Big Beer Stumbling

Attention beer lovers: Start guzzling more Bud, please. Heineken and Carlsburg would help, too. Also, the Silver Bullet and a certain beer from the Great White North, eh?

Your favorite megasuperdupergoogoo suds conglomerate, Anheuser Busch InBev, reported a third-quarter profit that was slower than the year-ago third quarter, after internal cuts it made did not make up for slowing sales in Europe and the U.S.

In a previous life I did a lot of financial reporting, so I find the numbers of this stuff interesting. Chances are you’d rather stab bamboo into your eye than read that kind of thing, though, so let’s just say things are a bit slower at AB InBev — but they still made a profit.

Other brewers being hit by the recession include Carlsberg and Heineken. The number of beers consumed by the quaffing public made by Molson Coors (I didn’t know they had combined until just now) was off almost three percent.

There is at least one bright spot in the industry, though. A fave of us Razor Stubble Guys, Samuel Adams (Boston Beer), saw its volume increase by seven percent and profits shoot up (like beer out of a punctured can) 40 percent.

And speaking of the Sam Adams-type craft beers out there, how’s that market doing? According to the Los Angeles Times:

Though overall beer sales were down 1.3% in the first six months of 2009, according to the Boulder, Colo.-based Brewers Assn., the craft-beer market remains somewhat of a bright spot, although it’s estimated to represent just 5% of the overall beer industry. The trade group, which dedicates itself to promoting small-market breweries, reports that craft brewers sold 4.2 million barrels of beer in the first half of 2009, up from 4 million from the same period last year.

So, what’s the takeaway here? Although they’re small in numbers, the craft brewers are now winning the beer battle. I know that in my home, we generally lay in a good supply of craft beer. The only time we’ll go with the mass-market stuff is when we have Bud, Bud Light or Bud Select … the last two almost being one and the same, in my mind (even though they taste a bit different).

Hopefully the big boys in the industry will notice and stop making crap beers like this.

By the way, we Razor Stubble Guys are finalizing our first video shoot. It will take place at a brewery that’s local to the DC/Baltimore area, but it might not be the first one (or even the second one) you’re thinking of. More details are on the way, but the video itself will probably have the feel of a Dirty Jobs episode crossed with a Mythbusters installment … and a little bit of Saturday Night Live tossed in for good measure (except for the “live” part).

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