Will craft beer ever get back to it's roots?

Well since neither of us knows for sure the type of thought going into things at DFH or BrewDog, we'll probably have to move the type of thought off the table. But when one is doing a collaborative beer for a special purpose for some folks its bound to look like a gimmick. As for BrewDog brewers, I'm not going to put very much faith in what gets shown on public television as a basis for figuring out how folks work.

However, if the collaborative brews in the Ancient Ales are reasonable despite their appearance of gimmickry, I'm willing to put a bit more faith in DFH than you seem to be.

 

Well then we should put the Ancient Ales in the category of gimmickry and also include multiple Sierra Nevada beers since they to have produced collaborative beers.

 

Unfortunately

 

Yes. It's called choice overload
.

 

Which roots? The early 70's roots (Anchor)? The early 80's roots (SN)? The mid-80's roots (BBC)? The "good beer" tree has a lot of roots, and they should all be appreciated, IMHO.

 

not assuming anything... If all anyone did was brew traditional styles there would be a serious glut of each style. It already happens with things like toothpaste and laundry detergent. Economics is economics, whether the product in question is beer or salad mix.

 

No. Why would it have? Beer market today isn't in any way similar to what it was when prohibition ended. For that matter, it's very different now than it was 10 - 15 years ago.

 

My comments, and the OP's original post, weren't talking about the rest of the beer market - they were referring specifically craft beer.

 

I'm not saying that collaboration beers are necessarily gimmicky. As I hinted at earlier, it depends on how loose one's definition of gimmick is.

If one subscribes to the definition that it is simply a stratagem to attract attention, then every collaboration beer that is marketed as such is indeed a gimmick. Sierra Nevada released an entire box of beers like this with so much promotion that they even had beer festivals dedicated to it.

If one subscribes to the definition that a gimmick is a stratagem that also does not add any real value to the product, then it's a case by case situation. When Sixpoint and Adnams devised a recipe together, and then Adnams gave Sixpoint a sample of their house yeast, the resulting beer wasn't a gimmick by that definition.

Personally, Bitches Brew feels like a gimmicky concept. As I said before, I'm not implying anything negative by saying that. I have no negative feelings about Dogfish Head. Having said that, since you brought up the Ancient Ales series, I'll relate my feelings about the concept and will probably be micro-chemically burned alive for it.

I see the Ancient Ales as fun and fanciful BS. There, I said it. Keep in mind that I like Dogfish Head.

I'm sure that the intelligent Dr. McGovern takes his work very seriously and I'm not trying to be offensive. Thinking that one can "resurrect" a beer because one finds evidence that a vessel thousands of years old once contained beeswax compound, calcium oxalate, and tartaric acid sounds ludicrous. Would someone 3000 years in the future be able to accurately resurrect the long gone Worcestershire sauce because chemical analyses determined that it had vinegar, tamarind, and anchovies? What would genetically modified anchovies even taste like in 3000 years? Would they even be able to pronounce Worcestershire?

In all seriousness, Sam Calagione admits that what they don't know is huge, that there's lots of room for interpretation, and that liberties are taken to appeal to today's drinker. So, depending on how one defines gimmick, one might certainly categorize these beers as such.

When I think of Dogfish Head and gimmicks, I think of the Oktoberfest they brewed with moon dust that was served in koozies made from space suit material. For me, this is uniqueness that doesn't add value beyond it's uniqueness. Would a tiny pinch of minerals/salt and neoprene koozie yield a different practical result? Would the dust be in a Maibock instead if it was brewed for the spring equinox rather than the fall equinox? Would I like to have tried this beer? Absolutely, but I wouldn't have bought it if it cost much more than Paulaner's Oktoberfest.

I don't think of gimmicks as inherently negative. They can be fun. Taking Dogfish Head down a peg is usually boring at best. My only real complaint is that I think their ABVs are often too high.

 

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Some throught provoking and useful ideas woven together (as usual). You've put your finger directly on a couple of the ongoing issues being raised in this thread, and I think we're in wild agreement that much depends on the definition of gimmick and that the definition should somehow be more than "I don't like it that they did it."

Also I'm pretty sure you've picked up the idea, correctly, that I don't think saying something is a gimmick when we don't understand why its being done is a fruitful way to go, and may actually be quite unfair to the person exploring new territory. Especially when the "gimmick" can have several purposes which may in fact include getting attention (no such thing as bad publicity after all ) but may also involve something like collaboration with another brewer or person with special interests. (But as someone once pointed out, you can always identify the pioneers, they're the ones with arrows in their backs. )

I particularly like your observation about Sierra Nevada's boxed release, etc. since more than one person has held up Sierra Nevada as an example of a brewery that doesn't have to rely on or make use of "gimmicks." Also from past threads I'm pretty sure some folks would claim that the annual Sam Adams Longshot beers are just a "gimmick" despite the legitimacy of how they are choosen and the contribution the competition has made to the lives of several individuals.

