Jack's Abby (2018)

My statements aren't "arguements ", I'm sorry that you feel so defensive.

I've obviously touched a nerve & you feel you need to defend your personal tastes - so be it. I stand by my opinions. Cheers.

Back to the original thread - I have & will continue to support Jack's Abby lager product. I think they make a high quality beer at a good price, which I can definitely support.

 

I really don't see JA/SD trying to compete with the juicy IPA market here. They had what like one on tap so far? I do agree that juicy IPA's are a fad and the fad is waning. Once Tree House opens their new mega brewery this summer that beer will be ultra available and anyone who wants it will be able to get it, and anyone trying to chase rare beer will move on.

I think the new fad in craft beer is sour ale, especially fruited sour ale, which Jacks/Springdale is probably going to focus much more on. Good barrel aged sour beers can take months/years to make so i'd imagine S.D. will be a big player in this game in the upcoming months while other breweries (trillium/treehouse) will be playing catch up.

 

I liked it quite a bit. Not super funky, pretty dry finish. Definitely worth the $7 + 32oz Growler deposit cost.

 

My view is that juicy and hazy IPAs are a fad only inasmuch as bitter and piney IPAs were a fad. I've said before that juicy IPAs seem like a very obvious market/taste correction after the IBU wars of the 90s and aughts. You push a variable to the nth degree and when you run out of room to keep pushing something has to give. Same thing with low ABV beers gaining traction after years of beers getting bigger and bigger.

Bitter and piney IPAs haven't gone away, it's just that nobody is making a huge deal about just how many damn IBUs they can shove in a beer and boasting about the fact that they will destroy your palate anymore.

Juicy IPAs won't go away either, but similarly breweries won't be clamoring to list 14 tropical fruits in the description and boasting about how hard they are to see through.

The 3 hour long beer lines will eventually move on to the nest big thing but I don't see any reason to think that the big players in the style won't continue on in exactly the way that so many west coast IPAs have continued on after they were no longer the "hot new thing".

We're several years into the juicy IPA era, and the flagship breweries are expanding, the big national brands are trying to at least flirt with style, and, judging from my recent visit to SoCal anyway, there are similarly styled breweries opening up in places other than the Northeast. Regardless of what the truth of the matter ends up being, I don't see how anyone can look around at the current state of things and see any evidence of anything "waning" on this front at present.

 

How can you possibly say that trillium will be playing catch up when it comes to sours? They currently have 7 sours/wilds on tap in canton and have hundreds of barrels of beer aging.

 

Based on what?

IPA has been the most popular style in American beer for a very long time and will almost certainly continue to be. Rarity/sexiness aside, people really like hoppy beer, period. Barrel aged fruited sours aren't going to change that.

 

My assumption is that there are a lot of people in the craft beer community who's goal it is is to chase the hard to find / trending beers and in the past 5 years or so those beers have been big barrel aged stouts and super hoppy high abv IPAs.

When it comes to IPAs, taste is very relative and a lot of people seek beer out just because it's rare. Pliney the Elder was that beer, Heady Topper was that beer and now Tree House is making that beer. Think of all the people who wait in line at Treehouse having never had a certain beer but will buy it on a whim because its trendy. Heady Topper is still a great beer however the hype is largely gone and people will care less. The same will happen to Tree House down the line. Once TH opens their new facility, between them and Trillium, there will be plenty of juicy IPAs to go around. The people who actually enjoy them (i'm one of them) will continue to buy them (and that will be a huge amount of people) however, a lot of people who are just interested in trying the current trending beers will find something else, and I believe that void will be filled by barrel aged fruited sour beers.

I'm not saying people will all of a sudden stop liking IPAs, i'm just saying people will stop waiting 3 hrs in line for them as they become more available and the hype moves elsewhere. I think Jacks Abbey has believed this for a while and is all in on their sour program which is awesome. Trillium is doing the same thing with potentially opening a sour only brewery, same with Two Roads.

