"Does American craft brewing have a quality problem?"

I think there are a multitude of reasons why this might be
1) new breweries are popping up more and more since it seems like a profitable buissiness venture so many breweries are just propped up to make money
2) some people are hyper confident in their beer, I forgot the name of it but typically when someone first learns a new skill, they overestimate their talent in that skill, and then once they start actually improving they underestimate their talent.
3) American breweries have added pressure on them to make a lot of beer quickly, and sometimes quality control takes a back seat. We don't have many breweries that are a hundred years old and heavily steeped in tradition the way European breweries are.

Overall I think the beer scene in the US has been improving, craft beer has become more and more common and more and more people drink it. Most people have their first beer drinking experience at a party or bar, usually drinking a tried and true beer, so I wouldn't worry about it hurting the craft beer scene too much. If anything, it might be something we all can learn from.

 

The majority of the bottled beer that's on the shelves is better than what was available 20 years ago, as far as how technically well made they are. Where I have seen problems is with a few non-bottling startups. The last three I've been to have been amateur, at best.

 

I agree wholeheartedly. There is a shortage of brewing talent with regards to the # of craft breweries currently online in the U.S. So many of them are being opened by homebrewers, and some are being opened by opportunists trying to cash in on the trend.

That is not meant as a slight to homebrewers - I am one, and many can and do make excellent beer. At home. On a 5 or 10 gallon system. But trying to start a commercial brewery because you make good beer as a homebrewer is a little like trying to bat cleanup for the Yankees because you hit the most homeruns for your high school team. There are a lot of steps you need to take in between to really learn how to properly do what you are setting out to do, and it's probably going to take years of drudgery making very little money to succeed. And even then, your chances are based on your talent more than your hard work. Hard work can make you a great tank scrubber, even a good assistant brewer. Only talent on top of years of hard work can make you a great brewmaster.

The upshot of this is that there are probably a lot of young people these days who see that there is plenty of opportunity out there for talented and dedicated people to make a career out of brewing. It's not going to be the most lucrative of jobs, but if you love it, then who gives a rip. It may take a while, like 5 or 10 years, before the brewing talent begins to catch up to the demand, but my hope is that when it does, most everyone has great beer available at a brewpub not too far from their homes. The explosion of highly regarded breweries shows that this may already be happening.

 

It really depends. In my experience and travels some markets are booming with selection and great beer and the sky is the limit, others have some options but the quality is lacking, and then there are places that are just dead zones with nothing going on ready for someone to take advantage of.

As far as what it takes, everyone has opinions on what they think is good or great, but the vast majority of customers aren't so picky and can easily be satisfied drinking Sierra Nevada / Sam Adams et. all vs. trying to hunt down the next Hill Farmstead, Funky Buddha, Tree House, Tired Hands or whatever...

Often in the case some brewer can fill that gap and be successful. In other cases the customer may want more.

It's a mish mash I see in that some places it's going to grow, and other areas it needs contraction. I think also that for me personally what often gets me in terms of all these new breweries is that I often get the impression lots of these brewers really haven't sampled a lot of different breweries beers and particularly a lot of the same style to get an idea of what an ideal say.. pale ale, or porter should be.

Often at times I'll find some new beer from a brewery, evaluate it and wonder, gee have you wondered what people think is a great porter and if yours compares to it? It kind of blows my mind, I'll drink some new IPA from some new brewery (the most hyped and rated style) cause they all want to make them, and really wonder if this brewer thinks that this beer will want to be consumed amongst brews like Duet, Abner, Heady, Permanent Funeral, Hunkamunkanewfoot etc.. no not even that league... but that they think it will compete with say Torpedo, Stone IPA, Dogfish 60, Racer 5, Lagunitas, Two Hearted, etc... when it is nowhere even close???

I am constantly running into this with many new places and just keep saying to myself over and over "Has this guy/gal (brewer) even tasted these beers?" I mean this isn't gonna fly or last.... There's a lot of people out there who really haven't done their homework.

Part of me also keeps saying I've seen this all before. I mean it happened and I witnessed it in the 90s so I am not so blinded to think this is going to last in it's current state (although there are many things different now). Customers are fickle, trends come and go, and people grow up changing the demographic. I mean I can see all these young guys who dork out over beer here, and I can picture them married ten years later (well maybe not...) with their wine cellar and kids and mini van, saying yeah I remember when I used to drink all that stuff but now I've moved on to __________ fill in the blank, spirits, cocktails, wine, whiskey, cigars, fine china, golf clubs whatever...

