
Seriously...the wife and I went out to dinner the other night, each got one drink with the meal because why not. $12 a piece for a single fucking glass of beer. I get wanting to make a profit, but fucking 600% profits or more is absolutely insane.
Yea I remember those crazy deals usually at college towns I feel like. But even 2015 by me in a relatively HCOL area there was 1$ miller lite Thursday nights which I doubt you see anywhere (I don’t go out drinking anymore). I hate shitty beer but for a dollar a beer it was hard to pass up.
It’s the cost. When I find myself at a bar now it only takes 1 beer purchase of $10 plus tip before I’m entirely done with literally pissing my money away. Beverages of any kind costing this much is an abject scam, we know they make this shit in giant vats for pennies on the dollar. They can shove $10 a drink straight up their asses.
I know multiple genx and boomers that have also switched to pot and no longer drink alcohol. If nothing else, it's cheaper and has drastically fewer calories, even if you include munchies.
I used to go to a night called "dimer's night" where beers were a quarter but the old name had stuck. This was late 80's though. I also worked at a place with $1.00 well drinks for happy hour in the early 90's.
I went to a bar for a friend's 21 back in the early aughts, they had 50 cent well shots. It was horrible rot gut stuff, but I had a blast cause I wasn't driving. Good times.
Truly so much more expensive to drink than ever. An domestic beer like a bud light or michelob ultra costs $5 to $6, it's ridiculous. How does a margarita cost cost $10 when it's 2oz of well tequila, mix, and salt. It's unstable for the average person.
I mean use to get boilermakers for 3.50$ Pabst tall boy and well whiskey. Been sober 6 years now and couldn’t imagine how much drinking in public would cost now. I had stopped going out for a bit before I even quit because of costs going up.
The prices for alcohol havent been "cheap" in my lifetime but holy shit it's gotten comically insane lately. For me to order a beer with dinner at a rest and have it literally double the bill for my meal is just fucking stupid
The easiest way to save money going out is to not drink alcohol.
My girlfriend will still drink and it's often a bigger tab than our meal. For like three cocktails.
And it's just gotten stupid expensive. We have an 11% sales tax. Those 15 to $18 cocktails start approaching $20. And that's not it like the Saint Regis bar. That's at like regular ass restaurants.
I used to pay 25 cents for a small beer, 50 cents for a well drink, and $1 for a name brand drink (not grey goose or even absolute but something like Smirnoff) in college. You could get sloshed and have a hot dog and popcorn for under $10. I remember being shocked one time when my bar tab was $16 but later found out a friend was putting their drinks on my tab.
This was between 2007-2010. Just 15-20 years ago. Now I can’t get ONE drink for under $10.
Around my way, disposable income did
Not increase a whole lot. But we did pass marijuana laws and added a slew of drive through coffee and chicken places. I wouldn’t say people are more health conscious, as them just changing their overall buying habits with what little money they have. Instead of a Friday night at a brewery, they’re dropping the same amount on some edibles
These bars are shooting themselves in the foot - 8-14 for a single draft beer - 14-16 for basic 2 ingredient cocktails ; you aren't going to get social gathering at places when people plan to go out for 1-2 drinks now vs just going .
Where do you see anything about a "single year drop"?
The closest quote from the article is: “'probably the biggest slump in alcohol sales for bars and restaurants that we’ve seen in 40 years,'”...
...but the 'biggest slump in 40-years' doesn't imply the entire slump has occurred in one year. Indeed, the article linked to that quote was written in 2024 and says " Over the past three years, at least 10 breweries and beer bars have closed in San Francisco..."
So a two-year-old article says the "slump" had been going on for three years already. That puts us, based on info from the article, at a 5-year slump.
US alcohol sales (in dollars) peaked in 2023, and overall consumption has been in decline since 2022.
So looking for multi-year explanations for a multi-year trend makes sense to me..
He said its the biggest one year drop. The acceleration and steepness of the drop is the central point of both headline AND article. It cant be missed. So either you didnt read it or you are purposefully misunderstanding it for bizarre and/or evil reasons, like most front page subreddits
I'm trying to understand why you think the article is referencing a one-year drop. In fact, so strong is your belief that the article pertains to a one year timeframe that you're irritated with anyone who invokes explanations of longer than one year.
But nothing that I can find in the article implies a one-year timeframe at all.
The headline is: "Triple Rock, America's oldest continuously operating brewpub, to close: The Berkeley icon is set to shutter sometime in December"
I bet you think the quote from the article that was included in the title of this reddit post by OP (about a slump) was part of the original headline. It's not. And the context of the quote about a slump has no implied or explicit timeframe attached.
Now, maybe you're trolling, but if anything is bizarre in this comment thread, it's your insistence that the article specifies a one-year slump, when the article does not specify any such thing.
But even if it did, the causal factors for a one-year slump could potentially be many years in the making. Indeed they almost surely are. So even if the article specified a 'single year drop' (it doesn't), explanations invoking a longer stretch of time would still potentially have validity. So I'm perplexed by the reasoning in your original comment, and that has only grown as you've doubled down on it
I would be more inclined to go out if a single drink didn't cost $10-15. I bought one drink and a mid burrito for my 21st birthday and paid $30, haven't gone out for a drink since.
Even the burritos at sit down restaurants are ridiculously expensive. The basic ones start around $15. Add a beer or margarita, and the bill for 2 people is $50-60 before tip
I went to a mom & pop Mexican restaurant recently and fully expected the $25 entree. What I didn't expect was for them to charge me $16 for a single bottle of Negra Modelo. When I asked they said it was because it's an "imported, premium beer." The price wasn't in the menu (and I generally don't look at the menu before ordering a drink anyway). I won't be back.
fuck that. It's $8.99/6pk at my nearest store. That's $1.50/bottle. If people are Shitty enough to do 1000% markup (over retail, not even wholesale) they should have the balls to put the price on the menu. I would have paid on card and fought the charge after the fact on principle saying I was scammed.
This is the correct answer. I don't know if you have taken a course in economics but in the first course they talk about supply vs. Demand. The two lines intersect at a price ppl will pay. Currently, businesses think we will pay any price. Because a few are still saying, well its ok this time. We need to correct them by staying home so the prices will come back down to attract our dollars. Until then go to the liquor store and embibe at home.
Don't forget that the food is rotting in the fields because there's no one to pick it, and gas prices have skyrocketed so it's exponentially more expensive to transport it now, too.
The future is 1 food distributor who gives us all a shitting disease not infrequently, and we'll like it dammit.
I don't know if you have taken a course in economics but in the first course they talk about the costs of doing business and the levels at which the business will simply close if it can't make enough money.
I think alcohol sales do a good job of illustrating why the K-shaped economy is bad.
Booze has become more expensive as the overall economy has inflated, which isn't surprising. Bars aren't suddenly more greedy - costs have risen. But our incomes largely haven't, until you get to the top few %.
In some parts of the biz, the response is to chase the upper arm of the K. Clubs are now designed around the interests of the very wealthy, with everything else an afterthought, if that. Even among them, there are big winners and losers. Lots of upstart clubs fail to attract the whales and fail, while the trendy spots bring in absurd per-night profits, charging $25,000+ for a table+service.
But the average bar can't do that - there are only so many millionaires between 21-35 to go around, and even millionaires can only drink so much.
So the cost of the booze has gone up, there's more money in the economy, but the people who have the money are too few to make for a broad-based bar culture... Normal stuff dies off, playgrounds for the wealthy compete to survive.
It's a perfect microcosm of why this pattern sucks.
You are but you're commenting in a capacity that suggests you have a perspective on how things were versus how things are. Which you don't. That's okay. But just don't comment. Be interested what others who have experience share.
did my comment imply anything about how things used to be, or was it just an anecdote about the present day consumer environment (in which I am participating in)?
no but you get to choose what you reply to and that comes with a level of expectations on what you're contributing. I get the feeling though that you're a contrarian dickhead so I'll pass from any further answers. Have a good day.
Maybe more anecdotal, but I've heard people in the industry talk about people not necessarily drinking less often but habits have just changed; Younger people are preferring to go out and spend their money on quality over quantity for something that feels worth it. A single bottle of premium spirit or natural wine or something to that effect vs drinking cheap beer.
When I was around your age 15+ yrs ago, I knew plenty of college students that would go out and blow $100+ on well drinks and cheap liquor shots on a big night out binge drinking, but that was pre-craft beer heyday and everything currently on trend.
Nothing to see here. The owners are in their 60s and their children do not want the business. They had mentally framed this business as lasting about as long as it has. It sits in a ridiculously high rent area on multiple transit lines. They own the building. They can make a killing renting or selling. But the last line in the piece, “Maybe somebody will come along and take it over.” … Makes it read a little bit of an ad, which seems to be the norm from this “news” website lately.
People love pointing out "trends" that aren't actually trends. We had four music venues/bars close in our area in the past couple of years, which had some folks sounding alarms but all turned out to be because of personal problems with the owners in each place. Everything comes to an end. The Triple Rock lasted longer than most.
Is there not actually a downturn in the restaurant/bar industry right now? Idk about Berkeley specifically but I think this might actually be a trend, even if this case isn't the exemplar.
If there’s a trend it might be that increasingly that the owners of small family owned businesses either don’t have kids or the kids aren’t interested in taking over small family run businesses.
A mixed drink for the miss, and a beer for me was $18 the other night with the $2 tip. IN RURAL NEBRASKA.
She and I agreed, we’ll both buy a case of what we want and enjoy the front porch and people watch.
I was out in the Keweenaw peninsula and northern Wisconsin area last week. $4.50 pints at Keweenaw Brewing. Couldn't believe it, locally they're usually $6-8.
According to cops in my family there hasn't been any more than pre legalization and driving a couple hours after you burn one isn't nearly as bad as driving after 6 beers.
So because this is a brewpub, as someone that's followed craft in America closely for over a decade, what you and most commenters missed completely is the other factor: market saturation. It's been an incredible rise over the past 40 years, with the total number of brewpubs (in America) nearly doubling in the last 10. We're finally at something resembling saturation i.e. a plateau, and I don't see, due to the issues you mentioned and others (like cannabis), how the number could possibly start going up again. No. We're on the downward trend. Other factors of course include the product mix, pricey products are a reflection of higher input costs, and this particular brewpub makes fairly standard or generic offerings that you can get [literally] anywhere.
Triple Rock is right near the university. There are a bunch of new big warehouse sized brewpubs in Berkeley and Oakland where the families live -- they're going out more than the students, but they're also drinking the way couples who haul their young kids to warehouses drink (modestly). Those spots are also more accommodating of outdoor social areas -- you can sit outside, the kids and dogs can run around.
I think the "brewpub" in the east bay is kinda dead because it also relies on a bigger menu well executed. The newer warehouse places have smaller menus (mostly pizzas) and people seem fine with it.
this is an econ sub. market saturation goes against the higher pint pricing point. if we were truly experiencing market saturation, why don’t we see this reflected in lower market prices? input/labor costs have increased, but have they increased to the point that $10 pints are break-even as you would expect in a market approaching saturation? doubt.
In my 20's you could go out with $20 and if you were lucky to get a happy hour, you were set. Now its minimum $8 beers and $15-$22 cocktails everywhere you go. Fuck that, don't blame the new generation at all
I lived near this spot, I figured I was on a local sub. It’s a fun bar but it was better before they expanded and made the kitchen more high volume, they lowered the food standard and took away the ‘pub’ charm when that happened. Still fun, I do love their beer, but haven’t been but maybe 1-2 times in ten years.
It's way, way, too fucking expensive, weed is legal and cheap, and we now know that no amount of alcohol is safe. Being health conscious is way more prevalent.
And
Covid profoundly changed the way people approach socializing. Combined with #1 and #2 you have a death sentence to the large majority of bars. Remember clubs? Yea they basically don't exist anymore.
