Craft's Proliferation Problem

I don't see any cause for concern with this. The well known bars that sell rotating craft handles always seem to be busy. I am willing to bet places like BWW, Hooters, and Chillis are losing a lot of sales by having 10 taps and having 9 of them being Macro/"premium imports." The last of those 10 being Sam Adams. I would bet that if they kicked Shocktop and Heineken to the curb and stocked a good strong craft it would increase their sales. I rarely order one of these beers, and often just go with iced tea in these situations so my wife can drink wine and enjoy herself. Hell, I rarely go to chain restaurants anyway, but if I really need to buy wings I normally get them take out so I can have my preferred drink with them.

I hear them saying that all the time. Normally not as a good thing those as you are intending.

 

I found this line interesting in the way it is presented. Craft has a 30 share (in bars and restaurants, not overall) and it is being presented as that is why craft should be limited to that share in the draft offerings. What isn't being said is that a 30 share is the highest of any category. Light beers are the next highest category at 21%. Craft would have more than 3 or 4 handles (out of 10) because it has become the dominant segment, and because it is the only one outside of imports that is growing.

 

Well said, and I think this goes a long way in answering some of @breadwinner 's points above. He also asks who it is hurting, and I would consider myself like-minded as you with the above quote. I'm seeing annoying rotation of taps that seem to be just rotation for whatever is new, local, has a cool name, or is hard to get, and an enormous change from a decade ago or more when I think there was more focus on trying to have the best beers available on tap. I think you understated it when you said it squeezes out poor to mediocre beer - I think it goes further because I've seen it squeeze out really good beer. I've asked bartenders why they're not bringing back various beers and they outright told me that the beer(s) I mentioned are great and sell among the best, but their overall goal is instead to rotate a lot of different beers through the lines. They want to be a place that always has a lot of new stuff.

I think you're on to some important points here and this has been the source of many of my gripes about craft beer going more mainstream. Unlike the veteran beer hobbyist type of consumer, more mainstream consumers can have different preferences that aren't necessarily going to be seen as beneficial. I don't care if it sounds elitist to say that, and I think people who give a knee-jerk criticism of what I just said need to see how it feels when some of their favorite and highly rated beers are pulled from the taps to make more room for Coors Blue Moon or Shock Top or whatever (hey, the majority prefers those beers). Or maybe the majority prefers just trying new beers all the time, so no matter how much you'd like to reliably have fresh Founders or Ballast Point beers, you're going to have a hard time because they want to put on Monkey Knife Fight or whatever the newest, coolest, etc. beer is out there for everyone to try. To use some unpleasant stereotypes, it's as if much of the new mainstream consumers are johnny come lately tickers who are having an enormous influence on the market, and those of us who want to "drink best" more so than "drink whatever I haven't tried" are going to bear the brunt of that.

 

Yes, that's an on-point expansion of the point about the proliferation of choices squeezing out options. I've seen the good options being removed in favor of new beer in the style du jour as well, on both shelf space and tap handles, in addition to the examples I gave (that probably only have meaning around the Great Lakes region) of production of those beers being halted entirely in favor of producing more of the currently trendy beers.

There are potential replacements and other options available for those who go looking, certainly. But there's fewer of them, and they're carried in fewer places. Throw in evidence everywhere that the feedback to the industry is turning into "just more of these specific beers please, cut everything else" - for exhibit A on that, I'd say the Sam Adams Rebel IPA that is near universally insulted on all the forums but still has an rAvg of 3.5, a score many quite good lagers struggle to reach - and we get the current situation: plenty of trendy options, features of the trendy options being shoved into other styles, fewer options for less trendy styles (plus the aforementioned blending of trendy features into them), and fewer places to find those non-trendy options.

We as a site and community like to complain about a time when the only choices were AALs and a handful of imports. I'd hope we wouldn't welcome pretty much the same situation, except with IPAs and BA stouts instead.

 

In an odd way, I'd argue that for some of us we already have that situation but in different guise. I can honestly say there are times I've been to craft beer bars with 20 or so taps and not a single beer I want to drink. That never happened to me in the 90's or early 2000's.

