The craft beer industry: beer quality problems

As noted at the close of her post

that was Julia Herz, the Brewers Association's Craft Beer Program Director.

 

Education and training for brewers would probably be a good investment to continue on. Their 20 page quality pamphlet may be a good start, I don't know enough to comment on that.

Maybe offer classes or courses of some kind. It may serve to help new brewers learn to do it the right way. I'm no expert, but it seems education breeds quality in any profession.

 

BREWING SCHOOLS

 

Rule of thumb: If a beer is old enough to quit breast feeding and move to a sippy cup it is old enough to remove from the shelf.

 

Jack - I agree with everything you are saying. I think that the Brewers' Association as an association needs to look at how it can use its power to improve beer quality and I think working with the distributors is one area where they can exercise their power as an association. If AARP can get me better car insurance, then there is no reason that the Brewers' Association can't get better treatment of craft beer by distributors and retailers for that matter. Too many restaurants leave the wine buyer in charge of buying beer and they all seem to think that Kronenbourg 1664 is a premium beer or that Stella is something extra special and too many craft bars still haven't gotten the hang of cleaning out their beer lines on a regular basis.

Regarding the basis of beer quality workshops, there are statewide brewers associations and brewers' guilds and maybe suppliers like the people who supply the malt and hops (and I can provide names) might want to fund such an effort. It might also make more sense to run something like this through the Master Brewer's Association of the Americas - this is where you will find most of the brewers who are doing the actual brewing. That said, it is imperative that people who own the brewers have that same passion for quality that August Busch III had and a separate program for brewery owners might be in order.

 

I can easily list what I think they should do but have no practical suggestions as to how they could do it. Perhaps setting up a cooperative between the distributors to sell stale beer to the industrial alcohol producers would recover some of the financial loss.

 

The most apparent problem around here is old beer still being offered for sale. The brewers I've talked to say once it goes to the distributor it's out of their hands what happens. The retailers I've talked to say the distributors can take it back but are not required to do so. The distributors I've talked to say they would like to carry more craft beer products but don't feel it's their responsibility to take a loss if the beer doesn't sell. Everyone involved is taking a short term profit/loss approach here and I can't say I blame them.

If the BA want's to take a long term approach perhaps it would be wise to encourage members to use clearly labeled produced on dates conjoined with consumer education about the importance of both freshness and how the product was handled prior to purchase.

 

@JackHorzempa I appreciate your commitment to this issue. I mean that 100% truthfully. I’ve been burned by poor quality beer before. I think we share opinions on this subject but have disagreements on the solutions.

I guess my question is, why is this the BAs responsibility? This seems to fall under a consumer protection category, which the BA is not.
They are a trade association. Their commitment is to the brewers, not the drinkers. They provide information to brewers on GMP and proper brewing techniques, but anything beyond that seems superfluous to their ethos.

Out of code beer is the responsibility of the distributor and/or supplier. It’s also not an issue limited to ‘craft’ beer and was an issue well before the craft beer revolution.

Identifying breweries or beers of poor quality for one reason or another is no one’s ‘job’ per se, but it seems like Internet review sites like this one, Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc. do a better job of it than any bureaucratic trade association ever could.

I promise I’m not trying to shut down any arguments! Just providing some of my opinions. Good discourse so far!

 

Good luck convincing the Indian beer store owners by me to do this. They will sell you a 10 yr old beer and won't even wipe the dust off. One problem I'm seeing is that a small beer store has to buy a lot of one product to get it cheap and it will never sell.

 

I believe user-managed review sites like this one and yelp, for example, are among the most powerful tools. Beer drinkers are more likely to reference these than some random seal of approval from some organization they don’t recognize.
Also, and this is the tough one, when you drink a bad beer, speak up! If it’s at a brewery, ask to talk to the brewer. If it’s at a bar, inform the MOD and shoot an email to the brewer. People can’t change unless they know they’re messing up.

AB made the same moves that breweries like Stone and countless others have made. It doesn’t mean they are being enforced. I’ve definitely seen >3 months old AB products on the shelf.
I’m not the only one: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ed-its-freshness-date/?utm_term=.336cc9f5fc4c

 

I will get beer from breweries or distributors that has been packaged two months prior. I've sent it back on more than one occasion. Anyway, my point is that sometimes retailers don't have any other option. They can either stock IPAs that are already beginning to fall off or not stock them at all.

 

It's just business, they have the right to leave it on the shelf and I have the right to leave it there as well.