>3) Covid profoundly changed the way people approach socializing. Combined with #1 and #2 you have a death sentence to the large majority of bars. Remember clubs? Yea they basically don't exist anymore.
Even before COVID. What killed the clubs and the appeal of night life for a lot of people was Tinder and the like. When Tinder became popular you didn't need to go out to meet new girls/guys. That really started the trend for people going out less
Having been in the brewery/alcohol world firsthand and on the periphery, for over a decade now, I can almost guarantee the real story here is just some form of poor management. Almost every brewpub/microbrewery/bar owner that shuts down their business has a story of how some outside, unforeseen circumstance forced them to close when in actuality it was poor marketing strategies, poor capital allocation, poor workforce management, etc.
People really underestimate this. It doesn't make financial sense to keep running an even profitable business when the building you own has increased in value more than enough to fund your retirement. Plenty of good, profitable businesses end this way.
That's probably true but I don't think you can entirely dismiss larger societal trends.
People drink less, especially young people, and the cost of going out is prohibitively expensive.
You can only manage so well if the market is shrinking and spending less and even then the well managed ones surviving still means poorly managed ones may not (when they would have 10-20 years ago).
Alcohol sales are clearly impacted by behavioral changes and that’s good to be honest along with inflation hitting wallets; alcohol is going to be left out.
But just wait until a certain funeral is being planned. I will drink a year’s worth with all the toasting I will be doing.
I’m sure there are some macro trends at work in terms of alcohol sales nationwide but I do think there are some super specific forces at play. As Berkley goes, so does not the nation go. This is an incredibly expensive area full of health-conscious people. I can tell you that in the mid-market east coast suburbs, breweries are opening and closing at a rate comparable to other restaurants. Closings have more to do with bad management, bad product, and competition than “zoomers don’t drink” or anything to do with fucking GLP-1 drugs. Most breweries around me are packed with millennials and their kids or just middle aged people.
Also being right next to a university it's going to be more impacted by drinking trends amongst young people. There isn't a mass of older folks with ingrained drinking habits to prop it up
Im 34 and have frequented pubs / bars since I was 19. I still go out for wings and trivia often and I rarely see tables of anyone younger than 25. Most people in bars seem to be millennials or older.
My best friend's oldest is off at college, and he called asking for protein shake money instead of beer money. We got a good laugh, but that's where alcohol is with the younger generation.
dramatic increase in low-carb diets + dramatic decrease in in-person socialization + dramatic decrease in disposable income = fewer people buying beer/wine/spirits, and the ones that are are more likely to buy and consume at home to save $$. The surviving places near me are the ones that are brewpub + restaurant that also sell their alcohol packaged in addition to on tap, in part due to support for breweries from the state. They also typically have live music and/or things like arcade machines, outdoor seating, app / digital incentives etc.
It's sad that foodservice and adjacent industries that typically have a tough time with thin margins are squeezed even more, as well as patrons, but that's the economic reality of today; the places that do a lot to stand out / provide multiple services or pursue multiple income streams are the new baseline.
Im fine at $6 and under a drink. Anymore than that unless it's good wine or scotch is a no go for me. $9 beers with the tip are just stupid, even if that is the market.
My local still has beer for $5, well cocktails and wine for $6, and top shelf spirits for $8.
It's cash only $ or €, and has a free CD jukebox with the newest CD being the soundtrack to Grosse Pointe Blank. Many genres of music to choose from.
No cellphones allowed, no cussing (you get one warning and then asked to come back some other time), and the bar box pool table is very well kept with games costing $1.
All this walking distance from my house in a HCOL city. I'm so grateful.
There are popular dive bars in Atlanta (ITP) offering $2-3 tallboys. Beer and shot for $6, etc. Many bars charge $15-20 for cocktails so I think the city is a good representation of Metro prices on the each coast.
I am a production manager for a large regional craft brewery and the difference in our portfolio now is night and day. We now primarily co-pack THC drinks, RTDs and non-alcoholic beverages and beer is only 20% of our business. Behavioral changes certainly aren’t helping, but market externalities, high costs for the consumer, and a massively oversaturated market are the more likely culprit for the rise in brewery closures.
Not surprising considering it's been going downhill for years, but still sad. We lived in Berkeley in the late 00s and this place was our go-to for drinks / dinner with friends 1-2 times a week.
I love to see it. Nothing has caused more damage to the country than alcohol.
Tobacco runs a close 2nd but vaping has helped on that front with harm reduction. Its nice to see THC take some market share away from alcohol. We need Less liquid courage and more thoughtfulness and awareness.
The world is healing. I’m all for a good time but fuck alcohol has also ruined so many lives man. My aunt is an alcoholic and that shit ruined my cousins lives.
Yeah I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all that bars are struggling. National, state and other public lands are seeing their highest usage rates in history. People are going outdoors like we haven’t seen in generations. People are creating 3rd spaces in all sorts of ways that are so much healthier than a dark, loud bar with nothing to do but drink poison. I saw a huge meetup of young adults playing mtg or dnd at the library the other day. My neighborhood seems to have about 3 house “parties” with BBQs going and people laughing chatting with each other over drinks and weed every time I leave the house.
Damn. They were good to their regulars. Always kept a head on your beer. It's the first place I remember serving a giant plate of nachos which is normal pub food now. I wish I could fly across the country and enjoy a pitcher of Tree Frog or even their crowd pleaser (Titanium).
I went to a local bar restaurant last Friday night. The restaurant was full. The bar area was empty. They were literally asking everybody to sit at the bar and nobody wanted to. It just doesn’t have the draw it used to.
It’s economics, it’s always economics- if it was viable to have 2 dollar beers- and viable for people to have the earning and spending power of the 70s- it does not matter how healthy or how social media affects us or how weed is used people would go to your bar to interact.
the only place i can get a cheep beer now is one of my towns two hole in the wall dive bars, and i really dont need to see my former highschool teachers swinging again
The beer at these places always uses words like "hoppy", "grapefruit" and "bold" in lieu of the right word: "bitter." They have like 10 beers on tap, and 7 of them are these nearly unpalatable IPAs that bloat the shit out of you. The beers are unfiltered, so drinking 1 of those beers is a bloat fest.
The beer isn't that great. It's expensive and we've been hammered with messaging around the health issues related to alcohol. So, why are we going to get these craft beers?
People look down on these mass-market beers, but you can drink more than one without distending your stomach. And because of its mass-market approach, I know that the beer I'm drinking will taste the same at every bar. Good luck with craft beer. I was at a craft beer joint recently and the larger was super bitter. Oh yeah, that was their "signature." It tasted like citric acid. $13.50/pint. There's no consistent flavor profile, so a white beer at one bar will taste entirely different and some brew master wanted to put his signature spin on it, so his has hints of nickel, barium, sriracha and hobo urine. Another craft beer joint across town tastes like Swisher Sweets, farts and lemon.
It was snobbery that felled them.
And now they're wondering why the economics have changed? Seriously? It's not an economics issue. It's purely a commercial problem. Asking: "what if we made a beer no one would ever want to drink at home and charged consumers inflated prices to drink it in a renovated industrial warehouse with shitty parking?"
This articles, like many others before it, posted to r/economics hearkens to the fact that craft breweries and brewpubs have been collapsing across North America over the last few years. I know what the article said, and I've actually been to the bar (which is fine, by the way). But my rant stands: We cannot derive macroeconomic trends from the collapse of these craft breweries; it's purely a terrible business model, one that was inflicted on themselves by the very people charged with making the beer.
Here here, the day the craft brewers began the slide to BITTER IPAs and then entered an arms race to produce the most bitter off putting brews possible, was the beginning of the end, they just didn't know it (and the hops are expensive).
Please pass me a nice smooth English 'bitter', which got its name because it had a faint, like FAINT aroma of hops compared to the smoothest of pints (which I also love).
You know what - I wonder if these brewers saw that brits loved 'Bitter Ale' and just went face first into hops.
Brown ale is bitter in a way I like. IPAs are bitter in a way I find disgusting. And of course there's so many other kinds of beer out there! But nope, a thousand hyper bitter IPA variations
I've had plenty of German beer, and I stand by what I said 100%, thanks
Hey, this is an economics sub, so let's look at it from that angle: the most common beers sold in America are all very boring ass lagers in the American style. They are the cheapest, by a mile, and that's the deciding factor for most consumers. But the best selling craft beers are consistently IPAs. This isn't because people who care about buying good quality beers have been somehow fooled into thinking IPAs are the best, it's because they prefer the way they taste.
Once you get used to drinking good IPAs most regular beers are pretty boring and flavorless
One of my favorite "correlation isn't causation, but..." scenarios: folks in the PNW tend to prefer IPAs, the PNW has a greater rate of SSRI prescriptions than the rest of the country, and some SSRIs dampen the ability to taste bitter stuff.
Thank you! I like basically every kind of beer other than IPAs, so it never won't annoy me that craft beer places seem to pump out nothing but IPA variations.
This just reeks of ignorance. I'm also annoyed that IPAs have pushed out other styles in the craft industry, but your ranting about quality in craft beer is so far off base. There are no doubt subpar breweries but it isn't hard to find a quality non-IPA that is consistent every time. Founders Bells Victory etc all distribute nationally and all have top tier mainline beers that are not hop forward
Every single beer by Victory is marketed as "sour." No, that means bitter. Bitter beer in the UK isn't cloyingly bitter. The beer is so sour you might as well sprinkle citric acid in a Bud and call it a day. And those beers are always 2-3x more expensive per can than any major brand.
u/crippledgiants responded, got his comment deleted calling me a name by pointing out they have a beer that supposedly proves his point. Their Belgian Tripel is literally marketed as a "sour tripel." This is exactly what's wrong with craft beer. No one wants to drink a beer that their mouth puckers and they salivate.
Here let me reply without the naughty word. Victory's flagship beer is called Golden Monkey and is. Belgian Trippel. This has been their flagship for decades, and is in fact the base for the sour beers you mentioned.
You are very clearly uninformed in this area and just have an agenda to push
That probably has a HUGE effect on how many customers he has coming in.
I mean, when I go to a bar, I can get a beer for as little as 1.20€ per bottle. (Admittedly, the bottles are only 33cl in volume, so nowhere near a pint.)
If you read the article, these guys are basically retiring and don't have any successors. Alcohol sales have had a multi-year decline world wide, and maybe that is part of the reason, but it doesn't seem that is the main driver behind closing.
I did read the article and there was no mention of their pricing.
And I read "retiring" as just a polite way of saying that there are no buyers interested... and they'd rather close the restaurant before they end up in debt.
"Triple Rock employees were informed of the pending closure on Thursday, and long-term staffers are expected to be offered positions elsewhere in John Martin’s remaining portfolio of breweries (Drake’s, Bear Republic) and bars (Drake’s Barrel House, Drake’s Dealership, Drake’s: The Barn and Shattuck icon Jupiter) once Triple Rock’s taps run dry."
Sounds like they will be fine and certainly doesn't sound like they are having debt problems if they are offering positions in thier other breweries they also own.
Good,hopefully more overpriced bars and restaurants go the same way. This economy isn't going to improve until people stop paying for anything but what they need.
The massive downturn in alcohol consumption is a really good thing. It was getting too high, and ongoing research shows that the health consequences of alcohol consumption keep being worse than we expected. I think there's a place for recreational alcohol, but it was way out-of-hand and dropping to 1/10th as many bars and breweries and distilleries would not be a net negative for the country.
In 2019 the average for males over the age of 15 was roughly 15 liters of pure alcohol per year. That's about 845 standard "drinks", or 2.3 drinks per day. But of course those are averages across the whole population. Per the link below, only 62.7% of males report having had any alcohol in the last year, so that smaller population needs to be drinking 3.66 drinks per day to make that average (these are for different years and slightly different age ranges, but the broad trends are likely very similar).
