Without Craft Beer

Sure, but neither is the typical BA -- or even the typical "craft" beer drinker -- the "typical" or "average" beer drinker of this era.

First barleywine...probably Young's Old Nick. Or could have been SN Bigfoot!

 

Agreed, but in that era it’s a mix of knowing its available, deciding what you want to search out, and then being able to do so.

To use my scrapple example. Have you had scrapple as part of your breakfast yet? Considered a true delicacy by many and at times there are heated debates about which company produces the best version. It is available to you in NY and you've lived there long enough to have tried it more than once.

 

Good for you, I don't remember my first. Just my first doppelbock!

But, the typical "craft" drinker of this present era and on BA is a 20-30 something who has *never* lived or traveled abroad and who most likely got their first exposure to non AAL by someone handing them a bottle and saying "here, try this" or by being made curious as to what the growing fuss was all about. Some Sam Adams proprietary data reported only indirectly on this site show that the typical craft drinker in the US is someone who mostly drinks AAL and who will have an occasional "craft" offering for the variety or special occasion.

Neither you nor I are even close to being the "typical" craft beer consumer in either context....

 

Sure. But isn't it prudent for those of us "atypical" consumers to point out to those who might think that none of these things was available (readily or with some difficulty) before "craft" beer came along that actually many if not all were -- frequently right in their own backyards? I think it is. But maybe I'm in the minority again on this one....

 

Without craft beer my wife would be happier.

 

I would drink larger amounts of bourbon, scotch, rum, vodka and gin and end up spending a whole lot more on alcohol.

 

This is pour moi?

Is this really a scrapples to scrapples comparison (sorry for that I tried not to)?

I've tried scrapple, but I think that's more of a function of my brother-in-law being from Maryland, rather than anything else. Never seen it in NYC, but I've never sought it out either as (no offense to scrapple) I'm not particularly interested in it.

If American breakfast foodstuffs was a hobby/interest of mine, then I'm sure we could be having a different conversation right now.

Back to Hefeweizen - then yes, thanks to craft breweries such as Sierra Nevada and Victory, I can try American interpretations of the beer. But I can also buy non-craft versions from the likes of Weihenstephaner and Schneider Weisse. And in fact for this style specifically, I'd say it's easier to find non-craft, imported versions of the beer, than craft versions. So it's not thanks to craft that I've been able to drink/try hefeweizen in NYC.

 

It's simply bad alternative history to throw up a world where macro beer has 99% of the market and the other 1% are the same imports that were available in the 1980s.

A more convincing alternative history would be one that outlined a world where craft beer from the UK and Europe dominated rather than the US. That might even be a better world than our current one!

 

Thank God we don't have to ponder this!

 

If by "craft" you're referring to the same sort of breweries that were formerly known as "micros" then I'd be just fine without craft beer. I always had my Belgian, German, and British imports that I loved and I could be just fine without American craft (though I might miss American IPAs). If anything, American craft has made things worse for me because I have a harder time finding some of those imports on draft these days. In the 90's, for example, I frequented a couple places that would have Fuller's Porter, Fuller's ESB, and London Pride on tap (at the same place). Now I can find almost none of those on tap.

Like @herrburgess and others, good beer isn't necessarily something to be equated with American craft beer.

 

Strange thing is that the best of my recent pub crawls have been when I was seeking out just one style which was mild

 

I wonder how many know that we had access to British IPAs in those days, too?

 

What's a British IPA? IPAs were invented in California no?

 

Really? That's news to me. When I was in college in Iowa and Minnesota in the early 1970s, my 'go-to' beers were Bock, IPA, Pale Ale, Dry Stout, and Maerzen...all readily available. My Bud and Hamm's drinking friends actually thought I was insane (I regularly heard comments like: "...doesn't that weird bitter stuff give you the shits??").
And as someone pointed out, when I moved back to the east coast, the choices were even greater.

All I an say is that it certainly wasn't the "dark ages" that the craft beer industry would have you believe. You certainly had to know where to look for these beers, but it wasn't all that difficult to find them. Some of the biggest breweries in the USA were still making specialty beers (and very good ones at that) in the '60s and early '70s.

But hey...believe it, or dont.
I guess you just had to be there.

 

i saw JW Lees this past weekend at my local binnys. its everywhere.

 

Absolutely nothing wrong with pointing out that such beers were already available to some limited customer bases but it seems more helpful to also acknowledge that one of the benefits of the changing American taste for beer is that now such styles, whether imported or domestically produced, are now widely much more widely available and so many more people are learning about trying them and perhaps arguing that that is the big benefit to those changing tastes that allow for the creation of more breweries per capita than we've had in years, if ever.

 

I recall being both nostalgic for a pub crawl many years ago and envious when you posted that.

 

The "changing American taste" has also resulted in more than a few casualties of previously (readily) available world-classics. But still, yes, I generally find it more helpful to celebrate how "craft" beer has led to increased availability than to celebrate "craft" beers with very limited availability, the way the Top lists on here do.

 

So you first tried scrapple when someone offered it to you to try and then learned you weren't interested in seeking it out again. Many feel that way.

As for having an hobby, I'd suggest that at least partially developed knowledge and interest are a pre-requisite for the development of a hobby.

Yes one can clearly find lots of imported versions of almost any European style beer in NY and Philly. And even granting that was true in the 70s-80s, where was the knowledge and interest in trying them at all. Now move yourself to a place like middle America. Don't even go close to a College town, since they will have a relatively large international population.

I personally have been in small mid-western towns in the 70s-80s that were in the process of dying for a variety of reasons. The best beer to be found within 50 miles was an AAL, most often Bud. Someone living in one of those towns in that era would have neither the motivation or interest in finding some other beer.

Fast forward to about 5 years ago on a similar trip and some of those towns had reinvented themselves and the downtown areas were thriving. As part of that change there actually some newly opened bars and even a bottle shop or two, with a reasonable offering of craft beer. (Even then availability is what we'd hope. In what was a smallish town basically next door to Nowwhere Indiana, I stopped in relatively large bottle shop to look for some Three Floyds. When I asked the owner if he had any in stock his answer was, "Sorry but this isn't Indianapolis, I've never even seen their beers here.")

So I guess for me theres a difference between something literally being in the US, and my knowing and being motivated to expend the extra effort.

 

That Budweiser commercial sure did inspire a lot of the recent threads....

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