Why is craft beer so hard?

Depends on the style, a 3.5 to a smoked porter or stout lover may be a 4.3 or 4.7. The only good judge to the self is...well...the self. I do check out ratings occasionally before purchase, but only if it is from a brewery I am unfamiliar with or it is labeled as an "American" which usually means hoped up. Good example is Shake Down American imperial Stout from Fatheads. Had we known it was that bitter a finish we would of skipped it and bought a single bottle, that said if you like hops....well, it's all back to the self.

 

Would you point to oversaturation of a market or decline in interest? The interest is there in my humble opinion, but the degrees of variance between breweries is astonishing.

 

AMEN!

 

I drink all store bought, commercial, higher priced beer. Nothing like Bud Light or Coors, more along German and imports. I used to love Pils Urquell, but the quality has gone downhill to my taste. Every beer I seem to try taste off to me. I used to like Ayinger Octoberfest Marzen, but it seems to be different too. The Japanese beers used to be good, they they started to make then in Canada (I think?) and it is gone down. Makesson was a nice beer way back when, then they started to make it in the US....blah.

Maybe they weren't pasteurizing beer a decade ago, I don't know. Maybe the kids took over production and cheapened up. Whatever it is, the stuff they sell nowadays is not to my liking. I am thinking about making my own beer. I don't want to brew beer, I don't have the time for it. But I am dissatisfied with what we have in the supermarkets. I may not even to be make any good beer myself, that is as good or better than the crap they sell in the store, will just have to see.

 

Pasteurization has been a fairly standard brewing industry practice for about 100 years, now, so it's very likely that some of the store-bought, Super Premium and Import/Specialty beers which you liked back in the day were in fact pasteurized.

P.S. You should definitely try your hand at home-brewing! It's not as hard as it seems, just takes patience and getting the steps down -- practice makes perfect as they say, and even the first few learning batches are usually quite drinkable.

 

I just struggle with that viewpoint, however. My two criteria for beer purchases are taste and price. If I had an unlimited budget taste would be the only criteria. I don't care if the beer is from a few blocks away, California, Germany, or Mars. Unfortunately it seems like most newer beers that take a stab at a style don't measure up to the big names that have been doing it for much longer.

My guess on the late "buy local" movement is twofold. One possibility is that many of these local purveyors just listen to their rep who tells them that "local sells" and nothing else matters but that. The other possibility is that there are truly a lot of consumers who struggle to differentiate between great and mediocre beer, and are easily influenced by the hype to support their local brewery.

 

I agree. I think both are at play. Some are more direct about it. One post recently:

"I support small brewers, even if they have average beer, because they are the future of the industry and they need all the help they can get."

 

I think people's taste buds has a lot more to do with whether they get into beer or not.

 

People seem to get into the 'group think' and only believe that there are only 25 beers worth drinking.

 

I totally understand what you're saying but the glaring question is: But who desides what is an average beer? One person's average beer is another person's favorite. You use food and restaurants as a corollary, but when it comes to food, especially in the US, there are more fast food joints serving in my opinion below average food, yet they are the most prevalent, most successful places serving food. Apparently a majority of people in the US believe that McDonalds, Taco Bell, Burger King, Wendy's and the like are great, not average or below average. Same with BMC beers.

As I said, one person's average beer (food, etc,) is another person's favorite. Brewers keep brewing and releasing beers that many on this site, feel are average, because they are selling and more than enough drinkers (at least to the brewers eyes, are buying the beers, and because of that, this bubble that many BAers believe, or at the very least hope, will happen, probably won't happen, at least not probably for a very long time...

At least that's my opinion.

 

Like anything else, people, brewers and business owners are like, are jumping on the bandwagon. Part of craft beer exploding is that you're also getting a mountain of people that just don't care about the product.

Funny that you mention Stone specifically because Greg Koch said that most of these new brewers have no business brewing professionally because their product is so shitty. (not those words exactly)

 

Except, of course, for draft beer. Even 50 years ago (when I started drinking beer) draft beer was pretty much always an unpasteurized product (which explains why it generally tasted better).

 

True, but as I understand it, kegged beer is still unpasteurized for the most part, depending on where you live and what the importers are doing, I suppose. I knew of a handful of examples of flash-pasteurized import kegs circa 2000 - 2005, but don't pay as much attention to those brands these days.

Several "big" (over 50,000 barrels) fairly 'local' brewers in my region have never altered their draught; Always unpasteurized and rotated often enough that the 60-day code works. The other 80-or so "Craft" brewers are so small that pasteurization (flash or tunnel) equipment has never been staged at their breweries to begin with.

 

I honestly don't find that a lot of new breweries make bad beer at all. There is however, an over-abundance of average or just decent beer.

To really get noticed nowadays your beer has to be the shit. That's the way it should be though. In theory, this should push all brewers to work harder and spend more time on their craft. It's a good thing.

 

Craft beer isn't hard. Is that disappointing IPA worse than any of the typical macro AAL's that used to be in its place on the tap wall? I can't imagine it is. You're expectations have changed. Maybe the better question is, "why is meeting your expectations so hard?"

 

Craft beer is only as hard as you make it. Keep an eye on the freshness of the beer and try different styles until you have found some that you prefer..

 

Thanks for the detailed write up!

 

SweetWater Hop Hash bad? Had to be way out of date, that beer is awesome. Anyway to answer your question, the bad that comes with such a crazy movement like craft beer is everyone thinks they can do it, and part of the process is utilizing social media to weed out the impostors. There's a lot of great beer being made out there and finding it is most of the fun!!

 

I wonder if the fact that most of the people in the DC area aren't actually from DC makes the difference, as I'm under the impression that through military and government service, transplants run amuck. Maybe I'm wrong, but if not than my idea of the area being a melting pot sorts, perhaps the predominant opinion amongst bar owners is that catering to homers away from home will net a better result.

Down here in the RVA we are quite the opposite. Our tap lists are anywhere from 1/3 to dominated by local stuff.

 

It all varies, there are places with a lot of diversity and then there are the ones that bring a mix of MD and VA stuff along with the DC few breweries, all depends on where you go.

Many of the basic restaurants also I find have a few one or two local options keeping in with the sort of "buy/source items" locally type movement as well