More Craft Brewers = More Mediocrity?

I enjoy drinking beer. I am also lucky to rarely find a beer I do not like. Have I said I really like beer. This is a hard issue for me to get my head around as I probably drink a lot of mediocre beer at small breweries. I enjoy the energy and as a home brewer love to talk to the guys that are chasing their dreams. A nice flight usually has a beer I really enjoy and a few that I drink and would not revisit. I get real value from my dollar this way. I have yet to go to a brewery that did not have anything I did not really enjoy. To quote a cliche Beer is a journey not a destination. Enjoy the ride.

 

Appreciate your perspective @cavedave. No doubt on the whole, if you factor all shops in metro, etc. there are in total more great options. I fully concede that.

But often I and others can't drive all over town. I have shops with limited shelf space near me, and grocery stores with a limited amount of shelf space. Yes, there are examples where the square footage was the same ten years ago as it is now, but the beers have changed, and given responses I've seen in other threads, some of the trends are the same. I'm seeing less Odell, less Stone, less Firestone Walker. Instead that section is replaced by Grand Canyon, Bad Water Brewing, Phoenix Ale Brewing. Same with taps at bars with limited taps available. Don't take my tastes, compare popular styles from Grand Canyon and others vs. Odell and others. It's a community judgement, not just mine. To pick on a different foe, I've seen very high rated beer slots on the shelf replaced by Goose Island 314, Goose Island Summertime, etc.

And one last, much larger trend - where are all of the pale ales that I could have purchased at my local grocery store 15 years ago that are nearly impossible to find fresh at a specialty beer retailer? Especially the British ones! So, that's by beef, chief.

P.S. Consumers determining with their purchases what beers are good or not is a different criterion though. A variety of market forces determine winners and losers, not taste alone. I'd wager you don't disagree with that. I think there's some equivocation with senses of 'good'.

 

Bold is mine. I disagree with you here. That is a fun half hour or hour for me. Unfortunately for my waist line I am like a kid in a candy shop.

 

But it still seems the case that the customer can spend their dollars on a third alternative entirely. Surely some who are attracted from Z will return to Z, but some attracted to Y may move on to X. But so long as their is net growth in money being spent on X and Y there will be increasing demand, and here around I don't see supply increasing faster than demand, what I see are brewers starting and either succeeding or failing with more and more dollars being spent on better quality beers.

For example, 5 years ago I used to have to drive 5 miles or more to find a place where I could buy beer by the bottle. Now there are two within about a mile from where I live and both have carefully curated offerings (both places either employ or have employed cicerones) and are on a growth curve (one has hit a plateau at the moment but the other is expanding). New local places get a shot at being offered. Some stay around some disappear and the ones that stay are those doing quality offerings.

There simply aren't any "locavore" bars I've ever found in SE PA. My favorites are again well curated. They keep track of what sells and what doesn't, and what sells is something with quality involved.

So except for having access to numbers I'm not seeing a growth of mediocre. I'm seeing average to excellent here, there and almost everywhere in this area.

 

Undoubtedly there will be some market forces that act against all of us with anything we enjoy.

I love classical music but I have to travel and pay big to hear it live in the quality I want. OTOH, classical music is more popular now than ever it has been in this country, it is likely to be available and successful for the foreseeable future, so I feel like complaining about minor difficulty in enjoying it is making the perfect the enemy of the good.

This is how it is in fine beer too, we tend to make the perfect the enemy of the good. The perfect would be if every brewery brewed only the beer we love in the quality we demand, none was owned by a corporate brewer, every tavern served only beer we love, and enough fine beer of top quality was made, and distributed well, that it would be available always.

And I won't get into the "what is fine art" debate, you are right there is more to it than that in this discussion upon which we all can agree.

 

THIS!

Here in Los Angeles I've had the opposite experience than OP in recent years.

ESBC, Smog City, Highland Park Brewery, Phantom Carriage, just to name a few. There are others, not in the leading pack, but still well worth having. Not to mention Firestone opening a small pilot brewery, along with Modern Times in 2016.

The feeling in Los Angeles, is the area is finally coming of age.

And since I'm replying to a New Yorker, I recently visited New York, Stopped by a place called Barrier Brewing on Long Island. Well worth a stop.

 

It's great that you're seeing growth of exceptional beer, must be a great time to be a beer drinker in your part of Pennsylvania (words that nobody has ever said before now). But, I do have access to hard numbers, the increase in craft distribution/placements is up roughly 5% higher than the sum of craft beer dollars nationwide.

 

:-)

Actually some of us in SE PA have been saying that for years, but people are so obsessed by the Case Law (which was recently changed to allow 12 packs), that the focus on what they don't like and miss a lot of opportunities.

So that 5% you see. Is that statistically significant? Are their reasons to believe the growth of interest in flavorful beer won't continue.

 

It seems like the bar has been raised significantly in the past 5 years. While offering a very consistent product, even some of the larger nationally distributed breweries have fallen behind, or been slow to react to, the trends in consumer tastes. Just look at the demand for "juicy and fruity" IPA's as opposed to the "piney and bitter" IPA's that most breweries offer.

The small neighborhood breweries are simply replacing pubs as gathering places. And as long as they have decent food and beer they very well could stay around for a while. What makes or breaks them will be their aspirations.

 

Oh I definitely take your point, and find the beerfest a particularly interesting example. One of the reasons I don't go to such events at all (but have been to somewhat comparable events for other domains) is that something like that attracts a large percentage of people who, for want of a better word, are "tickers" and much more interested in new notches in their gun handle than they are in quality.

But this is true in almost every area I'm aware of whether it be food, antique glassware, of beer. However, I've not lost faith in the basic notion of Darwinism. Especially since I discovered that the source of creativity for many creators in many areas is guided trial and error. The way to have a great idea is to have a lot of ideas. The way to learn to brew good to great beer is to brew lots of beers and throw away what doesn't work. Its the breweries that can't throw away what almost works who will fall by the wayside.

