Healthy look
"I associate beer with beer bellies, flab and an unhealthy lifestyle," said Lars Gessler, a 28-year-old student who nevertheless manages to stay trim despite drinking 50 liters each year.
"Younger people want flat stomachs and good health," he said. "They just don't like the taste of beer. It doesn't taste good and it's not trendy. You can't savor it the way you can enjoy a glass of wine. With beer you just chuck it down. Also, I think globalization has opened us up to other drinks, like cocktails, that come from other parts of the world."
The steady erosion of beer drinkers in the crucial 20 to 45 age bracket has forced the country's brewers to rethink their time-honored strategies. Some in the fragmented industry dominated by local microbreweries have resisted the changes and suffered from dwindling sales and profits.
Others, such as Beck's in Bremen, have decided to sell. Beck's is Germany's fifth-biggest brewery and sells its beer in 120 countries.
Some, like the Karlsberg brewery in Hamburg, have opted to chase the shifting taste buds of the younger crowds by adding non-alcoholic beverages to their line-up and creating new drinks made of beer mixed with cola, tequila, fruit juices or other ingredients.
"A lot of young people told us they didn't like the sharp taste of beer," said Karlsberg spokeswoman Ute Leitner. "They want something better. Beer just isn't cool enough anymore. It's not hip. It's what their parents drink."
Karlsberg tried to find to make its beer more attractive to younger taste buds by introducing additives. Seen by some as near sacrilege in the country that fought so hard to save its purity law, the drinks have nevertheless caught on.
In 1993, the company came up with a new drink called "Mixery" made up of beer, cola and a secret ingredient it calls "X."
"Mixery has become the most popular drink in night-clubs in the entire region," Leitner said. Its alcohol content of 3.1 percent is below the 4.8 percent level of many beers. Encouraged by the success, Karlsberg has also introduced a beer drink mixed with apple juice that has a 2.8 percent alcohol content.
The beer may taste awful to the country's true aficionados but for those who prefer the real thing, there still 5,000 brands to choose from. And, despite the decline, the beer making sector is still a huge and important industry.
The German beer industry has an annual turnover of DM18 billion and some 40,000 employees. Sales are down, nevertheless, by nearly DM2 billion in the last five years.
"The consolidation will continue," said Erich Dederichs, managing director of the brewers' association. "But beer is a part of our culture and a part of our heritage, and it will stay that way."
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