Controversial Beer Opinions Thread

Everyone's following the same model because it is successful. That's not surprising. Everyone on the small side of things, at least. Even the big players are following a similar model with IPAs leading the way.

This is where I think that small craft beer can "save" craft beer. That's were the diversity can happen and actually be profitable. You can have entire breweries dedicated to certain brewing traditions, as long as there aren't many/any others doing the same thing locally, and be very successful. You can have a lager only brewery and knock it out of the park. An English style brewery dedicated to session beers, a Belgian style brewery putting out different incarnations of Trappist ales, or a sour-only brewery making traditional and/or New World interpretations of the many different styles of sour beer would all work as well on the small, local scale and not one of them has to have an NEIPA to survive as long as they know their audience.

 

I think this can work for a select few, but there's many breweries I can think of that started off with a niche and have had to brew at least some New England IPAs to keep the doors open.

 

Don't drink hoppy beer from a clear glass in direct sunlight. Your beer will skunk in minutes. If you are drinking outside, drink from a can or brown bottle. it's not an opinion, it's fucking science.

 

TV is currently in its Golden Age and continues to impress me (unlike every crummy ass Gose I have tasted in the last 2 years)

 

Agree with your first point (just started Peaky Blinders, incredible so far) and don't insult Kirsch Gose from Victory Brewing like that!

 

Locally, Deciduous, Idle Hands and Honest Weight, to name three obvious ones. Jack's Abby opened Springdale although you could argue that they didn't really have to. Tributary, although, again, you could argue that Tod Mott helped pioneer the style without ever quite realizing what he was doing (which is probably the controversial part).

 

"Wait In Line IPA" should be considered it's own style of beer.

 

Way too many shitty ones out there! The really well crafted ones are few...Too easy to cover up mistakes!

 

Maybe true, but of the 80ish NEIPAs I've rated, 20 or so were 4.5+ beers for me. Every style has good and bad examples. I think the best examples of NEIPAs are among the tastiest beers I've had. The less good examples can be astringent, though, which I don't like.

 

It really varies, but I've found a few benefit from the harsher bitterness of a can sip, especially beers that get a little muted when they open up. Totally unexpected to be honest, but when I've noticed a differences I've done side by sides and the can will win. Heady for sure, done that a couple times and the can wins every time. Others are locals.

 

I can't speak to Deciduous, but a quick google search popped up multiple New England style IPAs that they brew. I've heard a lot about Honest Weight's IPAs (been meaning to check them out), but I don't know if they brew New England style IPAs (a few pictures certainly looked like they do).

Idle Hands brews their wildly popular Four Seam and Six Seam, not to mention their Change Up series. I believe they've posted on the New England forum about having to brew that style eventually, despite that not being their original focus. Same with Mystic.

Jack's Abby did start Springdale as you mentioned, but they also have incredibly popular barrel-aged Baltic Porters (not New England style IPAs, but barrel aged dark beers are also quite popular, and are most certainly not traditional like some of their other beers). They also brew multiple IPLs, and in fact have brewed a hazy IPL.

Finally, I've been to Tributary, but I'm not incredibly familiar with their line-up. But I imagine Mott the Lesser is their most popular beer, again, not a niche or traditional style.

Do all of these breweries NEED to brew popular styles to keep the doors open? We'll never know, but they eventually did brew them (Tributary has always brewed Mott the Lesser, and Jack's Abby has been doing Framinghammer and Hoponius for quite sometime).

But there are local examples that do not, and stick to their niche. Notch and Allagash come to mind. But as I said, they're few and far between.

 

In my area I have a brewery that does only traditional German Styles, a brewery that does only Belgian styles, a brewery that does only low ABV ales and specializes in simple tasty Pilseners, a brewery that has a barrel aging program to blend sour IPAs and saisons and wild ales, a brewery that does every style over the years EXCEPT a NEIPA. And some breweries that do NEIPA as well as other styles too.

It is a crazy wonderful time for fine beer lovers, there are more and better made varieties of fine beer easily available to us all than likely there has been at any time in world history.

 

Are there 10,00 iterations?

 

Or a 0.5 liter ceramic beer mug. That works for me.

 

Or just go find a shady spot...

(I used to wish that there would be some sort of little boxes on the tables in the sun to put your glass in - sorta like a GI JOE-sized Queen's Guard shack.)

 

Under a mature chestnut tree. Done that a few times in Germany.

If I live long enough I can do that under the chestnut tree I had planted in the back yard.

 

A few of mine:

The common one, the NE IPA. Love the style, hate the fanboyism that this style attracts. Lining up for hours, hoarding every can that is produced, breweries creating artificial hype to only promote the fanboyism, etc… I mean, locally a brewery put out a few NE IPA… They have cans still available, four of five days later. This is a big no-no for the hype machine. So now they seriously are raising their limits so they can sell out in one day. So damn stupid. What is wrong with actually having popular beer sit for a week and people can stop by and get cans after the release? We are not talking months, here. Not everybody wants to deal with the lines and other B.S. associated with this style. Then on any facebook group, forum, etc… It’s nothing but NE IPA’s. Just completely burned out from the beer community being so focused in that, alone.

Next up, the lack of breweries focusing on well made, traditional styles. It would be my dream at this point to walk into a (new) brewery and see a tap list that was stacked with German lager and *maybe* an IPA or two, but honestly not needed. Instead, it’s the complete opposite anymore. Cause you know, we need 6-8 IPA’s on at a time. It’s just that these places don’t have the skill to produce anything else, IMO. But damn, I love IPA’s and drink them all the time, but it’s not the only thing I want to drink and I typically don’t go after them anymore when we do go out. I also don’t need 6 or 8 different IPA’s to choose from. I just know I am in the minority, so that is why I brew my own and stack my list as I desire. But I appreciate the places like Notch in Salem, Jack’s Abby, Fat Head’s, etc… But new places? Hardly find anything more “complex” than a Kolsch… It’s a dime a dozen, anymore.

Beer reviews are annoying as hell. Cause you know, half the people who taste every single fruit in existence in a beer or the “bread crust from 11 week old bread, stored in a pantry under a reduced oxygen atmosphere”. I bet most of the people who taste “papaya, passion fruit and guava” never even had the damn fruit, straight, in their life. They go read some hop descriptors or scan other reviews and just re-hash the same BS. Let’s just be honest and call a spade a spade. Keep it simple, focused and to the point.

Lack of half pours at breweries. Not talking 5oz samples (too small), but those nice, 8-10oz half pints that are the perfect amount of beer when you want to try multiple options on tap but want more than a flight size, but less than the standard serving. Oh, and for these to be priced fairly. Half pours are amazing!

 

What? You're not very well versed in the flavor profile of an unripe melon rind or New Zealand feijoa fruit? Stick to lagers. You're not cut out for haze-boy life.

 

I miss when being new to beer meant you would go out and try Pilsners, stouts, Belgians, Browns, etc. IPAs were one of the last styles we tried. There was a sense of wonder of just looking at a menu of stuff you had no idea about and just ordering it.

Now it just means 'here's your murky IPA/BBA adjunct stout/kettle soured one note beer' starter pack. New craft beer fans are basically tasked with liking those styles.

 

Not on this thread you're not.