Craft beer predictions for 2022 from 2012

@Omer4176 said "It will be mainstream and somehow I get the feeling that it wont be as much fun as it is now. Call me a pessimist."

Spot on. I think the general landscape has changed drastically. I miss when breweries and brewpubs were places to hang out and drink good beer with good people. I'm tired of seeing little kids running around breweries unsupervised, I'm tired of the infiltration of bros, I'm tired of breweries with draft boards filled only w hazies, pastries, and kettle sours.

While I know there is room for everyone and I don't have to go to and support breweries and brewpubs with cultures I don't care for, it does become a bummer when you see the culture transition more and more this way.

There are still awesome groups and communities and new ones being formed that make me love the community and hobby. BUT. With exponential growth comes exponential douchebags, both in the forms of brewers/breweries and their customers.

 

is this no longer the case in your area?

 

There are definitely good places by me. I’m just saying that as the market has grown exponentially it seems like there has been exponential growth in crappy places as well that kind of flood the scene. It’s like this with everything. Nothing grows to only produce 100% quality outcomes. There will be good and bad and you have to decipher what that places are for you.

 

I think I see what you're saying, although I didn't experience any time when all the breweries that were opening were a quality product. But there was a time where it seemed like good beer was more often the focus of a new brewery and now there are more and more places that seem to aim to be more of a pub/restaurant/community gathering space with beer as one aspect of it.

I also recognize that my area is apparently different than most places in that locally made beer has been a staple of the local community for over 30 years and by the time I moved here 17 years ago the local breweries were as much popular bars/restaurants for the community as they were hubs for niche beer geeks. Around here, you've always had to seek out a good beer bar if you wanted to reliably find other beer needs because the breweries would always be full of a good mix of the community at large

 

Right. I’m not saying every place used to be good but I enjoyed the community and people involved a lot more. Even when the beer wasn’t as good or the number of quality curated places weren’t as plentiful the general community was more preferable to now. This is just my opinion from my location.

 

Thomas West Virginia
Breweries: 2
Population: 603

 

Yeah I think it's just a symptom of any niche interest going mainstream. When it's niche, everyone involved has a baseline appreciation that unites them. Once its mainstream you might as well be on the subway or at the park, it's just a bunch of people who live near by.

 

Well I will come out and say it but I already knew Italian craft beer would never be as big as I had foolishly hoped! You can see the posts I made and boy was I ever wrong about it!

But I will share with you that I made a very huge regret by not meeting the Italian legends such as Teo Musso and Lorenzo Dabove here at the World Beer Cup in 2016 in Philly. Sighs...oh well!

 

What I found most interesting is how few BA members I recognized on the thread. Where art thou, @yemenmocha ??