Should I be worried about de Garde?

He also thinks that Cloudburst is terrible and Floodland is an absolute joke.

There's a difference between thoughtful, constructive criticism and trolling. He underscores the sheer width of that divide.

Might I recommend the ignore option?

 

Yeah, that's a bummer because I am a huge fan of doggos, but my understanding is that the rules changed because a customer made it so we can't have nice things anymore rather than because dG suddenly started being anti-pupper.

 

Yeah I assumed there was an incident since they were previously dog friendly. I still love de Garde beers, but I rarely stop in their tap room anymore.

 

And I was just expressing my opinion that his opinions are no longer worth listening to. I'm free to do that as well, no?

 

I think the point is that if you are keeping track of this troll's posts, it's obvious that he's trollin'. Sure, he's free to do that, but it's a tired fuggin' act.

 

Reading through all this, I think that there has been a fair bit of movement away from classical sour/wild beers in general by the beer hype bois.. De Garde isn't the only producer that's affected.

When was the last time you saw people throwing out major ISO's in seeking out Lost Abbey and Russian River AWA's? Consider De Garde's spontaneous brewer contemporaries such as Jester King and Funk Factory as well as Allagash (although I guess Bardus is an exception, but their Coolship bottles are now collecting dust on shelves in Chicago) and even Crooked Stave. Side Project is now much better known for their Derivation and BBT stouts, but the saisons that put them on the map are now an afterthought (e.g. last batch of Saison du Fermier sitting for weeks with a case limit). Even still, a lot of the Cantillon packages sold in the recent online sale seem to have been snagged up by people with the intention of moving them for stouts.

I'm generalizing a fair amount of course, and to an extent I'm cool with it because it makes it quite a bit easier to pick up bottles of Fou Foune (for now) without having to ship internationally since people are getting these online or bringing them back from the EU-- because it maintains a sufficient degree of trading value. But I do think it could eventually prove to be an existential crisis of sorts for American producers whose portfolios essentially consist of just these types of beers- in this case, De Garde and Funk Factory.

 

Yeah I agree with this, see also all the 3F still sitting on shelves now. Speaking personally though with regards to de Garde - their saisons were always my favorite and I pretty stopped going there once the Premieres and Desays disappeared. Bus were cool too and super popular so it's weird to see those not continuing to be made. If Trevor started doing Bus in 4-packs, I think the hype wagon would circle around again.

 

People are also just fickle and move on to the next hyped product because they have zero attention span and are easily distracted by shiny stuff and whatever DDD and other internet hype makers draw attention to. What was once hypeboi'd de Garde, Crooked Stave and Jester King is now Holy Mountain and Floodland, and then it will be something else.

 

I'm starting to see Holy Mountain sit on the shelves in Portland as well. I think the low production numbers are helping Floodland but we'll see in a couple years if they start distributing due to (future) low membership.

 

Holy Mountain has bottles that go out to retail which always sit around a while. It's the brewery only releases (fruited sours) that get the eye of the hype bois.

I wouldn't even think about comparing Floodland and HM. Adam specifically started anew to be nothing like his old operation. He doesn't seem interested in that business model.

 

As the very active moderator for a relatively quiet forum, perhaps you should've been? Several others weren't this clueless.

In any case, you could've easily looked at his last few posts and made an educated guess that he only seemed to care about stirring up the pot. It was all incendiary, subjective, and personal bullshit. Not a word of it seemed fair and he didn't give a shit about the consequences or whom he offended. Nor did he care about rationally defending his extreme claims when they were rightly challenged by everyone else.

And that's some tiresome business which has no place here. He should be ignored, because that behavior never adds anything to the discussion.

Unlike de Garde, which, love them or find them "undrinkable," continues to fill a vital niche with their special focus on terroir which no one else in our regional scene can match.

 

But it is a personal attack whenever someone just randomly logs on to shit-talk about an independent brewer and their business. Can't you see that?

You may not care about this because it doesn't effect you personally, as some dilettante moderator on a silly message board, but it may well adversely impact that brewer, their business, and their employees.

And that matters to them and their livelihood whether you care to admit it or not.

 

Wow, talk about people who show up just to shit-talk.

 

I've got friends that will be stopping in during their trip down to Astoria this weekend. Will report their findings.