Are American Craft Breweries Ruining Beer?

A more interesting question than the one posed in the thread title is what impact online platforms like Untappd (and to a lesser extent BA) are having on beer culture?

In the “ruining beer” column, I might include the ticker-influenced never drink the same beer twice trend. Which gave way to the 45 variants of the same beer, 44 of which are worse than the original trend. The low ratings for beers that aren’t XTreme to the Max trend.

Not to say there aren’t positives too: spreading the word about excellent beers faster and making them easier than ever to get a hold of. Etc.

 

Part of the lack of sympathy is how no one justifies what they want out of this complaining (@JackHorzempa mentioned the lack of local Czech Dark lager after some prying last time.) I don't sympathize with posters wanting the olden days back without describing what it is they missed about the olden days. Were Czech Dark lagers really made with enough frequency back then (5 years ago? 10 years ago?) that you could buy them day-to-day, or perhaps seasonally? Examples like that would help provide some context for the complaining and shifting in different markets, otherwise we'll all be operating off the views of our own markets (again, as Jack stated.) In fact, those examples, could then become criticism, which could be helpful to know and keep in mind

Personally, I love the Czech Dark lager style, along with barleywines. Aside from Stone's Old Guardian disappearing, I can't think of any other changes to those styles in my area, despite the proliferation of IPAs. Neither was available with any consistency in years past. In fact, the change (in my market) has been an increase in both of these styles, with two Czech Dark lagers, and two barleywines offered over the past year. None of those three breweries existed more than five years ago, and only just offered those styles this year. Will they be made again? Hard to say. Do I want more of them to be made? Sure. So whenever they do get made, I make sure to buy up several.

Until people voice what it is they want out of this complaining, it'll just be unbridled complaints. Quantify it. Did options you enjoyed with consistency disappear in the past five years? Past year? What were they? Did the breweries go under, get bought out, or did they swap over production to other styles? Be specific, otherwise we're all sitting in our own bubbles.

Props to a few local users for providing some tangible desires.

For the record, I have complained about my market before. Specifically, I disliked that we didn't have a local NE IPA producer ~5 years ago. Now we have two, which fits into the market share well. Now we still have yet to have a brewery produce heavy stouts or barleywines with any consistency. Perhaps this winter we will see it.

EDIT: You quantified your point in a subsequent post while I was typing this up. I love to see it.

 

BrewDog tried and failed…

 

The "RIP Summerfest" thread was quite the discussion - achieving 17 pages in length:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/rip-summerfest.652715/

Cheers!

 

West coast IPAs will be back! And to me this year feels like the year of the pilsners and lagers...so I'm excited I stay away from the trends of milkshake IPAs and these thick sours. If I want a Berliner I reach for professor fritz 1809. I'm all about true to the style. But if you enjoy thick sours with granola in them then cheers to you!

 

That's all well and good (and I'm going to read through this over the coming days), but I want context for users in this thread (or any subsequent threads.) Support your views.

There's a lot of talk of "every market is different", but I'm not hearing what specifically is happening in these markets with upset BA users, aside from the proliferation of IPAs. Is that because they don't have local breweries? Or are all of those local breweries shifting to IPA production? Were there local, traditional options available in the past five years, or did the user rely on production from regionals (who have, admittedly, gone towards IPA focused profiles)?

I'm not going to guess your situation. Help me understand where you're coming from.

Not you specifically, Jack. We've discussed this numerous times, and I value that discussion. I want to hear from others.

 

But only because nobody could understand their damn accents...

 

Indeed, it is a laughable idea . Some folks break the craft brew movement into different eras that make it appear the movement is centuries old, rather than a few decades (being kind). It is only about 15 years ago when BA had a thread titled, "That New Style- Double IPA", and more than half of the best known American craft breweries hadn't even opened for business.

Add, Delusional craft beer drinkers with faulty memories are killing Craft Beer

 

I agree it's hard to find "normal" beers at local breweries that are all taking part of the NEIPA, pasty stout, other adjunct beer craze. There's at least one brewery near me that stuck to their guns and brew great pub ales and other European styles. They have one or two hazy beers on tap, but they're at least normal, not overly hopped or fruited. I think a lot of it has to do with regional over-saturation of breweries.

These days it seems if you want to stand out, don't follow the fad. It's one of the reasons I love Dovetail Brewing. My wife and I found them years ago when they got their start and it's great to see that they're still killing it. You end up reducing your production costs because you don't need as much hops and you can sell it for a more reasonable price. A crisp, clean, flavorful beer will always win in my book. I'm not one for a brewery with crazy profits, but I prefer to be that brewery that makes quality beer with an excellent selection of styles, and better pricing than anyone else in the area. Certainly no need to charge $6 for an English Bitter! I judge a brewery by their kolsch or pilsner. If you can nail either of those, then you're a quality facility.

 

Good on you!

Herd those cats!!



Cheers!

 

This made me think of some scenes from Seinfeld:

 

Probably because they were always taking out of their arses.

 

...or that OPs don't bother reading what has been recently posted and already discussed ad infinitum.

 

Really? From my POV, there's been a great change to the production of those two types in the past decade.

 

This should be quite a controversial topic.

I sort of agree with the OP's sentiment that the state of craft beer is not exactly to my liking, and that I often feel "out of touch" with it, like craft beer doesn't offer me as much as I'd like.

I think the bigger problem is the general lack of experience and the sort of enthusiast/hobby culture around local craft brewing, where the brewer usually has a story where they had a well-paying job they didn't like and took a crack at homebrew, and then decided to fully invest as a company, despite lacking any sort of classical training. I think this leads to a problem with quality and a situation where these brewers tend towards styles that are easier, more common, or more popular (where they can get a "free pass" for a poor brew -- think all the mediocre and bad NEIPAs floating around the market).

My dream would be to have a brewery in my area ran by a classically trained brewer from Britain or Germany, and this is definitely possible with the craft beer industry (think Urban Chestnut, KC Bier, Altstadt, or Live Oak), but just not in my area.

 

I guess I was oblivious to those being available when I got into craft beer. I couldn't name you an example of a local one outside of the past year. But that's what I'm here to learn.

 

Time to move?

As a FYI both Ron Barchet and Bill Covaleski of Victory Brewing were trained (and Ron commercially brewed) in Germany.

Cheers!