How to Use small beer in a Sentence

small beer

noun
  • At a cost of just over $2 billion, that measure is small beer.
    — Geoffrey Smith, Fortune, 23 Mar. 2020
  • In a world of deepfakes, ersatz eye contact is small beer.
    — Emily Nussbaum, New Yorker, 30 Jan. 2026
  • But that's just small beer compared with the riches on offer for the winner at stud.
    — Rob Hodgetts, CNN, 31 May 2018
  • That may be small beer for now, but Wetherspoon, at least, expects hoppy times ahead.
    — The Economist, 12 Dec. 2019
  • Twelve pieces max are complemented by a small beer and sake selection.
    — Amy Drew Thompson, Orlando Sentinel, 24 Feb. 2023
  • Three years later, Louis Zistel opened a small beer garden, bathhouse and dance floor.
    — Frank Witsil, Detroit Free Press, 11 Dec. 2019
  • In terms of drinks, colonists didn't have ways to purify their water, so people drank small beer or weak wine, Miller said.
    — Ava Berger, NPR, 28 June 2026
  • But compared to the world-eating ambition of Amazon or Uber, this is small beer.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 12 Mar. 2018
  • That is small beer compared with the advantages enjoyed by the children of the educated and wealthy.
    — The Economist, 26 Mar. 2018
  • Compared to those turbulent days, the second biggest defeat of Parkinson's reign is very small beer.
    — Richard Sutcliffe, New York Times, 8 Apr. 2026
  • The system is meant to make sure that big beer manufacturers can’t use their muscle with retailers to push out smaller beer brands.
    — Kyle Arnold, OrlandoSentinel.com, 26 June 2018
  • For Henry Holt and its parent company Macmillan, these screw-ups are small beer.
    — Alex Shephard, New Republic, 9 Jan. 2018
  • Of course, a pipeline is small beer compared to the world’s largest island, Greenland, laden with energy resources and rare earths.
    — Llewellyn King, Forbes.com, 31 Aug. 2025
  • And there's a possibility there may be a small beer garden near the barbecue area, but this detail had not yet been finalized.
    — The Arizona Republic, 16 Aug. 2023
  • One of the village’s longest streets, School Street, winding past homes and a small beer and kvass stand, was cratered from bombs and littered with shrapnel.
    — Fredrick Kunkle, Washington Post, 30 May 2022
  • To merely denounce the war, or to call for the end of American military support for Israel, would have been small beer.
    — Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, 26 Feb. 2025
  • This includes fresh paint in several places, some new concession stands, a small beer garden, new lights, and perhaps most notably, two new video boards flanking the stage.
    — Théoden Janes, Charlotte Observer, 3 July 2024
  • One employee monitored the small beer and wine section to manually check IDs.
    — Bloomberg News, NOLA.com, 22 Jan. 2018
  • Soon to come are more food trucks, spots to grab coffee, areas for buskers and even a small beer garden, said Ben Davis, head of Illuminate.
    — Michael Cabanatuan, San Francisco Chronicle, 27 Sep. 2022
  • Some of this may sound like small beer, but the history of information technology shows that small tweaks have often been effective in bringing down the giants.
    — The Economist, 28 June 2018
  • Count us skeptical that Democrats will back any substantive reforms that could ease fossil-fuel development, but even those on the table seem to be small beer.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 2 Aug. 2022
  • In November, Baerlic converted its adjacent taproom to a small beer and wine shop, closing down most on-site seating.
    — Michael Russell, oregonlive, 11 Feb. 2021
  • In comparison, fifth-tier Wrexham must have seemed like small beer, even allowing for the takeover by Reynolds and Mac just a few months earlier.
    — Richard Sutcliffe, New York Times, 26 June 2026
  • Another type of small beer — so named because of its low alcohol content, typically 2 to 4 percent — was made by reusing grain from a previous brew.
    — Leslie Shapiro, Washington Post, 19 Sep. 2023
  • Concerns about prices of pork, soybeans and solar panels are small beer in light of this scourge, which is now responsible for the annual deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.
    — WSJ, 12 July 2022
  • There's nothing surreal, though, about the brewpub, a friendly, homey spot with a small beer garden and an extensive menu of sandwiches, burgers, flatbreads, and entrees like fish-and-chips.
    — Julia Thiel, Chicago Reader, 22 June 2018
  • That's a big problem for small beer breweries, says Isamu Yoneda, head distiller at artisanal drinks maker Kiuchi Brewery.
    — Rebecca Cairns, CNN, 22 Oct. 2020
  • That makes the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 look like small beer.
    — Mickey D. Levy and Michael D. Bordo, WSJ, 26 Apr. 2021
  • Converted into a bar for the small beer garden beside the building, an Airstream trailer is being painted by local artist UNO.
    — Jeremy Hallock, Dallas News, 15 Dec. 2020
  • The fruit that apes were eating was probably 1 to 4 percent alcohol, somewhere between small beer and Michelob Ultra.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 5 Dec. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'small beer.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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