Back to Basics

I get it. You're tired of the candy bar shtick in beers. I'd stop buying them if you want them to go away

 

Yes, I will, but I doubt my meager boycott will make much difference.

I got suckered into that last one by the choice of candy bar.

 

They finally innovated just right for you

 

Sad but true.

 

Hah -- suckered, candy bar -- I see what you did there.

Slo-Poke? Tootsie Roll?

 

Sorry, Tootsie POP.

 

Ha!

 

You *know* what will happen now. If it already hasn't...

 

Unfortunately, I wouldn't expect most breweries to go "Back to Basics" anytime soon. I'm a member of an RI craft beer group on FB, and just about every post is a pic of a fruit smoothie beer or milkshake IPA. These are the types of beers that bring in the $$. I'm one of the few that post lagers, west coast IPAs, and English brews like Old Speckled Hen.

Ideally for me, a brewery will have 2-3 traditional styles available in addition to the popular stuff. That's all I'm asking for and fortunately there are plenty of breweries that follow this model.

 

The reason I always question this model is because I wonder for how long...Trends come and go but traditional beers have stood the test of time.

What will these breweries will do as more people go "back to basics"? or when people start realizing they don't need to pay a premium for good beer?

I guess we could assume they too will go back to basics and beer will have come full circle. The premium price part may be troublesome for some in the future???

 

Hopefully this isn't off topic, and I know this is just a tiny observation, but I wonder if it is true in the larger sense? It's been mentioned that brewers today aren't taught the basics before jumping into innovation. I was privileged to know and brew in a club with four men who went on to be brewmasters who brew successfully.. All we did was "the basics" as we built our skills and abilities.. We tried to improve skills doing traditional techniques and styles. Is this not true all over for homebrewers nowadays? Or is homebrewing no longer an avenue to being a brewmaster? I honestly don't know.

 

Yes, price is a huge factor here. Which is why I still spend most of my money at bottle shops vs breweries.

 

Cost-conscious drinkers are a completely different story. If I were so inclined I could go to my local Sam's Club which at the moment sells half-gallon bottle of Seagram's gin of 1L of Aviation for the same $9.99. Either would totally take me through the summer with no need to spend money on beer until August/September, when Costco starts selling Oktoberfest.

 

My guess is that most of the change away from home brewer - brew master trajectory is into the formal brewing training - brew master trajectory.

It may be that more home brewers these days only ever brew the trendy styles from the get go. I have no idea. But either way I don't think we can lay the blame for the relative decline in traditional styles (which I would characterize as the emergence and meteoric rise of several novel styles) on poorly trained brewers.

From what I observe as an overly interested outsider it seems like the stereotypical new brewery has shifted from a homebrewer who can muster investment to an investor/investor group who then go about finding what they believe to be qualified employees

 

I think the other concern @cavedave and @unlikelyspiderperson - is not just about background from homebrewing to commercial or retail brewing, but the SCALE of it. This is what I perceive to be the big "jump" when people do this. You can be a PHENOM-enal homebrewer with a small kit, but a LOUSY 3 barrel system micro-brewer, if the recipes and scaling up of ingredients, equipement, etc. elude the best homebrewer. I might be able to cook well, at home, for 2, in other words, but to run a restaurant? Jesus F'ing Christ no, I would suck at serving out 200 tables.

I see this, too, when a brewer goes from a smaller 3 bbl system up to 7 or 10 or XXX bbls a year because they think the ratios will stay the same as they scale UP in production.
Huge, and usually wrong, assumptions... fun convo. One of the few that I've chimed in on more than once, as this one hits home (quite literally).

 

That's a very good question and I think it is a part of the overall topic. So you learn the basics as a home brewer - good process, good ingredients, sanitation, etc. Then maybe you want to open a brewery. You start out by making those basic styles which are apparently unpopular and don't sell well, so you don't make money, and whoops you are right back to the basement again. It's all related and I think it is quite a vicious circle. Or as a new kid on the block do you skip all the basics, maybe never even learn them, and jump into what's hip? An established brewery can do the mix thing - they can carry four or five brands that satisfy the basics and provide the "innovative" (an sickeningly over-used term) brews as well either on the regular or as rotational offerings. Not explaining it well - I have a picture of a dog chasing it's own tail in my head here...how do you break in to that circle?

I look at a brewer like Jack's Abby - a lager brewery that certainly knows their craft. They do a solid core line up, but they play around as well with different styles and variations on a theme. And they opened up Springdale Barrel Room to do some really cool things that don't quite fit the JA model. Innovative - maybe. Derivative or variations seems more likely. Whatever you want to call it they have "stuck to their knitting" and stayed with some basics, but have been able to offer variety, tweak their core lineup once in a while, and do some "experimentation" via two different avenues.

And another thing I wonder - I know of a few breweries who's main thing is "flavored" one thing or another (like, I never met an additive I won't dump in) and some were truly heinous examples - I mean nonsensical flavor combinations. But what I wonder more broadly - is diving into the "additives" pool easier? So can you brew a pretty lousy "base beer" and put lipstick on the pig to satisfy the casual crowd looking for the new shiney or flavor of the week? I know there's skill to some of the "new age" beers, but adding a bunch of flavorings is simply blending things. It seems to me that somehow the need for skill can potentially be lost.

It may sound like I have a harsh outlook on new places, and I guess in a way I do. Some of that is based on observation - not just the products, but how the brewery is operated, maintained, etc. which goes back to that learning of the basic skills and knowing one's craft. But as many breweries I see that never quite figure things out yet somehow survive, there are many who do improve and eventually prosper.

 

Of course, scaling up is and always has been a problem for all brewers.

You claim in a post just above that brewers today have less training in classical styles, and hint at it also in the reply I quote. I am curious if it is true, and, if so, why this is? Is this your own experience with learning to brew nowadays? Is it your experience speaking to newer brewers? Others have said the same thing. I guess I am curious if brewers today are trained differently so that classical styles and techniques aren't taught or considered as important as they were for me and every other home brewer and professional brewer I know?

 

This is a good.point, and coupled with the near exponential growth the segment was seeing could explain a lot of the poor quality beer out there.

I tend to think that the sensation that spurs these kinds of concerns arise from two main things;

1. The avalanche of new brewers, who break down along pretty typical lines with ~10% being shitty, ~5% being something special, ~85% good but nothing special
   
2. The concurrent rise of these styles that, frankly, tolerate way more technical flaws (smoothie sour, pastry stout, milkshake IPA, the inverse trinity of demon lord) and image focused social media among exactly the younger demographic that is likely to consume these styles in greater volume.

These two things make for more actual examples, good bad and ugly, of these newer styles combined with a social media impression that there are even more of those styles as a proportion of all beers

 

I never thought I would be chasing lagers, pilsners and APAs