Olivia Observes Her Fellow Beer-Drinkers
Mindset Media, a market researcher specializing in psychographics, has studied people’s drinking habits and concluded that beer is a window to the soul. You are what you drink, essentially. What an incredibly accurate statement!
Mindset studies which groups of people gravitate towards which brands. I decided to do my own, much less scientific, research about the beer drinking habits of my peers (20-somethings in Buffalo, NY).
I have concluded that beer, for most Buffalo sports fans, is in fact the portal into our soul. And what our soul consists of primarily is… The Big Let Down, truthfully.
That’s because the beer we drink has everything to do with our passion for our sports teams. We are easily angered because we have gotten so incredibly conditioned to our sports teams screwing up that at the least provocation we fill immediately with rage!
We have trust issues, people! We are Buffalo Bills fans. I mean, c’mon! We start raging in the first quarter. Whenever anything goes wrong we immediately assume the worst. Half time comes to calm us down, we allow ourselves a glimmer of hope, then all that is just destroyed in the fourth quarter when something terrible happens and we realize we will be taking another heartbreaking loss.
Wide right! The Music City Miracle! The Inevitable Let-Down. It’s in our very soul!
But, I have good news for the people of Buffalo. If you are not a crazed sports fan, I believe there is hope for you! (The bad news is that everyone in Buffalo is at least a little bit of a sports nut. Sports mania is the water we all swim in around here.) Here is a psychographic breakdown of the two main beer drinking groups in Buffalo:
College students on a budget – a weird mix
If we research which brand of beer college students on a budget drink there is no doubt in my mind that we would find it is Labatt Blue or Labatt Blue Light. However we do have some sub-classifications:
- Crazed Buffalo sports fans drinking Natty Ice Pounders.
- Crazed drinking fans with a 30-rack of Keystone.
We can group all these people together because, let’s face it, your category is college student “balling-on-a-budget.” Your personality is a weird mix – you are a little naive, a little driven, and absolutely insane.
These are the fans that every year say, “This is the year, guys. We are going to the Super Bowl!” Like I said: Naive.
They are driven because you can bet your bottom dollar that they are going to crush that thirty pack and still be able to hide their drunkenness enough to get through security and into the game.
Most important, they are insane! These are the people Buffalo has become famous for because they end up starring in viral YouTube videos. While tailgating in the parking lot of the stadium they get caught on camera overdoing it with a dizzy-bat and face planting into the St. Bonaventure bus (Hoorah for my alma mater!)
These folks are absolutely insane because come Monday morning they will wake up hung-over, and still make it to that 8:30 class to take the test that they spent all night not studying for.
But there’s a ray of hope for college students on a budget: now, for the first time ever, you can buy a Blue Light (or Keystone or Natty Ice) and actually get a good tasting beer. You don’t have to purchase craft beer for your next tailgate, just buy the cheap beer you love and add some Mad Hops Flavored Beer Drops.
That way us ladies out there who hate beer don’t have to pretend to enjoy it anymore. We can finally be a part of the beer drinking world! All we have to do is add a squirt of Wild Blueberry or Cherry Wheat into our gross Keystone and we can tailgate with the best of them.
Craft beer drinkers – Never on Sunday?
The next group consists of everyone else in Buffalo: craft beer drinkers. Yes, there are some out there. What else would explain the existence of great local breweries like Murphy Brown Euphorium and Big Ditch Brewing Company? Why would grocery stores around here give us the choice to make our own six pack of craft beer?
While craft beer drinkers are tricky people to categorize, there are two types in Buffalo, with two totally different personalities. The only thing they have in common is that they do in fact all drink craft beer.
Group #1: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday craft beer drinkers.
These people don’t drink craft beer on Sunday (and maybe not Monday or Thursday either, depending on the Buffalo Bills schedule). When Buffalo is playing they are passionate, easily angered, and untrusting – just like a typical crazed Bills fan.
However, when the Bills aren’t playing their personality completely changes. They are adventurous, risk takers, and unpredictable.
They are adventurous because face it, it’s craft beer, you just have to be. They are risk takers because it’s like living a double life. When you’re in Buffalo, Blue Light is what you drink. We have Canada in our backyard! It’s risky to try one of the hundreds of craft beer flavors out there. They are also unpredictable, because you never know what kind of day it will be with these crazy souls.
Group #2: The craft beer drinkers who probably were not born in Buffalo.
These people moved here after they turned 21, and don’t like sports. I can’t give them any personality characteristics because, well, I don’t know any.
Finding Hope in Beer (and keeping the TV off on Sundays)
In conclusion, there are two very important things that you need to know about every Buffalo beer drinker, with any type of personality.
First, Mad Hops is about to throw all of you for a loop because now you can drink whatever beer you love or hate, and spice it up with one of six delicious flavors!
Second, these beer drinkers are from Buffalo, so get ready to party until 4:00 A.M. – which means bring a couple bottles of your Flavored Beer Drops with you, because you are going to want to switch it up!
Go Bills!
