Why is craft beer so hard?

Okay I found a purely local place. Today I was talking to someone from Copperwood Tavern, and they said all the beers they have on tap are from Virginia. But they are a farm to table restaurant, not a craft beer bar, so I would expect them to lean more locavore.

 

I drink a new beer from a new brewery, and THEN I check the rating. Typically, it turns out that I feel as most on BA. But I choose to drink the beer first.

 

Craft beer is so hard because salt peter is no longer allowed as a clarifying agent.

 

Ratings will forever be biased, because it is impossible for everyone to rate solely by style.

Taste buds are taste buds we all like what we like.

 

Agreed

 

I don't hate PBR, when someone gives one to me. A touch of lemon juice helps it along. Would never buy it though.

 

LOL. True. When I started drinking beer (46-47 years ago) my preferred beers were the original Ballantine Ale (which back then had a vibrant and fragrant hop presence), IPA, the few domestic dark lagers available at he time (as well as the few domestic Bocks that appeared in the spring), and the imported Märzens that appeared in the fall.

But with regard to additive flavoring for the so-so beers that I was stuck with during my college years in the midwest, the owner/bartender at "Louie's Pass-time Tap" in Storm Lake, Iowa actually showed me a neat trick to make any domestic lager at least somewhat more palatable: a small squirt of Rose's Lime juice (or the now trendy lime wedge) although he actually preferred this trick with his beloved Heineken.
Ol' Louie was a bit prescient, I guess.
But it really did work wonders when there seemed to be nothing around but Budweiser or Hamm's.

 

>researching a beer before you drink it and/or checking bottle dates is hard

 

Was Prior Double Dark one of your preferred beers?

http://jackcurtin.com/ldo/?p=1665

Cheers!

 

Yeah man!
Great stuff, that was.
Prior was definitely a favorite (that is, when I was able to get it...it was a bit hard to find with any consistency in NJ, and I don't remember ever having seen it on draft).
During those 2 years I was in college in Iowa, it was one of the brews I really missed having (I was only able to have it again when I was back home in NJ for the summer or for semester breaks). A lot of restaurants and even a fair number of bars in Iowa back then seemed to have either Schlitz Dark or Miller Dark on draft...but those beers were not really in the same league as Prior.

 

Unfortunately I have never had the pleasure of drinking Prior Double Dark. Back in the day it was brewed by the Adam Scheidt Brewing Company in Norristown, PA. As I drive through Norristown I pass a building that has labeled in the concrete: Adam Scheidt Bottling Plant. That building is now a self storage business.

There was discussion in a thread from yesterday that F.X. Matt is discontinuing Saranac Black Forest dark lager. A bar in NY would serve this beer on draft using a Prior tap handle:

"Clark's Ale House, which opened on West Jefferson Street in Armory Square in 1992, played it differently -- and that's why the name Prior's has lived on until now.

Owner Ray Clark and his father, Doug, had been long-time fans of Prior's. So when they took their first delivery of Black Forest made by Saranac, they continued to tap it under a handle marked "Prior"."

http://www.syracuse.com/drinks/index.ssf/2015/08/saranac_stops_brewing_one_its.html

Cheers!

Some photographs of the old Adam Scheidt buildings: http://pabreweryhistorians.tripod.com/scheidt.html

 

I love this thread

 

I cant believe that some people return beers if they are too bitter or dont like the flavor profile, you could have asked to taste rhe beer before you bought.

 

Lots of new people getting into craft beer seemingly for the money these days, or at least more focused on money than some of their predecessors. Some of the judges I've talked to, heard from through others, have made mention at awards that they've never tasted so many good beers, and so many bad ones too.