Are American Craft Breweries Ruining Beer?

Sure, there are a lot of breweries catering to the highly hopped DIPA, Sours, and adjunct beer crowd, but I have been pleasantly surprised by the breweries making well crafted classic styles. Some of these newer beer drinkers will gravitate toward more classic styles after a while. It's almost a natural progression these days.

 

Fads come and go. ESB is here to stay

 

That's pretty much my take.

I can't appreciate IPAs of any stripe. So when the west coast variety was ascendant and most tap lists were 50%+ those, here in Cincy, the local Hofbrauhaus and other niche places like Taste Of Belgium got a lot of my disposable beer income.

These days, I continue to frequent the Hofbrauhaus, Taste of Belgium, and such, but appreciate that there is actually a greater selection of beer I can try without fear of triggering my wall-of-perfume-or-furniture-polish response at most places - because I enjoy pastry stouts and fruited sours. Much like I always appreciated New Glarus' Serendipity, Raspberry Tart, and Belgian Red.

 

Yeah, for me it's not so much what extra ingredients are used but how they are used that makes a beer appealing to me.

 

Brewers need to follow the KISS protocol:
Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Fruits? Only in fruited lambics.
Lactose? In milk/cream stouts, ok, but nothing else.
Still to many IPA's, enough already!
Stop with flavored this and that.
Of course you can stay what you think the course is, and send us all back to the BAC Dark Ages. It's your call.

 

Over 8,000 craft breweries in the US (honestly can't keep track of the real number) and some are guilty of the OPs claim. However, in my experience (over 100 visited, over 1,500 sampled) there are many that uphold tradition and many who's "experiments" are quite good.
Look at the trees through the forest.
And remember, all breweries are businesses. They need to pursue profitability or they won't exist in the long run. (However this hard seltzer craze bothers me).

 

Did you wake up in 2009 this morning? Didn’t ruin beer then, and it won’t ruin it now.

 

I'm old enough to remember when the Trappist's began to use invert sugar and the controversy that surrounded that fiasco.

I recall when refrigeration became widely available and then every asshole wanted ice cold beer. It was hell I'm telling you

Let us not forget hops. It was the end of bog myrtle!!!

Let's bring back spruce tips and mugwort.
Fuck these brewers.

Cheers

 

Catering to their local markets?

I know Casper has a love for sours and chili beers and personally, I grow tired of them. But it's what the locals demand and the breweries are listening...

 

This too often gets lost in these conversations. I mean, check out all the fruit and gimmicks on offer at this trendy fly-by night brewery. I, for one, won't drink any beer that isn't aged in a clay pot and it damn well better have some savignon blanc must or blueberries in it.

BREWERY

 

when a bunch of "craft" places started flavoring their beers with all manner of fruity stuff "because it sells," they set a course for potential self-destruction. if ppl grew to like the fruit aspect more than the beer aspect, it was only a matter of time before someone removed the beer and added the fruit to, say, a seltzer water base. and the growth in seltzer has certainly put a huge ding in "craft" beer sales. sometimes to the point of destruction (as someone pointed out about boston beer co). ask yourself: what is going to be the preferred base beverage for all these fruit flavors going forward? will the consumers driving growth suddenly come to their senses and realize that a malt beverage base is better than seltzer? I for one have my doubts.

but beer? in its historical, traditional sense? yeah....as others have said, beer will be okay.

 

My local brewery is Appalachian Brewing Company. Their beer sucks big d***s! Absolutely horrible.
Tröegs moved to Hershey. They went over the top hops on every beer. Can't stand them now. Local "big" bottle store is only a mile down the road but their selection is 95% fad beers. Even their crowler list blows.
I've got a Keezer being built to hold 6 taps, so I've got some brewing to do.

 

I just hate that all of these super light colored, cloudy, non-bitter beers are called IPA. Being described as hoppy, yet not being bitter just messes with my head. I have learned to recognize the code words of hazy, NE, lactose, oats, juicy. It makes it so hard to buy an IPA now. I pretty much knew what I would be getting with an IPA 10 years ago. I don't know now.

 

I think "ruining" is a bit harsh. Brewing - real brewing - craft brewing - has always been about pushing the limits and "rules" about what beer is.
What we think of as normal would have blown our collective minds 20 years ago - at that point Stone's Ruination was about the hoppiest beer out there, now that's been completely left in the dust. How about when BCBS came out? That was a mind-blower at the time too. Wait a minute, Beer? Aged in Bourbon barrels? What the hell??
My point is, while traditional styles will always have their space, there's always these extremes that will be popular, especially among the younger craft beer fans. I know I've gone through phases of extreme beers, high-abv, high-ibu, high-adjunct, (just lok at the continuing popularite of the Extreme Beer Fest) but these days, I'm as impressed by a really well done Pilsner or Hefe
as I am by a million-IBU IPA.

 

You're not THAT old!!

 

To be honest, those changes didn't make for more facile and juvenile beer in the end. Maybe, just maybe, people aren't complaining about "change" after all.

 

I recently saw an article that stated Hard Seltzer has peaked and is heading downward; that is a good sign. As far as the fads with "beer" with added fruit, candy, children's cereal, et al, we can only hope this is also peaking and will eventually pass.

 

Something that occurred to me while reading some of these doom and gloom threads is that there's this odd sense that some people seem to have that unless more and more people are seeking out "good" neer all the time, then we're doomed!

Who cares if craft beer sales flat line? Why does everyone need to drink beer? There's nothing wrong with flavorful beer, in a diversity of styles, from smaller local and regional outfits, being a bit of a niche product.

 

I honestly don't care. They can do their thing and I will do mine. And I actually appreciate crazy names and acid trip graphics, they make my life that much easier as I don't have to concern myself with what they actually might be.

 

The only thing that bugs me is when you have a brewery that only makes a dozen variations on hazies that are indistinguishable from each other even side by side. Maybe they'll do a stout once in a while with the pastry case in there. But no other styles at all.
I mean, I get making what sells, but there has to be SOME variety there.