How “Far” Beer Has Come…

Yes, money does indeed make the world go round.
I am not a seltzer conniseur by any means, and I just don't get it. I just don't appreciate craft seltzer I guess. Craft Seltzer, is that even a thing?
And, whether I am perusing a shelf in a store or I am at a brewery drinking fresh craft draft, I always think, "look at all that seltzer taking up space!" But, if it helps our breweries to do well, then I suppose we should all support that.

 

I was walking around said brewery over the weekend and half the folks had bright colored slushies with straws sticking out of them or seltzers in their hand. and I thought, "is this what breweries are now gonna look like?" half beer at best? of course, I can only answer that question for my brewing operation. and as we tell ppl asking if we have anything like an ipa, the answer is "no.... but if you go to any one of the other places around town you can almost guaranteed get what you're looking for there."

 

Pretty complete discussion. One outfit does actually "do it all". McMenamins is primarily a brewpub chain (also hotels, concert venues, movie theaters) but also makes wine and distilled spirits (plus coffee), so have jumped through all the hoops that have been set up. I'm not sure how well they're navigating the current unsettled environment of beer fads, as well as the Covid impact on going out. They seem to be surviving, which suggests to me that their business was not highly leveraged.

 

This is all very well put. I couldn't agree more.

 

Replace "two styles"/"pastry stout" with "IPAs" and "sweet" with "bitter", and this is an almost verbatim echo of posts I made a decade ago.

Sometimes the market swings in a direction that doesn't align perfectly with your tastes. In my experience, that doesn't mean the things that fulfill your tastes vanish entirely, but it does mean there are fewer of them and they're harder to find.

I haven't heard of a brewery yet that does only pastry stouts and ends up with lines around the block to sell out on release day every release day, but past trends have demonstrated that's a possibility.

 

And I would say that you were right. I don't think the trend towards heavily hopped beers is a great direction for the beer industry either. Although I was likely to be dismissive of concerns like yours decade ago because I like hoppy beers and I was young and inexperienced with any "craft beer" that wasn't hoppy.

There is another distinction that's worth exploring though. The aggressive ipas of a decade ago at least challenged drinkers to explore a flavor palate outside of their comfort zone. What does it look like if we, as a community of beer needs, exalt beers that lean into our most basic flavor preferences from childhood?

 

Most folks around here were. It's almost like craft beer selects for people capable of exploring a range of flavors that includes bitter or something, weird.

One could argue the aggressive IPAs were also just an expression of the "Hell Yeah Extreme Taste!!!!!!!" attitude that the US is particularly known for. In which case, I would gesture at the current trend as yet another facet of that same basic urge. Tough to get beer more hoppy than a triple dry hopped quintuple IPA that's probably 75% by weight pure hop oils, but plenty of room on the sweet side to crank it to 11...then 12...then 243...

I may be biased myself, as I enjoy sweeter beers and having more options on more tap handles when I go out. But I'll still order a well-done kellerbier or maibock over the latest Triple Fudge Marshmallow Butterscotch Twizzler Zero Bar Mountain Dew Trix Candy Apple Caramel Pecan Rhubarb Syrup stout 9 times out of 10 (which is probably why my current favorite Ohio breweries are Wolf's Ridge and Jackie O's).

A side effect I noticed of the IPA craze was that better quality versions of other styles tended to stick, while more mediocre ones did not, though a fair amount of quality options I enjoyed did get the axe (stares at Great Lakes The Doppelrock). A possible kind of silver lining?

 

• Social Liberal
• Fiscal Moderate
• Beer Conservative

Drink as you like. I will do the same.

 

I wanna hear more about these magic spoons.

 

That is a wonderful point right there

 

That was a wonderful convo. Or is.

 

I really think there's an interesting conversation to be had right now about what we think of the current beer scene, where it's heading, and where we want it to head. As the beer cognosenti (I looked it up and I believe anyone who spends any time on these boards qualifies, also one of the reasons I hope that @cavedave wont make good on his plan to bow out of the convo) I think that there's value in stepping back and taking stock of where this little corner of the culture that we all hold dear is at.

I genuinely don't want a future where the only beer, or majority of the beer, available is beer that I already like. At the same time, I wonder what a beer market that introduces itself to new customers with fruit smoothies and liquid pastries looks like in a decade?

