The Problem with American Craft

Agree. Olde Mecklenburg in Charlotte takes no short cuts on their German brewing processes (decoction mashing, spunding, long lagering times); ingredients (100% German malts, yeast, and hops...no substitutes of any kind); and freshness (shipped and stored cold, always freshness-dated, and limited distribution to better control product).

And guess what? It works! They are now one of the largest breweries in the state and just finished an $8M expansion to a 60 BBL German-built brewhouse. They are doing what they know best, are perfecting a limited offering of beers, limiting their distribution to win local brand loyalty, and are letting the IPA experts down the road (NoDa for example) handle that segment of the market.

 

ISO Olde Mecklenburg.

 

The strong will survive. The recent boom in craft beer culture is definitely annoying in some respects (crowded bars/tap rooms, longer lines at releases, festivals being crowded...so on), but for the most part, I think all the new competition is good for industry. Flat out, if someone is making a good beer, I want to drink it. There are breweries opening up all the time in Portland. If they don't make good beer, they aren't going to be around very long. Just my opinion, but there are some talented people out there brewing right now. Its only a good thing.

 

I agree here. Originally styles probably came out of the geographical differences between process and recipe development. Stouts were simply strong er porters. I think, now ,what we have is style guidlines chasing recipes. I have heard that BJCP styles will soon number into the forites, where now around 21.
Basically, all diverging from the kind of differences seen in compaisions between English Pale Ale and American Pale Ale.
It makes beer speak and judging laguage more universal.

 

There will be a market corrrection, there is always a market correction. I thnk the difference between now and the early years of craft is that then it was seen as a sure bet, easy money. Not so much now, it is not a get rich or get rich quick biz.
The brewers that have survived have adapted but always kept their focus on quality, not fads, fetishes, or get rich quick marketing ploys.
In my view, BMC sees it's beer as product, while the skilled craft brewer sees his beer as his art, as well as his connection to his consumers.

 

The real key is what you say about "bad" and "good". Hoponious Union is a very good beer with hops. It outsells some good beers without much for hops. Where are these "bad" beers with hops? These terrible IPAs? I don't see them. Foolproof BackYahd in my market is mediocre, but not "bad". Magic Hat Blind Faith is ok, certainly not "bad" or "terrible".
What I see is a lot good and even amazingly good beers, with lots of hops, selling well. While I'm not a Pilsner fan, I do like brown ales and wish there were more good ones. Most of the "bad" beers I try are lightly hopped.

Maybe it comes down to this for many of us. If a beer is using a light malt, we don't get much flavor except from the hops. I do like scotch ales, browns, some reds, porters, stouts...but if it's yellow, it needs hops.

 

In actuality, I'm rather jealous. Cincinnati is a town so German, the phone book can practically be used as a German primer, and yet the only nods to German brewing we have? A Hofbrauhaus, only because Munich is our "sister city" (not actually in Cincinnati but in Kentucky across the river), and a couple beers from Moerlein that are decent to good. Every other brewery here is on the "put hops in everything to sell it" kick, and/or the "make everything except a lager of any kind, and if we do one, faux lager low-temp ale ferment it" kick.

I'm not saying Hofbrauhaus is at all bad, especially when they get regular shipments in from Germany, just that I'd love another choice in dunkel or doppelbock every now and again - as opposed to another "IPA disguised as a brown ale" or "IPA disguised as a winter warmer" or "IPA disguised as a porter".

 

They are in lots of places and take many forms: poorly made beers (i.e. exhibiting off flavors and/or the effects of poor process work such as thinness of body, over-/under-attenuation, etc) loaded with hops to mask these flaws; beers that, while technically competent, are not at all to style and (because they?) are loaded with hops; even weakly flavored base beers that are run through a randal of hops cones or other junk to make them seem more flavorful. I see all of these in some form almost everywhere I go -- and most of the brewers who spoke on the topic at the most recent Brewers Association meeting do, too. (See more here: http://blogs.denverpost.com/beer/20...ng-craft-beer-industry-quality-problem/13432/)

 

Important enough to do right? Sure.

Will it be done right? Doubtful.

In a way it’s a lot like brewing a good beer. There are lots of people who think that if they read a book about how its done they can just wade right in and duplicate the procedures themselves, "after all, its just common sense." However, at the end of the day common sense has to be educated and often may require a professional who has learned some things the hard way, even if only because the full range of expertise required is not easily captured in written text.

 

You'll want to be careful with what you say about them or it will not be long before we see a thread entitled "Olde Mecklenburg rant" that is filled with people feeling hurt because they can't get the OM beers and the brewery clearly has a gross disregard for their customers because they won't expand to national distribution so everyone can get them.

 

There are plenty of terrible IPAs sold in MA. If you haven't found one you've been extremely lucky or your threshold for bad IPAs is higher than it should be.

 

Well given that he was addressing most of his comments to folks other than yourself and was addressing a certain superficiality that had developed.

So no need to take his comments personally. It is, as you say, "just" a conversation. :-)

 

Good point. Still lots of room in the Biergarten, though...

 

Go ISO Heater Allen from Oregon too. Olde Mecklenburg and Heater Allen are my two favorite US lager / german style focused breweries.

 

Poorly made I understand. Would be interested in actual examples though. But I don't get the issue with "not to style". In my mind, style is nothing but an artificial construct designed to provide the consumer some indication of what the beer is going to taste like. So Lagunitas came out with an "Imperial Red", which is certainly not to any pre-defined "style". It's a super-hopped, higher abv Red Ale. It was tremendous. Everybody I know who tried it, loved it. Maine's "Red Wheelbarrow" is similar in style and is also excellent. Now the classic "red ale" is much less hoppy, more to style and to me less interesting and less enjoyable.

I'm not interested in being tied to the past. Example: Germany at some point came up with Rauchbiers, which are certainly unique, with the smoked malts. I'm sure somebody drinking some traditional lager thought they were pretty outrageous. Now they a traditional style. The English and Irish with stouts and porters, didn't have hot chili peppers to infuse them with, now we do. It's a great combination. But whoever made the first one, certainly broke some "style" protocol. To them I say "thank you". Genetic engineering has produced a much wider range of hop flavors than was ever possible even 50 years ago, let alone when most "styles" became styles. If taking a base Pilsner malt beer and loading it with New Zealand hops produces it a great result, then that certainly isn't a problem that craft beer has. That's creativity and artistry at work.
I get that there are some crappy start-up brewers (most of the badly made beers I have had were at brew-pubs) but I don't thin it has anything to do with the popularity of hops. The two things are not connected.

 

Well, after you have a chance to reflect a bit, take another read of what he said. He didn't say he had no interest in it, he actually said he didn't feel that progress was being made and identified some reasons for feeling that way. I'd suggest that is really quite a different thing than just jumping in with a one line mostly irrelevant comment saying "its not an important question." And as for the latter type of comments, you'll want to resign yourself to the fact that you either develop the ability to ignore such comments or give up on starting threads and/or subthreads. At any given time there are dozens of people on the site who just want to throw something into the mix whether its relevant or not. (I guess some folks have nobody else to listen to them and don't recognize they pretty much aren't being listened to here... )

 

This is wholly unnecessary.

 

As an interesting parallel to at least part of what you seem to be saying, we have a local classical music station that has a program that features new and/or seldom performed works by as yet "unknown" composers. Their closing line is "...reminding us that all music was once new."