The CDC recommends men have no more than 2 per day. The WHO recently summarized the state of medical knowledge right now with the statement that there is no safe amount of alcohol consumption, that all alcohol related risks rise starting with the first drink.
So any amount is too high in your mind? I think out of hand would be better served by looking at historical alcohol use over the past 100 years (or however far back the data exists) and comparing 2019 use. As well, comparing American alcohol consumption to other European countries. If for example America went from 20th in the world in alcohol consumption per capita to 1st, I would say that's a reasonable "out of hand" reasoning.
I know the studies make it sound like any amount is "unsafe" but it's probably better to think of it as "any amount has no benefit to your health" or even "any amount has more of a negative effect than no alcohol at all compared to prior studies".
I'm sure most of human history can handle alcohol just fine but the latest studies find no evidence that any amount of alcohol is an overall benefit to you in any way. You may recall there were studies in the 90s that small amounts of red wine was somehow good for you but they have been proven false.
I think that's an accurate take. I know more than a few physicians and they all drink haha. My point was this is an economics sub not a health sub, so like, explain your change in drinking habits concern with numbers.
No, that would be the WHO position, which I provided for context on the numbers. But I will say that an AVERAGE of 3.66 drinks EVERY NIGHT is an insane amount of alcohol consumption for even one person, let alone the entire alcohol-drinking male population.
In my mind, comparing with historical norms is not very useful when the historical norm was also crazy high.
I think what you're looking for is the median. Average is not going to be accurate for an approximation of what someone is actually drinking. Also it sounds like you should be making your points in the prohibition subreddit.
And yet you Americans still stand behind a pedophile president. You can't say only a few voted for him, by you not voting shows you still support the pedophile
Come drink expensive poison around strangers! The poison turns you into an asshole and if you drink too much of it you’ll have the worst morning ever; and if you drink even more of the expensive poison you’ll turn into a totally different person for a while and then get amnesia. And the expensive poison makes it so you don’t know when you’ve had too much expensive poison. But- hear me out- if you drink just enough of the expensive poison you’ll feel mildly more confident and relaxed for about 30 minutes!
Campfireandhotcocoa | 15 hours ago
Just a combination of everyone becoming more health conscious paired with decrease in socializing at 3rd places and honestly just how much more expensive it is to go out and drink. It is a recipe for disaster for these companies. I remember around the 2010s, still being able to go to the bar for quarter draft night. We paid 50 cents for a plastic cup of domestic beer. I haven't seen that in years.
Late-Bandicoot-4940 | 15 hours ago
Not since In-Bev bought it all up.
Campfireandhotcocoa | 15 hours ago
That didn't help the industry either. All that consolidation. Plus the innovation stopped.
Hurricaneshand | 13 hours ago
Innovation stopped because the consumer wasn't interested. Beer nerds loved it but the average Joe didn't and a lot of the beer nerds got burned out and started drinking well done lagers. $24 4 packs of tall boys just wasn't sustainable
UsefulLuck2060 | 13 hours ago
So true! I’ll splurge on sours every now and then, but really lost my appetite for IPAs, which still dominates tap lists. I’d say American breweries still lack quality on pils, lagers (not all of course), but leads to grabbing your beer of choice at a liquor store rather than a bar
Kurichan77 | 12 hours ago
In NYC we have some great pilsner and lager breweries. It’s tougher/slower to make, that’s why you see more ales.
dogs_gt_cats | 9 hours ago
> but really lost my appetite for IPAs
I've brewed beer, wines, meads, and ciders (and mixes of them) for decades now as a hobby. The second I see a brewery with more than 2 IPAs on their list I get suspicious, 4+ I assume they're terrible and move on.
IPAs were created as a way to preserve and mask the flavor and smell of beer (specifically English pale ales) going bad on the journey from the England to India. They loaded the barrels with perishable beer and hops, which gave them their characteristic strong hop flavor and aroma, and helped preserve them for the journey.
If you're a small brewer and you brew 500-1000 gallons of beer, you'll have a lot of money tied up in any given batch. If it's horrible, you could trash it and eat the loss, or you could dry hop it and age it with hops for awhile, filter them off, force carbonate it, and sell it as an "IPA" with the hops covering how bad it otherwise tastes/smells.
I would wager that when you see a brewer with 10+ different IPAs, they're just really bad at brewing and are trying to cover it up with something they think people will buy because IPA became a marketing term more than an actual style of beer.
I like pale ales for the same reason I think that the best measure of a cook is making a scrambled egg. There's nothing to hide behind.
EggplantAlpinism | 14 hours ago
Innovation is still present, it's just that the good brewers all went to a few specific places and the rest of the breweries tried to rest on their laurels, which didn't work with increased labor and ingredient prices
10000Didgeridoos | 13 hours ago
All the inbreeding in the industry didn't help either. Craft beer is such a homogeneous product now.
What started say 20 years ago as a couple big name craft breweries quickly turned into all the guys who worked at those en masse leaving to start their own breweries in the 2010s craft beer explosion, and then there were more spinoff breweries from those in all these cities.
They are all working with the same general beer knowledge from many years in this industry, so there is little difference between beers/styles now from one microbrewery to another. A hazy ipa at one is about the same as a hazy ipa at another. You go to the grocery store and there is an entire section of craft beers but put two of the same style blind in front of someone and they probably won't notice much difference.
It used to be 15-20 years ago people would go line up for limited releases of beers like Kentucky Breakfast Stout, but these days you can get good bourbon barrel stouts year round from who knows how many breweries.
It's just largely all the same and the market isn't big enough to support that many clones. I'm sure the handful (relatively speaking) of big time craft beer nerds have examples of newer ideas and limited run special beers out there today, but that is an even more niche hobby than it used to be.
Why would I wait in line for Vermonster anymore when there are dozens of IPAs barely different from it? It's just not special anymore.
gfense | 10 hours ago
A friend used to travel all over to buy out releases of Dogfish Head 120 Minute wherever he could find it. I also remember a coworker paying something insane for scalped Kentucky Breakfast Stout.
pgold05 | 9 hours ago
Both those are phenomenal, great taste
dnyank1 | 11 hours ago
I question the place "innovation" even has in the greater beverage industry. It's not an iPhone.
Ok_Yak5947 | 14 hours ago
Honest question, I’m genuinely curious - what possible innovation could there be in this space?
CreekRoadKilla | 14 hours ago
Seasonal Cocoa Puff stouts using repurposed bourbon barrels
Dweebil | 14 hours ago
You’re hired.
Snipethorn | 13 hours ago
Oh sorry we are out of Cocoa Puffs, would you like to try a fruity pebbles lager?
Inquisitive_idiot | 13 hours ago
WTF kind of question is that?! 😡
Of course I do! 🤩
ximbo_fett | 13 hours ago
May I interest you in a fine Lucky Charms Dubbel?
splett2-at-splettnet | 13 hours ago
Wouldn’t that be a Quad? You know, for luck?
Darktrooper007 | 12 hours ago
¿Por qué no los dos?
Feeling-Visit1472 | 9 hours ago
Meanwhile.
https://smartmouthbrewing.com/saturdaymorning
ChiTownDisplaced | 13 hours ago
Where can I try this?
Wellontheotherhand1 | 14 hours ago
A large percentage of craft beers quite literally didn't exist as a style, 25 years ago. Because nobody had ever made them before, or sold them. Pliny the Elder was like, revolutionary when it came out, a double IPA? It was outlandish and highly sought after. I used to do beer trading here on reddit (rip r/beertrade) and for a long time, I was shipping out 4-8 bottles of Pliny a week to people all over the country.
Now there's so much crazy crap out there, it's hard to keep up
Xenoanthropus | 12 hours ago
And you know what? Pliny is often imitated, never duplicated. Never had another DIPA I liked more.
10000Didgeridoos | 13 hours ago
And all the legendary beers of old have been copied and improved upon by the giant web of microbreweries out there that none of them are really worth seeking out anymore. Like you said, it used to take being in the know for a drop and getting in line to get a 4 or 6 pack of a beer like Pliny but now the grocery store probably has identical beers to that from a dozen breweries available all the time.
Wellontheotherhand1 | 13 hours ago
Pretty much, yeah. It's a weird time for the industry.
ChiTownDisplaced | 12 hours ago
I used to stand in a line for the annual bottle drop at my small brewery and come back the next day for a huge, packed beer release block party with local bands, local merch, and local produce. Hell, I met one of my groomsmen at the brewery. It was more than just the beer, but it was the good beer too.
I'm in a different city now and only one of the breweries here has any type of regular event other than a half-assed oktoberfest.
NoHorseNoMustache | 13 hours ago
As a guy who loved IPAs long before they got popular, I've never gotten into double or imperial and there are just so many of them out there. I want to be able to have a few beers after work, not have 2 get me as drunk as 4 normally would.
ChiTownDisplaced | 13 hours ago
There was variety. Now most feel like they have been brushed aside to make room for a bunch of IPAs and sours.
youngishgeezer | 13 hours ago
Half the IPAs are not even IPAs. It's just funny flavorings and little semblance to its namesake.
NoHorseNoMustache | 13 hours ago
I feel like a lot of the IPAs that I liked have been pushed aside in favor of crazy fruit flavored beers or 'Chocolate Peanutbutter Smors' type shit.
koopa00 | 12 hours ago
My wife is crazy about this brewer that makes "smoothies" (Drekker brewing) and one of them is a chocolate peanut butter. There's also something along the lines of blueberry marshmallow fluff. I don't get it, it's definitely not for me, but it seems kind of popular.
Meanwhile, I'm just drinking lagers and pilsners.
NoHorseNoMustache | 12 hours ago
Flavors like that are for people who want to drink beer but don't really like beer, I think.
pgold05 | 9 hours ago
Or just for women. Men tend to gravitate to more bitter flavors while women find them overly bitter and like things a bit sweater. Something to do with tasting poison for babies or whatever.
TheBros35 | 13 hours ago
Ding ding. Not many good IPAs at my local stores. Lots of weird fruit beer and a few zany flavors.
Wellontheotherhand1 | 13 hours ago
Hey man, the market speaks and people vote with their wallets. If they are producing a bunch of IPAs, it's a good sign that they are selling a bunch of them and that people want a bunch of them.
ChiTownDisplaced | 12 hours ago
From what a few brewers have told me when I asked why the disappearing variety at many places (10ish rears ago), its about quality control. The overpowering traits of IPAs and sours can mask inconsistencies to a much better degree compared to a more delicate beer. Less chance of a bad batch.
Also, IPA became a buzzword for hipsters that wanted to look sophisticated and get a higher abv.
My bartender friend's favorite customers: "Whats the strongest IPA you have? Wait, how much? I'll have a PBR." -hipster
PricklyPear85 | 12 hours ago
Dude try Sierra Nevada - Pliny wasn’t even a thought when Sierra Nevada was making the pale ale
Wellontheotherhand1 | 11 hours ago
I remember very well when SNPA was the only really quality beer you could get, yes. But it did not have that outlandish appeal that Pliny did at the time. Some of that is marketing and scarcity of course but the flavor is still absolutely on point, I had a Pliny the other day and it's still just as delicious
deepoutdoors | 14 hours ago
Different tasting brewskis bro.
splett2-at-splettnet | 13 hours ago
I once had a coffee Blonde Ale. I thought, surely you can’t make such a light beer with a heavy and dark ingredient…
But they did. It was awesome.
ChiTownDisplaced | 13 hours ago
Brewery i used to go to would make a small infused batch every week for "one off Wednesday." It could be anything from changing the type of hopps on a flagship beer to a jalapeño watermelon kolche. One time they made malt liquor, just cause. This place also wasn't just IPAs and sours like many breweries now. They had dark lager, a light and dark saison, a chocolate stout. They would come out with a new beer and my friends and I would try it, talk about it, the bartenders were friendly and relay info on the new beer from the head brewer. We learned new brews, their origins, and more. It was the novelty and community that kept me going back.
