Mexican craft beer: Coming from south of the border for your taste buds
While overall U.S. beer industry sales remain flat, Americans' thirst for craft beer continues to grow and Mexican beers such as Corona Extra and Modelo Especial have unquenched market appeal. Could craft beer made by Mexican brewmasters be the next big beverage trend in the U.S.? A trio of former Anheuser-Busch executives and a Mexican entrepreneur are betting on it with a new venture, Quest Beverage. The company has already introduced four beers into Houston and St. Louis and throughout Missouri, and the beers are now hitting markets in California, Illinois and Texas.
The beers currently being imported are a citrusy Crossover IPA and crisp Blonde Ale from Cerveza Urbana, based in Mexicali, Mexico, and a light, dry Kölsch ale and a malty, mildly bitter London-style ale from Monterrey, Mexico's Cerveza Rrëy.
A trio of trends points to potential success:
• A growing Hispanic population in the U.S. now makes up 18 percent of Americans.
• Mexican imports are hot. Corona Extra and Modelo Especial each owned 5 percent of the retail market last year, according to IRI, a Chicago-based market research firm. Modelo Especial sales rose 18 percent, dollar-wise, from 2017.
• Growth in craft beer, brewed by small, independent breweries, has slowed, but its share of the overall $111 billion-plus U.S. beer industry is expected to increase beyond the 23.4 percent it captured in 2017, according to the Brewers Association.
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Kelp in Craft Beer
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 03 2019, @11:49PM
This seems like your low point. Bitching about beer. Deplorable!