Can “lite” and “craft” really co-exist in the same beer? Miller Brewing obviously thinks so, having declared in press releases that its forthcoming Miller Lite Brewers Collection will combine “the best of both worlds.”

The new beers will be rolled out in September. Miller is reacting to a trend that is quickly becoming a permanent reality. Craft beers make up just 5 percent of the market, measured in revenue. But industry-watchers say that share could grow to as much as 30 percent in the next decade. In the first six months of 2007, sales of craft beers, in terms of dollar volume, jumped by 14 percent over the year-earlier period.

The problem for Miller is that the kinds of people who are interested in craft beers generally aren’t the kinds who are interested in light beers. Jay Brooks, a veteran, independent beer-industry writer and keeper of the Brookston Beer Bulletin blog, was apprehensive about any beer purporting to be “craft” coming out of the majors. But on that score, he was willing to give the Brewers Collection a chance. It wasn’t the “Miller” that bothered him, it was the “Lite.”

“It may seem prejudicial to not go into trying them with an open mind,” he wrote recently, “but I would argue it’s because I have a problem with the low-calorie beer category itself. I’ve never liked them, not just their lack of flavor, but the very idea of them. I find them an abomination, an aberration, a triumph of marketing over good sense.”

Not surprisingly, then, Mr. Brooks was less than impressed with the Brewers Collection.

Miller claims that its recent test-marketing trials in four cities were successful. If so, it is likely that it captured the market-segment it no doubt was after: light-beer drinkers who aren’t
interested in rich, complex flavors so much as they are in appearing to be interested in rich, complex flavors. Whether that segment is large enough to sustain the Miller Brewers Collection will be determined this fall.