As for the Ancient Ales series, I don't think any of the folks who would micro-chemically burn you for your thoughts are participants on BA.... But also they wouldn't because there are some legitimate limitations to the process of historical reconstruction which you've identified and raised. But I think its worth pointing out that the Ancient Ales are not the only cases of folks attempting to reconstruct "dead" styles from historical evidence, e.g., the the Gose resurrection, about 25+ years after its death, which relies on brewing records (e.g., how much grain, when something was done, etc.), written descriptions from when Gose was alive and well, and the taste memories of people old enough to have been drinkers of the last batches of Gose before its death as a style (with taste memories being among the least reliable of human memories, especially with 25 years of intervening beer drinking. ) Just as with your anchovie example, grains may have changed, hops may be different, etc. But if we going to view the Ancient Ales with some skepticism we probably should be using that same skepticism about things like Ritterguts Gose.

But lets try viewing the Ancient Ales (and Gose) with a slightly different perspective/set of lenses. Having listened to McGovern talk about his work and read sections of his book "Uncorking the Past." There are both some remarkably clear things that can be concluded from the careful chemical analysis of the residues (e.g., things that can only have come from grapes, or from certain spices, etc.) and some big gaps that have to be filled in. So, yes, it is conceivable that, say, the flavor of anchovies could change in 3K years, but on the other hand the analysis tells us that anchovies were in fact used rather than some other of literally 1000s of other possible ingredients (and the human fondness for salt probably hasn't changed in only 3K years). So some things are known that were not known before and then you can put your ideas to a form of empirical test, i.e., brew the beer. Which is why its quite healthy that both Calagione and McGovern talk quite publicly about where they had to fill in gaps and why they made the choices they did. Were there gaps, yes. But they've told us what they think those gaps are and why, and is an important step to finding the information needed for someone to be able to fill those gaps.

BTW: as for being able to pronounce "Worcestershire" sauce 3K years from now its actually quite plausibe to believe they would. During my professional life I've had to deal with a few folks who are "Descriptive Linguists" and whose goal in life is to use existing systems of notation based on physical positioning and activities of the human speech mechanisms to provide a guide to pronunciation that is so detailed you can pick up their book and do a reasonable approximation of speaking a dead language (if you are human ). (And yes, this has been empirically tested by one person providing such a description of an almost dead language to a second person who will be visiting the remaining native speakers in their natural habitat and finding that the second person starts off with a reasonably good approximation that the native speakers can understand and accept. )

 

Uh...what?? That sounds completely shitty

 

You actually managed to write up a longer post than I did! That's honestly the nicest compliment I've received this Father's Day. It's alarming that you think so. My modus operandi is usually dumb humor, but my jokes tend to reveal a crude point I'm trying to make. Speaking of which, since some believe that craft breweries have such a hard time making this year's batch of ____ taste the same as last year's, could you imagine how tough it would be for the brewers if they never tasted last year's batch, and the only thing they knew for sure about it was that it included some malted barley, Cascade and Kent Goldings? We have a hard time trusting craft breweries to resurrect their 2014 flagship, but we're trusting them with the job of a 700 B.C. recreation. Merritt or lack-there-of aside, Sam is a damn smart cookie when it comes to brand exposure through various channels. Other breweries must be somewhat envious.

 

Not anytime soon what with me tripping over space yeast beer boxes at the bottle shop

 

Quite.There's been very little actual innovation in brewing in our lifetime. Tweaking with the recipe or ingredients or the brewing process has been done since Moses wore long pants.
It's not always been a good thing, if you don't believe that then you haven't heard of nitro.

Ron Pattinson made a list a few years ago , he omitted nitro perhaps because he couldn't bear to mention it ;
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/innovation.html

 

The major limitation of that list is its narrowness of the definition of innovation.

You might find this of interest:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Creative-Mind-Myths-Mechanisms/dp/0415314534

 

Actually I have a harder time trusting the taste memory of the typical BA than I do the ability of many brewers to maintain comparability from batch to batch of their flagship beers. (Especially those breweries who are well enough established that they can use a panel of trained professional tasters to do there batch to batch comparisons.)

While not involving taste, try this simple exercise which our psych professor used:

Without looking at a penny (which you've seen thousands of times right?) draw a picture of the face of a penny and include such things as the date, the mottos, etc. in their correct position and with their proper wording. After all you've seen them thousands of time so it should be a piece of cake.

A few hints: Which US president? Facing left or right? Written above the bust? Written below the bust? Written to the left of the bust? Written to the right of the bust?

Then take out a penny and score your drawing for accuracy....

 

Iso: intestine aged rauchbier

 

I wouldn't consider tank 7 a gimmick. Dry hopping with a non traditional hop to a style would fit into the innovation category for me. They don't advertise it as anything other than a Saison it is sold as a great beer. I only consider a beer a gimmick if it was brewed for a reason beyond being great beer. Anything done in brewing that is done to make a good beer is fine by me, but once a beer is primarily made to just be different without concern for being a great beer it's a gimmick.

 

The use of a different hop is hardly innovation, it's been going on since brewing became an industry.Even the traditional hops were new at one stage.
Whether brewing an 8.5% ABV beer and calling it a Saison is innovation is a different matter.

 

Look at Craft Beer like food and not like wine and there's the difference. People like variety, but also end up eating the same things over and over.