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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

The important part is at the end:

  However, the state of alcohol purchasing says something larger about the American consumer. We’re seeing folks once again organize into two camps – haves and have nots.

  Consumer demand for singular “sub-premium” beers is rising at the same time as high-end mezcal.

This has been accelerating since the 2008 "crisis" and got way worst the past few years. There is no middle, there's either premium to cater to the (mostly) white collar class who are now comparatively rich, and there's crap for the working class, who are now super poor.

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I used to (like, 5 years ago) find a lot of $7 and $8 bombers that were pretty great, or $9 6-packs that were damn solid.

From my perspective it's not so much that I stopped buying mid-tier beer, as that it vanished and isn't there to buy anymore. Now I look at a $12 4-pack of beer that's not even that good and wonder if I should put the money toward a very-nice scotch instead....

I still buy from a few brands that I know well and that do deliver good quality at non-crazy prices, but there just aren't as many "yeah, sure, at that price I'll give it a shot" beers on the shelf. At least locally.

I've had this same experience. Every time I go to my local specialty beer shops, it's nothing but 4-packs that _start_ at $16. I've never even heard of most of them, and a large portion are just the really over-done trendy IPAs that every brand new brewery seems eager to produce. Maybe 20% or less of their offerings are what I'd call a solid mid-range 6-pack of beer.

Bells and New Belgium six packs are $10-$12 here, a long with a bunch of similarly priced stuff from smaller regional breweries.

Are they not mid tier?

There are more rare and expensive beers, but Bells is absolutely top tier quality for me.

I'm sad they are discontinuing Official. My Walmart has it for $8 a six pack.

(inexplicably less per can than the 12 pack right above it)

How much is wine? For $10 one should be able to buy a decent bottle of wine.

Local markets vary, but I regularly see ~$1/bottle as a promotion price for "mid-tier" (aka premium) beers, or to give examples of brands: Corona, Stella, etc. (I'm not talking about stuff like PBR here). These mid-tier's can be had for $11.99 12-pack, 12 fl oz. The non-promotion price is closer to $18. Both the promotional price and not-on-sale price began noticeably ticking upwards in January. I haven't bothered with crafts unless I can get it on tap when I'm out. Paying craft prices for at-home enjoyment isn't the right value proposition for me.

Obviously this is wildly anecdotal and a laughably tiny sample size, but I have found myself moving back towards a few favorite cheap beers over the last few years. I just got kinda sick of heavy stouts and hop-bomb IPAs, and have found myself enjoying cheap watery pilsners more. I drink a lot of PBR completely unironically, and my favorite local "craft" beer is "Hilltop Lager" - which is sold in red and white tall cans clearly designed to ape the PBR look and feel a little bit.

I don't know that this is a counterpoint to TFA really, but I wonder if some degree of folks just getting sick of the craft beer craze could be a confounding factor.

I’ve always like PBR & MGD (when I’m feeling more premium) and really dislike IPAs. It’s really nice to see local small brewers finally making their way into pilsners and lagers. I’ve had some really good ones that remind me of the Leinenkugel’s of yesteryear.

In the Phoenix area Huss and The Shop are knocking it out of the park with their lagers. Spotted Cow is still the best; even though it’s an ale, it drinks like a lager.

Love me some Church Music.

> I wonder if some degree of folks just getting sick of the craft beer craze could be a confounding factor.

Yup. I'm a (former) home brewer. I have quite a few friends who are current or former home brewers, too. We're all basically done with the craft beer trends at this point, preferring classic styles that are in the <= 5% ABV range.

I like the taste of IPAs but can't stand the hangovers if i have more than one

If you grind your teeth/clench your jaw during sleep, consider trying a bite guard.

No more headaches for me.

(I got one when I had a couple nasty headaches during a period I didn't drink for a few months. I knew from my dentist I ground my teeth but that was what pushed me over the edge.)

It's popular for some reason for IPAs to have high alcohol (like 7% or higher), but there's been a recent trend in IPAs (and other styles) for "session" beers that have more normal ~5% levels. I know it's just a few percent, but I find two or three pints of a lower alcohol beer leave me feeling much better than the higher ones.

The higher abv is because it allows the beer to obtain more hop flavor (not just bitterness) along with malt flavor. A classic American session IPA[1] will always (of course with few exceptions) be more bitter than a standard IPA and a double will be less bitter than a standard. However as you go up in abv you are able to get a lot more hop flavor in to bitterness. Only so much hop oil can isomerize without enough abv backbone.

[1] not hazys, bruts, east coast, cold or and other sub style. Just talking classic American IPA as made popular in the early 2000'

This is where I'm at. Pale Ales or Session IPA's both have lower calorie and lower ABV. Toppling Goliath's Psuedo Sue is fantastic. It's not cheap though.

I'm in the same boat.

I got older so hangovers hurt more but there is definitely an over saturation of beers, brands, and bottles. I'm still loyal to some semi-premium brands when I can find them - but so many smaller breweries put out millions of different brands/flavors/types and I can't be bothered to make space in my brain to remember them (and I'm not interested in Untappd or similar to remind me of how bad my drinking habit is).