The growth is needed in some areas, but it's an anomaly to me and not the norm. Even new brewers who aren't making the latest and greatest are going to be left with nothing when the chips come in. Some also wont make it because of bad business decisions, or just bad luck. In many ways I'll steal John Palmer's phrase about brewers, in that there are only 2 kinds, ones who are clean and ones who are lucky. I'll put in the same context as breweries and whether I think they'll be around... only the ones who make great beer, and the ones who are real lucky will... and sometimes that's not even enough

 

Ironic, isn't it, that some would claim that American craft beer has a quality problem, while it's the American craft beer movement that's allowed the US to claim the title of the best beer brewing country in the world? I mean, if we have a quality problem, what does that say about the rest of the world?

And, by the way, complaints about there being a lot of inexperienced people getting into the business now, without adequate training in the brewing craft, is pretty much exactly what I remember hearing in the late 90s and early 2000's. Though I think, back then, that concerns probably had at least as much to do (1) with not knowing how to run a business and (2) beer drinkers being less adventurous than they are today. Still, a lot of places (including some that brewed decent beer) failed back then. Thing is, I'm dead certain that craft brewers make better, and far more diverse, beer today than they did back then. Maybe there are some brewers trying to go pro with fairly limited resumes. I just don't think it was any different years ago when there was barely even a craft brewing industry around where people could gain experience making decent beer. Yet, somehow, even with that limitation, we've ballooned into a country with well over 3k breweries, and where craft beer sales are growing by double digits each year, blowing away the (sometimes negative) growth that the macros are seeing. Either beer drinkers with presumably more developed palates are for some reason drinking crappy beer in record numbers, or the beer being produced is actually pretty good.

Look, brewing may be both art and science, but it doesn't necessarily require Van Gogh/Einstein levels of skill in that regard. I don't mean to dumb down the requirements of the job, only stating the rather obvious point that the requisite technical skills are learnable, attainable. I would think that, in a nation of 300 million people, it would be possible for several thousand dedicated souls to acquire these skills, and that it would be a lot easier to do so today, than was the case 15-20 years ago.

 

I don't really know much about craft or anything, but ill throw in my 2 cents. I feel as though every brewery has problems with quality. BMC and all of them do. The only reason BMC and other big names don't have quality issues is they have more money to spend on quality control. You take these craft breweries which could just be a few friends brewing in their house, And they don't have the financial resources to test their product for quality and everything. So i feel as though everyone deals with it

 

Some craft has a problem when starting out, but after trial and error, and utter awful feedback, they usually get their act together and kick most macros butt. One can not run before walking....just saying.

 

*cough* Pipeworks *cough*

 

You appear to be arguing that mediocre beer is acceptable as a starting point for a new brewery. You also appear to be suggesting that the business landscape for starting a new brewery is comparable to the landscape which existed 15-20 years ago. Before I go to the trouble of listing all the reasons those would be incorrect, is that what you meant to state? Several posters before you correctly pointed out that there are a lot of people acting as master brewers who haven't "put in the time". I can personally vouch for the fact that there is a crapload of mediocre and even outright bad beer out here. It may be more "diverse" in style but it still is bad. New breweries struggle for shelf space, and try to draw attention to their beers with label art and suggestive or outlandish names.

The craft biggies know a fallout is coming and are positioning themselves for it. "Drink local" is a fad, and when it dies a lot of startups go with it. Is it possible for new 20-something home brewers to become successful master brewers? Sure. In about 10 or 15 years, I'd guess. If they're running their own breweries now, well...odds are they do not appreciate the complexities of brewing which would enable them to make exceptional beer.

When I spend money on beer I want exceptional beer, as I have no wish to subsidize mediocrity.

 

As has been demonstrated many times in other industries, there is more than one successful business model.

There is at least one brewpub / taproom (sorry, I can never keep the differences straight... anyway, this is a place that brews their own beer and serves it in their own bar, and, AFAIK, nowhere else) in the Twin Cities that has focused on making their bar a destination, a place people want to go, and not so much on making their beer into the next Surly. Most local "beer geeks" seem to rate their beer as mediocre.

From all appearances, they are successful with this business model.

 

Sorry if I wasn't clear regarding my position on this issue.

