How “Far” Beer Has Come…

Beer has been around for 5,000 years. Seltzer has been around for 250 years. The soda industry was born a few years after as a result. They have been competing for beverage customers on menus and shelves since then. I have no problem with an industry that recognizes the competition and adapts. Heck, the craft soda industry was started for the same reason as our present better beer industry, to compete with the big guys who made beverages with small taste. To beat 'em at their own game. I'm sure they'd make craft beer to compete with you, but they mostly can't, and don't. NMFRB, an exception, comes to mind.

If you guys are skilled enough and have better equipment to make better soda, and put alcohol in it, more power to y'all, I don't think less of you. Industries that haven't had to adapt to what the market demands are the exception, not the rule.

 

fair enough. as said, I started doing this professionally to make beer. not soda. obviously others in the industry feel differently.

 

Doesn't "seltzer" (if we use the term for any carbonated, non-alcoholic water) date from Something-Something B.C., when the first naturally carbonated mineral water bubble out of the ground?

Well, legally that isn't how the current alcoholic seltzers are made - they are fermented beverages from a base "wort" made from cane sugar or some other fermentable(s) - (even barley malt, in some cases).

 

I think it is as you said in a previous post, some will not adapt, and will not survive this (most likely) temporary shift to seltzer as the "thing of the day".

The good thing about making beer is that you can still do it just as well, or better, and enjoy it just as much, or more, when you aren't doing it professionally. I regretted for a short time not landing my chance to brew professionally, and since then have realized how lucky I was. My brew partner, who ended up brewing to acclaim in Connecticut, quit the industry in two years because of how much he'd grown to dislike doing what once he'd loved. All due to the demands of the marketplace.

 

Good points. But I think it started as an industry worthy of mention only after Joseph Priestley invented a way to prepare it commercially 250 years ago, and large scale factories were built to mass produce it, and flavors were added to great popular appeal shortly after.

 

well, unlike with beer vs soda, in brewing professionally vs brewing at home, I have actually done both. I can say that the two are very, very different. sounds like your friend (and you) may agree. others may feel differently.

 

Its gone So far that Hamms and a bottle of Miller taste so good, instead of the above .

 

But its not, do you know the ins and outs of ancient Peru economics when they would spit to make alcoholic beverages (as just one example)? Could they get any ingredient they wanted at basically any time of the year? Did they have this nostalgia, and FOMO, that is 100% driving these kinds of beers being made now, like we do, or is it something else? Did they know why things fermented and why they felt the way the did after drinking alcohol? I certainly don't know, and I don't think it is anyway close to being the same.

 

Not sure the point you are trying to make. But lets simplify this greatly.

Can we agree that the people in ancient times bought the kinds of beer they liked to drink, and wouldn't buy if they didn't like?

Can we agree brewers back then went into the brewing business to sell beer to customers?

Can we agree that brewers back then brewed beers intended to please customers to the best of their ability, technology, and equipment to do it?

Can we agree that if there was indication that a certain style of beer likely would sell very well back then, that brewers would attempt to make it to the best of their ability, technology, and equipment to do it?

 

If all the smoothies and hazys disappeared overnight I wouldn't be ordering a single WCIPA to fill those slots. Genuinely they just aren't in demand, I regularly carry 3-5 true WCIPA's at a time out of over 100 IPA's in the store. If these beers didn't exist that space would be dedicated to seltzers, ready-to-drink cocktails and additional sizes/shapes of existing products.

Truth is that WCIPA is just not popular and getting mad about what is popular isn't really warranted considering the complete lack of correlation.

 

I don't know, you are assuming its all a capitalist economics system, maybe its heavily regulated and only used for rituals/religious purposes, but again, I don't know, but it doesn't seem to far fetched. Do you know who the brewers are? Are they owned by a government or private and free to make and sell what they want?

I don't know, I have really lost the thread of any of this. If the only point is breweries have always had free rain to make what they want and to sell to whoever, thats fine, I don't know if I agree with that, but fine.

The point of this thread, is that brewers are making and marketing beers as if they just want to emulate some dessert or kids food stuff. There is lots of evidence for that, not sure why that is hard to understand. I am free to say how dumb that is, everyone is free to say I'm an idiot.

 

A few of these aspects are discussed in the book Ancient Brews - Rediscovered and Re-created by Patrick McGovern. I just completed reading this book a couple of weeks ago; I found it to be both an educational and enjoyable read. Maybe you would too?

https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Brew...&keywords=Ancient+Brews&qid=1634000202&sr=8-1

Cheers!

 

Wasn’t the law intended to prevent brewers from buying up all the wheat and rye needed for baking bread, as well as keeping ingredients associated with paganism and witchcraft out of beer? I seem to recall it had nothing to do with setting a standard and everything to do with protectionism and religious conservatism.

 

there were multiple purity laws in existence before, during, and after the most famous one of 1516. some had to do with economics, some with other political stuff, but all with keeping the ingredients to the basics. draw whatever conclusions you will from that.

 

I mentioned the baking aspect, but my post was more focused on various ways that the Reinheitsgebot is used as a marketing tool in modern times. To me, it's something that people like to use for rhetoric.

 

You might enjoy reading “The German Reinheitsgebot - why it's a load of old bollocks” by Ron Pattinson:

http://www.europeanbeerguide.net/reinheit.htm

Cheers!

 

Here is where you first took issue with me:

"Because science and technology, they weren't spitting to make anything taste like a processed sweet dessert, but because they didn't know anything about fermentation (I'm talking very generally here, as I'm not going into 2500 year histories of alcoholic beverages in Peru that had people spitting). Any odd style from an Oude Geuze to Gose, to Braggot or Gruit, Pumpkin Ale were made because of tradition and available resources. Not because they were trying to emulate Count Chocula, making it so sweet and over the top that only a 10 year old would enjoy it, if they could actually legally drink such things."

It sounds like the issue you have is that you think nostalgia shouldn't be on consumers' minds when they buy beer? Or that beer should be regulated by government so it doesn't imitate processed foods? Or maybe companies should be forced to call these beverages a different word than beer? I'm doing my best. Did I finally get it?

 

Everything is cyclical. In the recent present, these fruited beers, seltzers and "beers" made to taste like your favorite cereal as a kid are small minority of the beer people drink but they come off as exceedingly popular because of social media. (I can already see that seltzers, while still very popular, are trending downward and companies who produce them are already worried and looking to shift)

In a few years time, people will move on from those drinks either as a result of growing up or taste shift. The drinking generation after them won't want to drink it because it's not "cool" and latch on to something else that is. So maybe that lager revolution everyone's been waiting for will happen... but I wouldn't hold my breath.

I do like that the discussion about how lots of things have been thrown at beer throughout its thousands of years of history has continued. We know a very narrow gap of beer experimentation and while myself and others might find the idea of a Count Chocula flavored "beer" repulsive, we live in a golden age of "beer-flavored beer" with refined and consistent processes/QA and bountiful choices of styles and breweries.

 

I think they are a step above Martin House. But even though we both think there is something off with that, they are selling the shit out of those beers. That is another brewery on my list of will probably never walk thru their doors, but there are a lot of others that do.