America’s long love affair with beer is on the rocks

Last year, for the first time, Americans reaching for a drink more often chose a glass of wine or a cocktail.
U.S. drinkers, particularly young ones, are having relationship problems with the national beverage, The Wall Street Journal reports.
According to the Beer Institute, a trade group, drinkers chose beer just 49.7% of the time last year, down from 60.8% in the mid-’90s.
Among 21- to 27-year-olds, the decline has been sharper. Anheuser-Busch InBev SA, Budweiser’s owner, found that in 2016, just 43% of alcohol consumed by young drinkers was beer. In 2006, it was 65%.
Per capita beer consumption in the U.S. fell to 73.4 liters last year, from 80.2 in 2010 and 83.2 liters in 2000, according to IWSR, a drinks market research firm. Germany, by comparison, consumed 103 liters a person last year.
In some ways, big brewers are facing the same seismic shifts in taste as other large consumer-goods and packaged-food giants.
Consumers, especially younger ones, are gravitating toward smaller brands marketed as healthier, more natural or made closer to home. Brands such as Kellogg’s cereal, Campbell’s soup and Aunt Jemima pancake mix are all feeling the pinch. Miller Lite, Coors Light, Bud and Bud Light have all lost share to upstart labels.
Demographics also are at work. Industry research has shown young white males still prefer beer, but their numbers are declining as a percentage of the population and millennials drink less than older generations, hitting alcohol volumes more broadly.
The beer industry has tried to make up for declining volume by increasing prices. That has helped make whiskey and wine relatively more affordable.
As sales slide, a sense of crisis has taken hold of the industry. On Wednesday, Molson Coors Brewing Co. reported a 3.1% drop in U.S. second-quarter sales driven by lower volumes of its light beers.
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