 

Very true but they are still playing catch up. These beers sometimes take years to make and Trillium has only been focusing on this program for about a year. Still leagues ahead of tree house though.

 

I don't think Tree House/etc is sought after because it's scarce, I think it's scarce because it's sought after. At some point there'll be enough of it that's it's not scarce, but people are still going to love it and buy it like crazy.

How are sours ever going to become rare if they're not rare now and every brewery is rushing to crank up production of them?

I don't mean to be a jerk about it but there's a whole lot of nonsense going on in this thread.

 

The beer chasers are a small percentage of consumers, they may have walked away from Alchemist or Trillium, they may have never been concerned with Jack's Abby, but it hasn't stopped those three growing by multiples. That's the important thing, they've all grown, loss of "hype" is meaningless except to that minuscule fraction of people looking for something to tick, brag about or trade.

Hopefully people do stop waiting in line 3 hours for Tree House, it will happen not because people stopped liking the beer, it will happen because they're not selling 700 cases in 6 hours, they're selling 2100 cases a day every day.

 

If you've been to our space, hopefully you had a good time and got the point of what we're doing here - beer is fun. We're making things that we like to drink that don't fit under the JA brand.

If you haven't, we reopen on January 14th, with our first bottled release of Kriek Mythology, and a few other goodies. We'll post more as the details finalize.

While we are on the subject of these transient IPAs, you'll start to notice a few draft lines popping up in MA this weekend and next. Many of our restaurant friends stepped up when we announced that we had to temporarily close, and as a result we'll be sending about 50 kegs around MA. It won't be permanent, and its mostly hoppy stuff that we didn't want to go to waste. Hope you run into one soon.

Cheers!

 

Thanks for keeping everyone updated.

You probably answered this already, but will any of the hoppy offerings from Springdale be packaged up, or is the plan for them to be growler or on prem only?

 

I'm going to evade your question partially - our current lineup will remain in growlers/draft only. But stay tuned, if I get my way there may be some "other goodies" to quench your thirst.

 

I think people overrate the impact of a relatively small community of beer people who chase hype. I currently have been to Treehouse twice, despite the fact that they make my favorite beers, because I won't wait in those lines. Once the new brewery opens, a small number of people will say "no big deal now", and a much larger number of people will say "fantastic, we can finally get the beers we love". Trillium had huge lines before Canton, and while you may think "Trillium isn't hot anymore" they are selling way more beer now, and expanding to new space in Boston. Jack's Abby doesn't have many (or any) super sought after rare beers. But they make great beer at a reasonable price and sell a lot of it.

Hype is vastly overrated, and if people step outside of this cocoon they will see that. As for sours, it is a small niche market and that's all it's ever going to be. It clearly is the new "in" thing for some folks, and good for them, but it won't ever have the mass appeal that IPAs do.

 

Every commodity in life has to deal with the hype aspect and people seeking out the latest and greatest thing, its not specific to the beer industry. People see others that they perceive to be "in the know" talking about a specific new thing and they assume it must be good and then go get it and post their pics/stories about buying that new thing to show that they themselves are "in the know" thus perpetuating the hype, until someone comes up with that inevitable next new thing. I've come to the realization that there is so much great beer out there, I can't base what I buy on the fear that I'll be left out.

I totally disagree that sours are the "new things". BA themselves wrote an article back in 2014 about the huge increase in sours.
https://www.beeradvocate.com/mag/10...-beers-on-their-way-to-becoming-the-next-ipa/

 

Fingers crossed that this means a keg of one of the IPAs or the Saison is on its way to The Gaff in Waltham...

 

Looks like they will be canning some hoppy stuff.

 

yup. we hope to have these for the re-grand re-opening, or official actual opening, or whatever it should be called.

will be paired with bottles of Kriek Mythology, and hopefully a raw bar pop up, cause we fancy.

 

To quote Philip J. Fry: "Shut up and take my money!"