Beer Drinkers Are Shifting Toward This Emerging Style

In an era of ever-expanding drink options it's not surprising to see yet another new type of beer on the scene, but one increasingly common style has more to do with larger trends around drinking than appealing to beer-lovers' palates. The sudden collapse of drinking among younger generations has been a major focus of the industry recently. It feels like we can't go a week without a new story on why Gen Z isn't drinking, and while alcohol once used to be the domain of young binge drinkers, older generations are outdrinking them. That has led to the rise of new non-alocholic beer options, and now a second style of beer is popping up more often to appeal to a similar crowd: mid-strength beer.

Mid-strength beer is pretty self-explanatory. It's beer that has less alcohol than the average beer, but isn't completely non-alcoholic. While the level isn't set in stone, it usually has an alcohol by volume (ABV) of around 2.5-3.5%. That's compared to around 5% as the average for your standard beer.

Mid-strength beer is more versatile as an everyday drink than standard beer, and there lies its appeal. While people are drinking less in recent years, over 60% of Americans still drink, but many of those people would like to do so with more moderation. Mid-strength beer lets you down a few brews to sate your thirst on a hot afternoon and not worry about getting too drunk. It's for people looking for a pleasant, manageable buzz.

Mid-strength beer isn't really a new thing, it's just new to being a major market item in the United States. The United Kingdom and Australia already have a market for beer like this, and low-alcohol beers actually have quite a long history for the same reasons they are becoming more popular today. Back before modern infrastructure and plumbing, water was often unsafe to drink, so people would drink alcohol to hydrate. But of course people wouldn't want to be stumbling around drunk all day, so breweries and households would make "small beer" with less than 3% alcohol. 

Previous attempts to introduce mid-strength beer in the U.S. have struggled, because it was often just watered down versions of existing beer. But these new brands and options are brewed from the start to have a lower ABV. There are some breweries like Saranac that have started adding mid-strength beers to the lineup, while Small Beer is a new brand with beers exclusively under 3% ABV. And the trend is trickling up to larger breweries as well. While most popular light beer brands are not mid-strength, Miller has introduced "Extra-Light" beer that is only 2.8% ABV. You can also look for imports, as there are some preexisting styles like Belgian "table beer" that comes from this tradition. But if the explosion of non-alcoholic beer is any indication, we won't have to wait long to see a lot more mid-strength beer options in stores.