 

As another New Yorker I can't second this enough. For example, the established distro hops in New York would probably include Troegs, Victory, and Otter Creek. I would take basically any hops from Singlecut (consciously excluding OH & Grimm here since the former doesn't get distro and the latter's "distro" is basically a brewery release's exclusivity without the brewery) over any hops from Troegs, Victory and Otter Creek -- including Dirt Wolf, Nugget Nectar, etc.

Add to this the fact that Singlecut had a huge quality control issue when they first expanded, and then after that were producing forgettable beer for a while. Local breweries, like the Victories and Troegs before them, need time to find their footing and expand. If they never produce quality product, the market will probably force them out.

And this is another interesting quirk. Sometimes the market doesn't force them out of distro because the brewery is adding something to the community besides beer. Wicked Weed produces sick beer, but the fact that they have a really successful restaurant + brewpub probably doesn't hurt their bottom line, allowing them to sell more bottled product. I was in Wynwood a while back with some buddies and we spend two hours hanging out at the Wynwood Brewing Company: I remember the vibes, but not the beer.

I'll always have my standards on the shelf, but I try to throw in one new bottle every time I buy as well. I have the same philosophy with beer as with music: if I aspire to sample & understand every genre + artist + time period I go into catatonic shock and simply give up. I don't expect to try every new brewer, but I relish every chance opportunity I have stumbling into a great brew pub in a new city or getting a new bottle recommendation from my local beer shop.


Don't fight it.

 

I see both sides of this. If the local area makes mostly average beer there's not a lot of pressure for a new brewery to make world class beer. Locally speaking Upland made some pretty mediocre stuff until several other breweries and a craft bar opened up. Since then they have upped their game tremendously.

In Indy there are solid breweries but nothing nobody is going to stand in line for except a couple of Sun King releases. Now that the guys at Deviate quit their day jobs and are brewing full time I could see them making some stuff on the level of 18th Street. They are probably going to have to grow out of their current location to do it though.

In Vermont it's a totally different story if you're trying to make hoppy beers.

 

I agree completely in regards to packaged beer and draft lines. I don't like this business model where every new tiny brewery is cluttering up store shelves and tap lines with beer that doesn't meet the QA/QC standards of the larger established brewers. Unfortunately it's probably not going to change for many reasons including, huge demand for craft beer in general, ticking tendencies among us, and worst of all many consumers don't have enough experience to recognize flaws when they encounter them.

However, I don't mind going to a local brewery, even a "mediocre" one, to try their stuff and get a fresh growler from time to time. It's pretty rare I can't find at least one beer a brewery does well enough that I'm happy drinking.

 

A lot of posts lately talking about mediocre beer. I think we need to be clear about what we are saying when we throw around the term "mediocre". Some use it to refer to beers from a style(s) of beer they don't personally care for. When I use it I'm referring to a beer not being as good as the classic examples (SN Pale Ale, Bell's Two Hearted, etc. etc.). The first way of using the term is always subjective. The second way is sometimes subjective, sometimes not (fermentation flaws, oxidation, etc.).

I do agree with the central premise that there is a lot more mediocre beer out there these days than 5+ years ago. Even setting my subjective taste preferences aside a higher percentage of beers that I experience these days have obvious process related flaws. A higher percentage of these mediocre beers seem to come from breweries that constantly release new beers, and I think the central problem with them is that they are distributing everything they brew instead of perfecting a recipe and then distributing it. I'm also a big believer that the "buy local" movement is perpetuating this problem, at least in many localities.

 

Yes, the 5% is statistically significant. If anything, I would say that it actually under-reports the actual growth. As for interest in flavorful beer, I assume that it will continue to grow, though I do wonder whether the saturation point is (and there's roughly two threads a week asking the same question).

As to your second question about the market for flavorful beer being saturated, I don't pretend to have an answer. There's a lot of ways to theoretically answer that question....

1. Craft dollars and share of market continues to grow significantly, thus no, there's still plenty of room for growth.
2. Budweiser and Miller Lite are seeing significant dollar sales and share gains, thus people are returning to their old beers.
3. Michelob Ultra is blowing up, thus people are looking in the mirror, asking how they gained 50 lbs drinking craft, but are unwilling to drop beer completely.
4. Some of the largest growth brands this year are imports (Corona, Stella, etc.), thus people still want a high end beer, but aren't sticking with the high end "flavorful" taste (alternatively, there's a case to be made that these imports are just eroding BMC share)
5. I don't have any statistics to back this up, but I've been seeing a lot more blonde ales and cream ales recently from craft breweries. I suppose that my anecdotal observation would suggest that the craft customer either wants a less flavorful beer, or the opportunity for growth is in less flavorful beer. I honestly don't understand this trend because many of these aren't as good as your typical macro lager at twice the price. For example, I was at a store yesterday who had $200 half barrels of a cream ale less than 3 feet away from the $99 half barrel of Bud Light. (Not naming names, but between the two, I prefer the Bud Light).
6. Demand will follow supply, thus the +5% that craft distribution has over customer dollars is simply creating the capacity for a growing market which will avoid shortages so the demand can be met.

I'll probably be able to think of 5 more ways to spin this, stay tuned.

 

If the quality distribution hadn't changed one iota the end result would be more mediocre beers, no? The only way for more brewers to not result in more mediocre beers is for the quality distribution to skew in favor of high quality compared to what it was.

 

Of course I'll stay tuned. We don't learn anything from not listening to others or not thinking about alternatives possibilities.

 

It's my office holiday happy hour today. Options 7-100 could get extremely entertaining after a few drinks...