Craft Beer's Looming Crisis

The "looming crisis" in craft has taken many shapes. The one that will do the most damage is the people. People who are more close minded about the beer they consume than the religion or politics they practice.
Pomposity is the most rampant now in a business that was designed to be a "brotherly" (or sisterly) thing to bring you 'round the table and talk about the world, not the glass. Enjoy all of the wonderful beers out there with passion for the craft and the people as it was intended.

 

I'll drink to that.

 

I was beginning to worry. I haven't seen "the craft bubble is going to burst" thread or article for weeks.

It's nice to know in these crazy times that there are some things you can still count on.

 

FTFY. Personally, I loved those beers back in the early-mid90s, and I kinda wonder what I'd think of them now.

 

God, I hope not.

 

I didn't read it that way. Rather, people are reaching for gimmicks/ novelties to sell beer and soon that will wear off. Is he right? Only time will tell, but I feel that some breweries that rely on gimmicks/those who are 'one trick ponies' won't last long the next time the thinning comes around.

If a brewery finds a great way to incorporate fruit, then awesome! I'm not knocking fruit beers. All I'm saying is find a way to incorporate it that makes the drinker pause and reflect, rather than pass.

 

Are all you people engineers? "Fruit Beers" was Lew Bryson's little JOKE!

 

Pfft, you're obviously not a fan of brett beers, then .

 

I quit drinking beer for a week and it took me two months to get over it.

 

You sir.... obviously need to drink with "this home brewer extraordinaire."

 

I believe the time frame given is too short and too long. And i know the bubble will burst but mine has burst already. And im finding myself drinking less and re buying favorites. When novelties and the thousands of brewers (god forbid) go under and less beer will be on shelves, tickers will too. Which will mean trading will slow, and only then i dream, will mass hype end. Mass hype ends......craft slows. thats how i feel. But slowing isnt bad if you think of it as settling after the initial explosion.

But what will.never stop.is. "how can i reolicate this flavor. Or how can i put this cactus, scorpion, rain cloud molecule into this beer" because the adventurous is why craft started. To branch out. Make better beer and experiment. Brewing is a science. Scientists experiment. Novelties aside i do enjoy the experimental brews. But they will slow.

 

But, Victory is good....

 

I gave up homebrewing and drinking beer for about ten years (promised ex wife I would when kids were born) and I don't think I'm over it yet.

 

Sounds like you're over at least part of it.

 

Great, more handwringing. Some breweries do need to go though (or get better) and new breweries should be opened by people who want to make great local beer, not open "one of those craft beer things".

 

There's problems out there now we all know it. I know I can pick up a bottle like Knee Deep Simtra as an example and it will be 6 months old, some IPAs I've picked up are older. This is a huge problem for both the retailer who can't turn product over and takes a loss, and the Breweries who have people who don't know to check dates buy their beer and think it sucks. They won't buy again , and they tell their friends. There's some great beers dying on the shelf en masse, we all know this and it's widespread. The solution other than checking dates is to turn to local Breweries.

The fruit stuff is Brewers trying to spin and maybe seperate from the other 1000 IPAs on the shelf. I'm not a Sculpin fan at all, but the Grapefruit is good but a bit rough, I couldn't drink multiples. I've sampled Watemelon and don't see why it needs to exist. I don't like Green Flash either, and I don't drink any of their beers. I can get better local at a much better price.

So the " shakeout" will be educated buyers not buying old crappy beers. Brewers slimming down their lines, Brewers pulling back distribution to more user friendly areas they can successfully support. Those over extended and need to push out said beers to 48 states to make money might be in trouble.

 

I'm going to contradict myself here but as someone who does buy new beer every single weekend, it's all getting a bit tiring. I can buy 4-5 new beers every single week and still never try them all, and keep in mind I live in fecking Kansas. Another thing that gets on my nerves is that rarely do any of these breweries brew traditional styles. God forbid an up and coming brewery learn to brew a "boring brown ale" because sadly, the craft drinkers out there DO want their 9% ABV pineapple IPAs (oh, another tick, I gotta try one) So I hope the freaking bubble does burst. I'll still have thousands of options to choose from. I guess the bottom line is I need to stop ticking, I'm apparently adding to the problem.

 

I think it will be fine when retailers adjust, which they are doing already. One of my local shops, for example, used to sell a huge variety of Prairie. Despite Prairie being high quality beer, it sits on the shelves, so they have scaled back and now only sell Bomb and a couple others. What I'm trying to say is that supply and demand should settle a lot of these issues and yes, there will be brewery closures, but I don't think it will be apocalyptic. The level of interest in craft is still growing. Probably not as fast as the market is growing, but there are still many more buyers to be had. I think we are trending toward a world where at your local bottle shop and bar, the staple will be local and regional beer, the next big chunk is nationally popular high volume craft (founders, dogfish, goose island, etc.), and the insane variety currently flowing all around the nation dies down, ultimately sticking closer and closer to it's region of origin for the most part.

 

NC41 Nailed it.
Fruit beers are just an expression of peoples tastes. I'm not one to really go in on them. But. Whatever. They can be finicky as hell for a brewery to send out due to refermantation issues if they aren't getting cellared correctly. That aside.
The real correction is about distribution. This is where breweries live and where they die. In the distributors warehouse. And in the breweries mind on how wide they need to be versus what their market and capacity can be versus what it actually should be. Breweries that decide to grow, and spread themselves into too many markets are going to be the ones getting stung the hardest because they cannot control how their product gets re-presented to the consumer. It might present itself as a wide and strong marketer. But. The product suffers from its own shallow support. I can think of several breweries who have gone through each of the problems coming up as these possible crisis points. The growthy numbers overall are going to start slowing down and acquiescing towards saturation and things will start to settle out. There is still plenty of ceiling to explore hitting with beer though. And plenty of market share to take away from as consumers tastes evolve and change.
At the brewpub level. I only see a point of saturation emerging. Outside of the inevitable ingression of big craft and "craft" breweries with their tied brewpubs and the franchise model of brand/experience brewpub growth encroaching and affecting local market sustainability. There is no crisis point. No real bubble either. Beer, for what "craft" is, is to far out of the bag and into general culture to be put back into a small space again. The idea has launched. What its core principle was was actually a resistance to the big. The nationally distributed. Etc. So, in actuality. Craft beer wants to be in a small, and local space. So, the circle is actually complete. We're good.

 

I wonder which craft brewery will name their next new beer as Chicken Little Ale!?!

Cheers!