Tree House NEIPA Dominance

Yeah this is where anecdotal experiences built on fuzzy nomenclature arguments really fall apart.

You're calling out a fuzzy argument but making your own bad one.

All of the following things are true:
There is a relative demand for kettle sours that far exceeds "slow" sours that is at least in part BECAUSE kettle sours are far less expensive to produce, therefore, they can be much more accessibly priced.

The popularity of Casey/HF/SARA/3F/Cantillon is small potatoes, because all of those breweries are fairly small compared to the larger market for even just sour beers.

There is a greater demand for beers from those aforementioned producers than there is production capacity.

Relative demand does not necessarily refer to preference.

Preference is not fixed; there may be a time where a person who generally likes "slow" sours may prefer a "fast" sour.

You can't extrapolate out the anecdotal evidence of "most beer fans" re: those slow sour producers you reference to represent beer drinkers, generally. Craft beer is still a small slice of overall beer sales, of which sour beers represent a yet smaller slice, the audience buying sour beers who are then aware of let alone go nuts for those producers is smaller still.

It's possible that over time the sour beer segment will grow and that it would grow faster if a larger audience were able to sample beers from those producers.



But one thing I don't think you can say is true is that: kettle sours are: "giving the people something close to what they would want in a perfect world" assuming the following interpretation of that sentence is accurate: kettle sours are a substitute for something people want even more.

Sure, I may want a nicer car, but the decision about what car I drive is not merely a function of how much I can afford to spend on a car, because how much I can afford to spend is a function of the entire set of priorities that exist in my life, and how cars are priced and designed based on the buying habits of all other people who drive.

It's not useful, then, to consider what the buying habits of all people would be if all people had access to limitless resources.

 

@errantnight I don’t disagree with anything you said. I was well aware that my post was anecdotal and unprovable, but was making the point that so is what @islay posted, although he presented his opinion as fact. And he was specifically arguing that beer drinkers as a group have a taste preference for kettle sours, but I don’t believe that to be proven just based on sales volume alone. As you and I both noted, other factors like availability and price have a large impact on buying habits.

I have no idea whether most beer drinkers prefer kettle sours to slow sours. My point was just that I wouldn’t assume drinker preference based on greater availability of kettle sours since they are inherently easier to crank out cheaply in large quantities.

 

I have a very strong idea whether most beer drinkers prefer kettle sours to slow sours. This would be a nice experiment, albeit with easily predictable results: Pick a busy taproom at random on a Saturday afternoon; exclude sour specialists. Have everybody in the taproom taste blind, say, a peach (or passion fruit or raspberry or whatever) Berliner weisse from a middling local brewery alongside a 3 Fonteinen Oude Geuze (or your top-rated slow sour of choice, as long as it's unfruited or fruit-backward). Offer them a free large glass of the one they prefer (to be consumed on the spot only by themselves). I would be shocked if a large majority of the patrons didn't pick the fruited kettle sour. The few who preferred the lambic often would strongly prefer it, but many of the people who preferred the kettle sour would find the lambic disgusting.

Fruited kettle sours, like New England IPAs, have become so popular and ubiquitous because they're extraordinarily accessible to a wide swath of patrons. Slow sours, in contrast, join the likes of heavily smoked beers, IBU-arms-race-era West Coast IPAs, etc. as being palate-pushing niche products that elicit passion among their small group of fans and winces among most other folks (save for some poseurs who pretend to enjoy them because they think they're supposed to).

Yes, I'm engaging in speculation here, but it's informed speculation, and anybody who chooses to speculate in this regard but predicts that the lambic would be preferred by the majority is way out of touch with the craft beer consumer base in 2019. Fruited kettle sours have become one of the biggest trends in beer and are moving at a fast clip on tap and in retail in many (most?) markets. Yes, the fact that they can be pumped out quickly induces producers to want to push them relative to slow sours, but consumers, especially less traditional craft beer consumers including many women, are happily drinking them up.

 

Right you are!

Cheers!

 

It seems like you want us all to think your are special because you like slow sours. As someone who likes a great variety of beers, including kettle and slow sours (as you state them), I am just happy that we have a plethora of options in both categories. Maybe that is not universally true across the country , but from my travels, it seems like the beer enthusiasts and advocates can access just about any style anywhere in the country.

 

Let me first say, to provide context, I am from Mass. I haven't had either Cutting Tiles or Congress Street in a while, but all the Trillium beers I had last week when I visited MA last week suggest to me that I would not any like them over TH core beers. I just finished a Doppelganger that was only okay. There is better stuff out there, I do agree with that.

If that isn't what they call it, I hope that they change it to that name.

It is 100% the house yeast IMO. It is unique and has yet to be duplicated.

Breweries who I would rather have hops from: Hill Farmstead, Triple Crossing, Benchtop, Other Half. I haven't had enough Monkish stuff to give them a nod. The Alchemist would be dependent on my mood. Trillium and Aslin are both a no. I haven't had Bissell lately but I think it would be beer dependent.

The Society & Solitude #8 I had last week blows any beer I've had from TH out of the water. I do still say, as I've sad a few times in this thread, the house yeast makes their beer unique and that is why I still want TH from time to time.

 

I can’t really speak to the whole Hill Farmstead thing as I’ve only had a couple of beers from them so I need to give them some more gos.
I like other half but I think that is a personal rate thing.
Bissel Is definitely beer dependent. Never had Swish and heard that is amazing

 

I also think if we conducted this study with Guinness (or if wanted to go the sweet route, Young's Double Chocolate Stout) and Goose Island's Bourbon County Stout, or Founder's Kentucky Breakfast Stout, these people would prefer the Guinness, especially in the larger volume you proposed.