I am also a bit of an optimist and hope that maybe if we can practice calmly disagreeing with each other without losing respect for one another about something as mundane as our favorite intoxicants then maybe we can spread that to more emotional issues as well

 

ive worked in several bottle shops and liquor stores over the last decade. things have changed, no doubt. what hasnt? i love ipas. i also enjoy sours, wild fermented as well as smoothies. i enjoy dark lagers, black ipas and a really solid pilsner or kolsch. i can appreciate stouts, BBA with subtle adjuncts and pastry laden, but neither is my go to. i think my age group, mid 30's, is right in a sweet spot where we enjoy the "old" and the "new". one isnt better than the other. do i think seltzers are kinda lame? yeah. have i enjoyed a smooj or untitled art smoothie seltz that was phenomenal? hell yes. ive lurked heavily in these forums for a couple years now and quite frankly i often find quite a bit of elitism in the posts. beer is beer, just like jim beam red stag is bourban. beer is awesome and there are so many styles everyone can/should cbe happy. i see young folks purchasing "smoothie/pastry/hazy" beers exclusively, and showing a great passion and enthusiasm for doing so, unwilling to settle for the trash money grab efforts in the styles. just like i see plenty of other young folks seeking lagers, hefes, wcipas and other more traditional styles. hell we've been flying through various imported oktoberfests (i would say equally in comparison with pumpkin beers). anyway im rambling, beer is amazing, its a regular part of tons of ppls lives. why cant we all just get along!? maybe im just lucky where i reside, but i see top notch smoothies, classic imports, belgians, lactose everything, old school craft standbys and tons of neipas selling all the time. also alot of ppl mixing 6's of all of the above. the future is parity, experimentation and whole bunch of drunk ppl who love what they drink. cheers!

 

The pastry stout idea has been around for a while, as well. Take Off Color Brewing out of Chicago as an example. I remember Dino Smores being well regarded on this site way back when, while they were (and still are) making good sahtis, goses, saisons, bieres de mars...but their most sought-after beer was that marshmallow stout. (Of course, they are from a town where one of the more popular chains literally puts a piece of chocolate cake with icing in a blender with some ice cream to sell as milkshakes...and has for ages.)

On a personal note, Off Color's Le Predateur variant on one of their saisons was the first beer I ever tried where I actually got "nectarine juice" as a flavor out of it despite that not being an "addjunk", and thus some degree of insight into what people probably got out of IPAs. But I originally looked at the brewery because they had a s'more stout.

The more "extreme" the flavor, the bigger a standout it tends to be, and the more attention it draws to the brewery and its other products. Given that craft lagers survived the IPA wave, I'd bet all the styles we collectively love around here make it through the carbonated fruit smoothie and cereal cake frappe era.

 

Since you work in the beer retail industry perhaps you can provide some additional input. Part of me want to not begrudge people who prefer to drink stuff like hard seltzers, smoothies, stuff with lots of 'adjunks', etc. but for me the 'challenging' part is that at my local beer retailers, which have limited shelf space, that means they are carrying less beer (that tastes like beer) brands and instead the shelves are crowded with the other stuff. What do the store(s) that you work at do in this regard? Do they expand their retail space (e.g., knock down the wall(s) to expand) so they do not have to reduce beer product availability? Or do they just eliminate beer brands to sell this new stuff?

On a related note things are sometimes even more 'challenging' at craft beer bars where the tap handles are mostly the other stuff while previously they would be serving beer that tastes like beer.

Cheers!

 

we havent had to tear down any walls, although expansion would be awesome. honestly there have been and will always be brands that get dropped, its the nature of the game. if someone comes in and cant find what they want we will special order anybody anything so long as its available in the state. maybe your stores need to step their game up! space is definitely limited, but we order accordingly. not every new seltz gets in, nor every new ipa. you have to be picky and that allows room for everything else.

 

On the plus side, at a few of the smaller stores that I buy beer at most regularly the influx of styles that I am absolutely disinterested in means I have less of a difficult decision and the varieties they do carry of styles I like tend to be fresher than was the norm 5 or 6 years ago. Of course, I've also lost access to some brands that I really enjoyed. Those brands were generally hard to find fresh except every now and again when a fresh batch came in.

Definitely a give and take going on there

 

The challenge that I discussed.

And for a consumer like me who prefers beer that taste like beer more of a situation of "take".

Cheers!

 

Well I've no doubt from your posts on this site that you've got plenty of beer flavored beer at your fingertips.

 

Not a huge issue for me since most of the beer I drink is homebrewed. I have over a dozen batches in my basement and all of those batches are beers that taste like beer.

Cheers!