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Lagers, the answer to an overhyped IPA market?

By Anonymous
By: Keaton Erickson
First-Year Brewmaster Student

Since the earliest day of the rise of the craft beer industry, there was one word not even the most Urquell-loving brewer would utter to their sales and marketing team: Lager. 


The unjustly villainized lager was, for many years, the bane of the craft beer scene. Much as Hip-Hop was an answer to Disco, overblown IPA's were the answer to American style adjunct lagers. Over the past five or so years, however, brewers and consumers alike have grown tired of Bourbon barrel pop tart double dry hopped farmhouse breakfast session ales. Our palates have been over-saturated, and we crave the beer equivalent to a great pizza when your lazy ass is too tired to make dinner.

This was predicted early by Joshua Bernstein, one of America's most prominent beer journalists in a 2017 article he wrote for Bon Appetit. Now as we are well into the new year of 2019, we are seeing his predictions become reality. More and more customers are requesting easy drinking, clear, simple lagers. These lagers make up 79.2% of all beer sales in America, this is because the vast majority of beer drinkers stick to the macro brands.

I would suggest that a more effective method of biting into the big beer market as a craft brewer, would not be to give the average customer a 100 IBU Cascadian IPA, but rather a well crafted Lager. Though this may not show off a brewery's fun ideas, it does shows the brewers' technical ability. With such a simple beer, the brewers' faults have nowhere to hide.

Drink more lagers.


Keaton Erickson is a first-year brewmaster student in the 6th cohort. 

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