Beer styles more breweries should consider making

Wheatwine is a solid choice. I would also add Ambers\Red Ales\Hoppy Red Ales, Non-BA Barleywines and Strong Ales.

 

It would be nice to see more widely available packaged Altbiers. It would be nice to see more German styles in general, especially like Eisbock as OP mentioned, especially for winter seasonals. Although there are already a decent amount out, I think you can never have too many dark Belgian beers out on the market either.

 

I wish there were more brands of English style beers like Bitter Ales. I am not holding my breath here since apparently even well made examples (e.g., Yards ESA) did not sell well.

There is absolutely no doubt that the hop head portion of the Craft Beer consumer segment 'rule' here, especially for Juicy/Hazy beers. In the past few weeks I have read announcements on BA for new brands of the Juicy/Hazy IPA variety:

• Stone Neverending Haze IPA
• Elysian Contact Haze IPA
• Sierra Nevada Fantastic Haze Imperial IPA
  
• etc.

Cheers!

 

I don't know the percentage of American breweries have the equipment to brew lagers, but for those of you that do, I'd like to see more Maibocks. (My favorite style.) If a possible reason for not doing them might be that you think German-named styles don't sell, then call it an American Spring Bock. Get people hooked to the style and it will grow. (Same thing for the Vienna Lager style.)

 

I appreciate the sentiment of your thread, but the market is entirely driven by consumer demand, and right now consumers have their eyes and tongues fixed on one style, and until consumers stop forking over $22.99 for 4 cans of fruit slop, we will remain in this ditch.

Regarding Eisbock, is there really a need for anything beyond the beautiful Aventinus Eisbock?
I'll say the same for Rauchbier as it relates to Schlenkerla

 

I'd love to see more of all of these styles. I'm not holding my breath.

Eisbock: Some states consider the freezing process used to make eisbocks as "distilling" and thus require distilling licenses to make it. Couple that with the uniqueness of the process with which many brewers would rather not burden themselves and the general aversion to making lagers based on lagering times and lack of interest from the public, and this is bound to remain a rare style.

Roggenbier: Good style, a lot like a hefeweizen but a little harsher. The problem here is most craft beer geeks turn up their noses at beers that taste like hefeweizens, and most hefeweizen fans like the easy-drinking nature of hefeweizens and don't want a harsher variation.

Rauchbier: I love smoke beers. Every brewery owner I've talked to about them tells me they don't sell. It's an overwhelming and challenging flavor sensation that most consumers just aren't up for.

Wheatwine: There may be some market potential here, as NEIPAs have popularized the use of wheat and the public has embraced sweeter beers. I still think there's a stigma among beer geeks against highlighting the use of wheat, and I think the declining popularity of barley wines probably drags wheatwines down with them.

Gueuze and lambics: Most people don't like the taste of true slow sours, but they like the cred they get from claiming to like them. Hence the rise of heavily fruited barely sour beers. Most breweries don't have the equipment to make these beers, and they have to deal with the self-serving, shrieking objections of the Belgians if they market them as gueuzes or lambics if they do make them (so they struggle to market them properly). It's a long and expensive process to produce them, and then the public refuses to buy them if the brewers don't age them on many pounds of papayas and pitayas.

I've written variations on this statement many times, but I'll do it again: Until you accept that the craft beer consumer base is dominated by people with unsophisticated palates who want their beer to taste sweet and full of accessible, familiar flavors from outside of the world of craft beer, with few or no challenging flavor elements, you're not going to understand the direction of craft beer. I'd say all of these styles, though never particularly popular, made up a much larger proportion of the craft beer sold ten years ago. It would be great if people would give these challenging, flavorful styles a shot, but they've now been told (misled) for around half a decade by sites like this that the greatest beers ever developed by mankind are murky, juicy, sometimes flavoring-adjunct-riddled sugarbombs from the American east coast, that those exclusively are what all the cool people drink, and that anyone who resists should be dismissed as an old man yelling at a cloud. Why would they downgrade (in their narrow minds) to roggenbier?

 

So which one is your highest rated and your favorite?

Regarding your post.

As @JackHorzempa said more English styles. Specifically for me, session ales.

Also more lagers, always more lagers.

 

I just want to say that I really enjoyed this response.

 

I'd like to see more English milds. There is hope for these styles, as the shift towards lower ABV styles may bring these towards the mainstream.

 

The area several styles I would like to see more of. My concern is breweries with no relevant experience, making poor versions of those styles.

I enjoy Schlenkerla's entire lineup. Recently I was at a brewery and had a flight which included their smoked porter and smoked stout. The smoke was overwhelming, like I should be wearing an SCBA. The bartender told me the brewer “wanted to try something different”. If those had been my baseline for rauchbier I'd never try another one.

The same goes for the other styles mentioned. I'd love to see more of those styles, but they need to be from brewers who really want to explore that style. Not from brewers who just want to try something different.

 

RYES! I've been waiting for a decade for a regular, or even seasonal, rye in MN that I could keep in the fridge regularly. There just aren't enough of them, & it seems like the unfamiliarity with the style damages the quality of many of them.

WHEATWINES! A distant second to my love of rye beers, but this style is few & far between around here. Seems like a bracing, robust beer that should get more love in frozen climes.

 

In the EU, beers need to be from a specific region in Belgium to be called lambic and gueuze. When an American brewery tries to use those terms, it is frowned upon by the Belgian producers. Since American brewers tend to respect the European brewers they are emulating, they also tend to respect those wishes. You can be sure that if such a thing wasn't in place, there'd be a lot more American craft beers named lambic and gueuze.

 

I really have no desire for brewers to attempt more styles than they are currently producing. I'd actually prefer them to be less ambitious in this regard.

However, I would be happy if more brewers made cask ale.

 

Definitely a good list of styles I would to see more breweries making. I would like to see more breweries embracing more traditional German lagers and English ales.

 

Altbiers.
Table beers.
Bocks.
ESBs.
Hoppy lagers.
Although I'm not sure that the ale style envelope couldn't be pushed a little further.
Designer water, designer malt, designer hops, can all be pushed further.
The science of brewing is part of the new frontier, I think that can go a lot further.
Who knows what science will bring to beer?

 

Breweries should stop looking for new and different styles and try and improve the styles they already brew. fat chance

 

Explain what designer water is?

 

Weizenbocks !!!