CaptainVerum | 12 hours ago
Stone Xocoveza is a delicious Mexican hot chocolate style beer.
Odell Green Coyote Tomatillo Sour was a tomatillo sour, but is sadly no longer in production.
Ballast Point Indra Kunindra is brewed with madras curry, caynne pepper, cumin, toasted coconut, and kaffir lime leaf
As for what else? I'm still waiting for someone to make it.
gimpwiz | 4 hours ago
Different ingredients, different proportions, different yeasts, fermented for different amounts of time, in different temperatures... there's a lot to beer.
It's kind of like asking, what possible innovation could there be in pizza? Make some dough, put some sauce on it, some cheese, and bake it in an oven. Right? But then you look around and there are a dozen major pizza styles in the US, and a bunch of hyper-regional ones that barely anyone even knows about. Take off all the toppings, okay, anyone can go to the grocery store and find random shit to lay on top of a pizza. Look at just the dough. How many different dough recipes for pizza are there? Basically every single pizza shop has its own recipe, their own starter, etc. If you kind of group them together into "I can't differentiate these crusts" you still get at least a dozen really obvious different styles of dough, and you find that over time those styles change and evolve to match consumer preferences - individual shops stay static as a matter of legacy and pride while others make big changes (or new shops open up) and see how it shakes out.
PRobinson87 | 13 hours ago
Unique yeast strains that create specific flavors during fermentation. Unique cultivars of hops, grains, & malts, that create unique flavor profiles while being fermented with different yeast strains. Uncommon styles or variations on styles.
Slow_Drag_1011 | 11 hours ago
It’s almost like monopolies are bad if only America followed its laws.
discosoc | 13 hours ago
Innovation stopped once everyone settled in IPA being the only beer made.
ChiTownDisplaced | 11 hours ago
Micro Breweries just became IPA factories. Consumer selection dried up to make room for the higher margins that please the owners.
IPAs are very forgiving for the brewers and are on the low side of required tank days. I used to be big into craft beer but it was noticeable how popular beers were pushed off menus to make space for a new type of IPA, and then another, then another.
The_Sunset_Sands | 15 hours ago
Its the insurance industry. Almost all third places are financially untenable because of liability insurance. Bars are just one of the more visible casualties because of how ingrained in culture they were. Think of how many more street festivals and small time music there used to be? The casual art shows, the plays in the park, kids actually playing sports, all destroyed by the morgans and morgans of the world.
MrLewArcher | 14 hours ago
Insurance companies and law firms have basically been taken over by the types of people they were originally created to protect us from. Now it’s all just a scam
Silly_Double408 | 5 hours ago
Sounds exactly like what happen to our government. Taken over by the ones it was supposed to protect us from.
govunah | 14 hours ago
I might actually read an article on this if one existed
The_Sunset_Sands | 13 hours ago
It's my personal experience as someone that owns a brick and mortar grocery store. You used to only get sued for "gross negligence" nowadays you get sued anytime anything at all. There isnt any safeguards against frivolous lawsuits, so there is a cost to defend irregardless of the vailidity of the case.
Swimming_Agent_1063 | 14 hours ago
Are you saying third spaces are too expensive to insure today
splett2-at-splettnet | 13 hours ago
I mean so are first.
Starskigoat | 12 hours ago
Often it is the people in the spaces and their activities that cause liability issues.
Head_of_Lettuce | 14 hours ago
Do you have a source or any studies that support this? Cost of insurance really just tells you how expensive it is for the carrier to insure you, so it’s hard to imagine that as the root cause. Maybe symptomatic of something else.
Also it’s such a “perfect” answer to the questions being asked here that I’m a bit skeptical.
slowd | 14 hours ago
Cost of insurance reflects medical care costs that might result, lawsuit frequency and award sizes. It’s not causing it in a vacuum.
Head_of_Lettuce | 13 hours ago
Exactly.
ShadePipe | 14 hours ago
Here in South Carolina we've been in the midst of a "liquor liability crisis". Some years back lawmakers passed a bill that's caused insurance rates to skyrocket. They've been working on fixing it, but we've already had many bars and venues close their doors as a direct result of insurance rates skyrocketing: https://www.postandcourier.com/news/liquor-liability-restaurants-bars-insurance-costs-sc/article_5a29e694-74e1-11ef-836b-9f73936da736.html
xboxhaxorz | 14 hours ago
With that logic we should hold gun sellers accountable if they are used to kill and sellers of other products accountable for the actions of buyers
Easy_Respond_7266 | 14 hours ago
Can confirm. RIP to a lot of great spots on Gville.
blackmajic13 | 14 hours ago
Maybe it's just because I live in Milwaukee, the city of festivals for every little thing, but there are constantly street festivals. Every weekend, all over the place, from Spring to mid-to-late Fall.
BrewerAndHalosFan | 11 hours ago
Yep looked for a similar comment before replying with basically what you said. Bay View Bash this weekend!
Dear_Ocelot | 14 hours ago
Yeah, my city had to put out a framework for approving street festivals last year because there were so many, and some people got up in arms that they weren't going to be EVERY weekend.
The problem is when you have them that often, they mostly become "events to sell stuff," not actually special or fun. Most of the mad people were...selling stuff.
violetmemphisblue | 13 hours ago
I'm in a different Midwest city and we have festivals all the time. We have a weekly food truck lunch fair, a weekly farmers market, a monthly night market, church socials, park festivals, music events at parks and different "porch festivals". There's so many! From the other towns I spend time in throughout the midwest, it's much the same. There are events all the time...maybe this is a regional thing?
larrylevan | 14 hours ago
The man behind Morgan & Morgan is a billionaire btw
keithcody | 14 hours ago
My city requires terrorist insurance for any small local street festival type event. The going rate for what the city requires in $10k+ in just insurance to have something small and casual. Which just nuked things like car and art shows.
Prohibitoid | 14 hours ago
Additionally, the end of the ability to insure things will be the true end of our culture once climate change makes everything too insecure to invest in, ending with water itself. No one will take any more risk & there will be only decline. This is a step toward that phase of collapse.
Infinite-Research-98 | 12 hours ago
This…america is just becoming a sad place
pistola | 14 hours ago
Insurance companies don't charge higher premiums for fun. They might make a profit, but their actuaries don't build that into the underlying rates.
Prohibitoid | 14 hours ago
And once those numbers move far enough apart…
pistola | 14 hours ago
I'm not denying that insurance companies are profit-driven.
If insurance companies made zero profit, premiums would still be through the roof.
Prohibitoid | 13 hours ago
I am building upon your point, extrapolating toward the coming future where actuarial tables fully break down and insurance is no longer viable in any effective sense. After they’re through the roof they will dissipate entirely, “It’s cheaper just to gamble.”
PR0H181D0 | 14 hours ago
this sounds like bs
ParticularTop755 | 12 hours ago
I did research in college on the brewing industry, large and small brewers, barley and hop farmers, and yeast producers. Beer isnt getting cheaper in our lifetimes, the cost of the water in the beer and production is more expensive, the production of hops is more expensive (as well as demand outpacing growth of farms), and yeast production is more expensive. That and environmental initiatives for clean water make the production of 'cheap' beer almost impossible in the US
Edit: forgot about the bars and taphouses themselves, but rent and cost of landownership has also exploded, so if you want a beer out $6.50 is about the cheapest most can go nationwide before they are losing money. In a city its more like $8+ to be making any money
1900grs | 14 hours ago
Small in comparison, but there was also consolidation in the home brew suplly market. Their used to be great local and regional suppliers in the 00-10s. Northern, Midwest, Adventures, and Austin all had their followings and niches. Now? Private equity bullshit took so much if the fun out of it. It's been over 10 years since I made a batch.
Independent-Mango813 | 10 hours ago
On the bright side, they started making the beers even worse
BeneficialNatural610 | 15 hours ago
$10 for a beer is also not helping.
True-Firefighter-796 | 14 hours ago
Don’t forget the tip!
Sure you had to get up wait in line for a beer and clean your table. But someone has to spend 3 seconds pouring it.
tacticalTraumaLlama | 13 hours ago
This may make me a cheap bastard, but I never understood the thinking behind tipping for the minimum amount of service required to give me what I paid for. Carry the drink to my table? Sure you earned a tip. Pour it and hand it to me at the bar? No.
Vegetable_Lab2428 | 14 hours ago
And it’s even worse with any cocktails or mixed drinks. Can buy a full bottle of decent vodka for the same as 2 drinks going out (that have the shittest booze in them).
AllRushMixTapes | 14 hours ago
Yep. My drinking hasn't slowed, but my old fashioned and margarita game are excellent.
ChiTownDisplaced | 13 hours ago
That is not new.
battlepi | 11 hours ago
That is new.
acdha | 13 hours ago
Their menu shows $5.50 to $8.50 so that doesn’t appear to be the case here:
https://www.triplerock.com/menus
unexpected-rager | 12 hours ago
$5.50 in Cali seems like a good price
max_power1000 | 12 hours ago
Yeah. I know I graduated 20 years ago, but I could get properly drunk for $20 on high life Tuesday when I was in college. A big night on the weekend with several mixed drinks or shots when there were no specials would still only cap out around $60-70 with tip. These days it feels like it costs double that per person when we do go, and my wife and I are primarily beer drinkers.
PsychGuy17 | 15 hours ago
Don't forget that multiple studies are finding that weight loss injections are reducing desire for alcohol. Thus patrons are eating less food and buying fewer drinks.
foshiiy | 15 hours ago
GLP-1s seem to have that effect on anything remotely addictive. It does the same with nicotine apparently.
botany_fairweather | 13 hours ago
People sleep on the fact that glps are somewhat ‘curing’ addiction in a way we didn’t think was possible. Turns out the mechanisms that drive hunger for food are the same that drive it for things like alcohol and drugs.
Youarekillingmeeee | 14 hours ago
Man the studies 30 years from now are gonna either be super spicy or super “miracle wonder drug does all” boring.
Especially on the heels of that news coming out about Splenda damaging the DNA.
Splenda, a product created in the 70s during research on insecticides lmao
Kelsig | 14 hours ago
Petri dish studies are just not something that should ever get media attention
PsychGuy17 | 13 hours ago
Its the largest uncontrolled public experiment since oral birth control.
socialmedia-username | 11 hours ago
Isn't Splenda just an extract from the stevia plant? I have a crapload of powdered stevia that's super sweet, from plants I put in last year and grew like freaking weeds.
ct_2004 | 9 hours ago
No, sucralose is chlorinated sugar. No relation to stevia.
fowcc | 14 hours ago
Also i guess the need for "beer goggles" went down in the process
DPileatus | 14 hours ago
Wow! I did not know this. That's wild!
Corgi_Koala | 14 hours ago
I'm 2 years sober so take that how you will, but I do think that the campaign to get people to stop drinking and driving has had an impact as well.
10 years ago everyone I knew and drank with would drink and drive - maybe not completely sloshed but definitely above the legal limit.
Now I see a lot more people really stick to 1 or 2 drinks so that they can safely drive home. Nobody wants the penalties or shame of a DUI.
Some of that may be age and maturity as well but when people are only having one or two instead of 5 or 6 that means bars are making less money.
And even though rideshare options are widely available they aren't cheap. If I'm spending $8-$10 a drink to have 6+ and get drunk, having to spend another $50 to get home makes a single night out really expensive. Especially when you can drink at home significantly cheaper.
slowd | 14 hours ago
Build walkable neighborhoods to save the bars!
I moved to a walkable area with good public transport in my 20s and a significant factor in that decision was that I could be ready to meet friends for a drink whenever without having to plan around a vehicle. It was great.
