Americans Buying More Cheap, Simple Beer Instead of Costly Craft Beers

Millennials, I’ve got yet another unfortunate piece of news about aging: The craft brewery-loving IPA guy is over. Craft beer sales are declining. Nobody cares about how many ounces of hops are packed into the can or about the subtle notes of honey and chocolate in that stout anymore, if they ever did in the first place. The stereotypical beer hipster is now a middle-aged dad who can’t be too hungover for his kids’ morning soccer practice.

Beer is getting back to basics. America’s favorite beer is Michelob Ultra, a pretty whatever-tasting light lager with a bit of a health-conscious halo. One of the sector’s bright spots is Garage Beer, a simple brew backed by the Kelce brothers. The drink of the summer was the Spaghett, also known as the hobo Negroni, which is a dash of Aperol in a bottle of a classic of the cheap beer lineup, Miller High Life. Even beer commercials are boring, especially after the backlash to a 2023 Bud Light microcampaign spooked marketers across the industry.

In short, beer is getting dumb again.

“Beer just doesn’t have that same shine or that same relevance. It’s just not as cool anymore,” says Dave Williams, an alcohol industry analyst and consultant. “These companies are reacting to that and saying, ‘All right, we need to make beer fun.'”

It hasn’t been a particularly fun time for the beer industry as of late. Health-conscious Americans are cutting back on drinking, and when they choose to indulge, they’re increasingly opting for alternatives like ready-to-drink cocktails and THC drinks. The US beer market fell by 1.2% in production volume in 2024, according to the Brewers Association, which represents small, independent breweries. For craft brewers, the picture was bleaker, with production declining by 4%.

“Below-premium beer is doing better than premium, but neither is blowing the roof off,” Williams says.

The craft beer market is kind of reaching a point of oversaturation.

Many American consumers are struggling financially, causing them to trade down across a variety of items, including, in some cases, beer. Andrew Heritage, the chief economist at the Beer Institute, a trade association for the beer industry, tells me the below-premium economy segment, like a Miller High Life or Busch Light, is outperforming the overall trend, and that consumers are buying more from bulk retailers, such as Costco and Sam’s Club.

“I think that’s evidence of consumers looking for a lower price point,” he says.

Earlier this year, a Brooklyn, New York bar owner told me he’d noticed his “moderately employed regulars” had switched from draft beers to the cheaper Miller High Life. Consumers are buying their alcohol in smaller sizes and quantities, too, picking up a six-pack instead of a 12-pack on the way home on a Friday.

Consumers aren’t just changing their habits because of prices — tastes are changing as well. Craft beer was the hot new thing in much of the 2000s and 2010s. The boom brought a diverse set of flavors, options, and alcohol content levels. But craft beer maybe exploded a little too much. The space has become very crowded, and brewers’ flavors and names have gotten so outlandish that the sheer number of choices can become overwhelming.

“The craft beer market is kind of reaching a point of oversaturation,” says Garrett Nelson, an equity research analyst at CFRA Research. “The last year and a half, there have been more breweries that have closed than new ones that have opened.”

Like broader “foodie culture,” craft beer isn’t necessarily passé, but it isn’t special, either. It’s been very democratized— anyone can snap a picture of their meal and post it on Instagram — that it’s lost its sheen. And it codes millennial, which is now firmly code for “uncool.”

“It’s not a cultural signifier in the way it used to be,” says Kate Bernot, the lead analyst at Sightlines, which researches the alcohol industry.

The seemingly endless array of IPAs epitomizes the craft brewing industry — there’s your hazy, your juicy, double, etc. But they’re not for everyone. The alcohol content is often quite high — you can’t really spend a day watching football, knocking back IPAs without being in for a wild time. Many people don’t love their bitter flavor, either, and they’d prefer something that doesn’t knock your socks off with hops.

“The American drinker has definitely shifted, if not toward blander stuff, necessarily, I would say much more straightforward stuff,” says Dave Infante, who writes a newsletter about drinking called Fingers. Beyond beer, he points to ready-to-drink options, such as White Claw and High Noon, that are packaged in straight-to-the-point fruit flavors. Within beer, he mentions Michelob Ultra, which recently surpassed Modelo as America’s top-selling brew. “It’s got an active lifestyle brand that gives it a big boost, and it isn’t marketed aggressively on its flavor because it doesn’t have a whole lot to offer there,” he says. Ultra’s marketing profile is now so ubiquitous that the other big guys are taking a run at it. In 2020, Miller Lite ran an ad campaign against Michelob Ultra, boasting that it has more taste for just one more calorie.

