MN State Fair Beers Announced

40 beers, and only three of them are unflavored / non-gimmick beers (Fulton Frontier Summer IPA, Surly Juicy LuLuLucy*, and Surly The Kloser IPA). Most of the flavored beers are fruited. Finnegans St. Pat's Green Ale doesn't appear to be flavored, but it's green, so it's a gimmick beer. Sure, the gimmicks are consistent with modern State Fair tradition, but still the almost complete lack of unflavored beer speaks poorly of the state of the industry, at least in Minnesota.

* Frankly, I tend to classify NEIPAs as gimmick beers due to their intentional sweetness and evocation of fruit juice flavors. Their appeal primarily is to the flavored beer customer base, people who want their beer to emphasize flavors other than those traditionally associated with beer, which is why they so often reside alongside pastry stouts and fruited kettle sours among breweries' draft lines.

 

Yes, we know. You only like pilsners, give it a rest.

 

I agree that a lot of these end up being bad but there are many other State Fair beer options than included in this list. Go to the Leinie Lodge, Summit on a Stick, Schell's Stage to get your clean lager fix.

 

But its the State Fair, it only lasts 2 weeks.

 

I enjoy a wide variety of styles, but I'm not sure how much styles matter anymore if breweries are just going to cover the base beers up with gobs of passionfruit or chocolate. The extraordinary proliferation of flavored beers is a noteworthy recent phenomenon (I would argue problem) in the industry. So I will not be giving it a rest.

A look at many Minnesota breweries' tap lists would suggest that the State Fair is less of an outlier than I'd like it to be. Dangerous Man, for instance, features 7 flavored beers among 13 total beers as of this writing.

I think that the popularity of gimmick beers at the State Fair is indicative of the fact that it's hard to get a lot of people to try or like craft beer without flavoring it to taste like something else. Flavored beers are becoming more popular because craft breweries are depending on sales to people who don't really much care for the taste of beer, and that presents both opportunity for conversion as well as danger to the industry to the extent that these newer customers never do acquire the taste for unflavored beer, especially when craft beer inevitably loses the cool factor that it unexpectedly picked up a few years ago.

 

I'm more excited for this tap list...

 

I don't like those gimmick beers, either. However, I don't have a problem with brewers who brew what people want and will buy. Nothing wrong, in my book, with responding to consumer demand. I don't have to buy them, and I doubt they are going to take over completely.

Besides, as pointed out above, the State Fair is all about gimmicks. Without gimmicks, the food choices would be Pronto Pups, Sweet Martha's and the Lutheran hot dish hall.

 

I'm interested in trying about 3 or 4 of the new ones. But it' the fair so you have to put out something odd for the none hardcore beer drinkers

 

I agree to some extent that there are a lot of "gimmick beers" and those don't necessarily represent "pure" beers to their style and don't rely on simply grains, water, hops, yeast. I do also think that those gimmick beers are here to stay though. If it is reaching a larger audience that may not particularly love the taste of beer then good for breweries and those beers will get people into breweries to try some of the original standbys that we love. I think it is nice to see some fun one offs at the state fair. Don't really want to be paying 10 bucks for beers that already fill up the fridge at home.

 

We are coming back to visit MN after moving to the greater Portland area last year. Of course, after 40 years of MN living, Opening Day at the Fair is a must. We agree with the other posters - we'll spend some time at the Ball Park and give those oddball brews a pass. Even a BA ticker would skip some of those!

I thought about posting that state fair list out here on the PNW forum. That would probably make heads explode for some of the beer snobs out this way. I'd also have to explain what a funnel cake is....

 

Good point I agree

MNAle said "Besides, as pointed out above, the State Fair is all about gimmicks. Without gimmicks, the food choices would be Pronto Pups, Sweet Martha's and the Lutheran hot dish hall."

True Too

 

And here the obvious sticks out to me:

No Swedish Egg Coffee Stout in honor of one of the longest running, non alcoholic State Fair libations?

Tsk, tsk. Our brewers are caught up in a haze craze and a sour shower, and woe betide those who disagree with me in the internet.

 

I was with you until you started saying silly shit like "evocation of fruit juice flavors". Highlighting the natural flavor and aroma of hops is not a gimmick. If you can't differentiate between lactose milkshakes and Heady Topper, that's a you problem.

 

They're "natural" flavors that largely depend on recently developed hop varieties and hopping techniques specifically designed to produce tropical fruit juice-like flavors and to minimize the bitterness traditionally associated with hops, and NEIPA brewers tend to employ intentionally low attenuation to leave large amounts of residual sugars to make the beers inordinately sweet. They also go out of their way to induce Instagram-ready turbidity. So I think they're very much in the same ballpark as the flavored and gimmick beers in intent and effect, even if they have the convenient excuse of Reinheitsgebot compliance (in many cases) to distract from their purpose. That doesn't mean they can't taste good, however.

(I don't consider Heady Topper an NEIPA, for the record.)

 

The hops are as ""natural"" as any others so I don't know what you are getting at with the quotes. I totally get where you are coming from though railing against the trendy soda beers, I just think it's a bad argument to focus on the hop varietals in what is essentially an argument against brewing technique. And I even can see the desire to define NEIPA as "not Heady", but Heady is commonly credited as an originator of the style so clearly there is more work we have to as consumers/advocates to differentiate these things. cheers!

 

Good beer tastes good.

 

Do people do this in other forums? Go on a TV forum and argue that black and white tubes are better than 60" HDTV? It just seems so backwards to me to argue that anything new and innovative is lesser than the old way just out of some weird nostalgia for the older method. NEIPA's have been around and popular for almost a decade now, at some point the old guard will just accept that they're a real style of beer and not just a gimmicky fad, right?

 

Don't know about TV, but they certainly do on music forums (digital v analog/vinyl, for example).