In May 2015, I published a blog post titled “A Glass Half Full?” The piece was inspired by a simple yet intriguing question a colleague posed while we were enjoying a couple of beers together at the Delirium Cafe in Amsterdam: How large a share of the American beer market might craft brewers ultimately capture?
Toward the end of that blog entry, I offered my response. And here it is:
“Well I am not going to be nailed down to a specific market share. However, with demographic momentum working in their favor, capturing somewhere between 40% and 50% of the market (as currently defined) by 2035 is not unreasonable. Of course I may be wrong.“
Oh boy, was I wrong. Even though 2035 is still nine years away, it’s already clear that my prediction is unlikely to come close. Back in 2015, when I made it, craft breweries had already captured 19.3% of the American beer market – measured in dollar sales, not volume. Today, that share sits at 24.6%. That’s an increase, but hardly the dramatic surge I had anticipated when I offered that bold forecast eleven years ago. So, what went wrong?
Before addressing that question, it is worth revisiting the context behind my original prediction. Between 2010 and 2014, the number of craft breweries in the United States grew from 1,758 to 3,968 – an increase of ~125 percent. Over the same period, craft beer’s share of the U.S. beer market rose from 7.6 percent to 13 percent, a gain of 71 percent. By any reasonable measure, the industry was in the midst of an unmistakable boom.
In recent years, however, that boom has become something of a bust. Between 2020 and 2024, the number of craft breweries in the United States increased from 8,921 to 9,769, an increase of just 9.8%. Over the same period, craft beer’s market share increased from 23.7% to 24.7%. an increase of 4.2%. Taken together, these trends suggest that the American consumer’s appetite for craft beer has largely stalled.
Towards the end of my 2015 blog entry, I made the observation that my bold forecast hinged very much upon “the next generation of beer drinkers preferring craft over traditional beer” and that “preferences sometimes have a habit of changing with generational shifts”. How true this turned out to be.
It was Millennials – those born between 1981 and 1996 – whose outsized enthusiasm for craft beer powered the segment’s extraordinary expansion. Unfortunately, for craft brewers at least, it was an enthusiasm not shared by Generation Z – those born between 1997 and 2012.
It is well documented that members of Generation Z are drinking less alcohol. Writing for USA Today, Betty Lin‑Fisher characterizes this shift as Gen Z “ghosting” alcohol, noting that a desire to lead a healthier lifestyle is a key motivating factor. Survey data from Gallup in 2025 support this interpretation: 66% of Americans aged 18–34 reported that they viewed moderate alcohol consumption – defined as one or two drinks per day – as harmful to personal health. By comparison, this view was held by 50% of adults aged 35–54 and 48% of those aged 55 and older. A 2021 study in JAMA Pediatrics reported that 28% of college students abstained from alcohol in 2018, up from 20% in 2002. It is important to note that concern about the health impacts of alcohol has been increasing across all age groups in recent years, suggesting that changing attitudes toward drinking are not confined to younger generations alone.
Growing interest in healthier lifestyles – and a deliberate move away from alcohol – has given rise to initiatives such as Dry January and Sober October, while also adding new terms like “sober curious” to the popular lexicon. These shifts are not confined to the United States. Declining alcohol consumption has been documented across a range of advanced economies, including Australia, Ireland, and Japan. Even Germany – long regarded as a stronghold of beer culture – recorded its steepest drop in beer sales in more than three decades in 2025.
Many people who are cutting back on alcohol still want beverages that deliver beer’s familiar flavors. This preference has helped fuel rapid growth in the non‑ and low‑alcohol beer segment. In the United States, sales of non‑alcoholic beer rose by 23 percent between January and August 2025. Although non‑alcoholic beer still accounts for only about 1.3 percent of total beer sales, the category has become large enough to support major players. Athletic Brewing Company, which produces only non‑alcoholic beer at its breweries in Milford, Connecticut, and San Diego, California, now ranks as the sixth‑largest craft brewery in the United States.
Although much of the existing evidence points to declining alcohol use among Gen Z, a recent IWSR survey suggests the trend may not persist. In the United States, the share of legal drinking age (LDA+) Gen Z adults reporting alcohol consumption in the past six months increased from 46% to 70%. While this is quite a large change over a very short period, one expert suggests that this may be indicative of longer-tern trends and that as Gen Z age and gain greater disposable income, their drinking patterns may increasingly resemble those of older generations. Writing for the Pew Research Center on generational differences in values and behaviors, Michael Dimmock cautions that “don’t assume that what you see today is what you’ll get tomorrow.” In other words, change happens.
When all is said and done, this retrospective makes clear that my 2015 forecast was shaped by the extraordinary momentum of the craft beer boom and an assumption that Millennial preferences would be replicated by subsequent generations. Instead, the past decade has underscored how contingent such projections are on shifting demographic, cultural, and health-related dynamics. While Millennials’ enthusiasm propelled craft beer’s rapid ascent, slower growth since 2020 reflects both saturation and changing attitudes toward alcohol -especially among Gen Z, whose drinking behaviors differ markedly from their predecessors, at least to date. At the same time, the rise of non‑ and low‑alcohol beer, along with emerging evidence that Gen Z’s consumption patterns may evolve with age, serves as a reminder that generational preferences are neither fixed nor fully predictable. As the aforementioned Micheal Dimock of the Pew Research Center has noted, “what we observe today should not be mistaken for a permanent trajectory” – a lesson this episode in forecasting has reinforced all too clearly. And, as the Danish adage succinctly reminds us “prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future”.
Further Reading:
McCabe, Sean E., Brooke J. Arterberry, and Kara Dickinson, Rebecca J. Evans-Polce, Jason A. Ford, Jennie E. Ryan, and Ty S. Schepis. . 2021. Assessment of changes in alcohol and marijuana abstinence, co-use, and use disorders among US young adults from 2002 to 2018. JAMA Pediatrics, Volume 175, Issue 1, pages 64-72.
