Is beer a generation thing? Why might that be?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I remember guys like my uncles and my friends’ dads having certain beer preferences. The younger ones might drink Miller Lite, the older ones maybe Blatz or Schlitz.

With my generation, especially in high school, Budweiser products were easily the most popular and bringing another beer to a party might get you talked about. In university and after there was people got a little more diverse, but the Bud brand was still very present.

On my last visit to the US it seemed like Yuengling was now the go to, especially with the college aged.

Why would beer be so subject to trends? Presumably most brands that used to be popular taste the same now as they did then, so it doesn’t seem like the actual taste of the stuff could be the deciding factor.

2

Advertising. Marketing.

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3

“Dude, that’s what my dad drinks!”

Need I say more?

4

That wouldn’t explain the popularity of PBR amongst hipsters.

5

More broadly though the idea is that your drink of choice broadcasts something about you, be it group membership or whatever.

6

Price? When I was in college we drank a lot of Natty Light because it was cheap.

7

Like a lot of things in a consumer society, the brands you consume are signals of your identity. Why wouldn’t beer be subject to the same forces as any other nonessential, non-commodified consumer product?

8

Is beer a generation thing?
A: Yes. Every generation.

9

All the years that I was growing up, Pabst Blue Ribbon was an old man’s beer. Dad’s beer.

I guess Dad was drinking PBR before it was cool. Come to think of it, he did wear a Fedora!

Next hipster trend, polyester suits, and casual polyester slacks.

Please.

10

Gotta get me one of those LG-V410s…

11

Even the Pepsi Generation?

12

Not so much generation as having a choice. Well, being able to buy a beer made by anyone other than the majors only start around 1980.

In college I drank anything under $2.50 a twelve pack.

Now I’m more discriminating, and drink micro brews I like and usually under $1/bottle (I buy by the case at Costco). So, I don’t drink some of my favorites like Anchor Steam or Sierra Nevada usually because they are a little too costy vs say a Red Hook. YMMV.

13

I’m skeptical that it comes down to marketing as no major brewer would forget to set an advertising budget as its sales decline.

And I’m puzzled at the idea that it’s simply a reaction against what one’s dad drank. Whiskey brands like Jim Beam and Jack Daniels are as popular as ever, despite deliberately old fashioned packaging. There are other venerable products that have been successful across generations, like the Chevy Camaro or Ford Ranger. In fact, I’m having trouble thinking of products that are as trendy as beer. Clothes and grooming maybe.

14

Au contraire. It most certainly does. They deliberately sponsored indie music, dive bars, and so on, to get their hipster cred.

15

I’m not so sure. Excluding microbrews and “exotic” varieties (IPAs, stouts, etc.), all mass-market commercial lager beers are pretty much the same. They use the same ingredients, the same process, and end up with pretty much the same thing, which provides a “crisp, clean, refreshing taste” (or some variant on that theme).

So, the only way that they can differentiate themselves, is through marketing to different demographics. Drink Coors, and imagine yourself as one who enjoys the outdoors; who enjoys fresh mountain air and can appreciate Rocky Mountain water. Budweiser is a slice of Norman Rockwell Americana, with its famous Clydesdales pulling a beer-wagon. Miller is for the hard-working blue-collar folks, who enjoy “Miller Time” after their shift is done for the day.

We’ve seen so-called “lifestyle” advertising for beer in Canada for years. Molson Export Ale was for men in their 30s and 40s: Jake and the boys on the golf course, or Bill and the guys fixing up a classic car. Women didn’t drink Export; it was for men, obviously, and so they (and many men in their 20s) preferred Labatt Blue or Molson Canadian, whose commercials showed a group of mixed twenty/thirty-somethings having a picnic, maybe with a little friendly game of frisbee or touch football thrown in. Carling Black Label came back from the dead in the early 1990s, by advertising specifically to young professionals who were likely to hit the clubs on the weekend, and assorted hipsters. Nobody in Canada’s Coors Light commercials, no matter what they’re doing, looks older than 25–it’s obviously not for married people in their 40s. And so on, and so on.

I’m generalizing, and there are exceptions, and my examples may be a little dated. But I think they illustrate my point: brewers pick a brand, and target it to a demographic. Maybe older, maybe younger, maybe cross-generational, but with something in common. People who identify with the demographic being advertised to, drink that beer.

16

And who were too young to remember “Hey Mabel, Black Label!” :slight_smile: Frankly, my first reaction when I saw it being advertised again was that of my earlier post: “That’s what Dad used to drink.”

17

Actually, it sure does, though they marketed through more non-traditional channels. I’m actually a bit surprised by that graph. I would have put PBR’s hipster cred much earlier than that, to the early 2000s. I remember it being somewhat big in hip bars around 2003. But it didn’t seem to really get “big big” until a half decade later. (Though the article does mention that the “retro-chic” of the early 00s leading to the initial upswing in popularity before PBR more actively marketed.)

18

I imagine myself outside, in a canoe, having sex. Ohhhh, it works, that does remind me of Coors!
Nothing stays on top forever; some people want to be like their parents & some want to be their own person & do things differently.

19

Hell no! PBR got big big in 1986, with the release of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.

I mean, my god, who wouldn’t want to be just like (drink the same beer as) Frank Booth?

20

It’s also regional. I went to college in central Illinois, where half the student body came from the Chicago area and half came from the St. Louis area. You could tell them apart by the beers they drank. Miller, Stroh’s, and Old Style for us Chicagoans, and mostly Bud, Bush, and Michelob (for special occasions) for the Saint Looiers.

(once there was a table full of us at a bar, approximately half and half from each region. We asked the bartender for a pitcher half full of Stroh’s and half full of Bush. We called it Strush and it became a favorite in our gang.)