To stem the tide, more craft brewers are expanding their offerings in pilsners and lagers to capture a broader base of consumers and appeal to this back-to-basics palette. When considering the cost question, consumers tend to lean toward purchases that feel less risky, and lower-profile, more familiar flavors scratch that itch.

Simplicity is a key part of Garage Beer’s success. The brand grew out of a craft brewery in the Midwest and has now struck out on its own. The light beer has a 4% ABV, comes in a white, unremarkable can, and is about as basic as you can get in its branding: the garage. It comes in two flavors — regular and lime. NFL star brothers Jason and Travis Kelce invested in Garage in 2024 and do ads for it that can be borderline boorish. Its ad spots include spoofs of old martial arts movies with Jason Kelce and partnerships with pro wrestlers doing body slams and grilling burgers.

“It’s kind of going back to beer’s roots a little bit, where it was endorsed by sports players, it’s easy drinking, and it’s for your garage,” Sightlines’ Bernot says. “And I think it’s a little bit of a course correction to the fanciness of craft and fan imports.”

Garage Beer reportedly reached a $200 million valuation and expects to produce 250,000 barrels this year, although that still makes it a tiny fish in the giant beer sea. (For some context, the US beer industry produces tens of millions of barrels annually.)

Andy Sauer, the CEO of Garage Beer, who acquired the company in 2023, tells me they hope to “bring folks back to beer” with a beer-positive, independent message. “We don’t take ourselves seriously in any way, shape, or form. We just try to be the dumbest beer on the internet, and that’s sort of the spirit of what beer has been forever,” he says.

Other small names, such as Montucky Cold Snacks and Easy Rider, are also making waves by tapping into nostalgic themes and retro aesthetics.

“The liquid inside the can is not very remarkable. It’s fine. It’s a commodity lager more or less,” Infante says. “Those products are mostly marketing, and they’ve been very successful.”

The beer industry is facing a conundrum that, although not existential, is nonetheless challenging. It needs to appeal to more consumers, especially as people grow wary of alcohol and have more drinking options when they do decide to imbibe. And any efforts to reach out to potential new drinkers come with some downsides in this fraught cultural moment: In 2023, Bud Light sent a few cans of beer to a transgender influencer as part of an attempt to reach that community, and, well, you probably remember where that landed. Companies need to duke it out with their competitors, but they’re also afraid of land mines.

There hasn’t been an iconic beer marketing campaign that I can think of in years.

“It’s a very competitive market right now because there’s no growth, and so when there’s no growth, it’s a market share battle,” says Gary Wilcox, a professor of communications at the University of Texas at Austin who’s studied alcohol advertising.

Beer advertising isn’t as vapid, silly, or sexist as it used to be — beer brands don’t generally do the hot women running around in wet T-shirts thing like they did in the past. But it’s not really thrilling, either. The themes are basically America, garages, barbeques, beaches, and gentle reminders to consumers that they exist. Bud Light’s most recent Super Bowl campaign features singer Post Malone, comedian Shane Gillis, and former NFL star Peyton Manning at backyard parties, sitting in driveways, and screwing around on the porch. Over the summer, Miller Lite launched a commercial celebrating its 50th anniversary that highlighted its history as a “backyard beer.” Beer’s back to be positioned for regular guys — the group that’s historically been viewed as pretty inoffensive in marketing.

Bernot says beer marketing is more “boring” than it’s ever been. “There hasn’t been an iconic beer marketing campaign that I can think of in years,” she says. Budweiser still has the Clydesdale horses. Corona has been using the “find your beach” slogan for more than a decade. Coors Light’s schtick remains that it’s … cold. “We haven’t seen beer lead the cultural and advertising conversation the way it used to,” she says.

Taste-wise, beer’s current trajectory could be considered a reversion to the norm. Your boomer dad wasn’t knocking back sour beers after work, he was grabbing a Bud. Tastes going back from fancy to no-frills may have been somewhat inevitable. And with the marketing, the goal seems to be to make as few waves as possible, to say, “Hey, we’re here, but also, there’s nothing to see here.” And the best way to do that, for now, appears to be for brands to do some dumbing down. The problem is, in working so hard not to offend or confuse, beer is losing some of the irreverence that once made it fun, too.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.