Tuesday, December 11, 2012

You Bastards Killed Michelob With Your Craft Beer Purchases

Posted By on Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 4:23 PM

24/7 Wall St., which seems somewhat like a legitimate news source, I guess, has a survey of the nine mass-market beers that have suffered the largest decline in sales since 2006 and it turns out that times have been tough for the Michelob brand, which takes up the top two spots in the list:

American consumers have abandoned Michelob — a lager brewed since 1896 — at a faster rate than any other beer. From 2006 to 2011, sales declined from 500,000 barrels to 140,000, with a 20% drop between 2010 and 2011 alone. No other beer on this list sold less than Michelob. The next-lowest selling beer, Amstel Light, still sold 200,000 barrels more than Michelob last year. The brand has not always struggled. According to Beer Marketer’s INSIGHTS’ Eric Shepard, “the superpremium category — basically between Budweiser and the imports — Michelob pretty much had that to itself for many years.”

So, how long will it take for Michelob to become the new PBR, sold as a hipster discount staple at a dollar or two a bottle? A year or so? A few months? On the other hand, can anyone actually recall what Michelob tastes like? Maybe that could be part of the problem.

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