Back to Basics

I had cask Landlord in the UK a few times. I could be happy with just that for a long time.

 

You have to know the rules very well to break them properly. I'm afraid some of the newer brewers never learned them.

 

Is this beer readily available to you?

On a related note in a few days I will be brewing my annual batch of English Bitter Ale using Thomas Fawcett Maris Otter Pale Malt and the Timothy Landlord yeast strain. Generously hopped with East Kent Goldings hops.

Cheers!

 

Including, of course, being the 8000th person to brew a classic basic style!

My point is defending the overwhelming of the market with hazies, pastries, and smoothies in the name of innovation is not a valid defense (don't know if you were doing that or not, and right now I'm drinking and don't feel like paging back to check...). The brewers making these "styles" are merely trend chasing, not innovating.

 

Not anymore! It used to be on the shelf of my favorite spot all the time. Haven’t seen it in probably year. Sucks.

 

Cask Landlord sounds like an amazing experience. Speaking of back to basics, I’d love for there to be more cask abound.

 

Homebrew your own 'version' of Landlord - an easy beer to make.

Cheers!

 

I'm on both sides of the fence here. About 30% of the breweries in my area (lets say 40-mile radius) do some really solid "basic" beers. And I love them for it.
I personally think a really good Pils of any sub-style is incredibly hard to achieve. Nothing to hide behind. Some do it well and make money on two types of customers- connoisseurs (like us, I guess) and people that simply like "something light".
Stouts/porters have a little more leeway in execution, but you know when you have a classic thats not hiding behind added flavors. Some do it well, but not all.
Having said all of this, I really enjoy a good NEIPA and I don't think we'd be where we are today with this style if brewers didn't innovate (a word I have seen a lot of in this thread).

 

I think you will need a "correction" in the attitude of the brewing consumers -- a difficult project. The industry has enough brewers and breweries that value traditional styles, just not enough buyers. Even 10 years ago, I told a well established craft brewer that I'd like to see more of his ESB. He told me that it was a favorite of his, but couldn't sell enough to justify brewing it.
A brewery needs stability in sales to survive. I'm sure they would welcome reliable sales of traditional products. It's not like a software company where you can downsize expenses in a pinch. Brewers must have ulcers from trying to chase the market, bringing out new and different brews every few weeks, and hope the fans like them. A few too many duds and the brewery goes out of business.

 

Just did not like it, it felt overpowering to the point of being funky.

I understand, that's why I carefully used a generic "wheat", to encompass weizen, wit, and any domestic renditions.

 

I guess your use of Paulaner as an example just gravitated me to Weizen as the subject.

 

I have an IPA recipe that was a success and sold out for $20 a 4-pack. I could just change up the hops and call it a new name. Or I could brew a lager that takes a lot more time and skill that won't sell for half the price. What shall I do?

 

I think people are overly dramatic about the Hazy, pasty, purée takeover. My beer fridge is packed right now with at least 7 different styles of beer and none are those types. Well I guess Lawson’s Lil Sip may be a hazy but it’s more old school. Rest are German styles and A Fat Heads American IPA. Easy to find. Minimal effort.

 

I presume this is a rhetorical question, and that you're talking about some variation of an IPA (NEIPA, etc.) because to me, a plain IPA is already 'back to the basics' (and they don't sell for $20). If the customer base is 'trained' to buy the $20 beer, it's hard to 'untrain' them so you gotta' follow the money and keep brewing it.

But why can't a lager be brewed and offered to the same customers? Maybe you can brew that lager so well that they'll go for it, and maybe they'll pay $20 for it too. You can't have just one beer on your menu.

 

For you maybe, ha. If you got a recipe, or a recommendation for who has a recipe, lay it on me.

 

I don't see this discussion as about any singular brewery. You can find a brewery doing just about anything from strictly neipa, pastry stouts, slushie sours, and seltzer all the way to only styles that would have been available in a pub in 18th century Bavaria.

My point of view is that we are in an "innovative" era in the life of beer culture. There is an impulse, broadly, to try newer things and to seek out the "next hot style". Like all things, I assume beer culture will go through cycles and will eventually circle back to a more static position where most breweries are brewing a more stable selection of more basic beers. Some styles will have been added to the roster of " basic" (probably neipa, maybe the thick sweet stout) and we will have probably lost some styles as well. I just don't find the hand wringing about the "direction" of beer very accurate or useful

 

Innovation, e.g.: https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/new-beer-weekend-43.658582/#post-7259808

 

Maybe the point (?) here that the OP was trying to make, and I could be projecting here (of course), is that breweries might start with the fundamental beer styles FIRST, nail those down, then you can start tinkering.
Around here, and yes I'm an a**hole on this point, new breweries pop up and people have NO. IDEA. HOW. TO. MAKE. BASIC. STYLES. before they start creating "dark licorice saison stouts" or some such derivative. They haven't learned how to make a good solid lager, ale, stout, pils, anything, before they take the deep plunge. At a new brewery, just this past week, I tried a supposed "hoppy lager" that was neither hoppy nor had lager characteristics, and I also then tried a Kolsch which was basically completely flat. No CO2. WTF.

We crawl before we walk, and then we run later, but here in COS at least too many think they can come out swinging and they just.... strike out.

So it's no whack or bias against "innovation" whatever that means to you, but if you can't brew a basic beer, then your variants are unlikely to be that good. Period.