I'll take "Things that annoy" for $200

It's not your choice of PB, or J. It's your choice of Italian bread that's out of whack. All PB&J purists know that brioche is best.

 

How do you or anybody else get to disqualify somebody as a "real beer lover" based on their personal preferences? I absolutely despise sour beers, kriek/lambic all that stuff, but I'm not going to tell Belgians that grow up drinking lambic that they aren't real beer lovers because I don't have the same taste preferences as they do. That's just closed-minded. I love a good lager, but nobody is qualified to tell somebody else what to like. Like what you like and don't tell me what I'm allowed to enjoy.

 

Now that's traveling far down the path.

 

Oh I don't know... Bamberg to Cologne is only a ~4 hour drive down the "path". They could meet halfway in Frankfurt.

 

Feel free to step on those, wouldn't be mine.

 

The two things that annoy me are:
- Going to a brewery and finding 6 IPAs, a Blond and a Wheat beer on tap.
- Stouts than are high in alcohol, when the style is a low alcohol beer. I like imperial stouts, but you can't drink more then one or two and expect to drive home.

I live in the St. Louis area and try to check out all the new breweries, but why can't they have at least one malty beer that isn't 7% or more ABV? When i run into people who say they don't like craft beer and i give them one of my Brown or Scottish ales, they usually like it and say they didn't think craft beer tasted like this.

At least we have Civil Life and a few others that brew the kind of beers that I like.

 

I hope you have other accessible alternatives so that you won't have to go back.

There is a store a block from my house, they have questionable practices including scalping hyped beer 200% over standard pricing (for example variants of BCS for $49 /bottle vs. $24 most retailers prices). I was stoked when they first opened because it is the only place within a few miles with quality availability, but after exposure to their business practices I haven't been back for a few years now and will never go back, even though other places are much further. It's worth it to support quality businesses.

So taking advantage of beer enthusiasts (beer scalpers be it individuals or companies) would be my only "annoyance", and with the vast quantity of great beers across all styles (including local cask condition options), and can always find a great beer of any style at any time, on site or for home consumption.

 

The Beer Geek in front of me that wants to engage the server in a conversation that he knows nothing about while I'm waiting on said server to pour me a beer!

 

Yuck.

Let me add as long as I’m going vegetable here, I really done like ipas that are onion bombs, or Stouts that taste like LaChoy.

 

The fact that some brewers still use the vile and cancerous ringwood ale yeast.

 

I'm going to offer a genuine opinion. I feel myself becoming increasingly alienated from the craft beer crowd. I go to a brewery and all I see is rich white people. Craft beer has increasingly become a culture of elitism and exclusivity akin to the snobbish wine scene like I was afraid it was going it was going to. Obviously, I realize my experiences or these crowds do not speak for the whole. People all across the spectrum like beer. I myself am friends with a lower-income black man who absolutely loves IPAs. But I certainly can no longer shake the feeling of not belonging when I'm in a room filled exclusively filled with older white people who makes five times as much money as I do and are talking about their businesses, golfing, yachts, etc.

 

What's an example of a beer that uses ringwood yeast? I want to know what it tastes like.

 

Why would anyone get annoyed about beer? Drink what you like and ignore what you want. The only thing that would annoy me is people who get annoyed easily.

 

Seriously? Beer is about race now and income now? I guess I can get annoyed.

 

Shipyard [and founder, Alan Pugsley] is the standard bearer for Ringwood yeast in the US. Geary's and Magic Hat are known for it also. Magic Hat no longer uses Ringwood exclusively. Dogfish 60 Minute IPA uses Ringwood, but good luck detecting any difference in 60 Minute from a beer made with supposedly cleaner fermenting yeast. It's all about how the brewer manages it. A homebrewer could give more detail, but Ringwood ferments really fast and efficiently, but if the brewer doesn't handle it correctly it can generate diacetyl off-flavor, thus it's bad rep. Although with some British styles some diacetyl can be desired, like Old Thumper from Shipyard.

(Apologies if you know all this and I'm over-explaining.)

 

Isn’t this this case for a good portion of beers that are locally brewed in anyone’s given area?

Or are you saying that breweries tout a beer as brewed with “local” ingredients but are only sourcing, say, one of the specialty malts from a local malting company?

 

Around here, some brewers brew some beers where no ingredient comes from farther than 40-50 miles. The Yakima hop fields are 150-200 miles away, and some barley is grown in Eastern WA.

WSU and Skagit Valley Malting often work together developing new strains of grains, and new techniques of malting.

https://www.skagitvalleymalting.com/

http://thebreadlab.wsu.edu/small-grains-program-wsu-mount-vernon/

 

Annoying? The utter lack of Black/Cascadian IPAs out there for me to buy lol

Kidding (this time)...

But seriously, the ONLY real things that annoy about the macrocosm of beer are the extremists on any end of the spectrums beer has, the notions that what a person decides to favor = "Real Beer" and only has a growing gradient of hatred for anything along the spectrum to the other extreme end. I don't consider the macro drinkers to be any less beer drinkers than the craft sector, so long as they aren't telling me that my meticulously hopped pale ale or Belgian blonde is "frilly," "bougie," or "fancy" compared to their "real man's beer" (AAL).

Oh, and people who want to demean the entirety of the beer world by deciding that no beer should ever exceed 8.99 a sixer as if the quality shift between some brands and cost of ingredients across different styles don't play a factor. Essentially people who scoff at a beer that's asking price is around 29.99 with no knowledge as to why the cost is what it is, but are totally fine with purchasing a barrel aged bottle of fermented grape juice at the same price while also not knowing why the cost is what it is because it's just "beer." Often said with disdain.

 

I mean being in the PNW is probably a different story than say the Midwest where I am. We have less than a handful of malting companies in my city, and maybe just as many very, very small hop farms in the area. It’s just not feasible to source each ingredient so closely.

Since it seems like you’re around essentially the Fertile Crescent of many brewing resources for the US, I can understand where you’re coming from.

Around here, local breweries sourcing ingredients from abroad and regionally is pretty standard, and is the case for probably about 90% of the beers made locally.

Was initially about to make a note about the Northern Mariana Islands having strong “farm to kettle” brewing operations happening....

 

Oh, pretty much every brewery also brings in plenty of Weyerman malts for the German styles. And plenty of speciality malts as required. Even some English hops, when appropriate.

Just pointing out that it's becoming more and more feasible to be as local as possible, when possible.