Corgi_Koala | 14 hours ago
Yeah when I lived in a city with a bar about 2 blocks from my house I drank a lot more knowing I didn't even have to contemplate driving. It was great!
Now I just DD for my wife so she can cut loose.
mattumbo | 13 hours ago
Uber also made it very cheap to not drink and drive during that same period which further stigmatized DUI as now people were seen as incredibly cheap and reckless if they drove drunk instead of calling a $10 Uber. Now that rideshare has matured beyond being wildly subsidized by PE and ride cost has dramatically increased its far more expensive to go out and drink responsibly paying fares both ways but the attitude of “why didn’t you just order an uber” persists (IMO rightly, don’t be a danger to others because you’re cheap).
Drinks are expensive, rides expensive, and the culture around drinking increasingly a minefield of social risk due to more restrained attitudes towards it and prevalence of recording devices and information sharing platforms that make binge drinking fraught with opportunities to make a fool of yourself to a national audience.
espressocycle | 14 hours ago
The whole "impairment begins with the first drink" thing which is ridiculous. Most drunk driving accidents are way more than a couple drinks in and road fatalities keep rising as alcohol consumption falls.
68Warrior | 14 hours ago
Yeah! Nobody ever talks about the sober crashers!
Illustrious_Steak686 | 14 hours ago
Don't you think it's probably better to land on the safer side of things? It might be a little counter productive if the messaging was, "Absolutely, if you've only had one you are all good to drive!"
tacticalTraumaLlama | 13 hours ago
I vehemently oppose any attempt to lower bac limits below .08 like MADD is trying to do. No, sorry I'm going to need peer reviewed replicated studies studies that show significant impairment above and beyond the ability of the average driver while sober.
IMHO that push comes from neoprohabitionists who would love nothing more than have prohibition 2.0.
ChiTownDisplaced | 13 hours ago
That method worked great for DARE and the war on drugs.
AnimalBolide | 8 hours ago
People doing drugs doesn't directly kill other people.
People driving cars inhibited absolutely does.
It's hardly the rational approach to say that we shouldn't do things to prevent people from directly killing people by driving drunk. Get as fucked up as you want at home or a bar or wherever. You take that shit on that road, you follow the fucking rules.
Corgi_Koala | 13 hours ago
I mean yes in practice 1 drink won't substantially impact anyone's ability but normalizing any amount as ok is a slippery slope and anti drunk driving advocates picked a good approach. It's clearly helped reshape drinking culture.
Dismal_Buy3580 | 13 hours ago
No amount of alcohol makes you a better driver. Any amount above the legal limit makes any accident, even one that you would have gotten into sober, significantly worse for yourself. The dopamine of drinking one extra beer in an hour is not worth the lifetime of consequence.
espressocycle | 10 hours ago
I didn't say it made you a better driver, just that you can be a perfectly adequate driver with a moderate buzz.
Watchespornthrowaway | 9 hours ago
I get the ick when I find out someone I know has had a dui.
brandt-money | 13 hours ago
And a DUI can impact your job/career. Home and family are more important to me than drinking.
Ada_Pearce | 14 hours ago
I could eat and drink all night on 20 bucks, now you need like at least 80
WabbitFire | 13 hours ago
When was that? The 80s?
HawkI84 | 10 hours ago
Late aughts/early 2010's for me
nycsourdiesel83 | 10 hours ago
Bingo. Would go to the East Village in NYC. Drink saki bombs or get pitchers of beer. Sangria pitchers and share among the group. We could get smashed for under $50 with tip.
Pay-Homage | 14 hours ago
Some places in my city (700,000 people) list draft beers for $6 at happy hour.
While it isn’t the $2 cans a few other dive-ish places offer, it’s not a crazy price when cocktails are $12-$16.
But with sales tax, alcohol tax plus tip, you’re looking more at a $9 beer.
Buy two and it is $18 to have two “happy hour” beers at a decent place in a medium-sized city. Take a date who buys two cocktails and you’re looking at $50 just to “go get drinks” … at happy hour.
We either try not to go out or only order food if we do.
It’s just not affordable.
nonhiphipster | 14 hours ago
Also, weed is legal now
nicetriangle | 13 hours ago
I think the expense part of it is not getting enough credit when people ruminate on the causes. It's absurdly goddamn expensive to go out for a few beers now.
So we mostly drink at home now and just make wells vodka drinks. It's not fancy but who can be fancy in this economy?
Icy-Grab-5722 | 13 hours ago
Yes agree. It's really too expensive buying some at the store now too. Personally I like the trend of less drinking. Better health.
nicetriangle | 12 hours ago
On one hand I agree it’s good for public health, on the other hand I haven’t seen a time so tailor made for drinking as this one in quite a while.
FishbulbSimpson | 11 hours ago
It’s like the golden age of options but less people are partaking
nicetriangle | 10 hours ago
I mainly just mean shit is bleak
Secret-Teaching-3549 | 11 hours ago
The health thing has really gotten to me as of late. Even drinking a single beer I'll think to myself, "this isn't healthy for me, why am I even drinking it?"
Once_Wise | 14 hours ago
Also don't underestimate the legalization of cannabis. In the evening when before I might have consumed a drink to unwind, now I much prefer a toke. Most of the people I know feel pretty much the same.
LenoxAve | 14 hours ago
Also people don’t go out as much. I think big tech has done a good job at making us feel that everything we need is in our phones. We have mass home based entertainment options and social substitution via apps.
Setting-Conscious | 14 hours ago
Wage stagnation. Most people are poorer than they would have been 20 years ago.
Ricktor_67 | 13 hours ago
Try just 3 years ago. Prices for everything tripled since 2022, wages somehow are immune to price increases though.
Secret-Teaching-3549 | 12 hours ago
Seriously...the wife and I went out to dinner the other night, each got one drink with the meal because why not. $12 a piece for a single fucking glass of beer. I get wanting to make a profit, but fucking 600% profits or more is absolutely insane.
AdEffective2701 | 11 hours ago
Yep. Beer is 96% water.
FirefighterLeft5425 | 11 hours ago
I miss 25 cent wing nights
Toasterferret | 11 hours ago
Oh man… wings are like $1.75+ each here now.
I remember getting a dozen wings and two beers for like $10-12 back in college.
Over_End_6816 | 10 hours ago
Yea bring back pitchers of kamakazis for 8 bucks while we’re at it.
Ninjalion2000 | 14 hours ago
I’ve seen a few places that do 2 or 3$ domestic beers. Mostly near colleges only on certain nights/ happy hour.
Arsenal8944 | 13 hours ago
Yea I remember those crazy deals usually at college towns I feel like. But even 2015 by me in a relatively HCOL area there was 1$ miller lite Thursday nights which I doubt you see anywhere (I don’t go out drinking anymore). I hate shitty beer but for a dollar a beer it was hard to pass up.
cocky-rountains | 13 hours ago
It costs me like $100 to actually go out, get dinner, drinks, and then Uber home. That shit ain't happening with everyday costs rising.
faelanae | 13 hours ago
GLP1s also stop most desire for alcohol, too. And people are still at home behind their phones instead of going out.
esther_lamonte | 12 hours ago
It’s the cost. When I find myself at a bar now it only takes 1 beer purchase of $10 plus tip before I’m entirely done with literally pissing my money away. Beverages of any kind costing this much is an abject scam, we know they make this shit in giant vats for pennies on the dollar. They can shove $10 a drink straight up their asses.
acenkt | 14 hours ago
Plus a lot of the millennial/gen z crowd switched to edibles, just pop an edible and vibe for an hour or two, no hangover, no headache, no vomit
xole | 14 hours ago
I know multiple genx and boomers that have also switched to pot and no longer drink alcohol. If nothing else, it's cheaper and has drastically fewer calories, even if you include munchies.
lion7725 | 14 hours ago
They will grow up eventually
thediesel26 | 14 hours ago
It’s cuz they the want to retire, but their kids don’t want to take the business over
PlutoJones42 | 14 hours ago
You think that’s what’s killing bars?? Really?
thediesel26 | 14 hours ago
Not all bars, just the bar in the posted article
PlutoJones42 | 14 hours ago
Ah word I am your average redditor who of course doesn’t read the article, ty for the context lmao
Similar_Mistake_1355 | 14 hours ago
All self inflicted then?
cnh2n2homosapien | 14 hours ago
I used to go to a night called "dimer's night" where beers were a quarter but the old name had stuck. This was late 80's though. I also worked at a place with $1.00 well drinks for happy hour in the early 90's.
tacticalTraumaLlama | 13 hours ago
I went to a bar for a friend's 21 back in the early aughts, they had 50 cent well shots. It was horrible rot gut stuff, but I had a blast cause I wasn't driving. Good times.
FrighteningJibber | 13 hours ago
Decrease in socialization in 3rd places. And then we begin to complain about being lonely and doing nothing after work.
Elmo-Mcphearson | 13 hours ago
Penny pints at the OB in Fargo, ND were the absolute best. Whole pizza trays, stacked and filled with plastic pint beers. Absolutely phenomenal.
fool_on_a_hill | 13 hours ago
Not to mention weed
handsomegyoza | 13 hours ago
Bingo! I remember going out with $15-$30 bucks and getting AFTER it, with some $$ leftover for a slice. And this was in the 2010's, not too long ago
Reesespeanuts | 13 hours ago
Truly so much more expensive to drink than ever. An domestic beer like a bud light or michelob ultra costs $5 to $6, it's ridiculous. How does a margarita cost cost $10 when it's 2oz of well tequila, mix, and salt. It's unstable for the average person.
Smuglife609 | 12 hours ago
It’s cheaper to split an 8-ball than to go out and buy drinks with friends.
wookiex84 | 12 hours ago
I mean use to get boilermakers for 3.50$ Pabst tall boy and well whiskey. Been sober 6 years now and couldn’t imagine how much drinking in public would cost now. I had stopped going out for a bit before I even quit because of costs going up.
weristjonsnow | 12 hours ago
The prices for alcohol havent been "cheap" in my lifetime but holy shit it's gotten comically insane lately. For me to order a beer with dinner at a rest and have it literally double the bill for my meal is just fucking stupid
PancakeTrebuchet | 12 hours ago
Yup until about 2010 we were still getting $5 pitchers of Bud Light on Saturday and ripping cigs inside.
RIP Outside Inn
Impressive-Dish4408 | 11 hours ago
Working in the industry it’s honestly just the prices. Said prices are driven by outrageous rent
alilhillbilly | 10 hours ago
The easiest way to save money going out is to not drink alcohol.
My girlfriend will still drink and it's often a bigger tab than our meal. For like three cocktails.
And it's just gotten stupid expensive. We have an 11% sales tax. Those 15 to $18 cocktails start approaching $20. And that's not it like the Saint Regis bar. That's at like regular ass restaurants.
GryphonCough | 10 hours ago
I used to pay 25 cents for a small beer, 50 cents for a well drink, and $1 for a name brand drink (not grey goose or even absolute but something like Smirnoff) in college. You could get sloshed and have a hot dog and popcorn for under $10. I remember being shocked one time when my bar tab was $16 but later found out a friend was putting their drinks on my tab.
This was between 2007-2010. Just 15-20 years ago. Now I can’t get ONE drink for under $10.
Muted-Woodpecker-469 | 10 hours ago
Around my way, disposable income did Not increase a whole lot. But we did pass marijuana laws and added a slew of drive through coffee and chicken places. I wouldn’t say people are more health conscious, as them just changing their overall buying habits with what little money they have. Instead of a Friday night at a brewery, they’re dropping the same amount on some edibles
akmalhot | 9 hours ago
These bars are shooting themselves in the foot - 8-14 for a single draft beer - 14-16 for basic 2 ingredient cocktails ; you aren't going to get social gathering at places when people plan to go out for 1-2 drinks now vs just going .
