Are American Craft Breweries Ruining Beer?

Craft brewers aren't ruining beer.
Craft brewers are potentially ruining craft beer as some knew it... with the cooperation of consumers.

 

Seems to me that the idea of throwing different flavors into beer to hide or compliment the alcohol, and make a refreshing, interesting beverage of grain, water, and yeast, is as old as the brewing of beer itself. It can be argued that the craft beer revolution was and is a reaction to the lack of experimentation.that in some ways resulted in the "light lagerization" of the majority of the world's beer drinkers.

 

No. This too shall pass.

 

Sure, why not. Next thing ya know, they'll start making bubbly water with alcohol in it.

 

Nah. Enjoy a treat now and again! Ebbs and tides of new ideas/beers are daily but you'll always be able to find really good quality basic beers that aren't all changed up to ride the coattails of some trend. Cheers!

 

Are you saying that there should only be Bud, Coors, and Miller beer? Seems kind of boring to me.

 

Brewing beer with oreos, tang, blue raspberry kooooaid, etc... is a fad I hope passes soon .... even though some of those adjunct laden RIS are pretty damn tasty.

But personally, I would love to see the next big thing be to figure out beer with what you can do with "beer" ingredients and not what artificial shit you can buy by the 60 gallon drum from Amazon.

 

It may just be your area. I understand Florida is an epicenter of modern, heavily flavored styles. However, from my travels around the country, there is a ton of traditional styles being made all over the place. British session ales seem to be pretty niche and not often packaged, but other than that I can't think of any traditional styles that I haven't encountered in packaged format in the last 2 years (and honestly, I've gotten two English milds in cans in 2020).

My last 3 purchases, all from American brewers (well one is an Austrian brewer with a brewery in California), we're a pilsner with noble hops, a plain old porter, and a black lager. For sure I walked past all sorts of oddly flavored beers containing fruits and baked goods of every description. But luckily, I can read, and I know what kinds of beers I like, and those beers are still on the shelf. As usual, I will argue that American brewers are producing a wider variety of traditional styles than any other place in history.

 

They wouldn't make it if it didn't sell.

 

Ruining, no. Trying to keep up with the glut of other Brewers attempting to get more market share, yes.

Remember dog fish head using ingredients from the kitchen decades ago? After that hop breeders cultivated hops to have different aromas, increased bittering and new tastes and they are still at it.

I also prefer the early craft beer taste to many of the new beers currently being offered. That's why I home brew and will continue to.
If ya don't likem, don't buy em!

 

Wouldn't say ruining craft beer but they are pushing me away from craft beer. I don't even bother with the local breweries anymore and find myself buying almost all my beer from large craft breweries (mostly SN) and macro breweries.

 

I've been fairly vocal about my frustrations with so many breweries throwing pastry in stouts, pureed fruit in sours, and lactose in IPAs, but I would stop well short of saying that American brewers are ruining craft. At the same time that these aforementioned brews dominate the shelves I'm also able to find stuff like:

Schilling Modernism (https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/32906/197569/)
Notch Altbiter (https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/22723/429181/)
JA Shipping out of Boston (https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/26520/461807/)
JA Post Shift Pilsner (https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/26520/271260/)
Fox Farm Welly (https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/45832/523413/)
Mayflower Porter (https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/16105/41839/)

These six beers are awesome, in my opinion and reflect what I want out of some brews. So long as they, or stuff like them, are on shelves and tap handles, then American Craft brewers will be getting a pat on the back from me.

 

Pretty much how I look at it: that trendy stuff is Craft Beer. Narrowly, craft beer is what's made for ever changing 'craft beer culture', and that's what they want.

Everything else falls into a broader category, whatever you want to call it. 'Beer', in general, is doing fine by me.

 

Some of these pastry stout brewers need to consult with a pastry chef. I don’t enjoy them either way but I especially cringe when I see combos like peanut butter, coconut, marshmallow and maple syrup. WTF?!?! When have any of those ingredients been combined in any sort of dessert?!? The flavor combination Makes zero sense! You wanna throw sugary shit in a beer? Fine, whatever. But don’t just go haphazardly throwing anything you can find in a bakery. Model your pastry beer from some kind of realistic dessert.

Also, I think the pendulum is starting to swing the other way back to classic styles. Or at least more breweries are making both to appease both types of consumers.

 

Yep, if not completely because of…

I sort of argue that we sort of are in the same spot with bulk of the market. A bunch of beers that all look and taste similar, take up all the shelf space, and don’t taste like beer. It’s very similar to the complaints on those big names you mentioned years ago.

I also realize that there is still way more traditional made beer now too. I’m just making a point on the biggest part of the craft market.

 

Craft brewers have been experimenting for sometime too. There for a long time, people would encourage others to get creative through homebrewing or randal'ing new flavors into beer. Now those creative folks own breweries, and suddenly people are upset.

Of course, you could alleviate this by: homebrewing or opening up your own brewery, should you want to try and restart the cycle.

 

No.
"Craft Beer" is not being ruined by American brewers, it is changing in an attempt to create and keep up with a diminishing consumer demand thanks to seltzers and other malt-ternatives.

I demand beers that usually have some clarity, malt and hop flavor. I don't look for funky new ingredients, sours, lactose or added fruit, etc.

It is difficult to find new examples of the traditional styles that I prefer but it can be done.

In my happy little region, several breweries offer traditional styles in addition to NEIPAs, sours and pastry Stouts. Cheers.

 

I like the analogy between AAL and NEIPA, I do enjoy both styles on occasion but enough is enough.

 

I don’t know where some of you guys live but where I am of course the IPAs and stouts dominate shelf space but there’s also a ton of lagers coming out all the time too of all varieties. It’s hard to be upset. At least in my humble opinion, the options are so plentiful it’s hard to miss. Of course I buy stuff occasionally I don’t like, but that’s the flip side of the coin when there’s as many options as there are. I personally like most beer styles so I can’t speak to being upset because there’s a ton of shelf space and it’s not all dominated by my favorite style. The best thing I can recommend is to visit several stores in and around your area and you should be able to find diversity in the options. I frequent several stores and breweries to stock my fridge the way I want to. Overall, I feel like most of us can agree the options are more plentiful now than ever before and of course the styles preferred by the masses are going to be on the top shelf. Cheers.