When your local brewery losses its true essence

It isn’t easy trying to figure out what it is you’re trying to say.

 

Lol at the drop off in product quality. You've just tasted other things, and what's new is what's interesting.

 

I'm not sure what you are complaining about :
1) did the quality drop off ?
2) change the styles they brew?
3) is it too crowded?
4) Did they stop brewing your favorite beer
5) Are you just not happy because the masses discovered your favorite little brewery

 

Strangely enough, I understand your quandary.

Let's put it this way . . . when your local brewery stops making you feel special, you should stop going.

Now I'm going to go back to drinking a lovely lager, which most local breweries don't bother making because they don't have the patience or skill.

Fuck local. I'm drinking the best beer available to me. Local or otherwise.

 

Something like this happened with one of our local breweries. Used to love to pick up a pizza, or take cheese and crackers, out to this brewery and have a few pints and eat my food. Then they instituted no out side food or drink, including soft drinks.

After they would not let my daughter bring in her root beer, I decided their beer wasn’t that good and there are other options.

To local brewers: keep it loose and friendly.

 

When they start making hazy IPAs that taste more like jucie or mimosas than beer

 

Have you had a heartfelt conversation with the owners/brewers of your local brewery? One of the advantages of the drink local movement is that the local brewery folks can obtain regular and timely feedback from their customers and choose to respond (or not) to their customers inputs. Nothing beats a face-to-face conversation but it takes two parties to converse.

Cheers!

 

Go on, play the field

 

My local breweries piss me off because they make extremely mediocre beer

 

First brewery around here was/is a large Brewpub called Gilded Otter, that has a very talented brewer. He never tried knocking things out of the park back in the old days, but all his beers used to be clean, tasty, refreshing, and solid versions of the styles.

Talk about location, not only is the building beautiful, and large, and set up incredibly well with a beautiful bar, and a copper brewhouse, and a full professional kitchen, and has mountain views from side seating, and is next to the Mohonk River making it even nicer, but the best rail trail in our county runs almost through the parking lot of the place and a constant stream of bikers and hikers pass by. They decided, I guess, that good beer was not a necessity for success, because over the years they have just gotten worse and worse. All their rotating specialties, their best beers, were discontinued. All their regulars were dumbed down and taste like cheap ingredients and no care in production to me now. Luckily there are a "couple" other good breweries around here now, so it is hardly missed.

tl;dr Gilded Otter used to be solid, sucks now for a buncha reasons. Had a gradual beer decline over the years even as it stays successful as a business

 

Yup, when people no longer know my name it’s time for a new place.

 

Perhaps it is your taste that is changing, not the essence of the brewery itself?

ISO: True Essence NE IPA

 

I’m all for drinking local as much as I can. In the past few years in the locales that I have lived in, I’ve been fortunate to try several local breweries, many of them new and growing. My biggest turn-off is when a brewery seems to lose focus on true-to-style beers to produce adjunct products to cater to the non-Beer drinking set. I totally understand broadening your portfolio to attract customers, but when your pale ale, brown ale, or stout need some work, it’s maddening to see “blood orange wit” or “coconut key lime kettle sour” being pushed. Especially when those beers are sub-par as well.

 

Local breweries stopped being cool when everyone started going to them.

 

I’ve found a lot of local breweries opening these days aren’t into brewing beer, they’re into making money.It’s “the thing” these days.

 

And in a way that is a damn shame.

A number of craft breweries that started 20-ish years ago were founded by passionate brewers who had a 'business plan' of: we will brew the beers we like and hope that others will enjoy drinking them too.

I suppose that it would be unrealistic to expect that as the craft beer industry matures that a differing sort of folks would be entering the market,

Cheers!

 

Welcome to the mid 90s again . I guess we know what comes next...

 

One of the oldest craft brewers in North Texas which I'll leave unnamed used to boast several years ago about their traditional brewing methods and just using 4 ingredients in their beers, and went so far as to say they would never chase the trends.

Fast forward to today, and they'e chasing every trend in the market with the adjunct' and hazy ipa's not because they wanted to, but because they had to, in order to remain competitive.

It's just funny to look back at it now with the owner standing on his soapbox during the brewery tours touting how he would never do this. Funny how things change.

 

What do you and other customers think about these new beers?

I was recently in correspondence with a commercial brewer of a smaller brewery asking me for some tips to brew a so called 'NE' style IPA (e.g., which yeast strain to use, what grains to augment the barley malt, etc.). I neglected to ask what was the specific motivation to brew a 'NEIPA'. I just assumed that he was getting lots of requests from his customers to brew these latest 'shiny' new beer that everybody is talking about and desiring.

Cheers!