Low gravity or not, lager is Britain’s fastest- growing drink.
More than twenty-five out of every hundred pints sold in Britain’s pubs are lager.
Yet only thirteen years ago the figure was one in a hundred.
So what are the reasons for the fantastic growth of lagers popularity?
Mr. Claude Smith, President of the Incorporated Brewers’ Guild, puts it down to cash.
"It all down to people having more money,” he says.
“At the bottom of the Pile you get mild drinkers. When they get paid more, they drink bitter.
“When they get paid even more, they drink lager,
“Tt’s sort of fashionable and up-market. They want to prove they can afford it.”
Sunday Mirror - Sunday 01 October 1978, page 17.
So people were drinking Lager exactly because it was expensive and poor value. Seems a bit weird to me. What do you think? Did people really move to Lager because it was expensive?
Nice to know that in the 1970s, as a Mild drinker, I was at the bottom of the pile.
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7 comments:
Like you, I drank Mild because I enjoyed it. I am sure that most people choose the drink they like the most.
I can see the class split with mild and bitter, as mild was cheaper and mostly served in the vault rather than the lounge at the pub, but I think the lager market ran more along age lines in the sixties and seventies, appealing to young drinkers as something new and different, heavily advertised and promoted in youth-oriented music places. Those drinkers are of course now pensioners if they're still alive.
In the early to mid 1970s strong lagers were beginning to grow in popularity, and while most lagers sort of replaced milds of a similar strength, if you wanted to really tie one on, Carling Black Label at 4.3% ABV was the equivalent of a best bitter and the original Stella, as well as Lamot on keg were over 5% and as strong as many Extra Special Bitters that you had to really seek out, such as Abbot Ale, Courage Directors etc.
With European holidays being more and more common heaps of people developed a taste for 5% brews as drunk in Holland, Germany, Italy, Spain etc. and sought out strong lagers when they got home.
I can remember when there was a lime dispenser on the bar for your 'lager and lime'. Wonder why that fashion went out of style? Although you still get a version of it with Sol drinkers.
When the brewers market lager like they do sponsering football leagues and cups people are gullable and will drink anything.
There's a phenomenon in economics described as "luxury goods" and sometimes "Veblen goods" which are basically high status goods which increase in demand as income and/or the price increases. So for example a watch company which sells a watch for $1,000 may sell more units than if they offered it for $100. Or if people's income increases by 10% they may actually buy 15% more Champagne.
It's a lot easier to prove that's true for relatively rare goods like watches or fine wine than mass market beer, though. When a product floods the market it tends to lose cachet. While you could see these effects happening to increase the market share of lager from 1% to 5%, when you're talking about something as common as lager became, other factors became more likely to be involved.
Think the 1976 heatwave helped lager across these islands. Funnily enough my father born in 1973/1974 first drank Beamish when he started drinking as it was cheaper before switching to lager.
Oscar
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