Why "malt geekery" is non existent?

True enough, hops are currently the thing. I wonder if rich tasting malt forward styles (Amber, Vienna, Helles) wouldn't take off if marketers could come up with the right sort of catchy descriptive name.

 

Probably not.

Marketers are like certain types of leaders, they try to figure out what everybody wants and then they try to make it look as though it was their idea and that they created the path forward.

 

In my opinion, the craft breweries have a tough sell to the beer geek crowd (e.g., BA folks) here since there seems to be a fair bit of bias against lagers and other more mild tasting beers (mild in comparison to IPAs, Barrel Aged beers, Sours,...).

I have been lobbying Sierra Nevada for quite some time to produce their wonderful Kolsch beer more regularly (e.g., make it a seasonal release) to no avail. Bill Manley reports that the beer geeks think it is a boring beer.

Maybe their is a clever way to market these beers to the more 'casual' craft beer drinkers (e.g., folks who like beers like New Belgium Fat Tire, Yuengling Lager, ...)? You know, people who don't need an 'explosion' of flavors in a beer.

The fact that more and more craft breweries are producing Pilsners is a bright side here.

Cheers!

 

Many of you are oversimplifying things. The demand for hops has made IPAs mainstream, but not necessarily "geekery" material IMO. Go find a thread on Surly Wet or NE IPA and see how many supposed BAs just want to bitch and moan that every beer doesn't meet their very narrow expectations of what hops should provide. I don't consider many of these people hop geeks. Citra/mosaic geeks maybe? But I hope most of them just move on to cocktails soon.

More directly to your post, Stone also recently released Pataskala Red X. Red X is named after a specialty malt from BESTMALZ called....Red X. Malt geekery exists, it's just , you know, you have to be a malt geek to pay attention I guess.

 

You're talking about marketing techniques and common denominators, not necessarily American-specific stereotypes. And hop flavor is about as "ephemeral" as it gets in the beer world. So...what was your point again?

 

Agreed these are tough sells to craft beer drinkers whose tastes skew to bigger flavors. Craft beer drinkers also tend to view more subtle beers like Helles, Kolsch, pilsner, Vienna lager, as being to some degree similar to the reviled American/Euro adjunct lagers, which is unfair, but it's reality.

@sierranevadabill made an interesting comment in recent discussion that may apply here...

So, if you extend this some.... your malt-geeks are out there, but likely very over-shadowed by the number of IPA-focused drinkers in the market.

 

And the craft breweries (e.g., Stone) that skew their product line to cater to that market.

Cheers!

 

Let us not assume that "malt geekery" implies big malt-forward beer. In every beer, whether an IPA or a brown ale, or an imperial stout, hops and malt (and yeast and water) all give the beer unique characteristics. In even the hoppiest or juiciest IPA, the malt bill and mashing technique impact the final product. It is true that in most beers, hop varieties are given more attention. Butt malts provide the canvas, the foundation, the bass guitar, or any other analogy you care for. My ideal beer geek would recognize that every beer is a combination of these four simple ingrediants.

 

That is indeed a fact.

Based upon my extensive readings of BA posts this is not something that seems to be explicitly recognized. Lots and lots of attention to hops.

Cheers!

 

Are you sure you want to stand by that opinion of hop flavor being ephemeral, because no one mentions water.

 

I love lamp?

Edit : Clearly we aren't communicating with one another. And yes, if by ephemeral you mean "lasting for a very short time", then hop flavor is literally one of the most ephemeral qualities of a beer. I know that's not what you meant, but given that I don't think your American stereotype was relevant to the discussion, I wasn't sure what any of your points were. America is big and diverse and you can make a lot of money by capitalizing on a small percentage of any large market, no need to bring in stereotypes regarding American intelligence or whatever else you think.

 

I always have this reaction to malt threads too. You don't need to love barley wine to be a malt fan... but the same is true for hops and IPA too. I hate to break it to people who use the adjective malty as an insult, but if you like beer, you like malt. All of these analogies to bass guitar and painting canvases get it completely wrong in my opinion.

 

But the beer geeks love hops moar!

Cheers!

 

I'm not sure if it would really make that big of an impact. Remember that out of a cost of a six pack only a small percentage is going to the brewer. And out of that only a small percentage is attributable to ingredient costs.
Figuring out the cost of using a premium malt as a homebrewer over a cheaper altervative, assuming an extra $15 per sack of grain, my math is calculating that to 4.7 cents per 12 ounce serving, or 28.2 cents per six pack, for a moderate gravity beer. I would imagine that on the commercial level the economies of scale would make the costs even less.

 

Maris Otter is a type of barley, not a type of malt.

 

I think the hop vs. malt geekery isn't about expectations in IPAs, it's the general knowledge people have of hops, which at least anecdotally, seems to far surpass the depth and breadth of knowledge for malts. In other words, folks can name a multitude of hops and their characteristics. Unfortunately, that more forward knowledge and sharing of that knowledge has led to some misconstrued and plain wrong information.

Ask someone on BA what some of their favorite hops are and you will get at least one hop called by name. Ask them what malt they like and you may get "roasted". I don't even know enough about malts to name any specific variety beyond Spelt. I could name a half dozen hops with general note characteristics though. As you pointed out, malt geekery does exist to some degree which answers the thread title. Perhaps the better question should be - "why isn't malt geekery observed to the same level as hop geekery?"

It would certainly be an interesting experiment, and a chance to gain some tangible data, to ask folks at a craft bar what their favorite 3 hops vs. malts are, and see if they can even name 3 distinct crop types for each.

 

Then what do you call Maris Otter malt and why am I still reading this thread?

 

I didn't mean the bass guitar comparison to be an insult to malt

Like bass guitar is to rock music, malt is the foundation upon which a beer's flavors are built, it's often under-appreciated, sometimes it plays a leading role and sometimes it doesn't, but you'd really miss it if it wasn't there.

And I stand by my contention that adjuncts are the saxophone solos of the beer world

 

It's just an analogy, so it's great if it works for you, but it doesn't work for me. I get what you're saying, but you can have music without bass guitar (rock or otherwise)... I don't view malt as a foundation on which beer/flavor is built... and maybe malt can be a piccolo too.

 

Why not!?!

Maybe Pilsner Malt is the piccolo and Munich Malt is the Bass Guitar!?!

Cheers!