Re: mediocre beer being in any way 'acceptable,' no that's not what I believe. I, like you, don't buy mediocre beer. Or, rather, I don't buy beer I don't like. At some level, we're talking about taste, here. I mean, good Lord, why anyone would buy a pumpkin beer is beyond me, but I understand, intellectually, even if it makes no sense to my taste buds, that some pumpkin beers are well made brews. I guess so, anyway.

But regarding mediocrity being okay, I don't think I said anything along those lines in my previous post. But obviously, with thousands of breweries, there are going to be some miserable efforts out there. I don't find that acceptable, but neither do I think it constitutes a problem. It is what it is; any industry of this size is bound to have some marginal producers. It'll always be that way. Is the American restaurant industry at a point of crisis because there are a lot of shitty restaurants out there? Pointing out that some craft breweries make sub-standard beer isn't exactly a revelation. Is it your belief that things are getting worse, for some reason? If so, do you have any proof?

Re: whether I think "the business landscape for starting a new brewery is comparable to the landscape which existed 15-20 years ago," well, I suppose it depends what you mean by "business landscape," but I assume the answer is absolutely not; it's far better. There's a new food and drink magazine in town that just published its first issue, which includes an interview with Scott Francis, the founding father of the Columbus craft beer scene (dating from 1988, when he was the first brewer at Columbus Brewing Company). As the article states:

"Some recall Francis saying, “It is easier to make good beer than sell good beer.” The technical aspects of brewing and producing a specific style of beer can be a challenge, but in the early 1990s, educating customers at the bar stools of Columbus to understand and appreciate types of beer they never heard of was much harder."

Brewers in the US today don't have to deal with this problem to nearly that great an extent. Beyond that, I believe that it is likely far easier for an enterprising young brewer to get experience today than was the case 15-20 years ago. There are, literally, thousands of craft breweries in existence where one might apprentice. That wasn't the case 15-20 years ago. I really don't care if some of the brewers out there are in over their heads. My contention is that in an increasingly sophisticated beer drinking marketplace, the substandard brewers will get weeded out. But as MNAle says above, everything is relative. Some markets are more demanding than others, and it's been my experience that when you stay small, there are lots of niches that local brewers can exist within quite successfully.

It's easy to throw out something like: "I can personally vouch for the fact that there is a crapload of mediocre and even outright bad beer out here." Frankly, it's a useless statement. Like you personally vouching for something on an Internet discussion forum makes it true?

Everyone on these boards has his/her own experiences that they can share. And yours or mine are no more meaningful or definitive than anyone else's. I mean, I can personally vouch to the fact that ten years ago in Columbus there was one brewery making decent beer (Barley's), and two making boring to crappy beer (CBC and Elevator). That's it: three breweries, two of them not worth my time or money. We'll be at two dozen breweries here soon and I know of no one making beer anywhere close to the crap that CBC and Elevator were making back then; it's been my experience that that all make pretty good beer. And those two breweries from the early 2000's are now making terrific beer, too. The increase in quality, quantity and diversity has been nothing short of astounding. Sure, every now and then someone cranks out a dud, but the overall upward trend has been undeniable.

Of course, that's just one data point. Maybe quality is sinking in other parts of the country. Personally, I doubt it. But I can only vouch for my own experiences.

Finally, I couldn't disagree more with your final paragraph. Wine coolers were a fad. Pet rocks were a fad. Disco was a fad. Drinking local isn't a fad; it's the way things were done during most of the country's brewing history. It may be a marketing slogan you might see in a brewery ad, but it's also not really even its own thing but, rather, part of a much larger local movement in the food/ag and beverage industries. Farmer's markets are the fastest growing segment of the grocery industry. This article is a year old, but check out the following:

"8,144 farmers markets now are listed in the USDA’s National Farmers Market Directory, up from about 5,000 in 2008."

"Local food and direct marketing opportunities, including farmers markets, are one of the fastest-growing segments of agriculture. According to the latest Census of Agriculture, direct sales of food products from farmers to individual consumers rose by nearly 50 percent between 2002 and 2007...Worth an estimated $1 billion in 2005, local food sales grew to $4.8 billion in 2007 and nearly $7 billion last year, according to industry estimates..."

