Less Thrilling

They'll realize it soon, as there are lots more products coming from Anheuser-Busch. You'll see products with flavors and colors that add individuality to bottled drinks and flexibility to draft beer in bar settings. Feel like a spicy mango beer? It's being tested right now.

"They're beertails or beertinis -- fun drinks that are meant to excite," Lachky said. On its Web site, Anheuser-Busch also offers recipes for mixed drinks that use beer as a base.

Next spring the company is introducing Bistro8, a malt-based beverage that Lachky says "acts" like a wine, with a complex flavor, a little carbonation and a light finish. "It's perfect for food," he said. It has done well in testing in Florida and South Carolina, especially among women.

Of course, none of these products is going to lift Budweiser to greater heights, but over time they will hopefully push consumers back into the beer fold, Lachky said, and encourage people to be more accepting of beer. Anheuser-Busch isn't trying to replicate Bud Light's volume but to "fill white space," he said -- get to all those moments when people could drink a beer but are instead reaching for something else.

"You're basically asking consumers to experience malt-based beverages other than in a 16-ounce glass," Lachky said.

Of course, executives and industry observers predict no overnight miracles. Depending on whom you ask, the industry's slump is either part of a cycle that will take time to run its course or a structural change that will take concerted effort to reverse, if that's even possible.

Insiders like the Beer Institute's Becker point out that beer sales have ticked up in the past month or so, a fact he attributes to beer companies "working it a lot harder." But these are big issues, no matter what their genesis, say longtime observers.

"It took a while to get into it," Steinman said. "It's going to take a while to get out of it."