IczyAlley | 14 hours ago
Single. Year Drop. Multi-year Explanations. Truly this is front page reddit
eb991 | 12 hours ago
Where do you see anything about a "single year drop"?
The closest quote from the article is: “'probably the biggest slump in alcohol sales for bars and restaurants that we’ve seen in 40 years,'”...
...but the 'biggest slump in 40-years' doesn't imply the entire slump has occurred in one year. Indeed, the article linked to that quote was written in 2024 and says " Over the past three years, at least 10 breweries and beer bars have closed in San Francisco..."
So a two-year-old article says the "slump" had been going on for three years already. That puts us, based on info from the article, at a 5-year slump.
US alcohol sales (in dollars) peaked in 2023, and overall consumption has been in decline since 2022.
So looking for multi-year explanations for a multi-year trend makes sense to me..
IczyAlley | 12 hours ago
The owner quoted in the article is talking about his past year of sales. Good talk see you out there champ better luck next time
eb991 | 12 hours ago
>talking about his past year of sales
The word "past" doesn't even appear in the article.
Care to share any actual quote or text from the article that suggests the slump is confined to a single year?
IczyAlley | 10 hours ago
Did you see me use a quotation mark?
He said its the biggest one year drop. The acceleration and steepness of the drop is the central point of both headline AND article. It cant be missed. So either you didnt read it or you are purposefully misunderstanding it for bizarre and/or evil reasons, like most front page subreddits
eb991 | 9 hours ago
Lol at "evil reasons"
I'm trying to understand why you think the article is referencing a one-year drop. In fact, so strong is your belief that the article pertains to a one year timeframe that you're irritated with anyone who invokes explanations of longer than one year.
But nothing that I can find in the article implies a one-year timeframe at all.
The headline is: "Triple Rock, America's oldest continuously operating brewpub, to close: The Berkeley icon is set to shutter sometime in December"
I bet you think the quote from the article that was included in the title of this reddit post by OP (about a slump) was part of the original headline. It's not. And the context of the quote about a slump has no implied or explicit timeframe attached.
Now, maybe you're trolling, but if anything is bizarre in this comment thread, it's your insistence that the article specifies a one-year slump, when the article does not specify any such thing.
But even if it did, the causal factors for a one-year slump could potentially be many years in the making. Indeed they almost surely are. So even if the article specified a 'single year drop' (it doesn't), explanations invoking a longer stretch of time would still potentially have validity. So I'm perplexed by the reasoning in your original comment, and that has only grown as you've doubled down on it
Time_Physics_6557 | 14 hours ago
I would be more inclined to go out if a single drink didn't cost $10-15. I bought one drink and a mid burrito for my 21st birthday and paid $30, haven't gone out for a drink since.
SCIPM | 14 hours ago
Even the burritos at sit down restaurants are ridiculously expensive. The basic ones start around $15. Add a beer or margarita, and the bill for 2 people is $50-60 before tip
Mr_Tort_Feasor | 11 hours ago
I went to a mom & pop Mexican restaurant recently and fully expected the $25 entree. What I didn't expect was for them to charge me $16 for a single bottle of Negra Modelo. When I asked they said it was because it's an "imported, premium beer." The price wasn't in the menu (and I generally don't look at the menu before ordering a drink anyway). I won't be back.
SvenBorrest | 10 hours ago
fuck that. It's $8.99/6pk at my nearest store. That's $1.50/bottle. If people are Shitty enough to do 1000% markup (over retail, not even wholesale) they should have the balls to put the price on the menu. I would have paid on card and fought the charge after the fact on principle saying I was scammed.
basquehomme | 14 hours ago
This is the correct answer. I don't know if you have taken a course in economics but in the first course they talk about supply vs. Demand. The two lines intersect at a price ppl will pay. Currently, businesses think we will pay any price. Because a few are still saying, well its ok this time. We need to correct them by staying home so the prices will come back down to attract our dollars. Until then go to the liquor store and embibe at home.
Time_Physics_6557 | 14 hours ago
I think it's more that input costs have risen than small businesses upcharging for fun. rent alone post-COVID has skyrocketed
vinyl0rd | 14 hours ago
Overhead and labor have increased significantly for most small businesses in the past decade. Those are your two biggest expenses.
Conscious-Bite1 | 11 hours ago
Well if everyone didn’t want to get paid so damn much, then beer would be cheaper!!
/s
ExeUSA | 12 hours ago
Don't forget that the food is rotting in the fields because there's no one to pick it, and gas prices have skyrocketed so it's exponentially more expensive to transport it now, too.
The future is 1 food distributor who gives us all a shitting disease not infrequently, and we'll like it dammit.
battlepi | 11 hours ago
You can't expect a single drink to make up for rising rent though. The markup is basically rape.
Ray192 | 13 hours ago
I don't know if you have taken a course in economics but in the first course they talk about the costs of doing business and the levels at which the business will simply close if it can't make enough money.
nickiter | 10 hours ago
I think alcohol sales do a good job of illustrating why the K-shaped economy is bad.
Booze has become more expensive as the overall economy has inflated, which isn't surprising. Bars aren't suddenly more greedy - costs have risen. But our incomes largely haven't, until you get to the top few %.
In some parts of the biz, the response is to chase the upper arm of the K. Clubs are now designed around the interests of the very wealthy, with everything else an afterthought, if that. Even among them, there are big winners and losers. Lots of upstart clubs fail to attract the whales and fail, while the trendy spots bring in absurd per-night profits, charging $25,000+ for a table+service.
But the average bar can't do that - there are only so many millionaires between 21-35 to go around, and even millionaires can only drink so much.
So the cost of the booze has gone up, there's more money in the economy, but the people who have the money are too few to make for a broad-based bar culture... Normal stuff dies off, playgrounds for the wealthy compete to survive.
It's a perfect microcosm of why this pattern sucks.
Ed_Trucks_Head | 9 hours ago
Until there is nothing left to do but stay home and ingest a subscription, filled with ads of course.
SyrupOnWaffle_ | 11 hours ago
i would drink a lot more if beer was $4-$5 instead of $7-$10
Epic_Tea | 12 hours ago
Totally
Nblearchangel | 10 hours ago
30$ for a meal and an adult beverage is cheap where I am
BatEco1 | 10 hours ago
That was 87 years ago.
dawtips | 10 hours ago
Really why are you even commenting about this at 21?
Time_Physics_6557 | 10 hours ago
I'm interested in economics and study economics, am I not allowed to participate in an economics forum because of my age? lol
dawtips | 10 hours ago
You are but you're commenting in a capacity that suggests you have a perspective on how things were versus how things are. Which you don't. That's okay. But just don't comment. Be interested what others who have experience share.
Time_Physics_6557 | 9 hours ago
did my comment imply anything about how things used to be, or was it just an anecdote about the present day consumer environment (in which I am participating in)?
dawtips | 9 hours ago
no but you get to choose what you reply to and that comes with a level of expectations on what you're contributing. I get the feeling though that you're a contrarian dickhead so I'll pass from any further answers. Have a good day.
catchy_phrase76 | 10 hours ago
Yup, gotta find the dive bar.
nufandan | 13 hours ago
Maybe more anecdotal, but I've heard people in the industry talk about people not necessarily drinking less often but habits have just changed; Younger people are preferring to go out and spend their money on quality over quantity for something that feels worth it. A single bottle of premium spirit or natural wine or something to that effect vs drinking cheap beer.
When I was around your age 15+ yrs ago, I knew plenty of college students that would go out and blow $100+ on well drinks and cheap liquor shots on a big night out binge drinking, but that was pre-craft beer heyday and everything currently on trend.
uncoolcentral | 15 hours ago
Nothing to see here. The owners are in their 60s and their children do not want the business. They had mentally framed this business as lasting about as long as it has. It sits in a ridiculously high rent area on multiple transit lines. They own the building. They can make a killing renting or selling. But the last line in the piece, “Maybe somebody will come along and take it over.” … Makes it read a little bit of an ad, which seems to be the norm from this “news” website lately.
Memitim | 13 hours ago
People love pointing out "trends" that aren't actually trends. We had four music venues/bars close in our area in the past couple of years, which had some folks sounding alarms but all turned out to be because of personal problems with the owners in each place. Everything comes to an end. The Triple Rock lasted longer than most.
FlyingBishop | 13 hours ago
Is there not actually a downturn in the restaurant/bar industry right now? Idk about Berkeley specifically but I think this might actually be a trend, even if this case isn't the exemplar.
AFartInAnEmptyRoom | 9 hours ago
Trends that aren't trends are a trend in itself
Spez_is-a-nazi | 12 hours ago
If there’s a trend it might be that increasingly that the owners of small family owned businesses either don’t have kids or the kids aren’t interested in taking over small family run businesses.
Nemonoone67 | 11 hours ago
Post made by a clanker too. No better than a twitter screenshot.
Fartfromabuttt | 13 hours ago
Nobody makes "news" without a buyer already lined up.
westondeboer | 11 hours ago
This.
Every bar I go to in Los Angeles is packed. I don’t see people drinking less, I see people having more options.
Better-Leg4406 | 15 hours ago
A mixed drink for the miss, and a beer for me was $18 the other night with the $2 tip. IN RURAL NEBRASKA.
She and I agreed, we’ll both buy a case of what we want and enjoy the front porch and people watch.
Flimsy_Thesis | 15 hours ago
Shit, man. That’s average price for a single cocktail where I live. It’s gotten stupidly expensive.
larrylevan | 14 hours ago
Come to Manhattan where it’s $25-30 per cocktail
hankintrees | 14 hours ago
Same here on Maui. We hardly go out anymore.
Flimsy_Thesis | 14 hours ago
Yeah, I’ve noticed that when I visit.
Toasterferret | 11 hours ago
Man remember when a cocktail was only like $16 here? Prices have just gone completely nuts over the last ten years.
toastygoats | 14 hours ago
Yeah, I kinda hate paying 7 dollars for a pint of beer but that seems to be the going price these days for where I’m at
MrD3a7h | 14 hours ago
Howdy, neighbor
PancakeTrebuchet | 12 hours ago
Porch beers are always the best beers
Lastminutebastrd | 11 hours ago
I was out in the Keweenaw peninsula and northern Wisconsin area last week. $4.50 pints at Keweenaw Brewing. Couldn't believe it, locally they're usually $6-8.
Youmeyoumeyoume | 14 hours ago
Depends on the craft cocktail though, some of them require an insane amount of ingredients, time, and/or prep!
carnitas_mondays | 15 hours ago
it’s only going to get worse.
Jafar_420 | 14 hours ago
Don't forget more people are using cannabis instead of alcohol.
SDL68 | 14 hours ago
In Canada, drinking and drunk driving are down 30% 10 years after legal weed
Jafar_420 | 14 hours ago
Awesome.
thediesel26 | 14 hours ago
Yeah but what about DWI for weed
SDL68 | 14 hours ago
According to cops in my family there hasn't been any more than pre legalization and driving a couple hours after you burn one isn't nearly as bad as driving after 6 beers.
OldGermanBeer | 10 hours ago
Up 420%!
Jafar_420 | 9 hours ago
It's 4:19 , you got a minute?
espressocycle | 14 hours ago
But Canadian road fatalities have been trending up for the last five years. Maybe people need to drink more.
SDL68 | 12 hours ago
Distracted driving and people spending 5 min just to scroll through menus to change the climate control lol
scrandis | 11 hours ago
That's amazing
Haki23 | 14 hours ago
And people cutting down from pandemic-levels of escapism
bdog59600 | 9 hours ago
My local brewery started making THC seltzers to expand their appeal. My local liquor store has 2 out of 12 coolers dedicated to THC/CBD beverages.
