Roughly half of adults drink beer, and this figure hasn’t changed much in five years. But since 2009 “big beer’s” giants, including Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors, have seen fortunes decline further, especially with their core light and domestic beer business. While companies have exploited their premium and craft beer offerings to some success, today’s consumers, especially Millennials, are also gravitating toward wine and spirits.

Today’s beer consumers crave greater label transparency (ingredient disclosure), flavor/type innovation beyond basic lager, and more resealable packaging options. The $97 billion beer market must listen and adapt to slow declines or risk more of the same, or worse, in the next five years.

This report builds on the analysis presented in Mintel’s Beer – US, December 2013 and previous editions published in October 2012, 2011, and earlier titles.

This report includes volume and value sales data for domestic and imported beer for home (off-premise) and on-premise consumption. However, most discussion and analyses are centered on off-premise beer consumption and purchase behavior.

The report covers the following beer segments. In terms of volume sales, these segments are ranked in order of volume sales, and named by the Beverage Information & Insight Group in its Beer Handbook 2014:

• Light beer (including low-calorie brands such as Miller 64 and Bud Select 55)

• Super-premium and premium beer (such as Budweiser’s Black Crown or Leinenkugel’s, as well as “mass-craft”* brands like Blue Moon and Shock Top)

• Imported beer (including imported light beer brands)

• Craft beer (such as Lagunitas, Boston Beer Co., and Sierra Nevada, which are also referred to as “true-craft”* in this report)

• Popular beer (such as Budweiser, Busch, and Miller. Also referred to as regular domestic beer in this report)

• Ice beer (such as Natural Ice or Icehouse)

• Malt liquor

* “True-craft” beer refers to artisan-style beers, typically associated with small, independent local or regional brewers. Based on the definition developed by the Brewers Association, true-craft brands must meet specific criteria pertaining to annual production volume (less than 6 million barrels), ownership (less than 25% of the craft brewery is owned or controlled by an alcoholic beverage industry member that is not itself a craft brewer), and beer type/production (that is deemed traditional or innovative).

The styles and positioning characterized by true-craft beer also have been acquired and/or adopted by larger brewing corporations including Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors, which Mintel has included in this report, referred to as “mass-craft” beer.

Both true- and mass-craft brands contribute to the overall market size of this report. Where possible, Mintel discusses true-craft and mass-craft beer brands and products independently.

In addition to beer, there are data tables and analyses for the hard cider segment in this report. Non-alcoholic beer is also discussed to a small extent but sales figures aren’t tabulated on their own for this segment.

Sales of flavored malt beverages (eg Bud Light’s Lime-A-Rita‎ or Mike’s Hard Lemonade) are sometimes, but not always, included in data tables due to data constraints. Data tables are noted accordingly. That said, these beverages are generally not discussed in this report. For a full discussion and analyses, please refer to Mintel’s RTD Alcoholic Beverages – US, December 2014.

For far more robust coverage of the craft beer market, please refer to Mintel’s RTD Craft Beer – US, June 2014, as well as past titles in that series. Black and Hispanic consumer behavior is covered in depth in Mintel’s Black Consumers and Alcoholic Beverages – US, December 2014 and Hispanic Consumers and Alcoholic Beverages – US, December 2014.

Value figures throughout this report are at rsp (retail selling prices) excluding sales tax unless otherwise stated.

• Market Size and Forecast: total retail sales of beer based on US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey and estimates created by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis; forecast developed by Mintel. Volume sales from the Beverage Information & Insight Group’s Beer Handbook 2014. Note that the market size in this report differs from the one provided in the 2013 report. There are differences in the source data used, as well as the underlying assumptions.

• Segment Performance and Retail Channels: volume sales from the Beverage Information & Insight Group’s Beer Handbook 2014.

• Leading Companies and Brand Analysis section: based on MULO sales data from Information Resources, Inc. InfoScan Reviews. MULO is defined as Multi Outlet, representative of the following channels: total US grocery, mass; total US drug; total Walmart, dollar, military, and club stores. Note that the values shown in this section differ from the Market Size and Forecast and Segment Performance sections of this report. Companies and brands sales data encompasses only sales through MULO channels, while Market Size and Forecast and Segment Performance sales cover the entire market.

For the purposes of this report, Mintel commissioned exclusive consumer research through Lightspeed GMI to explore consumer consumption of/attitudes and behaviors toward beer. Mintel was responsible for the survey design, data analysis, and reporting. Fieldwork was conducted in September 2014 among a sample of 1,886 adults aged 22+ with access to the internet. Please note that adults aged 22+ are the Mintel sample to ensure respondents are legal drinking age for survey participation.

Mintel selects survey respondents by gender, age, household income, and region so that they are proportionally representative of the US adult population using the internet. Mintel also slightly over-samples, relative to the population, respondents that are Hispanic or Black to ensure an adequate representation of these groups in our survey results and to allow for more precise parameter estimates from our reported findings.

Please note that Mintel surveys are conducted online and in English only. Hispanics who are not online and/or do not speak English are not included in the survey results.

Mintel also has analyzed data from Experian Marketing Services, using the Simmons NCS (National Consumer Study). The Experian Marketing Services/Simmons NCS/NHCS was carried out during April 2013-June 2014, and the results are based on the sample of 23,133 adults aged 21+, with results weighted to represent the US adult population. Mintel also utilized Simmons data based on the NCS/NHCS carried out during January 2013-March 2014, and the results are based on the sample of 23,046 adults aged 21+.

While race and Hispanic origin are separate demographic characteristics, Mintel often compares them to each other. Please note that the responses for race (White, Black, Asian, Native American, or other race) will overlap those that also are Hispanic, because Hispanics can be of any race.

Broadcast ads mentioned in the Innovations and Innovators section of this report include links to the ads on YouTube. These videos are sourced from brand-specific channels, but can be removed or changed by the channels’ owners following publication. Due to the age restrictions for the alcoholic beverage subject matter, accessing these videos requires a YouTube log-in and consent to any potentially mature content of the videos.

The following is a list of abbreviations used in this report:

Generations are discussed within this report, and they are defined as:

* also known as Generation Y or Echo Boomers

In order to provide an inflation-adjusted price value for markets, Mintel uses the CPI to deflate current prices. The CPI is defined as follows: