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Oktoberfest is underway, but U.S. craft brewers may need more than the annual German beer party to stay profitable. After a decade-long boom, the craft beer industry is contracting and trying new things to bring in customers. From New England Public Media, Karen Brown reports.
MATT TARLECKI: There you go, yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF BUBBLING LIQUID)
KAREN BROWN, BYLINE: Matt Tarlecki is watching over the fermentation tanks for this year's Oktoberfest pilsner, one of the styles he's developed to attract new customers.
TARLECKI: So this is all (ph)...
BROWN: When he started his brewery in 2014, he didn't think it would be this hard to get people to drink beer.
TARLECKI: There was a lot of new developments as far as hops coming out back then, and the craft beer boom was sort of peaking.
BROWN: Tarlecki's brewery was the first of three to open that year in the western Massachusetts town of Easthampton. He rented space in a former mill and called it Abandoned Building Brewery.
TARLECKI: It was really fun. It was really exciting. There was a lot of room for growth and opportunity.
BROWN: Throughout the 2010s, the number of breweries across the country grew from 2,000 to 10,000, according to the national Brewers Association. CEO Bart Watson says millennials in particular seemed to love hazy IPAs and bold hoppy ales, and they were tired of the light lagers from corporate brands.
BART WATSON: I think some of it is every generation just wants to drink a little bit differently.
BROWN: But around 2020, everything changed. COVID shut down the brewery taprooms as well as the restaurants that bought the beer wholesale. Then Watson says the cost of raw materials went up. Millennials were having families and drinking less. Meanwhile, as Gen Z came of drinking age, they had less appetite for high-alcohol beer, so hundreds of breweries closed. To use a movie metaphor...
WATSON: We used to be in the "Field Of Dreams" era - build it and they will come. You could put up a brewery and you'd have lines out the door. And today, we're in the "Moneyball" era, where you got to scratch and claw, and you have to find every little edge in order to be competitive.
BROWN: One of those, he says, is getting in on the popular new craft drinks, besides beer, Breweries are making their own canned cocktails, hard seltzer and THC-infused drinks, plus nonalcoholic beer. And it's not just about the drinks. Tarlecki says brewers are realizing that being a community gathering place is a better draw than beer alone.
TARLECKI: The way the brewery is now is definitely not the way I had imagined it when I opened it 12 years ago.
BROWN: His brewery now hosts trivia nights, science lectures, songwriter showcases and recently an arts and crafts market in the parking lot.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Thank you so much.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Enjoy.
BROWN: While the taproom was virtually empty, dozens of shoppers walked around outside holding IPAs they bought from the beer tent. Twenty-seven-year-old Erin LaVoie was out doing errands.
ERIN LAVOIE: I don't think that I was planning on having a beer this afternoon, but I was honestly like, well, I can get some of my stuff that I needed to get anyways and have a more novel weekend instead of...
BROWN: A block away, the New City Brewery hosted a honky-tonk dance on its patio and game night inside. Twenty-eight-year-old Brandon Robert was playing the card game Magic with friends and drinking an ale.
BRANDON ROBERT: I come here every - like, every single week to play Magic. It's like, I don't know that I would go out at that same rate comparatively, like, if I wasn't playing Magic.
BROWN: While Tarlecki says the new products and strategies are bringing in customers...
TARLECKI: Yeah, you don't want to stretch yourself thin and kind of take away from what your original goals were, which is, you know, making craft beer.
BROWN: Still, he's determined to keep his labor of love afloat. He just raised the price of a pint by 50 cents, and this fall he's launching bingo night. For NPR News, I'm Karen Brown in western Massachusetts.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOOKER T. & THE M.G.'S' "GREEN ONIONS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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