But we're not going to suggest barrel-aged stouts are preferred over Guinness among the craft beer crowd are we?

Instead of relying on hypothetical situations, we do have hard numbers in the ratings. And "slow sours" are rated much higher than kettle sours. In fact, some are rated as high as the highest rated stouts and IPAs. There's actually one in the top ten here on Beeradvocate. In fact, there's FIVE on the "Beers of Fame" list.

Ratings are not the be-all end-all in these debates, but they're at least something objective.

Personally I've also never seen people line up for a kettle sour. Have you ever been to Zwanze Day though?

 

Both things can be true: tree house can be excellent and ratings can be arbitrary.
That being said, there is so much amazing beer all over the nation right now I wouldn’t fret about it. I’m more than happy to drink amazing stuff from brewers who haven’t been “discovered” yet.

 

I haven't been to Zwanze Day. With rare exceptions, in life, I don't do lines, and to the extent that Zwanze Day functions as a de facto sour beer festival of sorts, I think slow sours are the worst candidates for that sort of event because palate fatigue hits very quickly and digestive challenges are common when drinking sours in quantity. If you can't tell, I'm not really enthusiastic about the-rarer-the-better whalez-bro hype side of the craft beer scene, but I certainly know multiple people who -- I get the impression -- find that stuff the primary appeal of being into craft beer.

I am indeed aware of lines for fruited kettle sours, but mainly at breweries that are better known for their NEIPAs and also known for their pastry stouts, so there's probably some halo effect at work. I can think of so many breweries that track primarily in the trifecta of NEIPAs, pastry stouts, and fruited kettle sours; is that not a phenomenon that others have noticed? I must mention J. Wakefield in Miami, which arguably invented the "Florida Weisse" and has been able to generate high ratings and huge hype mainly on the strength of its fruited kettle sours (although I know it's also a major pastry stout player).

There certainly is a significant hype aspect to demand for beers from the biggest names in slow sours and only the biggest names. The pool of people actively engaged in that hype, or at least actually drinking such beers on a regular basis,* is vastly smaller than the pool engaged in the NEIPA hype. I've been told repeatedly by industry participants that fruited kettle sours are hot and slow sours are not in the market. I believe that most consumers' expectations for the drinking experience associated with sours has been massively altered by the rise of fruited kettle sours. Frankly, beyond competitive beer geekery, I don't think slow sours ever stood a chance of coming anywhere close to the mainstream appeal of the likes of NEIPAs. We're talking about one of the most challenging and offputting segments of beer ever developed versus one of the most accessible and welcoming.

* This could be a case where the same guy who obsesses over Tree House and downs two 4-packs of Tree House IPAs per week also hypes up and trades for Allagash sours, which he busts out a few times a year. By revealed preferences, that fictional guy prefers NEIPAs to slow sours even if he gives both high ratings and brags about drinking both. Yeah, slow sours tend to be even more expensive than NEIPAs, but neither is cheap, and when we're talking about traders, price has ceased being a major factor in many cases.

 

I've been to Zwanze at both Lord Hobo and Novare Res locally. You do get your neck beard types there, but you also get all kinds of different people. And they stay for hours happily drinking lambics, but yes, they can be a tad harsh on the digestive track for some. (Not me, I happily drank my weight in Cantillon when I was in Belgium)

I have definitely observed plenty of kettle sours being brewed. But I don't agree that they're quite as popular as you think. But again, neither of us really has anything but anecdotal evidence.

Locally, Nightshift has an entire "weisse" line-up, yet their top three selling beers are Nite Lite (a light adjunct lager), Santilli (an American IPA), and Whirlpool (a New England style pale ale).

 

I would be curious to hear people's thoughts on the breweries that occupy the top 3 tiers of the neipa sphere. It's not my wheel house but I'm certainly curious to know who people think are doing the best work in the style

 

Who do you consider the top tier? The top two in terms of ratings is easy, that's Trillium and Tree House.

After that it gets a bit fuzzy. In the top 20 "New England IPAs" on this site, you'll also see Alchemist (questionable whether they make true New England IPAs), Hill Farmstead (some have also questioned theirs too), and Toppling Goliath (@islay is the only who has questioned them, but we can include them as questionable as well).

I've had multiple IPAs from all of them over the years, I've definitely had the most from Trillium. Before their fermentation profile change, I would have put them at the top. But now they're hit or miss.

And this is how I would classify all of them, hit or miss. I wouldn't put any single brewery over another. I've had some absolutely amazing IPAs from all of them.

Alchemist is truly the outlier here though in my opinion. I absolutely would not call their IPAs the same type of beers as the others. I also feel Heady Topper has changed over the years, I remember it looking differently and really knocking my socks off like 6 or 7 years ago. Now it's still good, but not like it used to be.

My pictures of the beers literally look different too (granted different lighting, but one picture has an orange hue to it, the more recent one's are more golden/yellow).

 

This is of course absolutely subjective, but for me its:

Tier 1: Tree House, Monkish, HF (is this a NEIPA?), OH
Tier 2: Trillium, Great Notion, Foam, Bissell
Tier 3: SingleCut, Old Nation, Electric, possibly MT?

 

I have had good heady topper but the one I just cracked is a mess. Can't tell how old it is because they don't date the cans. It could of been cooked in a hot truck or warehouse in the last week or two. But I wouldn't even rate it a 3.75. Wish I had picked up some month old two hearted.

 

Definitely agree with OH as being top tier. I'd probably put Aslin in that 2nd tier, maybe I've been lucky and just had the good ones but stuff like Double Orange Starfish and Master of Karate are absolutely elite.