 

I think the expanded growth is good for an informed beer buyer, Ok that said in general maybe not so good overall. Just take IPAs for example, I look at a slew on the shelf, there may be 5-6 that are really good .... If they're fresh. A big if because they're not all dated, actually very few are. So yes there's a glut, but a guy who knows what's up can pick thru the chaff, but the rush to add to the line can be disappointing. Surely these Brewers know what a world class Dipa tastes like, the competition that's out there. Surely they know what they're pushing isn't always it. So stuff sits and average becomes undrinkable because it doesn't sell, making the whole cycle worse. If there's no date, and beer drinkers don't know it's time sensitive they just pass it off as a crappy beer. When if fact it might be a good beer fresh, but it isn't. I shouldn't see ipas on shelf bottled in Nov but I do.

See Double Jack here, it's not really even remotely fresh in most cases, but fresh it's killer good. It's one of those that easily falls thru the cracks, and a good example of a good beer bring stigmatized.

 

There is definitely a bubble that will burst to some extent. There are so many "me too" breweries that have jumped on the craft bandwagon a certain amount of correction is inevitable, especially for those with less than stellar offerings. I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing.

 

Man, you must have (had) the mother of all Krogers, because I've never seen an Orval/Dupont/Ayinger in a Kroger, much less any non-boutique (i.e., TJ's or Whole Foods) grocery store, and that's over a couple decades of paying attention. Maybe it's just a regional thing?

HB's international variety crack aside, it's not like these beers can't be found, of course. It just means you have to hit the bottle shop, big box beer/wine store, etc., rather than a grocer.

I'd love to hear what, exactly, a tap list from a decade ago (or more) looked like that compares so favorably to now. Because I have no such recollection. There's this implication that a decade or two ago, Saison Dupont, Celebrator, and Landlord flowed from the taps like water. Either you lived in a very different place than I did, or, more likely, some selective memory is at play. A decade or two ago, most bars were packed with non-craft offerings, and there were precious, precious few bars even devoted to craft handles. Perhaps you're saying that you're just frustrated a beer from that era, that you like immensely, isn't on all the time now, like Sculpin or Two-Hearted. If that's the case, I guess I feel for you...I guess...except for that those beers are still readily available, if not on tap somewhere else, then certainly off-premise, which sort of brings me to my next point...

With all due respect, I call bullshit. Or, at the very least, I suggest you possess a surprising narrowness of palate. I call bullshit on the supposed glory years of the 90s and 2000s. I call bullshit on not being able to find one single beer you'd like to drink in a taplist of 20. Maybe what would assuage my doubt is an example -- give me a tap list of 20 beers you came across recently, in which each beer was not worth drinking.

Some good comments here, man, and I hear your concern about style creep (i.e., everything becoming more hoppy), reduced option, etc. I still maintain that, when I peruse the aisle of my local bottle shop, I see no shortage of good old pale ales, (non imperial) stouts and porters, and, to a lesser extent, lagers, though with the latter I think it's important to acknowledge that lagers, outside of BMC, have never been a huge feature of the craft movement. (Sure, there are iconic exceptions like Boston Lager, but even 10 and 20 years ago, lagers weren't, to my mind, big pieces of breweries' portfolios. Particularly out West where I'm from.) Sure, I've been in bars with, say, 10 taps, and half are IPAs. Is it a little tiring? Sure, I guess. Except for that a) usually there's still a non-IPA I can dig, and b) I probably won't return often to that bar, as there are many others with much better variety.

It's also worth pointing out, and I hope it doesn't come off as blaming the victim here, that you've expressed an absolute intolerance to hoppy beer. To that end, any increase in the popularity of any hoppy beer was going to adversely affect you, no?

 

My take? Not a problem.

Darwin's natural selection also applies here. Less worthy products will get less love and slowly vanish, beers more loved by the consumer will do well, and by providing a variety at all times, there are always beers to appeal to the consumer's changing interests.

 

It isn't so hard to imagine.

Imports is very different situation now. In decades past I found it easier to find German tap handles, especially Weissbiers and pilsners. Similar for Belgians. Just easier to find then. And British beers? With a handful of exceptions, it has been more than a decade since I've seen a few Fuller's taps, some Marston Pedigree, Whitbread, and the like. Instead, the norm I see now is 100% American or at least 80-90%.

For American craft, things are very different now. In the 90's it was more common that breweries had their versions of traditional styles. Pale Ales were common. I really like pale ales. And they weren't something that could now really be labeled a "session IPA". They were real pale ales. Maybe they had a straight up Porter, Dry Stout, Amber Ale etc. Today it is far, far more common that it's something like a Rye Ginger Cinnamon Pale Ale, or Tree Bark Mole Mushroom Stout, or any other of a long list of silly "innovative" ingredients that make many craft beers so "innovative" these days. Today when I find that rare moment of seeing something like an American brewer with a Pils I get excited at first and then have the huge letdown when I read that oh, it's made with pear juice and pear tea.