Sound familiar? It's the same trend breweries are benefiting from. Here's the thing, the majority of the country doesn't buy their food at farmers markets, nor do they buy locally brewed beer. They don't need to in order to support a burgeoning local food and drink movement. So, no, I don't think drinking local is a fad. I think it's a growing trend. Here I go with one of those useless personal experiences again, but I can state with absolute certainty that if Stone comes to Columbus I'll drink far more of their beer than otherwise would have been the case simply because they'll be a local brewery. I cannot imagine a reason why the allure of an actual physical connection to the things I eat and drink would fade away. As long those things I can get locally are high-quality, that is. And the quality (and, as I said, the quantity and diversity) here has never been better.

I know you're in VA, but have you ever been to Boone, NC? Do you know of Appalachian Mountain Brewery? Wonderful place. It has two brewers listed on its website: http://appalachianmountainbrewery.com/about/crew. The so-called head brewer had no professional brewing experience or specific education (near as I can tell) before he went to work at AMB. The brewmaster graduated from App State in 2011 and seems to have been one of the first students who went through that school's new fermentation studies program. As it says on that website: "Being a Brewmeister is his first professional job and he couldn’t be more excited to start his career." Pretty iffy credentials, wouldn't you say? Thing is, they make great beer. Even if they haven't "put in the time."

 

oop
almost got me!

 

is it a quality problem,or a price problem?

craft has always been more expensive then non craft beer from what ive seen.so as the economy gets worse,people are going to stop buying the craft and start buying the cheaper non craft

 

But the economy is getting better.

And even when the economy imploded several years ago, the craft beer segment did very well.

Craft beer, as others have pointed out, is an affordable luxury. When the economy is stressed, people need to cut back, of course. Maybe they don't buy a newer car, go on vacation, eat out as often, or pursue a pricey home renovation project. By comparison, $10 here or there on craft beer is cheap, even when times are hard.

 

Too many people these days believe they can "build a better beer" -- not because they brew great beer, but because there are more than enough mediocre beers already on the shelves to support their belief.

 

I admit I find myself unsure on these points. It seems that Tree House in Massachusetts brews not just good, or average, but exceptional beer. They seem to be a bunch of guys with no prior professional brewing experience. Meanwhile, I have had many mediocre brews from more established breweries and from some small ones.

Brewing, like winemaking seems to be a combination of art and science. The science can be learned, through experience or study. The art? Some have it, some don't. Craft beer is a "hand crafted" product at these microbreweries, and as always, such products will likely exhibit a greater flaw rate than mass produced options, but will also, at their best, surpass mass produced options in quality.

I can only hope that the cream rises to the top. But what BMC does (and Boston Beer does) isn't easy. The level of consistency is impressive. As craft breweries get larger, expectations change. It has to be the same batch to batch, year to year. That becomes the mark of quality and excellence.

 

My apologies if this has been tackled in the receding 10 pages, but would someone care to take a whack at defining the term 'mediocre'? I mean, where it's not just a stand-in for 'I, personally, don't like X." My point is that, obviously, sub-par craft beer exists. But so does decently made, if unspectacular craft beer, at least according to my personal taste. For example, what's your opinion of Spotted Cow? Personally, I find it not worth my time, boring as hell. I might even call it mediocre.

Of course, it sells so well that profits from it allow New Glarus to produce beers like Wisconsin Belgian Red. I don't think a lot of people would call New Glarus a mediocre brewery, but they certainly do (you know, in my humble opinion) have a pretty bland flagship brew.

If mediocre means ' these guys don't seem to know how to brew decent beer, across the board' that's something I could buy in to. I just haven't run into that issue in quite a while. I have seen a few start-ups take a while to get their brewing sea legs under them, however.

 

In the context of the article the OP linked to, mediocrity was not even the topic. Quality was. They are not the same thing.

 

Below is an extract from the linked article in the original post:

“At a news conference that followed the opening conference session, Gatza said quality problems include off flavors, oxidation and the presence of dimethyl sulfide, a sulfur compound produced during fermentation that gives an unpleasant whiff of corn. He said many new breweries are not sending beer to labs for testing as they should.”

So, the ‘intent’ of mediocre as regards the original post was breweries making ‘bad’ or ‘mediocre’ beer from a technical brewing perspective.

I personally have never tasted Spotted Cow but I would be willing to bet that from a technical brewing perspective that beer is just fine.

Cheers!

 

Appreciate your straightforward way of stating that. American exceptionalism isn't always worn on the sleeve quite so proudly by some others.

Cheers