I think this is right. When I was in my 20s I was really into beer. Now I'm older and I split my time between the usual light beer culprits when I'm drinking out and enjoying a few craft favorites when I'm drinking in and gaming/doing hobbies. Also when a four pack of 16oz cans is approaching $20 (or exceeding that) I'm less likely to be exploratory because who the he'll wants a fridge of rejects they don't like.

I (rarely) homebrew, for fun, but when it comes to beers in the fridge I have so many great local options to choose from (here on the south shore of MA, near Cape Cod), it's ridiculous: Second Wind, Stellwagen, Mayflower, Timberyard.... typically canned just a week or two before purchase. A few times a year I'll make a trip to Treehouse (worth it), otherwise the local package stores are well-stocked. I do remember enjoying Anchor Steam and IPAs back in the day (as a big upgrade from shitty mass-produced lagers), but my palate evolved and my preference for the best and freshest brew simply rules out generic bottles from the opposite coast.

My understanding is that this is kind of the pattern of the beer downturn. The huge operations are doing okay, shifting around amongst their sub-brands, introducing seltzers, etc. And the hyper-local stuff is still doing well it seems. But the "pretty big" craft brewers that went nationwide, they're facing the brunt.

Those light beers are also low ABV, which is ideal for warm summer days where to just want something refreshing without getting plastered. A simple tasting 4% beer works great for that. A complex, bitter 12% double IPA? Not so much.

I’d much rather drink an amber ale on a nice warm day than yet another IPA.

Just a point to the marketing and shifting norms... I would call a 4-5% beer normal, not low, ABV.

5% used to be considered high or an ‘export’ lager when I was a lad. We called Stella Artois at a massive 5.2% “wife beater”.

Typical session lagers like Heineken were around 3.5%.

Yeah, I'd call normal anywhere between 3.5 - 5%, with session beers being anything < 3.5%. Anything above 5% is strong and where, 15 years ago, beers used to top out at around 6.5% in your average supermarket (Carlsberg Special Brew aside), nowadays beers at 8 and 9% are commonplace, although perhaps not to the extent they were 5 - 8 years ago.

A lot of these are just too much, and too weird (as I and many others have commented), for day to day drinking. Nowadays I mostly drink session beers because I normally have to worry about driving, getting up early, or functioning in some at least semi-useful way later in the day.

Jesus, that ‘speccy brew’ burning tyre taste. We got a couple cans once when properly skint and choked them down.

Some of these 12% burned hops ipa’s taste like special brew to me.

> Jesus, that ‘speccy brew’ burning tyre taste.

Yeah, it's basically undrinkable. It was a bit of a staple at 6th form parties in the early 90s because it was cheap and strong, although I always struggled to get it down. I did buy a can many years later to try for a laugh as a fully fledged adult (is it really as bad as I remember, etc.?)... and couldn't finish it. Just awful.

To take that one step further I think most new drinkers find seltzers more refreshing in the heat than low abv light beers.

Worth noting that most 'hard seltzers' like whiteclaw are still brewed sort of like beers for tax reasons. Since brewed drinks have less excise on them than premixed drinks.

Well nah, the ingredients just like "alcohol": https://ussupport.whiteclaw.com/en/support/solutions/article....

You could argue that the alcohol in it was fermented, but all alcohol is fermented, aha. Apparently WC base alcohol is a pure spirit "5 times distilled from corn & gluten free".

Bud Light was the most popular beer in the USA until very recently Modelo Especial just passed it. Both of those are very straight forward beers.