Second place behind Pils
Bavarian light beer is becoming a trendy drink
01/29/2022, 11:15 am
The beer industry has been used to bad news for years. The Germans are drinking less and less Pils and Co. With Hellem, on the other hand, the situation is different: sales of Bavarian beer are even increasing. Beer brewers from other federal states have also noticed this and are adapting to the trend.
Light beer from Bavaria also finds new buyers outside of the Free State. Compared to the nationwide comparison, sales of the Bavarian beer variety in supermarkets and beverage stores have increased by double digits, bucking the downward trend in the beer market. For the first ten months of 2021, the market researchers from Nielsen recorded an increase of almost 14 percent in retail sales of light beer. It’s the biggest winner among beer styles.
According to the Nielsen data, the market share of Hellbier rose from 7.9 to 8.8 percent. Hell is the undisputed number two behind the still dominant Pils. Bavarian breweries, which export more, benefit from this. And in the meantime, large Pils producers from North Rhine-Westphalia have also jumped on the trend. They sell the light, as they say in Bavaria, through their retail and catering channels or with their own brand.
“We have enormous export successes,” reports Lothar Ebbertz, General Manager of the Bavarian Brewers’ Association. For a long time, the image of the light outside the white-blue borders was “not that sparkling”, but it has been trendy for some time. The typical shape of the beer bottle – with a short neck and rather stocky – is on the rise again, “because it is perceived as authentic”. The increased demand for Hellem has also helped the Bavarian breweries to come through the Corona crisis relatively well overall, says Ebbertz.
Bavaria’s image helps with sales
And even if more and more breweries are now jumping on the trend, many do so with Bavarian partners – in order to have an “authentic sender”. “In recent years we have noticed that light beers with a Bavarian sender are particularly in demand,” confirms Peter Lemm, spokesman for the Krombacher brewery from North Rhine-Westphalia. She has had a sales partnership with the Starnberger Brauhaus in retail and gastronomy since 2021. The Schadeberg family owns a minority stake in the Bavarian company. According to the latest figures, sales of Krombacher Hell beer stagnated at a relatively low level in 2021.
The Warsteiner brewery has had a foothold in Bavaria since 2001 through a stake in the König Ludwig Schloßbrauerei Kaltenberg in Fürstenfeldbruck. It also includes the traditional brand “Oberbräu Hell”, brewed in Holzkirchen, which Warsteiner plans to sell throughout Germany from the end of February.
The look is also Bavarian – with a chapel, a pair of traditional costumes and white-blue diamonds on the bottle. Veltins from Sauerland, on the other hand, relies on its new Pülleken brand with a funny joke on the label, as sales manager Volker Kuhl emphasizes. You want to be independent of the variety trend and not get lost in the beer series with a Bavarian image.
Bayreuther makes it to Berlin
The national test for Hell is still pending. According to Veltins, 68 percent of the Hellbier volume sold in retail is sold in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg and 7 percent in North Rhine-Westphalia. This means that only a quarter is distributed among all other federal states. One of the most successful exporters from Bavaria is the Bayreuth brewery, also known as the Bayreuth Brauhaus. Her Helles can be seen more frequently in Berlin, among other places.
“Even in northern Germany, the Bavarian philosophy of life has found its way through our Helles”, says CEO Hans-Joachim Leipold. The light beer is difficult to produce and is considered the premier class among master brewers, emphasizes Leipold. “With this style of beer not even the smallest brewing error can be hidden and the beer drinker would immediately notice a discrepancy.” At the moment, however, the light seems to taste good to the beer drinker.