Has Craft Beer Jumped The Shark?

No, not yet but it's getting close with more craft beers creating partnerships or being bought out by larger brewers.

 

...this is our own doing. Variety is the adjunct of life and we cant seem to get enough

 

I voted "Hell No" because all you have to do is go to a beer fest and watch the number of people who are drinking the regular menu beers that the breweries are offering instead of the one-offs, etc. There are a ton of folks who are just getting into craft beer so that the movement will stand the test of time as well as all of the new breweries that are just opening or are in the planning stage.

 

No, it has not.

In this area of the US there are plenty of good breweries putting out very good and very consistent products that are reasonably priced and that don't generate a "feeding frenzy" when they are available if they are seasonals. For example, Victory Prima Pils, Troeg's Sunshine Pils, Stoudts Pils, Sly Fox Pikeland Pils and Neshaminy Creek's Trauger Pils are almost always spot on from year to year, don't cost an arm and a leg and are so easily available that everyone takes them for granted.

These same breweries continue to grow and expand, not only their sales and markets, but also their explorations and improvements of quality beers to offer. They are far from having passed a peak and being in decline. Similarly, even the oldest US brewery, Yuengling, has shown itself capable of broadening their range and quality of offerings and their beers are anything but over priced or generating a "feeding frenzy."

 

True. Trillium is a great example. They produce a few relatively simple, straight forward beers, but they do it extremely well. As far as I know, they also do not plan on distribution anytime soon, in order to keep their absurdly high level of quality consistent. This philosophy of quality over profit potential is rare these days, but it isn't unheard of.

 

Consistency issues? Elaborate please, and go beyond this year's winter ale is not as good as last year's.

High prices?!? $10 for 6 x 12 ounces of good pale ale is too much? Check out prices in Canada, Brazil and Australia.

Over hyped beers? Delciousness doesn't solely exist in a batch where 381 ivory-capped bottles were made one time.

 

Hell yes and **** yes.

I'll quote a Deutcheslagerbier-lovin' buddy of mine --who's ten years younger than me, mind you--

Mind also that I've only been in the bizness for twenty years, but from where I'm at in the flyoverland that is the upper Midwest, this has been the truth for more than ten years now.

A certain amount of experimentation and "innovative" style-bending is fine, but it should not be the hallmark of the market segment. As it is, the practice is not indefinitely sustainable if you want to draw-in mature, adult drinkers whose palates were cut on bland or only mildly-exciting brands.

The Craft Purists expect Craft to overwhelm and supplant Macro, but the opposite is true.

We will continue to see more instances of A-B/InBev/MillerCoors (as a single corporation, of course, with Heineken, Duvel-Moortgat, and Carlsberg as their chief "Macro" competition) absorbing the proud, smaller scale American Craft brewers.

Wait -- what was the question, again?

 

this is stupid, why was i even reading this

 

certain styles and certain breweries are close to jumping the shark..but craft as a community and a whole..not in the least

 

Not unless we're wearing leather jackets while water-skiing.

 

I saw him jumping a dragon last year at Hunahpu so I think you might be a little late on the shark...

 

I voted hell no because the vocal group of 'been there, done that' BA's is a minuscule portion of the beer drinking public. Are there folks that will never try a craft beer? Undoubtedly, but there are a lot of people that have recently gotten into craft and a vast number that may. To them a lot of this stuff is all new. There are so many options to explore that they shouldn't become jaded or bored for quite some time. The industry keeps evolving. Now if the question was 'Has craft beer changed considerably since it's beginnings and will it continue to do so?' then the answer would be hell yes!

 

they sell 25oz bottles of fantastic beer for about 10$...hardly an arm and a leg by today's standards

 

Part of the problem is looking at Craft beer as a single monolithic entity. There are the big national players and they fill one niche. There are the high end regional brewers and they fill a slightly different one. Then there are a whole slew of small craft brewers and small tap rooms. At the small end of the scale we are getting close to the atmosphere of the old English or Irish pub - neighborhood places where you go to hang out. The bars and restaurants selling the stuff buy from different sources - one group may have one or two nationals, a couple of regionals and then a bunch of locals. The next will focus on imports and the higher end stuff. The nationals and regionals also show up at bowling alleys and airports. Certain brewers may jump the shark but the industry is too diverse to get everyone to jump the shark at the same time.

 

You are a product of that robbery standard. You think the price is good, until it is presented to you in a different light

 

I understand the $/fl oz argument. I am just saying that Ive seen a lot worse beer be sold for a lot more money. So my argument is strictly relative to what is common in the market today

 

Doesn't this mean both that a rare beer cannot be good, and. good beer cannot be rare?

Don't you mean that "rare does not necessarily imply good"?

There are tons of rare beer I wish I could try: Alexander, most Lambic, most German lagers, etc.

 

Nah, just implying there is no link. There are plenty of good rare beers and plenty of bad ones. Ditto with flagship shelf beers.

 

'Mutually Exclusive' means literally that one cannot be the other. Not trying to be a grammar fascist, just explaining where he's coming from. I was pretty thrown off by your remark as well.

 

Failure rates for new craft breweries are near zero.