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MORE MEXICAN LAGERS IN HOUSTON!

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MORE MEXICAN LAGERS IN HOUSTON!

We wanna see more Mexican Lagers in Houston for dozens of reasons, and one of the main reasons is because they’re so dang crushable! But to be honest, it’s not about what we want.

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Summer is now officially upon us. Ask any native Houstonian and they’ll probably agree, this year has brought some of the most beautiful weather we’ve ever seen in the History of the Bayou City. But that can’t last forever.

Ask those same natives, and they’ll surely tell you about the scorching hot, sticky-humid days with air so warm and moist that you can almost chew on it. And if you’re not a native, you’ve probably experienced one or two of those days by now.

Since beer’s an agricultural product, styles and flavors change with the readily available ingredients. In that same vane, since it’s hot AF, more folks than ever are reaching for something light and crisp with the hopes of a little bit of relief.

Relief in the form of a light, crisp, refreshing, beer.

After a recent trip to Austin, I was blown away by the diversity in beer styles. Look, I love a good IPA as much as the next beer nerd, and I enjoy a good pils by the grill, but I’m the minority. It seemed like every brewery there had 2-3 lighter beers almost always including a Mexican Lager.

Plenty of Houston breweries have a good light beer or two, and plenty across Texas do too, but Mexican Lagers seem to be the minority.

Since the last time I wrote about Mexican Lagers in Houston, a few folks have answered the call, and a few new breweries have been added to Houston’s ranks.

As of 1/22/2018
Texas Beer Refinery Texican Lager
Black Water Draw Border Town Lager
Southern Star Hecho en Conroe

As of 8/27/2018
Fulbrook Ale Sanchez
Platypus Ole Chit

Most recently
Southern Yankee Que Pablo
Running Walker Mexican Lager
Twisted Acre Green Card

There are 61 breweries in Houston at the time of this writing, many of which boasting well over 100 beers brewed. B52 has over 500 beers under their belts!

Say each of those 61 has 100 beers brewed on average. That’d make 6,100 different beers brewed in Houston. Of those estimated 6,100, 8 of them are Mexican Lagers.

EIGHT!

For those of you counting, that’s 0.1%.

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The most baffling part about how puny those numbers are is how staggering the numbers are that beg for craft breweries to start trying their hands at Mexican Lagers in Houston.

Mexico is the biggest importer of beer to the US, and it ain’t even close, y’all. Mexico imports $3.6 Billion USD worth of beer, while the Netherlands and Belgium take second and third with $779 Million and $313 Million respectively.

Mexico sends us so much damn beer that they’re starting to send their craft beer in addition to the litany of Mexican Lagers. As of March 4, 2019, a few ex-AB Inbev execs got together to create Quest Beverage.

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As an importer of Mexican craft beers led by a team of beer-industry veterans, announced the distribution of Cerveza Rrëy and Cerveza Urbana into the U.S. Both brands of award-winning craft beers are now available at bars, restaurants and retail locations in Houston and St. Louis. The company will be expanding distribution to southern California and Illinois
later in March.

“As the premium beer market continues to evolve, we see two growing trends: Mexican imports continue to grow, and craft beer consumers continue to search for new, flavorful options,” said Gregg Billmeyer, Quest Beverage’s founder and CEO. “We feel Cerveza Rrëy and Cerveza Urbana are positioned perfectly to capitalize on these two converging trends, and we’re excited to bring these high-quality beers to the U.S.”

According to Statista, in 2016, Mexican Lagers make up the 8 of the top 10 of the highest selling imported beers in the US with Corona and Modelo leading the pack by a long shot.

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With numbers like these, I can’t imagine why every brewery isn’t trying to brew more Mexican lagers in Houston!

Sometimes I think craft beer has it’s head up it’s own ass. Looking at numbers like these, it’s hard to think otherwise.

With over 7,000 breweries operating in the U.S., competition is getting thick. While catering to beer nerds like us is important, we’re a very small percentage. If craft beer is 13% of the beer market, we’re the 1%-ers that want the weird beer with french toast and 13lbs of hops per barrel.

Mexican Lagers are a terrific opportunity to bump that 13% up, and this is coming straight from the Brewer’s Association’s Chief Economist, Bart Watson.

“If we can get 1 million new craft drinkers to drink 1 pint a week, that’s 200,000 incremental barrels. 5 million new drinkers is 1 million bbls. For there to be enough new growth for everyone in this room to succeed, we’re going to have to widen our view and not think about the 13%, but the other 87% that’s out there to capture.”Bart Watson
Brewers Association’s Chief Economist

So here’s the open invitation.

You brew one, we’ll cover it.

On social media. On the site.

Hell, we’ll even come help you brew it if you’re down for a real collab. Tony will even create the label art! He’s worked with SpindleTap and Hop Stop Humble and he and Josh are currently working with another Houston brewery on a big project to be launched very soon.

We wanna see more Mexican Lagers in Houston for dozens of reasons, and one of the main reasons is because they’re so dang crushable! But to be honest, it’s not about what we want, it’s about having more approachable options to share with our friends.

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Anthony Gorrity
tony.d@beerchronicle.com

Anthony's a Houston native, a Creative Strategist at https://ledgeloungers.com/, an adjunct instructor of Visual Communication at Lone Star College, and a UH Coog that loves good beer almost as much as he does his city. Anthony lives to help others and that's found a home helping some of the coolest breweries on earth with creative and marketing projects that can be seen on our Portfolio page. Fueled by hoppy lagers, sessionable IPAs, and gangster rap, he's ticked his way through H-Town, rocking the most unusual Nikes he can find. When he's not writing for us, he's with his family or very patiently rooting for the Rockets.

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