BillieBlanus | 14 hours ago
So because this is a brewpub, as someone that's followed craft in America closely for over a decade, what you and most commenters missed completely is the other factor: market saturation. It's been an incredible rise over the past 40 years, with the total number of brewpubs (in America) nearly doubling in the last 10. We're finally at something resembling saturation i.e. a plateau, and I don't see, due to the issues you mentioned and others (like cannabis), how the number could possibly start going up again. No. We're on the downward trend. Other factors of course include the product mix, pricey products are a reflection of higher input costs, and this particular brewpub makes fairly standard or generic offerings that you can get [literally] anywhere.
Ok_Rough5794 | 13 hours ago
Triple Rock is right near the university. There are a bunch of new big warehouse sized brewpubs in Berkeley and Oakland where the families live -- they're going out more than the students, but they're also drinking the way couples who haul their young kids to warehouses drink (modestly). Those spots are also more accommodating of outdoor social areas -- you can sit outside, the kids and dogs can run around.
I think the "brewpub" in the east bay is kinda dead because it also relies on a bigger menu well executed. The newer warehouse places have smaller menus (mostly pizzas) and people seem fine with it.
carnitas_mondays | 14 hours ago
this is an econ sub. market saturation goes against the higher pint pricing point. if we were truly experiencing market saturation, why don’t we see this reflected in lower market prices? input/labor costs have increased, but have they increased to the point that $10 pints are break-even as you would expect in a market approaching saturation? doubt.
BillieBlanus | 14 hours ago
Input costs are higher than ever. Across the board.
SaxRohmer | 14 hours ago
this misses the biggest thing which is Gen Z. they just don’t consume alcohol like prior generations
Ada_Pearce | 14 hours ago
Plus there is less reason to leave your house these days. Why go to a theater when that movie will hit hbo max in a few months
babesboysandbirb | 13 hours ago
You mean better
Playful-Honeydew-521 | 12 hours ago
lol that was my thought, isn't it good that americans are drinking less? i'm saying this as an expert level drinker
Dude_with_the_skis | 12 hours ago
Don’t forget legal weed
handsomegyoza | 13 hours ago
In my 20's you could go out with $20 and if you were lucky to get a happy hour, you were set. Now its minimum $8 beers and $15-$22 cocktails everywhere you go. Fuck that, don't blame the new generation at all
Blue_Back_Jack | 13 hours ago
Don’t forget to tip!
cooooquip | 13 hours ago
No more drink’in with Lincoln 😞
handsomegyoza | 12 hours ago
Sad times :(
stephcurrysmom | 14 hours ago
I lived near this spot, I figured I was on a local sub. It’s a fun bar but it was better before they expanded and made the kitchen more high volume, they lowered the food standard and took away the ‘pub’ charm when that happened. Still fun, I do love their beer, but haven’t been but maybe 1-2 times in ten years.
Guest_0_ | 14 hours ago
Because
And
still-waiting2233 | 14 hours ago
Most people have cell phone cameras and they don’t want their drunkeness documented
Wooden_Permit3234 | 13 hours ago
I drank heavily up til about age 30 then tapered it down to basically never over a few years.
But I’d bet ONE embarrassing drunken video in my teens would have stopped me from drinking, right away.
Guest_0_ | 13 hours ago
That's also a big factor. Can't wait for smart glasses to proliferate so every waking moment of human consciousness can be recorded and shared.
Long9696 | 12 hours ago
And stored and used to train AI and used to build a social credit system.
Blue_Back_Jack | 13 hours ago
minouchaton | 13 hours ago
>3) Covid profoundly changed the way people approach socializing. Combined with #1 and #2 you have a death sentence to the large majority of bars. Remember clubs? Yea they basically don't exist anymore.
Even before COVID. What killed the clubs and the appeal of night life for a lot of people was Tinder and the like. When Tinder became popular you didn't need to go out to meet new girls/guys. That really started the trend for people going out less
Virtual_Magazine_860 | 12 hours ago
I would be very interested to see if this is just an American thing or not.
SituationSouth5955 | 15 hours ago
Having been in the brewery/alcohol world firsthand and on the periphery, for over a decade now, I can almost guarantee the real story here is just some form of poor management. Almost every brewpub/microbrewery/bar owner that shuts down their business has a story of how some outside, unforeseen circumstance forced them to close when in actuality it was poor marketing strategies, poor capital allocation, poor workforce management, etc.
espressocycle | 14 hours ago
In this case they're old and they own the building.
Winzip115 | 5 hours ago
People really underestimate this. It doesn't make financial sense to keep running an even profitable business when the building you own has increased in value more than enough to fund your retirement. Plenty of good, profitable businesses end this way.
Corgi_Koala | 14 hours ago
That's probably true but I don't think you can entirely dismiss larger societal trends.
People drink less, especially young people, and the cost of going out is prohibitively expensive.
You can only manage so well if the market is shrinking and spending less and even then the well managed ones surviving still means poorly managed ones may not (when they would have 10-20 years ago).
gandalfsbastard | 15 hours ago
Alcohol sales are clearly impacted by behavioral changes and that’s good to be honest along with inflation hitting wallets; alcohol is going to be left out.
But just wait until a certain funeral is being planned. I will drink a year’s worth with all the toasting I will be doing.
handsomegyoza | 13 hours ago
You and me both brotha
ASGCris | 9 hours ago
Count me tf in.
Anthemic_Fartnoises | 14 hours ago
I’m sure there are some macro trends at work in terms of alcohol sales nationwide but I do think there are some super specific forces at play. As Berkley goes, so does not the nation go. This is an incredibly expensive area full of health-conscious people. I can tell you that in the mid-market east coast suburbs, breweries are opening and closing at a rate comparable to other restaurants. Closings have more to do with bad management, bad product, and competition than “zoomers don’t drink” or anything to do with fucking GLP-1 drugs. Most breweries around me are packed with millennials and their kids or just middle aged people.
Taborask | 13 hours ago
Also being right next to a university it's going to be more impacted by drinking trends amongst young people. There isn't a mass of older folks with ingrained drinking habits to prop it up
f0reskinbandaid | 14 hours ago
Im 34 and have frequented pubs / bars since I was 19. I still go out for wings and trivia often and I rarely see tables of anyone younger than 25. Most people in bars seem to be millennials or older.
NeoMoose | 13 hours ago
My best friend's oldest is off at college, and he called asking for protein shake money instead of beer money. We got a good laugh, but that's where alcohol is with the younger generation.
lordcochise | 13 hours ago
dramatic increase in low-carb diets + dramatic decrease in in-person socialization + dramatic decrease in disposable income = fewer people buying beer/wine/spirits, and the ones that are are more likely to buy and consume at home to save $$. The surviving places near me are the ones that are brewpub + restaurant that also sell their alcohol packaged in addition to on tap, in part due to support for breweries from the state. They also typically have live music and/or things like arcade machines, outdoor seating, app / digital incentives etc.
It's sad that foodservice and adjacent industries that typically have a tough time with thin margins are squeezed even more, as well as patrons, but that's the economic reality of today; the places that do a lot to stand out / provide multiple services or pursue multiple income streams are the new baseline.
Atrocious_Algae81 | 12 hours ago
Im fine at $6 and under a drink. Anymore than that unless it's good wine or scotch is a no go for me. $9 beers with the tip are just stupid, even if that is the market.
B00marangTrotter | 11 hours ago
My local still has beer for $5, well cocktails and wine for $6, and top shelf spirits for $8.
It's cash only $ or €, and has a free CD jukebox with the newest CD being the soundtrack to Grosse Pointe Blank. Many genres of music to choose from.
No cellphones allowed, no cussing (you get one warning and then asked to come back some other time), and the bar box pool table is very well kept with games costing $1.
All this walking distance from my house in a HCOL city. I'm so grateful.
weHaveThoughts | 15 hours ago
We need to bring back $3 pints. My neighborhood pub has a mug club for $10/year where members get $3 pints. It does get the locals to hang out.
high_fly11 | 14 hours ago
$3 pints at two pitchers in Oakland and SF.
BarnacleDowntown8952 | 12 hours ago
I agree. 15 years ago we used to go to this bar that had $2 PBR Tall boys at all times.
Bars should have some kind of option like that for the youth, available at all times.
DellGriffith | 10 hours ago
There are popular dive bars in Atlanta (ITP) offering $2-3 tallboys. Beer and shot for $6, etc. Many bars charge $15-20 for cocktails so I think the city is a good representation of Metro prices on the each coast.
jormungandr9 | 14 hours ago
I am a production manager for a large regional craft brewery and the difference in our portfolio now is night and day. We now primarily co-pack THC drinks, RTDs and non-alcoholic beverages and beer is only 20% of our business. Behavioral changes certainly aren’t helping, but market externalities, high costs for the consumer, and a massively oversaturated market are the more likely culprit for the rise in brewery closures.
EdHominem | 11 hours ago
Not surprising considering it's been going downhill for years, but still sad. We lived in Berkeley in the late 00s and this place was our go-to for drinks / dinner with friends 1-2 times a week.
Nandulal | 13 hours ago
This is all I know or have ever heard about this bar:
https://youtu.be/LI-Gjg_vi3A
This comment was too short so here are more words you fucking chode sub
Lastminutebastrd | 11 hours ago
Wrong bar. That song is about the (former) Triple Rock club in Minneapolis. They shut down back in 2017. It was an awesome place.
Nandulal | 8 hours ago
lol I'm even more poorly informed
--TheCity-- | 14 hours ago
I love to see it. Nothing has caused more damage to the country than alcohol. Tobacco runs a close 2nd but vaping has helped on that front with harm reduction. Its nice to see THC take some market share away from alcohol. We need Less liquid courage and more thoughtfulness and awareness.
MWH1980 | 14 hours ago
I guess more people are turning to vaping as a coping mechanism these days?
I swear every other person I see has one in their hand. And here I am, weathering the collapse of society with a casual beer or two.
SqueakNRoar | 14 hours ago
The world is healing. I’m all for a good time but fuck alcohol has also ruined so many lives man. My aunt is an alcoholic and that shit ruined my cousins lives.
sevseg_decoder | 14 hours ago
Yeah I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all that bars are struggling. National, state and other public lands are seeing their highest usage rates in history. People are going outdoors like we haven’t seen in generations. People are creating 3rd spaces in all sorts of ways that are so much healthier than a dark, loud bar with nothing to do but drink poison. I saw a huge meetup of young adults playing mtg or dnd at the library the other day. My neighborhood seems to have about 3 house “parties” with BBQs going and people laughing chatting with each other over drinks and weed every time I leave the house.
The alcohol industry was right to be scared.
LinearG | 12 hours ago
Damn. They were good to their regulars. Always kept a head on your beer. It's the first place I remember serving a giant plate of nachos which is normal pub food now. I wish I could fly across the country and enjoy a pitcher of Tree Frog or even their crowd pleaser (Titanium).
Oceanbreeze871 | 12 hours ago
I went to a local bar restaurant last Friday night. The restaurant was full. The bar area was empty. They were literally asking everybody to sit at the bar and nobody wanted to. It just doesn’t have the draw it used to.
Paradigm_Reset | 11 hours ago
I'm GenX and drank gallons of Bug Juice at Triple Rock throughout the early 2000's. It was a cool local place for beers with friends.
I wonder if Jupiter is struggling too.
Gmarlon123 | 11 hours ago
It’s economics, it’s always economics- if it was viable to have 2 dollar beers- and viable for people to have the earning and spending power of the 70s- it does not matter how healthy or how social media affects us or how weed is used people would go to your bar to interact.
Friendly-Escape-4574 | 9 hours ago
the only place i can get a cheep beer now is one of my towns two hole in the wall dive bars, and i really dont need to see my former highschool teachers swinging again
dodgertodger | 15 hours ago
Why are we surprised?
The beer at these places always uses words like "hoppy", "grapefruit" and "bold" in lieu of the right word: "bitter." They have like 10 beers on tap, and 7 of them are these nearly unpalatable IPAs that bloat the shit out of you. The beers are unfiltered, so drinking 1 of those beers is a bloat fest.
