Poll Results: Top 5 Beer Styles Purchased by Beer Geeks

Here are the results of last week’s poll, which asked you to share what three styles of beer you buy most often.  After hundreds of votes and dozens of comments here and other places around the Internet, things have cooled off enough for us to draw some conclusions.

This whole thing was kicked off when the Brewer’s Association shared some Symphony IRI Group data from food, drug and convenience stores which showed that the craft beers purchased in these channels didn’t quite line up with the ones folks around here (and many beer geeks in general) seem to get most excited about.  This makes sense, as us geeks usually don’t buy amber lagers at 7-11, but we wanted to see just how different our behavior was.  The results can be seen above, and they’re just as we had suspected they’d be.

Beer nerds like big flavors and like to treat themselves to more-expensive styles of beers.  The end.  Well, maybe not quite the end. 

While there was a difference in our poll categories (we bundled pale ales and IPA’s into a single unit) the top of both lists are very similar.  If you combine the pale ale/IPA data from Symphony IRI, it adds up to 25.7%, which is pretty close to our chart-topping 22%.  So both lists are topped with PA/IPA’s followed by seasonals.   I guess this is why most brewers make all sorts of these types of beers  – they’re a hit with geeks and non-geeks alike.

It’s at the bottom of the list where we see a dramatic departure.  The casual beer drinker prefers “easy drinking” craft styles, while us geeks like more challenging flavors.  We also like pricey imports with centuries of brewing tradition behind them.  No real surprise there.

I guess the practical takeaway here is for party planning.  Looks like a pale ale and seasonal beer strategy (with a nice IPA thrown in) will satisfy most beer drinkers, geek or not.

Or you could be like me and only stock stouts, waiting for someone to ask for a Bud so you can go full Beerdouchicus on them. 😉