Why is craft beer so hard?

Something worth keeping in mind: That IPA is a "3.5" in the opinion of people you don't know, might not agree with, and who might not even like IPAs. When it comes to the beer in front of you, the only opinion that really matters is yours.

Ratings without reviews are kind of useless anyway. At least when people had to write a review to rate a beer, you could figure out whose opinion was worth heeding.

 

Start brewing your own beer if the industry is letting you down. Some of the best brews I've consumed have been handcrafted by friends (or myself). I drink my own beer more often than anything else now days, esp since my sour pipeline is at the point where completed brews are always around the corner.

 

Craft beer is hard because it's brewed on the other side of the railroad tracks.

 

I find drinking craft beer pretty effortless. Most of the time I'm trying new things and drinking my favorites and enjoying a lot of very good beers.

 

I definitely find myself being disappointed with IPAs more than any other style. It's far less common that I find a bad stout or pilsner.

 

Dude, I feel like beer is getting better, but a lot of the real small local micro breweries are still really bad. I appreciate the entrepreneurship and the passion, but my gawd, some of these breweries are awful. I was at one last week and the beer was supposed to be a cherry porter. I tasted no cherries and no porter. It was brown as tree bark and had a grainy feel to it. It tasted like 100 percent malt. These guys have no business brewing beer and imagine there are many more.

 

Don't drink wack 'craft' beer. Seems simple. I've been drinking more wine and mixed drinks 'out' due to "fuck this taplist" sentiments.

 

this is why I'm a diehard "ticker" for life. If there is a beer I've not yet had, I'll drink it and form my own opinion. BA ratings usually steer me in the right direction, but in the end, my personal rating reigns supreme regardless of anyones score

 

Sorry, but holy fuck this has got to be a parody thread.

 

... and it was a crowded place?

I can't tell what you're griping about but I want to hold you nonetheless.

Call first or check social media for a tap list so you can cancel a head of time if the beer sucks. I do it all the time, most of our cellars can hush that social urge.

Now lets sit criss cross apple sauce and pour out IPAs all together. You need to get on the harder stuff man.

 

There's definitely QC issues going on with 'craft' breweries of all sizes these days, and I've consumed way too many beers with diacetyl issues within the past year. At a certain point it gets hard to keep writing it off as 'just one more bad bottle/can'. I'm starting to get that old feeling again again...

 

It took over 90 years from the US to go from 4,000 to under 200 breweries - 1873 to the mid-1960s (that's "breweries" not brewing companies - since by then a number of companies were operating more than one brewery). At that time in the US, the "Big 3" national breweries controlled less than 1/3 of the total US beer market - (AB- 11.7%, Schlitz 8.5%, Pabst 8.1%).

The total number of US breweries topped 4,000 for just one year - 1873. After than it was a steady decline, as the average number of barrels brewed per brewery went up as modern industrialization methods were adopted by the industry. The average production of a US brewery was 3,000 bbl. in 1876 vs 47,000 bbl. by 1914 right before WWI and, then, National Prohibition. In the final decade before the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act (a time when some states had already enacted state Prohibition laws) US breweries totals were in the 1,400-1,100 range.

This graph from the Brewers Association (I added the red line during Prohibition, to show that the decline of breweries during that period was in line with the previous 3 decades and the following 5 or so) illustrates that. Also, of the +700 of breweries that opened in the first couple of years after Repeal, 80-90% had some connection to per-Prohibition companies.​

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Craft beer is easy, but you should ALWAYS check the dates.

 

Seems to me to be a product of the "buy local" movement. Tap handles in craft bars now focus on location more than taste.

 

Thank you. They need to decorate your "user box" with some kind of Expert frame or subtitle!

@TongoRad you're noticing diacetyl problems, is that a function of attemps to shorten brewing time and pump out more volume on existing equipment...or ingredients...or both?

As with everything in the universe, there is ebb and flow, a cycle of expansion and contraction and beer is no exception. I believe quality and consolidation will cause the correction.

To the OP point, quality is striving for an enjoyable exprience and if people stop buying what they do not like, then, hey. There it is. The problem solved itself. Capitalism and macroeconomics drive and define the landscape. Nothing hard about it, really. Either you wait it out, seek out better choices, vote with your wallet, etc.

Or we could all end up trading home brew at some point to achieve palate satisfaction. Who knows.

 

I completely agree. I generally distrust ratings without an n size of a few hundred, and I love the filter for reviews only button so I can get a sense for a particular beers stylistic take, but as a general rule of thumb, if a beer has a low score relative to similar beers it is probably not coming home.

Take the IPA example - if you look at all the IPAs with more than 500 ratings:
- There are ~190 of them on the site
- The average number of ratings is 2,000 per beer
- The average rating is 3.94
- Over half of them have a score of 4 or more
- Only 39 of these IPAs have a rating of below a 3.7
- The Bros have rated 108 of them, and the average rating from the bros is an 89; just under a 4.0

So when I see a Sculpin, 60 minute, Centennial, Union Jack, Two Hearted, Torpedo etc... and they are all rated above a 4.1, I am not going to bother with an Anchor IPA which is rated a 3.6 - it is in the bottom 15% of IPAs, so there is a very low chance I am going to like it, and there are literally 100 other beers that I am probably going to enjoy at least as much and probably more so.

When powered by a big enough n size, the ratings really help cut the heard for me. I am never going to get through 190 different IPAs - If I bought a 6 pack of each it would take me a year and a half drinking 2 per day! I use the ratings to filter my selections in the store and raise the chances of me really enjoying a beer. Of course, you have to know that IPAs skew really high on the rating scale. If I did the same things for Lagers I would never drink a Lager!! The cut off for Lagers is a lot lower - more like a 3.6, because people don't rate by style.

 

Pardon me, I'm not @TongoRad , nor have I ever been, but diacetyl can be a product of too tight a production window.

 

here is the current draft menu from popular DC craft beer bar, ChurchKey

http://www.churchkeydc.com/documents/BBCKDRAFTTUESDAY03-31-15.pdf

Out of about 50 beers, I see one from DC, one from Maryland, and one from Virginia (and that one is not from northern Virginia)

Maybe this area is different, or my experience is too limited, but my sense is that local beers do not at all dominate tap handles. People who crave local, on tap, have to go to the taprooms and brewpubs to find most offerings.

 

Name one product where this is not the case.....

 

A 3.5 is a 3.5. Math is a "hard science", there is nothing subjective about real numbers.