The beer isn't that great. It's expensive and we've been hammered with messaging around the health issues related to alcohol. So, why are we going to get these craft beers?
People look down on these mass-market beers, but you can drink more than one without distending your stomach. And because of its mass-market approach, I know that the beer I'm drinking will taste the same at every bar. Good luck with craft beer. I was at a craft beer joint recently and the larger was super bitter. Oh yeah, that was their "signature." It tasted like citric acid. $13.50/pint. There's no consistent flavor profile, so a white beer at one bar will taste entirely different and some brew master wanted to put his signature spin on it, so his has hints of nickel, barium, sriracha and hobo urine. Another craft beer joint across town tastes like Swisher Sweets, farts and lemon.
It was snobbery that felled them.
And now they're wondering why the economics have changed? Seriously? It's not an economics issue. It's purely a commercial problem. Asking: "what if we made a beer no one would ever want to drink at home and charged consumers inflated prices to drink it in a renovated industrial warehouse with shitty parking?"
Rob71322 | 15 hours ago
Or, as the article said, they're old and want to move on and their kids don't want to do it.
dodgertodger | 14 hours ago
This articles, like many others before it, posted to r/economics hearkens to the fact that craft breweries and brewpubs have been collapsing across North America over the last few years. I know what the article said, and I've actually been to the bar (which is fine, by the way). But my rant stands: We cannot derive macroeconomic trends from the collapse of these craft breweries; it's purely a terrible business model, one that was inflicted on themselves by the very people charged with making the beer.
snowice0 | 15 hours ago
Or you know . . You can read the article and not make stuff up because you don't like IPAs
RedAero | 14 hours ago
That comment in the context of the article is such a perfect example of projection it ought to be framed.
mickcube | 15 hours ago
show me where you paid $13.50 for a lager and i'll venmo you the money
dodgertodger | 14 hours ago
https://bellwoodsbrewery.com/pages/brewpub
aroc91 | 12 hours ago
The most expensive single I see there is just a hair over $7.
IKillZombies4Cash | 15 hours ago
Here here, the day the craft brewers began the slide to BITTER IPAs and then entered an arms race to produce the most bitter off putting brews possible, was the beginning of the end, they just didn't know it (and the hops are expensive).
Please pass me a nice smooth English 'bitter', which got its name because it had a faint, like FAINT aroma of hops compared to the smoothest of pints (which I also love).
You know what - I wonder if these brewers saw that brits loved 'Bitter Ale' and just went face first into hops.
Prince_Ire | 15 hours ago
Brown ale is bitter in a way I like. IPAs are bitter in a way I find disgusting. And of course there's so many other kinds of beer out there! But nope, a thousand hyper bitter IPA variations
Mistravels | 15 hours ago
>bitter
THANK YOU
These beers taste like shit.
Wellontheotherhand1 | 14 hours ago
Y'all only think that because they actually taste like something, and you're used to your beer tasting like pretty much nothing
Mistravels | 14 hours ago
I grew up drinking beer in Germany.
You wouldn't know what good beer tasted like if you were waterboarded with it.
Wellontheotherhand1 | 14 hours ago
I've had plenty of German beer, and I stand by what I said 100%, thanks
Hey, this is an economics sub, so let's look at it from that angle: the most common beers sold in America are all very boring ass lagers in the American style. They are the cheapest, by a mile, and that's the deciding factor for most consumers. But the best selling craft beers are consistently IPAs. This isn't because people who care about buying good quality beers have been somehow fooled into thinking IPAs are the best, it's because they prefer the way they taste.
Once you get used to drinking good IPAs most regular beers are pretty boring and flavorless
hybridaaroncarroll | 15 hours ago
It's an acquired taste.
Karma1913 | 15 hours ago
One of my favorite "correlation isn't causation, but..." scenarios: folks in the PNW tend to prefer IPAs, the PNW has a greater rate of SSRI prescriptions than the rest of the country, and some SSRIs dampen the ability to taste bitter stuff.
Prince_Ire | 15 hours ago
Thank you! I like basically every kind of beer other than IPAs, so it never won't annoy me that craft beer places seem to pump out nothing but IPA variations.
crippledgiants | 14 hours ago
This just reeks of ignorance. I'm also annoyed that IPAs have pushed out other styles in the craft industry, but your ranting about quality in craft beer is so far off base. There are no doubt subpar breweries but it isn't hard to find a quality non-IPA that is consistent every time. Founders Bells Victory etc all distribute nationally and all have top tier mainline beers that are not hop forward
dodgertodger | 14 hours ago
Every single beer by Victory is marketed as "sour." No, that means bitter. Bitter beer in the UK isn't cloyingly bitter. The beer is so sour you might as well sprinkle citric acid in a Bud and call it a day. And those beers are always 2-3x more expensive per can than any major brand.
dodgertodger | 14 hours ago
u/crippledgiants responded, got his comment deleted calling me a name by pointing out they have a beer that supposedly proves his point. Their Belgian Tripel is literally marketed as a "sour tripel." This is exactly what's wrong with craft beer. No one wants to drink a beer that their mouth puckers and they salivate.
Wellontheotherhand1 | 14 hours ago
Yes, they do. I specifically buy sour beers because my wife enjoys them.
crippledgiants | 14 hours ago
Here let me reply without the naughty word. Victory's flagship beer is called Golden Monkey and is. Belgian Trippel. This has been their flagship for decades, and is in fact the base for the sour beers you mentioned.
You are very clearly uninformed in this area and just have an agenda to push
crippledgiants | 14 hours ago
Come now, show me the sour notes
https://victorybeer.com/beers/golden-monkey/
edit: crickets from u/dodgertodger eh?
Happy_Feet333 | 15 hours ago
So how much is he charging per beer?
That probably has a HUGE effect on how many customers he has coming in.
I mean, when I go to a bar, I can get a beer for as little as 1.20€ per bottle. (Admittedly, the bottles are only 33cl in volume, so nowhere near a pint.)
And the bars here are doing fine.
Facebook_Lawyer_Gym | 14 hours ago
If you read the article, these guys are basically retiring and don't have any successors. Alcohol sales have had a multi-year decline world wide, and maybe that is part of the reason, but it doesn't seem that is the main driver behind closing.
Happy_Feet333 | 14 hours ago
I did read the article and there was no mention of their pricing.
And I read "retiring" as just a polite way of saying that there are no buyers interested... and they'd rather close the restaurant before they end up in debt.
Facebook_Lawyer_Gym | 14 hours ago
"Triple Rock employees were informed of the pending closure on Thursday, and long-term staffers are expected to be offered positions elsewhere in John Martin’s remaining portfolio of breweries (Drake’s, Bear Republic) and bars (Drake’s Barrel House, Drake’s Dealership, Drake’s: The Barn and Shattuck icon Jupiter) once Triple Rock’s taps run dry."
Sounds like they will be fine and certainly doesn't sound like they are having debt problems if they are offering positions in thier other breweries they also own.
Kind-Philosopher5077 | 14 hours ago
Good,hopefully more overpriced bars and restaurants go the same way. This economy isn't going to improve until people stop paying for anything but what they need.
BangBangMeatMachine | 15 hours ago
The massive downturn in alcohol consumption is a really good thing. It was getting too high, and ongoing research shows that the health consequences of alcohol consumption keep being worse than we expected. I think there's a place for recreational alcohol, but it was way out-of-hand and dropping to 1/10th as many bars and breweries and distilleries would not be a net negative for the country.
vinyl0rd | 14 hours ago
What does "too high" and "way out of hand" mean? This sounds like a random statement based on no data.
BangBangMeatMachine | 14 hours ago
In 2019 the average for males over the age of 15 was roughly 15 liters of pure alcohol per year. That's about 845 standard "drinks", or 2.3 drinks per day. But of course those are averages across the whole population. Per the link below, only 62.7% of males report having had any alcohol in the last year, so that smaller population needs to be drinking 3.66 drinks per day to make that average (these are for different years and slightly different age ranges, but the broad trends are likely very similar).
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-topics-z/alcohol-facts-and-statistics/alcohol-use-united-states-age-groups-and-demographic-characteristics
The CDC recommends men have no more than 2 per day. The WHO recently summarized the state of medical knowledge right now with the statement that there is no safe amount of alcohol consumption, that all alcohol related risks rise starting with the first drink.
https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health
vinyl0rd | 13 hours ago
So any amount is too high in your mind? I think out of hand would be better served by looking at historical alcohol use over the past 100 years (or however far back the data exists) and comparing 2019 use. As well, comparing American alcohol consumption to other European countries. If for example America went from 20th in the world in alcohol consumption per capita to 1st, I would say that's a reasonable "out of hand" reasoning.
SovietKnuckle | 11 hours ago
I know the studies make it sound like any amount is "unsafe" but it's probably better to think of it as "any amount has no benefit to your health" or even "any amount has more of a negative effect than no alcohol at all compared to prior studies". I'm sure most of human history can handle alcohol just fine but the latest studies find no evidence that any amount of alcohol is an overall benefit to you in any way. You may recall there were studies in the 90s that small amounts of red wine was somehow good for you but they have been proven false.
vinyl0rd | 11 hours ago
I think that's an accurate take. I know more than a few physicians and they all drink haha. My point was this is an economics sub not a health sub, so like, explain your change in drinking habits concern with numbers.
BangBangMeatMachine | 10 hours ago
>So any amount is too high in your mind?
No, that would be the WHO position, which I provided for context on the numbers. But I will say that an AVERAGE of 3.66 drinks EVERY NIGHT is an insane amount of alcohol consumption for even one person, let alone the entire alcohol-drinking male population.
In my mind, comparing with historical norms is not very useful when the historical norm was also crazy high.
vinyl0rd | 10 hours ago
I think what you're looking for is the median. Average is not going to be accurate for an approximation of what someone is actually drinking. Also it sounds like you should be making your points in the prohibition subreddit.
BangBangMeatMachine | 9 hours ago
I agree that the media would be more useful. If you can find a good source for that, feel free to share.
I don't know why you're bringing up prohibition, though.
Inevitable-Scene7834 | 15 hours ago
And yet you Americans still stand behind a pedophile president. You can't say only a few voted for him, by you not voting shows you still support the pedophile
prefinality | 15 hours ago
I think you’re responding to the wrong post, this one is about a downturn in alcohol consumption and the closing of a brewery
Admirable-Trip5452 | 15 hours ago
I don’t disagree about Trump, but what does that have to do with decreasing trends for alcohol consumption?
tybeej | 15 hours ago
Need to work on your algorithm there
b_m_hart | 15 hours ago
Ahh yes, Berkeley, the politically conservative bastion. I'm sure all of the MAGA flags outside the establishment were a turn off to all the tourists.
weHaveThoughts | 15 hours ago
If people hung out in bars more we would have talked them out of voting for the idiot. We need to bring back neighborhood bars and $2 & $3 pints.
Outlaw_Josie_Snails | 14 hours ago
Did you comment on the wrong post? Dafuq does that have to do with the OP's post in regard to a bar closing down?
mkipp95 | 14 hours ago
Clearly a bot trying to stir division whose algorithm blindly posts on every news related sub.
Arlo1878 | 13 hours ago
Wrong post for the wrong thread. If attempting to stir the pot, then bugger off.
parkinthepark | 11 hours ago
Come drink expensive poison around strangers! The poison turns you into an asshole and if you drink too much of it you’ll have the worst morning ever; and if you drink even more of the expensive poison you’ll turn into a totally different person for a while and then get amnesia. And the expensive poison makes it so you don’t know when you’ve had too much expensive poison. But- hear me out- if you drink just enough of the expensive poison you’ll feel mildly more confident and relaxed for about 30 minutes!
Not the sales pitch it used to be.