And lastly, there's the trend of having various taps on the handles just because they're local. I'll save the rant, but many of them are just not worth the calories.

So, reconsider the allegations of BS. If someone likes imports, especially Germans, and has an aversion for "innovative" ingredient beers as well as low scoring no-name locals, it isn't so inconceivable that there's nothing on a taplist of 20 that I would want to drink.

 

A couple thoughts -- first, I'd submit that spot in Columbia was the extreme exception to the rule. Second, whether stuff like Lindeman's Peche/Pomme/Framboise + Guiness + Bass + Harp are something to be nostalgic is questionable. Finally, the list you provide is, indeed, in some ways narrower than the previous example. Lotta IPAs on that board. 2 porters. 2 stouts. 1 BA stouts (btw, how many of those popped up back in the day? Whether you like them or not, apparently a lot of folks do now, and they might like the fact that they might have a little more access to them these days.) A hoppy amber. A terrible lager (egad, strawberry?!) I'm not saying it's the best list in the world, but it could be worse. And the bigger question is whether your Columbia spot from the 90s is representative of its era, and, if not, whether you might find a similar establishment these days that more closely aligns with it.

 

Hell yes. Some of your exact examples bring back fond memories.

I used to get 1L krugs of Konig Pils at once place, maybe have three of them and stumble onto the red line to get home. Or perhaps start with a Weihenstephaner Kristall, Kostritzer after that, and finish with a couple Fuller London Porters. I remember having some of those exact beer combos.

 

I'm not sure if you enjoy pale ale but I think they were much more common back then too. Balanced ones. Malty by today's "standards". The British beers were a treat for me. One place in Tempe here had Fuller's London Pride, Fuller's ESB, Fuller's London Porter, Whitbread, Double Diamond, McEwan's Scotch Ale, and a few others. All in one place. Today it's a rare thing to find - oh look, there's London Porter on tap!!!

 

I do have a complete inability to appreciate hoppy beer (which your lumping in "pale ales" as non-hoppy beers really illustrates just how much of an inability it is), this is true. That being said, an increase in the popularity of hoppy beer that did not also trigger the retirement or removal from inventory indefinitely of known good non-hoppy beer would be fine and dandy with me.

I don't intend to take shots at specific beers here, but when something like Troegenator remains available (which is a good beer, which I do purchase and enjoy) and is touted by many as an extremely good doppelbock while something like The Doppelrock (at least to me, way closer to the Korbinian / Celebrator tier than almost any other domestic doppelbock I've tried, in mouthfeel, dark fruit notes, malt layers, and so forth) gets booted because "more IPAs needed, new ones, while also keeping every old one we've ever made too"...and by a brewery that got a lot of its original following with how good their lagers are, no less...

Throw in the complaints from those who do enjoy hoppy beer about freshness concerns, with walls upon walls of IPAs going out of date all over the place, and it's looking less like we really need more new beers stacked on top of every brewery's existing portfolios, and more like trimming every category down to the good stuff before worrying about making more beer du jour may be a better idea.

You see no shortage of options. I see fewer options than I used to see that are not the trends of the day. Luckily, I enjoy sours, so that particular wave is going in my favor - but by the same token, I don't want to be faced with shelves and shelves and shelves and shelves of sours, and a handful of options of other styles which may or may not have brett strains or lactic acid added to them to make them more sour-like.

 

I feel similarly. To make a crude analogy, you may like sours as they are now, and as the Belgians make them, and so forth. But imagine in the future that most of the sours are also made with chamomile, or lemongrass, or basil and blueberry skins, or scorpion tails, etc. And then you become the odd bird for liking "old school sours" instead of the new, "innovative" sours. And suppose hypothetically that even though Cantillon might be available in a market, instead the bars choose to put on tap every new local attempt at the style because they're new, because they're local, because they're "innovative", etc. instead of putting the best on tap.

The more I reflect on the above thread, especially some of @herrburgess examples, I'm coming up with more examples that are non-existent today. I can recall being able to choose from 5, 6, 7 Hefe-Weizens on tap, for example. That's almost non-existent today (unless maybe it is a German theme bar or one of the insane 100+ taps places). All of this innovation and rotating of taps, mostly American taps, has completely changed the landscape of what you can get when you go out to the pubs.