The Problem with American Craft

There are a shit ton of crappy IPA's available, it takes a good brewer to make a good IPA. If you make a crappy beer, no amount of hops will make it good.

 

name examples.

Every company is going to make a pale ale. Every company is going to make a porter.

lack potential? who are you? do you invest in these companies? are you trading beer stocks?

 

Too much bad beer, wild inconsistency, bandwagon jumping, treating beer like competition, treating beer like currency, trading and 3rd party sales, uninformed bar and beer shop owners and beer distributors, little appreciation for beers/styles without unmistakable in your face flavors, lack of pub culture... There are tons of problems.

 

I'm giving a nod of sympathy to the sentiment of trying a new, local brewery and not writing them off so quickly. Maybe they will become the next Surly or Firestone Walker in a few years.

I'm talking about those breweries that have been open a few years, some cases 10 or more years, and don't brew anything spectacular. They stay in business largely from reasons other than their stellar beer.

 

i'll admit i'm trolling a bit here.

But you guys are just unhappy. There is plenty of amazing beer to be drank. Don't concern yourself with the rest. Do you think every beer on the market has to be world class? It can't be, otherwise world class would no longer be "world class". It would lose the meaning.

like someone above said, the market is growing at an unsustainable pace. Eventually the market will figure itself out and the ones who can sustain with a good beer and business model will remain.

I don't get why we as a community are so eager to complain about all this new craft beer. Its a craft. Its an art. Its subjective. The good things is that the more people practice this craft, the better it will become. We are a young beer community. We'll figure it out. In the meantime drink what you like. I assure you, there is plenty of good beer to go around.

 

Names?

this i can get on board with. earn your tip, learn what you are serving.

 

You're join date and your overall sentiment of the American craft scene leads me to believe you really don't know much about what's really out there. Once you've been on here for a while and you start reading up on beers and hearing people mention beer X and Y you'll realize that American craft beer is extremely diverse.

A lot of breweries do hop on the hoppy train though because it sells. There are probably more hop heads out there than anything else.

 

Well, there are generally two approaches. One is to take style guidelines as gospel and try to make the best version of the style possible. By design, most of these will taste alike (assuming a competent execution).
The other approach is to try something new, which I see all the time. Strange ingredients, hybrid styles, experimental hops, imperial versions, barrel aging, sour variations on traditional styles, etc...
Not sure what the problem is? There's literally something for everyone here.

 

I think there are good reasons to be miffed. What brewers brew, what other people buy, does change what I'm able to buy at my local stores and what is on tap at the beer bars I frequent. I speak up because I care about those things. Freshness is a problem too, as it is harder to find fresh examples of world class beers because there's so much damn demand for stores to carry a little of everything to please the one and done crowd.

Every beer doesn't have to be world class. But here at least there are countless world class examples, even new ones in my market (Founders for example), but places are dropping them from the taps or not having them at all because instead there's this huge "buy local" movement that promotes breweries of any caliber just because they're local. There is wasted shelf space from mediocre breweries. Things are very good in many ways, no doubt, but it's a damn shame that they could be so much better without some of the obvious problems.

And besides, we don't have to be mellow about these topics. Maybe in public. But this is a beer discussion forum. It's ok to discuss these things with some passion. Cheers.

 

i can't speak for other states, but I know here in Illinois there is a intense growth rate over the last two year. But, i've tried a large majority of these breweries and am very rarely able to complain about the quality. Maybe its not my style of beer, but the qaulity has usually been high.

 

Time will solve this. As long as the people making the best beer have a solid business plan, they will win out. Bad beer won't last forever. This beer game is cutthroat.

 

Hey I like gimmicky beer! Sure they never usually pull off what they intend in the flavor department but at least they get me excited to try it and that's reason enough!

 

Sorry, but supporting something because it's local is a PERFECTLY VALID and healthy reason to drink a beer. If I need a heart transplant, I'm gonna try to find the best doctor in the world, but if I need a fresh pale ale, I think supporting my local brewery, about 3 minutes from the house is good for the community. It's good for beer in general.

Not supporting local breweries and having to seek out whalezbro is what's wrong with some of the BA culture. Sending mules in to gobble up all the Pliny before some us that work day jobs can get to the store is what's wrong with beer culture. But supporting your local brewery??? More people should support their local brewery.

Sorry, but this reasoning is ass backwards.