Similar place. I find over time I find I appreciate the lighter euro-lagers or pilsners most, and periodically some belgian non-trappist ales and german beers. Ales are heavier so I don't usually go for them, and "craft" beers generally disappointing.

Have shifted more to wine, but owing to being conscious of my health, I buy infrequently.

If you had assets during the pandemic you got many good gifts, some once in a lifetime (those 1.95% mortgages).

If you didn't have assets, you got a check for $2000.

It really cannot be overstated enough the wealth divide that pandemic QE created. The way things are you have to inflate assets by $100 for $1 to make it down to poverty level hands.

> It really cannot be overstated enough the wealth divide that pandemic QE created.

:s/\<created\>\.$/exacerbated./

The underlying causes go back further than Roger & Me.

Some of us got neither

Last two years the increase in equity in my house and my retirement savings exceeds my income over the last ten.

I got that for doing absolutely nothing.

> If you had assets during the pandemic you got many good gifts, some once in a lifetime (those 1.95% mortgages).

Exactly. Real estate doubled, tripled. Stock prices skyrocketed. Established stocks like Apple triple during the pandemic. It's mindboggling. That's after 12 years of continuous growth after the 2008 recession. Going off of assets, the past 15 years has been the greatest economic boom in human history.

I was watching a Robert Kiyosaki talk with some podcast recently where he mentioned investing in Wagyu beef ranches I think. And he said something to the effect that the poor will stop buying hamburger, but the rich will suck the additional costs because they essentially are not stoic enough to go without was the vibe of his claim. So pretty much the division of essential and non-essential curves differently for different classes is how it sounds.

I don't have enough money to be investing in Wagyu beef ranches but I agree with that (especially if they really get cell based meat going, but even without just based on regs and consumer behavior RE animal cruelty). Eventually it'll be just premium meats vs... tbd (plant replacements, bugs, cell based meat off an assembly line)

Funny you brought up Kiyosaki (Rich Dad, Poor Dad author) since one of the lessons in the book was - the rich (wealth accumulators) are smart enough to not spend their money on luxuries such as expensive new cars, and presumably high-end craft beers.

If the rich aren't buying expensive new cars (e.g. Rolls Royce?), who is? Certainly not the rest of us.

This is like the people who say the rich don't have money, they only have stocks. They have both...

The conclusion makes sense though I'm not sure it being a question of a kind of stoicism. From personal experience, if you have money, costs go up, and you get angry you're spending more, but you can afford it so you suck it up and pay (ironically, a bit stoic).

If you literally don't have the money, you have no choice but to change your behavior, so you go without.

This is just not true. The real wages and wealth of those the the 10th to 98th percentiles of income have all grown since the period prior to the financial crisis. The real wages of those in the 10th-20th percentile have grown the most.

Yeah but it feels true, which is almost good enough.

It’s just like everyone who knows a recession is just around the corner. Hard to support with evidence but it’s the vibe du jour.

Do you have a preferred source for this? I went down a rabbit-hole of googling and trying to evaluate how reliable the sources were and got pretty lost. I found several articles claiming to use data from the US Federal Reserve with conflicting interpretations.

Prices have also increased?

Maybe I'm an outlier but the more high end beer/alcohol I buy, the more sub-premium beer I buy as well. That is buying more sub-premium means I've gotten richer.

I'll have a nice mezcal with a shitty bud light or whatever afterwards. If I don't have a high end drink then that's when I'll have something middle of the road like a local affordable craft or something and since it's affordable I don't need to buy a sub-premium beer to finish off the night.

Could it be people have just discovered better alcohol and are drinking that for the taste and then the budget stuff for the buzz? The masses may have discovered it's kind of an optimal strategy.

It's a strategy that's endured thru the millennia:

John 2:10

> “A host always serves the best wine first,” he said. “Then, when everyone has had a lot to drink, he brings out the less expensive wine..."

Good advice, but If I understood that passage they all just got a bunch of free wine though

it was all free to the guests. the passage was in response to how good the miracle wine was to have tasted. it was the end of the night when they were running out of wine, so the expectation would be that they had already long finished off the good stuff. but here they are bringing out the best wine at the end of the shindig.

I don't know about you, but I've always known "joe six-pack" to be pretty price conscious.

Then again, as others in this thread have pointed out; the market is rather saturated with gross $12 4-packs. I've been suckered by a few.

when you see someone walking out of the store with a 30 pack of Keystone, you know they are not drinking for the taste.

"Schaefer is the one beer to have when you're having more than one."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRecWSp4VFg

kirkland light: it's 11am somewhere! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHRNzj_G7Us

“Available in 48 packs where you buy your paint!”

More than 6

I'd drink keystone over like half the garbage craft beers or like a budweiser any day

Ehn, it's just Coors Light in a separate can. And I can confirm that due to unscientific experiments of mine while in college.

Same with Natty Light btw - that's just Bud Light.

it's more about the fact there's 30

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